Ebook distributor PublishDrive has signed a deal with Chinese retail giant Dangdang to open up a massive market to indie authors.
Dangdang is reckoned to be the the biggest ebook seller in China and online book sales are said to be rising fast in the country. The Dangdang royalty to authors through PublishDrive is 60%.
PublishDrive also concluded an ebook distribution agreement with Chinese national library supplier CNPeReading last year which offers a 240% royalty — library-licensed purchases are often made at multiples of the cost of a single book.
Amazon is one of Dangdang’s rivals in China and claimed recently it has sold ‘millions’ of Kindle e-readers in China in recent years. It has an ebook store at Amazon.cn but indie authors cannot publish to it through Kindle Direct Publishing.
Fiberead is a company that does claim to offer ebook distribution to Amazon.cn as well as with several other retailers, including Taobao, a subsidiary of Alibaba and reckoned to be the world’s biggest ecommerce company. Fiberead offers authors a 30% royalty on ebooks while it takes a 70% share.
PublishDrive is currently distributing over 60,000 books by more than 3,000 independent publishers in 70 languages. With teams in four countries, they believe in the power of global distribution, working with 400 stores and 240,000 digital libraries worldwide, with major retailers including Amazon, Apple or Google, and local partners.
PublishDrive is led by CEO Kinga Jentetics and offers authors and indie publishers a data-driven global publishing platform. Jentetics founded the company as she was struggling to publish her master’s degree thesis and the lack of distribution opportunities prompted her to build an easy-to-use platform for indie authors and small publishers.