Are there better places than Clickbank for selling e-books?

[Chabrenas]

I've been at it again: reading free MMO advice. This scheme looks good enough in concept - do keyword research and then test market a few possibles using Adwords before deciding on subject and content for an e-book. The suggested implementation is to sell it through Clickbank, but the scheme is several years old. Are there better places, (assuming I'm not an established and trusted publisher of e-books with my own merchant account, able to handle all the work in order to take all the revenue)?

[inplainview]

Have you looked into Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing?

I'm at it since about six months and I'm starting to see some interesting results.

[Clinton]

You've tweaked my interest, inplainview. Could you tell us more?

[Chabrenas]

inplainview: I've just read through Amazon's Kindle Publishing guidelines. I notice that payment for amazon.com (i.e. US$) sales is made either by transfer to a US bank account or by US$ cheque. Even for the minimum royalty payment of US$100, you'd lose quitea chunk each time you collected. Do you restrict your sales to amazon.co.uk?

[Kay]

Thanks for the reminder that I should have explored that potential problem. Having done so now, I'm not sure what you wrote is correct.

I notice that payment for amazon.com (i.e. US$) sales is made either by transfer to a US bank account or by US$ cheque.

You seem to be suggesting that you need a bank account in the US to get your hands on the dosh. I have a USD bank account, but it's not in the USA.

From Amazon Kindle Publishing, Help Topics, Getting Paid:

The Kindle Store is invoice-free! We'll pay you automatically by Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) to a US, UK, or euro-denominated bank account or mail a check approximately sixty (60) days following the end of the calendar month during which applicable sales occur.

[fabdomains]

Right now you can open joint sterling and dollar accounts via Citibank in the UK - useful if you're in the world of online marketing.

[Kay]

There are loads of places outside of the USA where you can open US$ bank accounts. The point is that there was a suggestion that you needed a US bank account, which the info on Amazon itself does not seem to bear out.

[Saul]

You do need an account in a US bank, not just account in USD to receive EFT, otherwise you get a check. It' the same policy as their affiliate program. And that sucks.

[Chabrenas]

Saul: Yes. Once you get to the detail page, you see that they only do US$ EFT within the US. Actually, it looks as if the same applies to Euros and GBP - EFT only to banks within the currency zone. Pretty feeble for an international business, but not by any means uncommon, and I don't see any way of asking them to accumulate the payment until it hits a higher threshold.

[Kay]

Thanks, I see it now. Yes, it's very feeble for an international business to do this. For heaven's sakes, Amazon must have people all over the world selling books via Amazon.com. How stupid is this? They write a "check" for my $100, send it by snail mail to me in Timbuktu, and then I have to snail mail it to my US$ account in Outer Mongolia. Bah!

Also, it's rather naughty of them to have info on one place (the bit I quoted) and then say something entirely different elsewhere (the bit you referred to). Grrr!

Now what? Is there a better alternative to Amazon?