A new self-publishing resource

Last week, I got a media release regarding the official launch of http://www.youpublish.com/. Since one of my major goals is to help you find options in your publishing life, here are some pros and cons for this new resource:

Pros
First, You Publish is a new platform for selling digital products. One of the people behind it is Mark Victor Hanson of Chicken Soup fame (who knows just a tiny bit about publishing).

Next, one very unique feature is that it allows someone to upload and either give away, or sell just about any format, PDF ebooks or reports, video or audio instead of only one like most other resources. There is no cost to set up an account, you can stop at anytime.

Another plus is, if you are selling, the revenue split is 50% which is pretty decent by industry standards. The fact that you can upload any product and they handle payment processing could be very useful if your website is not set up to do that/can't handle everything you want to sell.

Cons
This can be good or bad, right now it's very new. This is good because there is less work available and yours could temporarily stand out, bad because no one knows how effective/publicized it will be. Again, since MVH is involved, I tend to believe it will be run well.

Another sort of negative: I'm not sure I like the search feature as it doesn't allow search by topic from what I tried. Although, the likelihood someone will search on "mystery novel" and buy whatever they find with no other exposure is probably slim (just like on Amazon or B & N by the way), issues could arise if a shopper doesn't remember an exact title or spelling of an author's name but they know the subject matter.

If you are considering publishing anything digitally, this site could make that task easier than it has been in the past. Worth at least keeping an eye on if the tools it provides suit you and your project.

Cheryl Pickett
http://www.publishinganswers.com/