Let’s Talk About Amazon — Again
The topic of Amazon in relation to book authors and book publishers and book buyers is never ending. This is partly due to Amazon’s size of the marketplace and partly due to the innovations that Amazon and its competitors continually introduce.
I read with interest the Huffington Post May 14th article by Penny C. Sansevieri (@BookGal on Twitter) entitled “Cutting Out Amazon.com: Does It Still Make Sense to Sell There?”
Penny wrote an insightful post (link to it below) with ideas for authors who do not want to rely on Amazon to sell their books.
While I agree with Penny’s ideas (she always has great ones!), I do want to add my own opinion that authors who do NOT sell on Amazon are cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Especially telling is this anecdote Penny shared in the article:
Several years ago we had an author who sent his book to O Magazine, not thinking they’d feature it — it was just, well you know, wishful thinking.
As it happened O Magazine did run a blurb on the book which was great, yes? The problem was the author chose to not have his book on Amazon and his e-commerce system on his site wasn’t set up.
Consequently he didn’t sell a single book from the O Magazine mention. Lesson learned.
Leaving aside the question of why this author did not have his website already set up for e-commerce, there remains the question of why anyone would risk not having his/her book available on Amazon, an online book buying site that has such a huge percentage of the online book buyers.
In addition, as Amazon branches out into book publishing, movie making, TV series development and who knows what else is coming, authors should have an Author Central account on Amazon as one more way for book readers to find authors’ books. (See my Author Central account’s Phyllis Zimbler Miller Page.)
New book marketing experiment:
I have just started an experiment with THE EDNALOR MYSTERIES written by 93-year-old author Shirley Windward. I self-published this book as a paperback through CreateSpace several months ago.
Now I converted the book to ebook format (mobi) and entered it in the Kindle Select program. This means that for 90 days the ebook can only be sold as a Kindle ebook on Amazon and not on any other site. (The paperback can be sold elsewhere.)
I plan to watch how this ebook does with the benefit of Kindle Select before considering putting the ebook format on other sites. (At this time an author on Kindle Select can have five days in which the ebook is offered for free. I have been researching which combination of five days might be the best strategy.)
Please weigh in below with your comments about Amazon.
And consider buying THE EDNALOR MYSTERIES now available on Kindle.
Plus read Penny’s article now.
P.S. Did you see my U.S., U.K. and Germany Amazon stores on my author Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/PhyllisZimblerMillerAuthor?
I am also trying out a free Facebook app that allows a sample chapter to be included.
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(c) 2012 Miller Mosaic, LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter and @ZimblerMiller on Pinterest) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which helps clients with defining who they are and what they have to offer.
But… isn’t using Select the same thing in reverse that you mention about the author and O magazine? What if someone who wants to buy your book, like me, uses a Nook? or an iPad? Or a Sony or Kobo or something else that doesn’t take Kindle formats?
I also worry about the whole free phenomena. I have watched my entire catalog get purchased from Amazon and returned two days later, each book, one at a time, in order — as if someone was buying it, reading it, and returning it, then moving on to the next. Free is great for visibility, sure, but it’s becoming the common currency for book royalties, and for people who rely on royalties, that’s a problem. My mortgage company doesn’t care how many books I sell for free.
Susan —
Excellent comment, especially pointing out what seems a contradiction in what I have said.
For me book marketing is done for the long term and in stages. Thus in this experiment the first stage is having the ebook only on Kindle (the paperback is available elsewhere now) for 90 days to see if Kindle Select makes a difference with selling the Kindle format of the book.
(And people can download software for PC and Mac to read Kindle books on their computers.)
Then the next stage will be expansion of the ebook in other formats to other sites. And I certainly wouldn’t submit an ebook to O Magazine until it had wider distribution.
I have tried having one of my fiction ebooks free all the time to see if this would help people know about my books. In retrospect, this is not a good plan.
The advantage of Kindle Select is that I can choose the five days out of 90 that the ebook is free. In this way I hope to interest people who miss the free days and thus buy the book.
What do you think of this plan?
Hi Phyllis,
If you’re an indie author who self publishes books you need to use Amazon to make the most out of your business. I do not know of one author who has not got an account with them. It seems like everyone sells the majority of their work there.
LK —
I so agree with you that every indie author needs to be on Amazon.
And as of this morning I published an ebook only on Kindle so that I can try out the Kindle Select program. (HOW TO SUCCEED IN COLLEGE AND PREP FOR BEYOND COLLEGE should show up on Kindle in 24 hours.)