I was about to self publish on Amazon when I was presented the terms and agreement pages.
I looked at them and somethings have me wondering and concerned about the "safety" and security of my book.
It says they have the right but not the obligation to edit the book and some other stuff. Does this mean that THEY own MY book and can go in and mess with the contents as they please?
Or is this just saying they'll fix any grammar and spelling errors I missed?
Elaine M
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I used their publishing section, CreateSpace, and had no issues. They can and will remove offensive material (porn, slander, etc.) but that's a very tiny percentage of what's put up on Amazon.
The AUTHOR owns the book, the ISBN number and the copyright. CreateSpace takes a money cut for printing up books to order when you get a sale. Amazon takes a money cut separately from CreateSpace when you post the book up on their site for sale, as a transaction fee. FYI, My $5 selling price gets me .84 cents per book sold, that's how big their two combined cuts are.
Amazon and CreateSpace do NOT edit anything - that's your responsibility to get your manuscript into professional shape by doing your own editing, or paying someone to do it for you. All they do is print the book when a sale is made and ship it. And Amazon features the image of the cover and the description. The rest is your responsibility.
Athena
No, that means FIRST, you are too uneducated in the BUSINESS of writing to do this on your own.
They have stated that hey can EDIT your book on their site but are not OBLIGATED to edit your book if you have not done so.
Anonymous
As far as I know, going on second-hand information because I've never published through them but I know a few people who have - they aren't so much concerned with the quality of your material, but rather with receiving a portion of anything that your work may bring in, which means that they're similar to any other publisher who deals with self-published works. It's no reflection on them if your work is insufferable rot because if no one reads it or if it receives poor reviews, who cares? They've still got thousands upon thousands of other books available that they hope will bring them profits. They do however concern themselves with content - they don't fiddle about when it comes to what they say is out of bounds - I won't bother detailing that here because first of all I don't write about things that might be so controversial as to have my work removed from a site that I hope to feature it and secondly because I'm not about to research the intricacies of their guidelines when I don't plan on availing myself of their services now or in the future. Just know that they will force anyone who enters into an arrangement with them to agree to allow them to skim a certain percentage off the top of any sale - let's say for sake of argument that it's 30%, but again, I'm not going to research that so you will need to verify whether or not that estimation is anything close to accurate. That would mean that if you were to release a book chapter by chapter and charge $1 for every read, Amazon would take 30 cents and you would net 70 cents. It's not an ideal arrangement, but it sure beats vanity publishing which is just organised gangsterdom really. So it's basically that or having your work printed and bound at a local shop after which you could sell individual copies for whatever price you deem fit.