I've been checking my email and smashwords multiple times a day. This morning, I look and there is a a notification that (retroactively), I was approved on 4/13! It shipped to Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Diesel today. One week till the next milestone.
Yesterday, I talked to the Amazon POD people, the good kind - Print On Demand. You pay them $758 for design plus 0.19 cents a word for edit and you have a book that anyone can order on line. The profit on my $16 target book, Foundation for the Lost, was about $4.48 a copy. This means 605 copies to break even. I suppose this could also be amortized over the e-books.
From what I gather, advertising helps little for Amazon unless you get a burst of orders on the same day, catapulting you to "best seller" status, however briefly. This loop becomes self-sustaining, because most people only see and order from this list. Once you have enough orders, you benefit from drag - people who ordered this book also ordered X. If I act this month, I get a 15% discount on the edit.
Wow, that means Weston editing the Scarab was really valuable! I'd still want other people to look at Foundation before the editor gets it because I only get one pass. I want the paid comments to be focused on a macro level to make it the best product possible. Perhaps I can use ebook procedes to fund a POD project.
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