I am looking at print on demand options but I have not looked at those other versions.
Hi Brett,
Having known people who have successfully published and sold stuff online (and having made a living myself selling digital goods), I have some Thoughts that I *hope* will be of use to you.
In my experience, The 3 main factors (after the quality of the thing itself) that determine sales are:
1 - selection of marketplace
2 - ease of transaction
3 - effectiveness of marketing
(The third is a huge area, so I'll leave that alone, but the other two I can adress briefly.)
The amount of people who find a buy books as PDF on the internet is relatively small, this is for a variety of reasons. The amount of people who buy books on Amazon, and Audible (and, to a lesser extent, iBooks) is Huge. If you offer your book to a hundred people, 1 may purchase. If you offer it to a bajillion (I am assured that this is a real number) you may get 1% of that number. Which is more.
Second is ease of transaction. When you use an established platform, you are leveraging their sales funnels. If someone sees your book on Amazon (for example) and wants to buy it, they tap once with their thumb. This ease of transaction again, will net you many more sales than if that person has to find her credit card, plug in the numbers, download a file etc etc.
You would have to do some work on the back end (formatting for KDP etc) but I honestly think it would be worth your while.
Apologies for the absolute essay. Also, apologies for anyone who has read this as a comment.
Hope it all goes well. If I can help with anything, feel free to PM me. Have a good one.
j.