Dymocks Now Following in Penguin’s Footsteps – Launches Program to Fleece Authors
Some time back, Dymocks, an Australian bookseller,announced that they were going to launch their own self-pub service. That service is going to be up and running in about another 8 hours, and it’s called D Publishing Network.
And yes, it does fleece authors. In fact, it might actually be a worse deal that the Book Country service I told you about a few weeks back. That program charged both a extortionate conversion fee and a commission. I’m not sure that Dymocks charges a commission on copies sold but their conversion charges are just as ridiculous.
Like Book Country, D Publishing Network offers both print and Epub conversion and distribution services. You can pay for just one service or bundle them for a lower fee. I’m more familiar with digital, so I’ll cover that first.
Print only – $499: They take your manuscript and typeset it for their digital print option. They understand that (as with any typesetting process) that it may not be correct the first time and you can keep adapting for up to five times. You also receive a PDF ebook with this package.
ePub only – $399: Conversion of your manuscript to an ePubebook format.
Print and ePub – $699: Combined package deal.
Dymocks wants to charge you $400 AUD to convert and distribute your ebook. It will be sold via Dymocks.com, Google eBookstore, and they also plan to add more distribution channels in the near future.
Now, I’ve said before that $300 was a ridiculous charge for ebook conversion (that’s what Book Country charges), and this is even more so. If you shop around, you can get both Kindle and Epub done for under $150. Also, Dymocks is only offering the one format, and they’re not going to distribute it to the Kindle Store. That means they aren’t going to bother with 40% the world ebook market.
Oh, they will put your ebook into the Google eBookstore, but one, you can do that yourself, and two, that only covers a fraction of the world market. It’s only open in a handful of countries ATM.
As for print, that might actually be a worse deal. They’re charging $500 to format a print book and sell it via the Dymocks website. You also have the chance of getting the book into their 96 bookstores. The book will be POD, of course, and not have a traditional print run.
Update: I’m told that the price may not be such a bad deal. Someone whose opinion I respect says he’d charge about that much to do basic formatting of a print book.
I’m not as familiar with paper distribution as digital, but I’m pretty sure I can come up with a better offer. Dymocks is only going to sell via the one website in a few small markets (Australia and New Zealand). You can cover most of Dymocks' markets by selling your paper book via The Book Depository. They offer free shipping to a lot of countries and I’m told they stock POD titles (Create Space or Lightening Source).
Also, Lightening Source now has a plant up and running in Melbourne. I suspect that Dymocks plans to have your books printed there. Why not cut out the middle man? LSI is more than happy to work with you direct, and they already have a distribution network.
BTW, one thing that sets Dymocks apart is that they focus primarily on Australia. I can understand that an Australian author would want to cover their home market, but you don’t need to use an Australian company to do that. But if you want one, I would check out Booki.sh. I don’t have current info on whether they will accept self-published authors, but they are a reputable Australian tech company and ebook distributor. You can read more about them here.
But you don’t need an Australian company to cover your native market. You can do that yourself with the right marketing efforts. What’s more important is that you make your work available to as many people around the world as possible with the least amount of cost and effort.
And that is the best reason not to bother with Dymocks.
D Publishing Network
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