There are a number of ways for indie writers to publish, including utilising Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes and Noble’s own self publishing kit, PubIt. Another small but growing resource is Make Your Offer (MYO) which offers a sales space to sell and barter for Ebooks.
The premise is quite good. Setting a price point on a book can be quite hard, especially if you only have a small number of titles out and can’t readily create a loss leader to encourage sales on other works. MYO allows the option for users to bid on your book, offering people the chance to read your sample and then make an offer on what they’ll pay for the title. You can specify a minimum approved bid and set the system to auto accept. Or, you can opt out of the bidding system and sell at a set price.
This is a growing community with currently less than 100 books available and a small number of members. But, everything has to start off small. The developers of MYO are constantly striving to make improvements which could see MYO continue to grow exponentially in the future. You can’t expect huge sales here, but you can expect a book community ready to make purchases and offer feedback.
I’m interested in how this website will work out, and for a first time novelist like me, who’s work got lost in the black hole of Amazon’s Kindle rankings almost immediately, the ability to have Inside Evil remaining visible for an extended period of time is welcomed. I’ll report back on how sales go, but any new way of selling and promoting Ebooks is surely of great use to the indie community.
Geoff Wakeling 
The developer of this site heavily spammed at least one forum in trying to promote it. I looked at the site and found that it’s very much like one that used to use the same method for selling. What often happens when you try to sell books (or anything else) this way is that you waste an enormous amount of time and achieve very little. Someone bids and it’s too low for you to accept. Maybe it goes back and forth until you either settle for a price that’s basically an insult to the work you’ve put into the book, or the bidder decides that you’re holding out for too much and backs out.
If you’ve priced your book fairly why give someone a chance to bargain it down? Do they really want a book or just a bargain? To me, this kind of thing smells like desperation, an author who’ll go into the bargain basement just to make a sale. If that’s an author’s position, then it makes more sense to lower the price to .99 and make sure it’s on sites where there’s plenty of traffic.
As for the site itself, it doesn’t say much in its favor that after several months it only has 100 books. I suspect that a fair number of those are still the developer’s own books. Then there’s the question of traffic. Other than the authors, does it have any?
Just some things to think about.
Hi Sylvie,
As for the spamming, I haven’t seen that myself so can’t comment.
I agree on the offer idea, but you can easily opt out of that if you wish. Then it means that it’s as easy as Smashwords or Amazon to sell, so there’s nothing to hold up the process.
Whether it work’s or not, I think it was worth mentioning…simply because it’s another option for people to advertise their books. And yes, it’s small…but we’ll see if it develops from here 🙂
@Catana
Lowering the price to $0.99 is just putting your book in the bargain basement anyway. I’m an indie author myself, and hell yeah, there are times I’m desperate for sales, especially if I was only authoring books. I have a full time job, but in the current climate who knows how certain that will be. I would love to be a full time author.
The pricing your book fairly – that’s the big unknown. If it’s your first book, how do you know what’s fair. Even after publishing almost 10 books, I still don’t know what to price the next one at.
The website strong points are its community and the ability to link together the purchaser and the publisher and build a network. On places like Amazon, all you’re told is you have a sale. It’s not easy to network on sites like Amazon or Smashwords.
The website is a month old. Not several months old. The developers books are approx 10% of the current books on there. More people are joining all the time and it has recently been expanded to bring together authors and artists together. Which has received strong feedback.
It made just under 10 sales in its first month. Yeah these may have been authors buying other authors works, I’ve found that that happens a lot anyway.
The aim of the website is to help authors and artists by giving another realm of exposure for their books – and the resources readily available so they can contend with the traditional methods of publishing e-books. It brings like minded people together.
Is it worth rememebring that Smashwords, now a website with over 100,000 e-books, only had 150 e-books available by the end of it’s first year, from around 90 authors. After lauching approx March time in 2008.
Make Your Offer had approximately 40 e-books at the end of its first month, from around 20 authors, it launched March 2012.
Website traffic comes with time as more people discover the website. There are millions and millions of websites out there and search engines do not immediately put new websites up top notch. It takes time. It’s not going to be an Amazon over night.
The forum posts were not “SPAM” they were targetted marketing on getting the word out about a new service for authors (and now artists) without spending an absolute fortune on advertising costs.
It’s a shame that it gets labelled “SPAM”. Facebook started out through people “SPAMMING” inboxes about a social networking service.
@Geoff excellent point. Allowing offers is optional.
My book is priced at $0.99 on Amazon but it is still lost in the abyss. I have been a member of MYO from the beginning and I think it is a wonderful place for authors and book lovers to connect with each other. It is also another platform for unknown authors to get noticed. The site has developed rapidly in the month it has existed and I have great confidence in its success. There are fantastic ideas being put forward to improve the site, like artists showcasing and offering their work. How many sites allow the members to have their say on what happens and how the site progresses? Hmm I don’t know of any other ones.
I know, and that’s one thing I really like….the administrators really do take under advisement feedback and act upon it. Anyone new place to sell is a hit with me 😀
Me too 🙂