Taming Amazon discussion

I know that Amazon is the elephant in the room when it comes to self publishing, and I also know that this group is called "Taming Amazon", but Jim, you've provided such good advice regarding Amazon that I'm wondering if you've experimented with any other publishing platforms, like Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple, Scribd, etc... Have you found any good resources for how to break through in these platforms? My thought is that if most authors focus most of their time on Amazon, it might be easier to make a splash on some of these other sites with a little work and focus.

Draft2Digital is now offering its authors the opportunity to do free book promos through Barnes and Noble. I have not tried it yet--still need to have my editor do the final edits on the short story I plan to offer as freebie/bait for my series.

I have used Smashwords for my short story collection. Besides putting your book on their site, they will submit it to all of the major retailers, B&N, Apple, Kobo, etc. The only problem is that the traffic and search capabilities on the other sites doesn't compare to Amazon.
While I have had some sales on Smash and B&N, the total of all of them combined is less than Amazon.
Hopefully, SmashWords will someday be able to compete with Amazon, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

I should add: I didn't mean that I had not tried Draft2Digital--I have and am loyal and happy. I meant I have not tried to put the short story up free yet and do the price match on Amazon. My non-Amazon sales are about equal to Amazon sales but I find that B&N customers do not post reviews there, so far.

I also use Smashwords which distributes my novels to many other sales channels, but I'm just not sure how to promote on these other channels. Just having your book available isn't enough (or at least it hasn't led me to many sales from these channels). I'm wondering how to reach B&N readers or Kobo readers.

I think the good thing about Smashwords is it's free, the downside is you can't use KDP as your book is not exclusive to Amazon. I'm not a fan of KDP exclusives anyway so it doesn't matter to me. The reason why I started to use Smashwords was someone asked me for the book on Sony and Kobo. I don't know how to make books more visible on other platforms, as only B&N, to my knowledge, let you post reviews.

i think I'm more likely to read a book if it's recommended to me on Goodreads and then I see what the Goodreads reviews say.

Draft2Digital recently added Inktera as another sales outlet. (They also have ScribD but I'm not sure I trust ScribD yet.) So with one upload I'm on B&N, Apple, Kobo, Create Space (had to add the paperback cover) and Inktera.

Smashwords is also linked to Scribd. As part of the announcement of their partnership, they offered every Smashwords author a free year of membership with Scribd. I signed up for the membership. It is a little challenging, because many of the books I want to read aren't available on Scribd, so it's kind of like a garage sale -- it doesn't work well if you are looking for a specific thing, but if you just go in with an open mind you'll find a lot of good stuff. I actually just downloaded City of Glass, The Color Purple, I, Claudis, and The Other Boleyn Girl from Scribd. Lots of good vacation reads!

To circle back to the topic of this thread, I've considered doing small, focused Facebook ad campaigns for specific platforms, like Kobo and Barnes & Noble. I'm wondering if the introduction of Kindle Unlimited will pull a lot of authors out of these platforms, which may make them even more enticing for the authors who stay. I'll let update this thread if I move forward with these campaigns and see any uptick on the non-Amazon platforms.

Thanks for the update J.

Here's a great article by an author who has been in KDP Select and also outside it. It's always bothered me when authors go for it because I don't want to go through the hassle of stripping DRM and converting files and then uploading the e-pub to my Nook--if I could even figure out how to use Calibre.(Failed and decided I just don't buy Kindle books. There's no shortage of other things to read.)

Last month my royalties from the non-Amazon retailers combined exceeded my Amazon royalties. This isn't always the case, but it can happen.

Maybe the way to tame Amazon is not to be their exclusive property. The exclusivity may be better for them than for you, according to this article:

http://noorosha.com/why-exclusivity-i...

Here's another article about Kindle Unlimited that I found interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/tec...

Like Amber, I don't want to work with Amazon exclusively. As much as they may have helped indie authors, I don't think it will be to our benefit if they're the only one left standing. And I think Apple is giving them some good competition right now.

Great article. Using authors as loss leaders ... 75% drop in income... Thanks for sharing it.

Kindle Unlimited is death for authors; $9.99 all-you-can-read models are going to make authors starve. I recently took my book out of KDP Select, and will launch my 2nd outside of KU. Taking 70% of royalties of books that are priced above $9.99 is not an incentive to lower book prices, it's punitive. Amazon is now a monopoly, and the government needs to intervene to rein them in. Bezos built his company on the hard work of authors, and now he's tossing us to the wolves of the market.

I've never been in KDP Select because, as I said before, I'm a Nook owner and like to treat readers the way I want to be treated. So far I have no regrets on that decision. I've continued to have several months lately where my non-Amazon sales were as good or better than Amazon sales.

I finally went with Scribd. I get the same royalty for a Scribd read as I do for a Kobo or B&N sale. I haven't had many Scribd reads, but I don't lose money on them.

I think Amazon would be somewhat less of a monopoly if indie authors would branch out to other retailers.

I'm actually in the process of listing my book with Kobo, B&N, iBooks, etc. through draft2digital (one of the reasons I left KU/KDP Select). I'm uncomfortable listing with Scribd (or any other book buffet site), though, because they have an all-you-can-read model. But if they provide a proper royalty, it's hard not to use them.

By the way, since I left KU I've noticed a drop off in sales. Maybe that's due to leaving KU or maybe it's because it's after xmas and people don't have money to spend. I expected a drop in sales in December, and a rebound in January, but so far that hasn't happened. My December sales were half my average, and my January sales look like they'll be less than December's sales.

Thanks for the link to the blog article you posted, Amber. I've been looking for info/opinions like that.

