Considering Starting an Online Ebook Store

Hello everyone,

I write and blog some and I am trying to find a way to do good with that and earn some income from home (I have two special needs children and my wife has some medical issues as well). I would love to set up a site that sells ebooks for various authors and splits the income between the authors, myself and a charitable cause. Probably 50% for the authors (who would set the sale price), 25% for myself and 25% going to the cause. I wanted to get feedback from some authors who are actively marketing their own work.

Has anyone here ever sold through a book store similar to what I'm describing? Would you consider this type of selling arrangement? Why or why not? What would you need to have in place in order to feel that you were benefiting from selling through a site like that? I'm not really sure how ebook authors handle selling through others' sites as far as contracts and how to accept payment and all of that. Just trying to see if it could be viable.

I would likely try to focus on books that were on related topics and use that topic to help gather traffic to the site to increase sales for all the authors who may be trying to sell on their own from small webpages. It seems like everyone would win working together in that way. Any thoughts?