My very own Bookstore

A little while ago I discovered a new start-up that call themselves HummingbirdDM.

• They have created a customisable retail outlet for anyone to sign up for. 

It is an eBook and audio book store which supplies content from all the big publishers like Penguin, Simon and Schuster etc, all the best-sellers in digital format delivered by a free app to your device.

• The store owner: you, will earn money from the sales of books via your store.

The front page is customizable by you, the store owner or you can ask the friendly guys at Hummingbird to assist you. Hummingbird provide regularly updated streams of best-sellers which you can use for your default front page, or you can select the genera you like: Romance, mystery, non-fiction, westerns... the choice is endless.

• They also offer the opportunity for writers and authors and the creators of audio books to upload their works to the retail database and have an opportunity to sell to readers, also. 

I decided to join them as I like the idea of earning money from selling books and also I like to be able to expand the markets and retail outlets of my own books.
You get a good chunk of the retail price when books sell via your store. Their contract is written in clear language and appears to contain no 'gotcha' clauses so I can recommend them for that reason alone.

• How do I get paid?

If you are in a country outside the USA (like me) You may like to try Payoneer as your bank account to receive your income. This link will earn us both money and get you signed up to the best way of receiving overseas funds I have yet to discover. 
Check this opportunity out, I think you may find it exciting.

Don't worship the gate-keepers - they are idols with feet of clay.

Reposted from my comments at Mark Williams international
As a successful erotica author I have watched my publisher pay me peanuts while reaping 100 or 200 times the income from my work over the past 11 years. I also strongly suspect that tens of thousands of my books have been sold secretly at wholesale price without my knowledge, but I have absolutely no way of proving it. They make endless careless mistakes with their accounting for my sales and royalties. They cannot account for my entire earnings and sales with them because they regularly change their accounting system and I have no rights in my contracts to request an independent audit of their records.
This subterfuge and unfairness broke my will to write. What is the point of being a writer whose books people love to read and I don't get paid for that good work? What is the remedy if the gatekeepers not only pay you hardly anything but they steal and lie as well? The average author is too poor to sue one of the big six.

Not only that, but despite having had three books published in three years, after that they didn't want any more of my books. They are a comfortably earning backlist for them. Why make any more effort to use me or my work? Or to find out if my genera work or biographical works are equally popular, as one might imagine they could be. No.

I bless the fact that I got my digital rights back from them 6 years ago before they thought they needed them. When they requested the rights back, as belatedly, they were publishing 100 NZ authors in ebook format early this year. I asked my editor for information on their marketing plan, and how much of their profit was I to receive?
There was no marketing plan, and I was to get 10-25%.

Having heard the news about ebooks I found smashwords and others online. I said thanks but no thanks to my publishers, as I think anyone would have.

I have now set up my own publishing company. My old books are being re-edited and going on-stream online steadily with many etailers, not just Amazon. Additionally I have found a very talented author, A J Burton, a retired policeman who writes gripping, realistic, very funny detective mystery fiction.
My choosing to publish him, recognising his talent and acknowledging his ability as a writer has transformed him into a real person, not a loser, as he had been, when trying to sell his book to agents and editors around the world. From being depressed and almost giving up, he is in heaven now, busily producing the sequel to Demon's Coven, and learning about how to edit his work.

The ebook revolution, fuelled by the manufacturers of ebook readers and app writers, etailers, Amazon.com and many authors has set millions of people free - we are merely two of them!

For all of us as human beings, the ebook revolution is simply the beginning of true freedom to write what we wish, publish for the enjoyment and enlightenment of others and to read what we wish. Gutenberg, Caxton and all those who wished humans to have access to the written word will be applauding from their graves.