Since 2008, German digital publishing site XinXii has enabled writers and document creators to electronically publish manuscripts and papers through its site to sixteen different e-reader formats. The beauty of XinXii’s publishing model is its simplicity; the author chooses the format, sets the price, retains the rights to the work, and receives a 70% royalty for the real-time publication sales through the site’s online store without incurring any surcharges or maintaining a contract with the site.
Now, XinXii is facing some big-name competition. At the London Book Fair on April 11, 2011, digital publishing company Kobo announced its plans to establish self-publishing markets in Germany and France, while on April 23rd Amazon.de launched its German Kindle store, providing access to not just the 650,000 titles it made available to the retail giant’s German counterpart, but opening the capability of self-publishing with Kindle to its German consumers.
XinXii is ready to take on these new competitors with the announcement that it has collaborated with the Firefox Top 50 Add-On, “WiseStamp.” This venture means XinXii.com is integrated into the WiseStamp email app platform, which lists it alongside platform giants like Amazon.com, eBay, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, from a drop-down menu. It is the only German site to be listed. With over 1.5 million downloads to date, that translates into a wider email marketing availability for authors who e-publish and sell their works through XinXii’s online retail store.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.