Recently some indie author friends have become so outraged by ebook returns that they're trying to organize and bring pressure to bear against Amazon to eliminate its 7-day return policy on Kindle books. There are other vendors who allow returns as well, and I'm sure this same group will be targeting those vendors in due time.
The main reason why this group of authors is so upset is that they're watching their online, real-time royalty reports very closely, and making financial decisions for themselves and their households based on the "sales" they see reported there.
However, as any mainstream-published author already knows all too well, until net royalties for book sales are actually paid they are subject to change, and a large quantity of returns can easily bring your royalty statement for a given 6-month period into the red. The same is true of returnable self-published books, but these authors don't seem to get that, or if they do get it, seem to think it's unfair.
And so they've taken to social media to try and raise the visibility of this issue, to nudge their fellow authors into taking action intended to eliminate legitimate, vendor-sanctioned ebook returns.
In my opinion, what they're doing is a big mistake and if they succeed in getting vendors to eliminate ebook returns, it will be bad for all authors who have ebooks on the market.
Amazon's 7-day return policy seems to be the biggest target here, so I'll address my remarks to that specific vendor. But I think the points I'm about to make here are equally applicable to any ebook return policy.
I am *in favor* of Amazon's 7-day return policy on Kindle books. Here's why:
1. Hard copy books can generally be returned up to 30 days after purchase---longer, if you bought them someplace like Target. Therefore, as a consumer and reader, I don't see why ebooks shouldn't be returnable as well. Why aren't all of these same authors up in arms about return policies on hard copy books?
I'm all for removing barriers to ebook adoption, and one major barrier is consumers' perception of value, that an ebook is somehow inherently inferior to, and less valuable than, a hard copy book. Elimination of ebook return policies makes ebooks economically inferior to hard copy books, from the consumer perspective.
2. Returnability removes the risk for buyers who might not otherwise take a chance on a new author.
3. People who want to game the system will always find a way, and it doesn't make sense to take these first two benefits away from readers (and authors) for the sake of trying to do battle with the scammers. Take returns away, and the scammers who are abusing the returns system will just go back to outright piracy.
Meanwhile, you've given paying customers some good reasons not to take a chance on your ebook.
4. I don't believe most people DO read a book within 7 days of purchase, nor do I think most readers WANT to be put under that kind of time pressure. Those who are willing to read EVERY Kindle book they buy within 7 days are already paying a significantly higher cost than the price of the book in terms of convenience.
Classic case of penny-wise, pound-foolish.
True, the dishonest buyers' inconvenience does not put money into authors' pockets. But this just underscores my point about people who are looking to game the system. People who are willing to put themselves out like that to save three bucks or less are not a desirable target demo. I don't want them to be my fans because they're not truly invested in my work in any sense of the term, and never will be.
5. Regarding the "missing" or "stolen" royalties issue, I know this will sound harsh, but authors shouldn't be counting their chickens before they hatch, anyway. Until I actually get a royalty transfer into my bank account, I know those figures I see in the KDP reports are fluid and subject to change. KDP authors still have it better than mainstream-pubbed authors, who must wait a year or longer for the first royalty check and only get them every six months thereafter.
My Indie Author Guide STILL hasn't 'earned out' (the collapse of Borders meant thousands of returns), and it was published in November of 2010.
6. Contrary to what these agitating authors seem to think, those ebook returns do NOT represent lost sales. The people who are motivated to steal books or anything else never intended to pay for those things, and never would have paid for them. This argument from the authors is like a bank manager thinking that if only the bank robbers could've been talked out of their heist, they would've opened accounts at the bank and become customers.
Pirates and thieves are pirates and thieves, period. It's just a question of how they get the books for free: illegal download, or return policy abuse.
7. Some of the authors who are speaking out about this are suspicious that there are actual, organized groups promoting the practice of return abuse as a means to get free ebooks. But even if there ARE groups of people who've organized to promote theft, well...so are pretty much all piracy groups. There's no way to stop all piracy, and if people are abusing Amazon's returns policy, it's just another form of piracy.
8. Again, I know I'm about to sound really harsh, but the realities of business ARE sometimes harsh and that doesn't make them any less real: Ignorance is not a defense here. Anyone who's self-publishing for profit has a duty to read, and ensure they not only understand but agree with, any contracts they're signing, and that includes KDP terms of use and Amazon's ebook listing and sales policies.
