Amazon entices authors to Kindle eBook platform with royalties pledge

Thursday, October 7, 2010 - 14:50 by David Aiken

Online retailer Amazon has been attempting to make its Kindle eBook sales platform more attractive to UK authors, by offering them a place on its new 70 per cent royalty scheme, if they choose to publish via the internet.

Amazon is hoping to make headway with its DTP (Digital Text Platform), giving writers a chance to spread their latest works to a wide audience, using the world of e-commerce and the Kindle eBook reader technology.

Amazon and the publishers will take a five per cent share ratio for each sale as part of the newly integrated 70 per cent royalty initiative, following a model established by Apple, which sees third party software developers get a good deal when publishing apps for its smartphones and multimedia devices.

Amazon's Greg Greeley, said that UK authors and international publishers would be able to benefit from this new program, getting a better share of the money made from each eBook sale. He also said that the introduction of a worldwide market would allow for greater diversity in the choice on what is, already, an impressively varied platform.

Amazon is pushing to get people who are already familiar with its platform for safe shopping online to become Kindle users, so that they can buy brand new books digitally rather than picking up physical copies.

The new deal stipulates that publishers and authors will need to sell their books for between £1.49 and £6.99 to be eligible and the good news for the customer is that each will have to be a minimum of 20 per cent cheaper than the high street RRP of the paper equivalent edition.

Amazon, which began life selling physical books in the 1990s, has since grown to be the biggest name in e-commerce and taking its knowledge of safe shopping online and applying it to the eBook market has produced interesting results.