Even though I agree with everything that's been said here, I've just signed up for KU. So far my indie book Of Mice and Money has sold 4 copies on Amazon, 3 on Smashwords, and none on Nook or Apple even though it's been available there via Smashwords. Clearly, I don't have this thing figured out. And I can see that KU is a great deal for readers. So shoot me, I'm giving it a try for 90 days. I'll post any results I see although I realize that if the book starts selling now, I'll never know if it would have started selling without the help of KU. I just felt I needed to do the experiment -- with apologies to all of you who wish KU would go away. Maybe it will. Apple is a force to be reckoned with -- far more powerful than me.

For those who publish beyond Amazon, make sure you update those other editions with the Goodreads librarians. Give them the ID # or ISBN for the other retailers.

Winifred, don't apologize for experimenting. That's what all of us authors are doing. You try something new, give it some time, review the results, and then determine if it's worth continuing. That's author-preneurship. From my vantage point, it seemed that a lot of authors were initially very excited about the introduction of KU. However, the danger is that Amazon controls the purse each month, so many authors who price their books at $3.99 and $4.99 are getting paltry royalties for KU downloads, something like $1.70 per read instead of the $3.49 they'd get for the purchase of a $4.99 book. This can really drastically hurt profits. However, on the other side of the coin, authors with a lot of low-priced books (I'm thinking a romance author with 30 books priced at $0.99), may find that KDP Select does wonders for them, since they get an increased royalty. For these authors, it's all about sales volume, which KU can bring to the table. What I'm seeing now is a lot of authors putting some books in and keeping some books out of KDP Select. For instance, some might put the first novel in a series in KDP Select to try to generate new fans who will be willing to pay for the next book in the series. Many authors are still focusing on Amazon as their primary sales channel. Amazon can bring the readers, and their algorithm configuration makes it possible for indie authors to gain visibility. I'm still not seeing that on the other platforms. It is hard to break through on B&N and Kobo. What I've been hearing is that to succeed on these platforms you have to develop relationships within the organizations to gain more visibility. A friend of mine reached out directly to someone at Kobo and got the first book in his series featured on a list, which resulted in a huge leap in sales. I've also started hearing more authors talk about going after Google Play. I haven't been able to delve too deeply into this platform just yet.

J. wrote: "Winifred, don't apologize for experimenting. That's what all of us authors are doing. You try something new, give it some time, review the results, and then determine if it's worth continuing. That..."

Thanks. My thought is that maybe I'll find more readers through KU. My profits at this point aren't that important to me. What I need now are readers! Once a few more readers find my books and maybe start looking for more of them, I hope to be able to branch out to other retailers. And then maybe make some money.

Great discussion. I particularly enjoyed J's long post. I'm nearly two months into my first novel's exclusive period on KDP and I'm trying to decide whether to keep it there or branch out. Frankly, my greatest worries about branching out is the ISBN expense (none so far on Amazon) and the reformatting hassles. I've had authors on Facebook tell me there's no need for ISBNs on other channels and formatting issues aren't that tough. Any thoughts?

Joey wrote: "Great discussion. I particularly enjoyed J's long post. I'm nearly two months into my first novel's exclusive period on KDP and I'm trying to decide whether to keep it there or branch out. Frank..."

If you go through Smashwords, they'll assign you an ISBN for free, and I don't see any problem with that. An ISBN just identifies an edition. It has nothing to do with copyright. So the edition you put on Smashwords is called The Smashwords Edition, and it uses that ISBN on Barnes & Noble and iBooks and wherever it's distributed through Smashwords.

Thanks, Winifred. Great info.

Joey wrote: "Frankly, my greatest worries about branching out is the ISBN expense (none so far on Amazon) and the reformatting hassles.."

No worries, Joey. There need be no expense, and no hassle. Kobo assigns its own ISBNs the same way Create Space does for paperbacks. In fact, every e-book retailer will assign your book a number and you won't have to buy any unless you have your own imprint. (Don't ask me to explain that--an indie author who has his own imprint told me he had to buy new ISBNs when he corrected some minor matters in his book, and he said his imprint was why he had to buy them, so I'm just passing that on.)

I have found zero formatting hassles using Draft2Digital and been told by a reader who actually pays attention to what he calls "cracking open an e-book to look at the formatting" that mine is unusually clean compared to most. I give D2D the credit since I don't do it myself. I use them even for my mobi formatting which I then upload to Kindle.

I've noticed that my file sizes are smaller than those of other authors whose books I've received as review copies, and I think it has to do with the way D2D effectively compresses the cover art to still look good but not take up as much file space on people's e-readers.

Thank you, Amber. I'm going to school here.

I always recommend that people purchase their own ISBNs. Bascially, the ISBN is your book's identifier. In that code is the publisher's name. If you get a free ISBN from CreateSpace or Kobo, whose publisher's name is in the code? Yours or CreateSpace's? I've had Amazon-hating bookstores look up the ISBN to make sure it is not listed as a CreateSpace book (even though I use CreateSpace for printing). I make sure that CreateSpace is not listed as my publisher. I am my publisher.

Interesting. But then, I haven't yet tried to get my paperbacks into bookstores. Planning on that next summer, with a store (in my alternate place of residence) that takes local authors books on consignment. They only do it by appointment, in person, so I won't know until June whether this will matter to them.

When producing a book I spend money on 2 things: a good cover and good editing. I think purchasing ISBNs is an unnecessary expense. The more costs you add to the process, the more units you have to sell before you see any profits. Physical bookstores are a relic of the past. I'm not going to spend money trying to get them to carry my books. Even if I persuaded them to carry my book, they probably won't sell many copies, and will take a portion of my small royalties. I'm interested in game-changing sales.