If you don't like Amazon's ebook returns policy, you shouldn't publish there or list your ebooks for sale there.
- - - -
Personally, I share Neil Gaiman's view on piracy: I don't care how people initially discover me, because once they're fans and are able to pay, they will. And in the meantime, they'll be spreading the word about me and my books. You may disagree with this stance, or even feel it's naïve. But the bottom line is the same, regardless of anyone's opinion about it: thieves will ALWAYS find a way. Hassling your paying customers and fans in an effort to discourage thieves will NEVER stop the thieves, but it is LIKELY to annoy customers and fans, resulting in TRUE losses in sales and new fans.
Has consumer hatred of DRM taught us nothing?
Monday, April 22, 2013
Friday, April 19, 2013
Publetariat Update
I still have a blog post in me about this incident, but I'm not quite ready to write it yet. In the meantime, here's the update:
Writer and web developer Shawn E. Bell has very generously volunteered his time to resurrect Publetariat for all of us.
Shawn also offers author services for indie authors and small imprints; please consider him if you need help with your books.
I also wish to thank the many others who came forward to offer help. This has been a devastating experience, but I'm amazed and humbled by the way the indie community can pull together.
With Shawn's help I hope to have the essential site back online soon, though it may be many more weeks or even months before all desired functionality is restored.
Please be patient, and watch for a re-launch announcement from me on Twitter and Facebook.
Writer and web developer Shawn E. Bell has very generously volunteered his time to resurrect Publetariat for all of us.
Shawn also offers author services for indie authors and small imprints; please consider him if you need help with your books.
I also wish to thank the many others who came forward to offer help. This has been a devastating experience, but I'm amazed and humbled by the way the indie community can pull together.
With Shawn's help I hope to have the essential site back online soon, though it may be many more weeks or even months before all desired functionality is restored.
Please be patient, and watch for a re-launch announcement from me on Twitter and Facebook.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Hackers - 1; Publetariat - 0. We All Lose.
I will write a more in-depth follow-up as soon as I can calm down enough to do so, but for now, I'll just reprint what's supposed to be displaying for anyone who visits Publetariat.com right now. It isn't displaying as I write this, because the site is so trashed that nothing works there anymore.
-------------------------
As regular site visitors already know, Publetariat has been repeatedly targeted by hackers over the past few months. The most recent of these attacks occurred on 4/16/13, and has broken the site in numerous ways.
As a totally non-profit, volunteer-staffed site, Publetariat lacks the resources and staffing to keep recovering from these malicious attacks. The site is currently not accessible or properly functional, though its content is still contained in the site's database. But even if I can rebuild the site, it seems likely that another malicious attack will bring it down in a matter of weeks. For that reason, I'm trying to decide if it's even worth the effort to try. I hate to let the hackers win, but I also can't make a career out of fighting them.
It's devastating to see something I've poured my heart and soul into being destroyed like this. Still, I'm glad Publetariat played its part in the indie author revolution, and has helped so many of you.
Anyone who's very knowledgeable in Drupal and can volunteer to work on fixing the site, or migrating it from Drupal to Wordpress: please email me at indieauthor@gmail.com.
Sincerely, And Sadly,
April L. Hamilton
Publetariat Founder / Editor in Chief
-------------------------
As regular site visitors already know, Publetariat has been repeatedly targeted by hackers over the past few months. The most recent of these attacks occurred on 4/16/13, and has broken the site in numerous ways.
As a totally non-profit, volunteer-staffed site, Publetariat lacks the resources and staffing to keep recovering from these malicious attacks. The site is currently not accessible or properly functional, though its content is still contained in the site's database. But even if I can rebuild the site, it seems likely that another malicious attack will bring it down in a matter of weeks. For that reason, I'm trying to decide if it's even worth the effort to try. I hate to let the hackers win, but I also can't make a career out of fighting them.
It's devastating to see something I've poured my heart and soul into being destroyed like this. Still, I'm glad Publetariat played its part in the indie author revolution, and has helped so many of you.
Anyone who's very knowledgeable in Drupal and can volunteer to work on fixing the site, or migrating it from Drupal to Wordpress: please email me at indieauthor@gmail.com.
