It’s almost 2023, not 1981. You now have limitless options regarding book sales. Of course, your book needs to be on Amazon. Not to the exclusion of everything else, though. The bottom line is, no matter how expansive it is, you’re limiting your opportunities substantially by focusing all your publishing efforts on just one marketplace. Even if it is Amazon. Here’s why:
Published Versus Successfully Published
There’s a big difference between publishing your book/s and PROFITABLY publishing your book/s. Anyone can put a book on Amazon. That’s nothing special. Obviously, Amazon publishing is easy, and some authors are successful selling on that platform exclusively, but only if they spend an inordinate amount of money. Publishers, on the other hand, rarely put all their eggs in that basket, and you should pay attention to that.
Naturally your book needs to be on Amazon, but Amazon has no vested interest in your success as an author. They just want to be positioned to take the lion’s share of any sales YOU generate. Your reach needs to span the entire spectrum. Allowing yourself to be pigeon-holed into Amazon alone is a huge mistake. It simply won’t maximize your earning potential, not to mention it will do little or nothing to help you build a fan base, develop your brand, capture emails, or maintain your creative independence.
If your goal is to make a significant number of sales, get reviews, and actually earn money for all your hard work, relying solely on Amazon is unwise.
First of all, you’re buried. And you’re going to be buried for a long time.
Secondly, Amazon takes a very greedy cut when compared to all other merchants.
Finally, reviews are factored in to ranking, and between all those empty promises from people who loved your book but run away screaming when asked for a review, and Amazon doing “review purges” for no reason except to wipe out legit reviews you got from strangers, you have a long lag time to get to that magic fifty reviews that will help your ranking.
In the meantime, you could be gaining traction on other platforms where there’s not nearly so much competition and your cut of the money is much bigger.
Amazon and Your Goals
What are your publishing goals? If you don’t know, you aren’t ready to publish. If your publisher has no immediate answer to that question, you’re in even worse trouble. You need a publishing goal. It doesn’t have to be high and lofty. If you’re an Indie author, it can be as simple as 50 sales, 20 new subscribers, and ten new fans the first month. Amazon will play a role in your sales, but they can’t help you with any of your other goals. That’s the bottom line.
For instance, let’s talk about subscribers. If all your marketing efforts-or your publisher’s-are funneled into Amazon, you may get some “follows” on their platform, but they’re not your customers, they’re Amazon’s. You can’t get contact information and you can’t use them to build an email list.
If someone loves your book/s and that person leaves great reviews for you, you will never even know the person’s name unless he or she makes an effort to find you outside of the platform. (A huge percentage of Amazon reviewers publish reviews under a "handle" not their real names.) So for building an email list and a fan base, two vitally important things, Amazon is not an asset because all your buyers' information is stored by Amazon and they’re not giving it up.
Also, believe it or not, not all readers are Amazon shoppers. Fifty million people use Nook, which, of course, is Barnes & Noble’s answer to Kindle. It’s irrelevant whether those numbers are up or down from the year before, fifty million is fifty million. You need to try to get your piece of that pie. And all the other pies. Barnes & Noble made $92 million last year selling Nook readers. They’re not going anywhere.
Rakuten Kobo is currently in 25 markets, has its own e-publishing arm (Kobo Writing Life) delivers e-books to 150 countries on a weekly basis, and has some 38 million users. There’s another slice of pie you don’t want to sit on the plate. Because if you don’t get it, someone else will.
I won’t go on to list every merchant because you know who they are. I will just tell you that you need a presence with all of them.
Your Own Platform is Essential
You definitely need your own platform, as well. Selling directly to your readers is another route to netting more money and capturing more emails.
Create a simple website or even just a Facebook business page, but you need something. And then link to all the merchants, not just Amazon.
Many authors link only to Amazon from their website and that’s a mistake. Amazon is not concerned with your success; they want to sell products and get their own subscribers. If you’re an author and want to sell books, you need your own platform. Foregoing an author website is a mistake, whether you're an Indie or trad published author. Therefore, while Amazon is an essential sales channel, it’s not the only (or even the best) way to sell your book/s.
Sometimes You do Need to Follow the Crowd
I’m all for swimming upstream, but sometimes the majority does rule. This sort of leads into my last point, which is that you don’t want to stand out as having a lesser presence than other authors. There are occasions where it may cause people to scratch their heads: if the vast majority of well-known authors, lesser-known authors, and not-yet-known authors' books are popping up everywhere, you don’t want people wondering why you’re only on Amazon.
At one point in time, Amazon alone may have been enough for an author, but that’s no longer true. Now, to sell your books and build your fanbase successfully, you need to offer options to your readers and fans—both in how they shop for your book/s and how they interact with you as an author. There’s a reason most authors and virtually all publishers diversify their books on multiple platforms. The crowd is not always right, but in this case, they are. You need to be everywhere, not just the big A. Write on.
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