Sincerely, And Sadly,
April L. Hamilton
Publetariat Founder / Editor in Chief
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Big Publishers Forming Imprints With ASI: You're Doing It Wrong. Here's How To Turn The Titanic Around
I have been VERY vocal in my criticism of the many mainstream publishing outfits who've decided to form new, vanity publishing imprints in partnership with Author Services, Inc. (also known as "ASI" and "Author House", among many other aliases). This begs the question: if those vanity partnerships are so wrong, what should publishers be doing instead?
I have the answer, and it's pretty damned simple. You'll see for yourself when I lay it out below: there's nothing terribly Earth-shattering or insightful in it, it's all just plain old common sense. But no plan, no matter how sensible, will ever get any traction with big publishers unless they can accept some attitude adjustment first.
Note that in this post, where I refer to Big Pub, I'm talking about the Big Five mainstream publishing houses.
Partnering With A Vanity Press Will NEVER Work
What you've decided to offer via your various partnerships with ASI is such a transparent ripoff of authors, you really ought to have known better. It's painfully obvious to everyone (other than Big Pub, apparently) that this is a facile money-grab undertaken by outfits that are desperate to get a piece of the growing indie market share, but are so unwilling to invest anything of value or meaning in the endeavor that they've outsourced the entire enterprise to a disreputable vanity press.
ASI has been in the business of overcharging would-be authors for "publishing services" while also stripping them of their intellectual property rights for decades. Do you really have so little respect for writers that you thought we wouldn't realize inserting yourself between us and ASI can only accomplish one thing: to further increase ASI's already excessive fees to cover Big Pub's cut?
Readers Are Your Customers
For many decades publishers have viewed booksellers as their customers, not readers. Publishers sold their books to booksellers, who in turn sold them to readers. This business model makes readers the customers of booksellers. It's a business model that is now failing in the face of so much technological and cultural disruption, yet big, mainstream publishers seem at a loss to shift their focus from booksellers to readers. They've made careers of knowing what bookseller purchasing agents want, they've never had to give much thought to what readers want. That's always been the booksellers' job.
Well guess what? Amazon, the biggest bookseller of them all, is eating your lunch precisely because it has only ever focused on what its customers---in this case, readers---want. Its in-house imprints are informed by reader tastes and wants, and if you want to survive, your imprints must be similarly informed.
Authors Are Your Lifeblood
It's not just aspiring authors who are going indie in droves. Increasing numbers of well-known, mainstream-published, bestselling authors are jumping their mainstream publishing ships in pursuit of the greater control and profit afforded to indies. When JK Rowling decided to take her ball and go home, it should've been a wakeup call to your entire industry.
Popular, established authors don't need you anymore. There is nothing you can offer the Rowlings of the world that they cannot obtain on their own more cheaply, more efficiently and faster than you can provide any of it.
And this is why continuing with business as usual is a slow suicide march for Big Pub: you turn away from anything you feel appeals to anything less than a NYT bestseller -sized audience for fear such books won't earn enough to keep you afloat, yet authors who do succeed in scaling such lofty heights are as likely as not to ditch you as soon as they've gained a foothold with readers.
And your ill-advised partnerships with ASI have given authors and aspiring authors good cause to look at you with a very jaundiced eye. What more proof do any of us need that you don't view writers as your partners, but merely as profit centers to be exploited?
When an author or would-be author asks you (as they are starting to do with regularity), "What can you offer me or my career that going indie can't?" you better have a good answer. Because right now, what you have to offer most first-time authors is ridiculously slow publication schedules, unfair contract terms, laughable efforts at promotion, and advances so small that they may not even cover one month's expenses for a writer who toiled months or years on the manuscript you hope to profit from.
Either that, or the "opportunity" to have the bones of their dreams picked clean by ASI.
You DO Have Something To Offer, But It's Not What You Think
Up until recently you've done a great job of convincing writers that what you have to offer is an odds-on opportunity for fame and riches, and that without you fame and riches are impossible things for any author to achieve.
When you lost your stranglehold on the distribution piece of the bookselling business, it was time to come out from behind the curtain and dispense with this Great and Powerful Oz shtick. Thanks to several well-publicized instances of indie authors reaching sales figures to match those of your strongest authors, and MANY well-publicized (within indie author circles, at least) instances of indie author earnings FAR exceeding those of authors who've signed with Big Pub, the cat's out of the bag and authors are paying very close attention to the man behind the curtain.
The good news is, enough writers have become self-publishers that as a group, they're pretty well informed about the harsh realities of publishing and bookselling. They know from firsthand experience what's involved in producing a book and bringing it to market, both in terms of effort and expense. They know it's not free and they know it's not easy.
The bad news is, they're no longer buying what you're selling because they also know it's a myth: signing with Big Pub guarantees nothing in terms of a book's success or failure. All that it does guarantee is that the book will be mired in Big Pub's outdated, slow, inefficient production, distribution, sales and marketing processes.
Your Commodities Are Administration, Experience, Expertise And Connections
Your business model is in desperate need of a radical overhaul, to display what you bring to the table in sharp relief for would-be author-clients. Big Pub needs a Public Relations facelift too, to rebuild the trust between yourselves and writers: something it seems you've greatly undervalued, judging by how quick you were to squander it on the likes of ASI. Fortunately for you, acting on the former may ensure the latter takes care of itself---but only if you do it right.
I have blogged here before about the necessity for any indie who's going it alone to have an entrepreneurial spirit and approach, if she hopes to earn a living on her book sales alone. Guy Kawasaki echoes the same opinion in his book APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book. But I've also acknowledged here that many, perhaps even most, writers have no desire to be entrepreneurs. There are plenty of exceedingly talented writers out there whose strengths in plotting and characterization far outstrip their skills in bookkeeping, administration, design, production or marketing.
You have people on your payroll right now, as I write this, who are seasoned experts in the very things those authors can't, or don't want to, do by themselves. These are the things you have to offer and you've come by them honestly, so stop trying to hide them like so much stagecraft.
How To Capitalize On Indie Authorship Without Being Evil
Here are the broad strokes of how, were I in your shoes, I would attempt to turn the Titanic around.
(Any Big Pub representatives reading this who'd like to fly me out to New York for some paid consulting time to have me fill in the details, I can be reached at indieauthor at gmail dot com.)
Up until now, in recent decades your business model has required Big Pub to be interested in only two kinds of books: easy moneymakers, and status symbols. Any book that came your way and didn't appear to be either a likely bestseller or winner of a major literary award would be rejected, regardless of any other appealing qualities it might have.
This is why you haven't published a Great American Novel in generations, yet have created a market environment in which the Snookis and Honey Boo Boos of the world will never have much difficulty signing a six- to seven-figure book deal. It's time to let go of your self-assigned role of gatekeepers and arbiters of taste, because you've been exclusively in the business of selling product at a profit far too long to keep denying it. There is no shame in this; you're businesspeople after all, not philanthropists. So own it.
Writers aren't bowing and scraping to you anymore. You can no longer afford to sit on high like so many Pontiffs of Publication, reaching down to bestow your magical favor on the select few while brusquely relegating all other supplicants to the nearest exit.
You need to start PARTNERING with authors, forming business relationships that put the parties on more or less equal footing. You can no longer survive merely as book publishers, you must also become book producers.
------------------------------
Step One: Retool The Factory
If I can find freelancers to provide quality editing, cover design, interior layout and ebook formatting services for under $2500 total, and with turnaround times of 2-3 weeks each (or less), you should be able to acquire these same services at a comparable cost and within comparable timeframes.
If you haven't got the in-house staffing to do it right now, establish a stable of trusted freelancers to whom you can subcontract the work at the same rates they're already getting from individual indie authors. Alternatively, pay them higher rates in exchange for the right to keep them as dedicated resources, taking jobs only from you, to ensure they will be available when you need them.
There are PLENTY of skilled editors, designers and ebook conversion experts out there (many of whom were laid off from fulltime positions with magazines, newspapers and other publishers) who would welcome the chance to have a fully-booked work roster, as well as the opportunity to add the business relationship to their resumes.
You also need to keep some social media / web communications experts on staff. Their job would be to engage in social media and web communication on your brands' behalf, and to train / mentor your author-clients in the most effective uses of social media and web communication. This approach is considerably less expensive---and more effective!---than throwing money at the usual, old-school book promotion methods.
--------------------------------
Step Two: Overhaul Distribution
Re-negotiate your contracts with booksellers to eliminate returns. Indie authors and small, independent imprints aren't subject to those impossible terms, and now that chain booksellers are no longer the powerful rulers over your domain they once were, you are no longer subject to their unworkable demands.
You should get the same deal producers of every other product known to man get in the world of retail: the seller orders as many units as they think they can sell in advance, and none are returnable. The seller can discount any unsold product as he sees fit, holding monthly or end of season clearance and 2-for-1 sales, if need be. Once the product has left your warehouse, it's no longer your problem.
Since brick-and-mortar, chain booksellers are an endangered species, MOST of your print book production should be managed with a Print On Demand system, which would eliminate the big chunk of your current overhead expense that goes toward large, upfront print runs.
---------------------------
Step Three: Overhaul Advances
Establish an acquisitions model that doesn't require you to essentially sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into lottery tickets in the hopes that just a couple will pay off each year. Instead of acting as treasure hunters, ever on the lookout for the next blockbuster and willing to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars or more at a single title, acquire a wide range of titles that can respectably clear the net profit threshold, and acquire them at lower cost to put that threshold within easy reach.
There's no reason for ANY advance to ANY first-time author to EVER exceed six figures, and even six figure advances should be so rare as to be newsworthy. Historically, the great majority of books acquired in bidding wars have not earned out; but acquiring them has prevented publishers from spreading their capital (and risk) across many more titles with potential.
Get out of this downward monetary spiral and let your rivals take a bath on those bidding war gambles; it won't be long before all of the Big Five stop acting like they're on a bender in Vegas. A typical advance for a very promising book should be in the mid- five figure range, and many other books could be acquired with far more modest advances. Just think how many more titles you could acquire if you never paid any advances higher than $125k, and the great majority of your advances averaged out at less than $20k.
---------------------------
Step Four: Pluck The Low-Hanging Fruit
Successful indie books are hiding in plain sight all over Amazon, Apple's iBookstore, Smashwords, Goodreads and elsewhere. These are authors who've already proven they know how to write and they know how to grow a readership all on their own; imagine how much MORE successful they might be with your help. They are a proven quantity too, so your investment in their books is very low-risk, nothing at all like acquiring a previously unpublished title you think may hold promise.
Acquiring previously self-published, successful titles allows readers to tell you in advance which books they want to buy. You should be seeking out the authors of bestselling and best-reviewed indie books and offering them contracts---but not in the way you've done it in the past.
---------------------------
Step Five: Overhaul Acquisitions
For every manuscript or self-published book that comes to you for consideration, rather than the simple math of your current thumbs up, thumbs down system, you should consider one of four possible outcomes.
1. Possible Bestseller / Award Winner - Offer the typical, negotiable contract from one of your flagship imprints, with a sizeable up-front advance and back-end profit split. The book will be published in both print and ebook formats, and the author will receive training and support from your social media expert team.
2. Possibly Respectable Seller, Midlist Type Title - These are manuscripts you're currently rejecting on a daily basis, because you can't see a way for these books to recoup the costs you must invest to produce them. Yet countless indie authors are turning modest to impressive profit on books that sell only in the mid-thousands of copies. After you've retooled the factory and made the other changes outlined above, your overheads should be considerably less than they are at present, bringing the bar for profitability within reach for far more books.
Offer these authors the typical, negotiable contract from a new, boutique imprint, with a modest up-front advance and the typical back-end profit split. The book will be published in ebook formats only to minimize upfront costs, and the author will receive training and support from your social media expert team. Any book in this track that proves to be a hit could also be offered in print formats later, with terms either negotiated at the same time as the ebook deal or later/separately.
3. Modest Seller, Quality Work, Motivated & Social Media Savvy Author Who Could Grow - Offer these authors a negotiable contract for an ebook only release from a new, boutique imprint with no upfront advance, and a back-end profit split that's higher than for acquisitions made under items #1 and #2 above. The author will receive the same training and support from your social media expert team as all your other signed authors.
For this type of book, you would essentially be taking what you would've paid as an advance and investing it in the production costs of the book. The backend profit split begins with sale #1 since there's no advance to be repaid. You're partnering with the author in a way that helps him to cultivate a larger following while minimizing your upfront investment and risk.
4. Unpublishable, For Whatever Reason - Reply with an honest rejection, do not offer to sell any professional services.
--------------------
Step Six: Open A Totally Separate Author Services Division
Open a new business, totally separate from your publishing business, to serve indie authors who wish to remain indie. This business would offer paid pro services from the same stable of in-house or freelance / contract experts you employ on all other books. The key is to ensure your service offerings are priced only slightly higher than what those authors would have to pay if they sought out and contracted for the services themselves.
Your slightly higher price points can be justified on two counts. First, you would be offering a one-stop shop of pre-vetted service providers, saving authors the time and trouble of locating and vetting individual service providers themselves. Second, you could provide a certification seal to service division clients, allowing them to place a seal on their book covers certifying the book has been professionally produced by the experts at [insert company name here]. This certification would be buyers' guarantee that at the minimum, the book they bought has been professionally edited and designed.
Unlike your current ASI clients (if any), these authors are being allowed to remain completely independent and you would merely be offering services they would have to acquire on their own anyway if they intend to stay the course of top-tier indie publication. With this model, the author retains all rights to the work and there's no backend split - you are offering 'for hire' services only.
To eliminate even the appearance of any conflict of interest, anyone to whom you offer 'for hire' services cannot resubmit the book for later publication consideration under items #1-4 above. No writer should be led to believe that if he invests in the for-hire services you have to offer, a publication contract will be forthcoming.
Step Seven: Lather, Rinse and Repeat. Class Dismissed.
April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat.com, founder and Editor in Chief of The Digital Media Mom, and Editor in Chief of Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily.
I have the answer, and it's pretty damned simple. You'll see for yourself when I lay it out below: there's nothing terribly Earth-shattering or insightful in it, it's all just plain old common sense. But no plan, no matter how sensible, will ever get any traction with big publishers unless they can accept some attitude adjustment first.
Note that in this post, where I refer to Big Pub, I'm talking about the Big Five mainstream publishing houses.
Partnering With A Vanity Press Will NEVER Work
What you've decided to offer via your various partnerships with ASI is such a transparent ripoff of authors, you really ought to have known better. It's painfully obvious to everyone (other than Big Pub, apparently) that this is a facile money-grab undertaken by outfits that are desperate to get a piece of the growing indie market share, but are so unwilling to invest anything of value or meaning in the endeavor that they've outsourced the entire enterprise to a disreputable vanity press.
ASI has been in the business of overcharging would-be authors for "publishing services" while also stripping them of their intellectual property rights for decades. Do you really have so little respect for writers that you thought we wouldn't realize inserting yourself between us and ASI can only accomplish one thing: to further increase ASI's already excessive fees to cover Big Pub's cut?
Readers Are Your Customers
For many decades publishers have viewed booksellers as their customers, not readers. Publishers sold their books to booksellers, who in turn sold them to readers. This business model makes readers the customers of booksellers. It's a business model that is now failing in the face of so much technological and cultural disruption, yet big, mainstream publishers seem at a loss to shift their focus from booksellers to readers. They've made careers of knowing what bookseller purchasing agents want, they've never had to give much thought to what readers want. That's always been the booksellers' job.
Well guess what? Amazon, the biggest bookseller of them all, is eating your lunch precisely because it has only ever focused on what its customers---in this case, readers---want. Its in-house imprints are informed by reader tastes and wants, and if you want to survive, your imprints must be similarly informed.
Authors Are Your Lifeblood
It's not just aspiring authors who are going indie in droves. Increasing numbers of well-known, mainstream-published, bestselling authors are jumping their mainstream publishing ships in pursuit of the greater control and profit afforded to indies. When JK Rowling decided to take her ball and go home, it should've been a wakeup call to your entire industry.
Popular, established authors don't need you anymore. There is nothing you can offer the Rowlings of the world that they cannot obtain on their own more cheaply, more efficiently and faster than you can provide any of it.
And this is why continuing with business as usual is a slow suicide march for Big Pub: you turn away from anything you feel appeals to anything less than a NYT bestseller -sized audience for fear such books won't earn enough to keep you afloat, yet authors who do succeed in scaling such lofty heights are as likely as not to ditch you as soon as they've gained a foothold with readers.
And your ill-advised partnerships with ASI have given authors and aspiring authors good cause to look at you with a very jaundiced eye. What more proof do any of us need that you don't view writers as your partners, but merely as profit centers to be exploited?
When an author or would-be author asks you (as they are starting to do with regularity), "What can you offer me or my career that going indie can't?" you better have a good answer. Because right now, what you have to offer most first-time authors is ridiculously slow publication schedules, unfair contract terms, laughable efforts at promotion, and advances so small that they may not even cover one month's expenses for a writer who toiled months or years on the manuscript you hope to profit from.
Either that, or the "opportunity" to have the bones of their dreams picked clean by ASI.
You DO Have Something To Offer, But It's Not What You Think
Up until recently you've done a great job of convincing writers that what you have to offer is an odds-on opportunity for fame and riches, and that without you fame and riches are impossible things for any author to achieve.
When you lost your stranglehold on the distribution piece of the bookselling business, it was time to come out from behind the curtain and dispense with this Great and Powerful Oz shtick. Thanks to several well-publicized instances of indie authors reaching sales figures to match those of your strongest authors, and MANY well-publicized (within indie author circles, at least) instances of indie author earnings FAR exceeding those of authors who've signed with Big Pub, the cat's out of the bag and authors are paying very close attention to the man behind the curtain.
The good news is, enough writers have become self-publishers that as a group, they're pretty well informed about the harsh realities of publishing and bookselling. They know from firsthand experience what's involved in producing a book and bringing it to market, both in terms of effort and expense. They know it's not free and they know it's not easy.
The bad news is, they're no longer buying what you're selling because they also know it's a myth: signing with Big Pub guarantees nothing in terms of a book's success or failure. All that it does guarantee is that the book will be mired in Big Pub's outdated, slow, inefficient production, distribution, sales and marketing processes.
Your Commodities Are Administration, Experience, Expertise And Connections
Your business model is in desperate need of a radical overhaul, to display what you bring to the table in sharp relief for would-be author-clients. Big Pub needs a Public Relations facelift too, to rebuild the trust between yourselves and writers: something it seems you've greatly undervalued, judging by how quick you were to squander it on the likes of ASI. Fortunately for you, acting on the former may ensure the latter takes care of itself---but only if you do it right.
I have blogged here before about the necessity for any indie who's going it alone to have an entrepreneurial spirit and approach, if she hopes to earn a living on her book sales alone. Guy Kawasaki echoes the same opinion in his book APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book. But I've also acknowledged here that many, perhaps even most, writers have no desire to be entrepreneurs. There are plenty of exceedingly talented writers out there whose strengths in plotting and characterization far outstrip their skills in bookkeeping, administration, design, production or marketing.
You have people on your payroll right now, as I write this, who are seasoned experts in the very things those authors can't, or don't want to, do by themselves. These are the things you have to offer and you've come by them honestly, so stop trying to hide them like so much stagecraft.
How To Capitalize On Indie Authorship Without Being Evil
Here are the broad strokes of how, were I in your shoes, I would attempt to turn the Titanic around.
(Any Big Pub representatives reading this who'd like to fly me out to New York for some paid consulting time to have me fill in the details, I can be reached at indieauthor at gmail dot com.)
Up until now, in recent decades your business model has required Big Pub to be interested in only two kinds of books: easy moneymakers, and status symbols. Any book that came your way and didn't appear to be either a likely bestseller or winner of a major literary award would be rejected, regardless of any other appealing qualities it might have.
This is why you haven't published a Great American Novel in generations, yet have created a market environment in which the Snookis and Honey Boo Boos of the world will never have much difficulty signing a six- to seven-figure book deal. It's time to let go of your self-assigned role of gatekeepers and arbiters of taste, because you've been exclusively in the business of selling product at a profit far too long to keep denying it. There is no shame in this; you're businesspeople after all, not philanthropists. So own it.
Writers aren't bowing and scraping to you anymore. You can no longer afford to sit on high like so many Pontiffs of Publication, reaching down to bestow your magical favor on the select few while brusquely relegating all other supplicants to the nearest exit.
You need to start PARTNERING with authors, forming business relationships that put the parties on more or less equal footing. You can no longer survive merely as book publishers, you must also become book producers.
------------------------------
Step One: Retool The Factory
If I can find freelancers to provide quality editing, cover design, interior layout and ebook formatting services for under $2500 total, and with turnaround times of 2-3 weeks each (or less), you should be able to acquire these same services at a comparable cost and within comparable timeframes.
If you haven't got the in-house staffing to do it right now, establish a stable of trusted freelancers to whom you can subcontract the work at the same rates they're already getting from individual indie authors. Alternatively, pay them higher rates in exchange for the right to keep them as dedicated resources, taking jobs only from you, to ensure they will be available when you need them.
There are PLENTY of skilled editors, designers and ebook conversion experts out there (many of whom were laid off from fulltime positions with magazines, newspapers and other publishers) who would welcome the chance to have a fully-booked work roster, as well as the opportunity to add the business relationship to their resumes.
You also need to keep some social media / web communications experts on staff. Their job would be to engage in social media and web communication on your brands' behalf, and to train / mentor your author-clients in the most effective uses of social media and web communication. This approach is considerably less expensive---and more effective!---than throwing money at the usual, old-school book promotion methods.
--------------------------------
Step Two: Overhaul Distribution
Re-negotiate your contracts with booksellers to eliminate returns. Indie authors and small, independent imprints aren't subject to those impossible terms, and now that chain booksellers are no longer the powerful rulers over your domain they once were, you are no longer subject to their unworkable demands.
You should get the same deal producers of every other product known to man get in the world of retail: the seller orders as many units as they think they can sell in advance, and none are returnable. The seller can discount any unsold product as he sees fit, holding monthly or end of season clearance and 2-for-1 sales, if need be. Once the product has left your warehouse, it's no longer your problem.
Since brick-and-mortar, chain booksellers are an endangered species, MOST of your print book production should be managed with a Print On Demand system, which would eliminate the big chunk of your current overhead expense that goes toward large, upfront print runs.
---------------------------
Step Three: Overhaul Advances
Establish an acquisitions model that doesn't require you to essentially sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into lottery tickets in the hopes that just a couple will pay off each year. Instead of acting as treasure hunters, ever on the lookout for the next blockbuster and willing to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars or more at a single title, acquire a wide range of titles that can respectably clear the net profit threshold, and acquire them at lower cost to put that threshold within easy reach.
There's no reason for ANY advance to ANY first-time author to EVER exceed six figures, and even six figure advances should be so rare as to be newsworthy. Historically, the great majority of books acquired in bidding wars have not earned out; but acquiring them has prevented publishers from spreading their capital (and risk) across many more titles with potential.
Get out of this downward monetary spiral and let your rivals take a bath on those bidding war gambles; it won't be long before all of the Big Five stop acting like they're on a bender in Vegas. A typical advance for a very promising book should be in the mid- five figure range, and many other books could be acquired with far more modest advances. Just think how many more titles you could acquire if you never paid any advances higher than $125k, and the great majority of your advances averaged out at less than $20k.
---------------------------
Step Four: Pluck The Low-Hanging Fruit
Successful indie books are hiding in plain sight all over Amazon, Apple's iBookstore, Smashwords, Goodreads and elsewhere. These are authors who've already proven they know how to write and they know how to grow a readership all on their own; imagine how much MORE successful they might be with your help. They are a proven quantity too, so your investment in their books is very low-risk, nothing at all like acquiring a previously unpublished title you think may hold promise.
Acquiring previously self-published, successful titles allows readers to tell you in advance which books they want to buy. You should be seeking out the authors of bestselling and best-reviewed indie books and offering them contracts---but not in the way you've done it in the past.
---------------------------
Step Five: Overhaul Acquisitions
For every manuscript or self-published book that comes to you for consideration, rather than the simple math of your current thumbs up, thumbs down system, you should consider one of four possible outcomes.
1. Possible Bestseller / Award Winner - Offer the typical, negotiable contract from one of your flagship imprints, with a sizeable up-front advance and back-end profit split. The book will be published in both print and ebook formats, and the author will receive training and support from your social media expert team.
2. Possibly Respectable Seller, Midlist Type Title - These are manuscripts you're currently rejecting on a daily basis, because you can't see a way for these books to recoup the costs you must invest to produce them. Yet countless indie authors are turning modest to impressive profit on books that sell only in the mid-thousands of copies. After you've retooled the factory and made the other changes outlined above, your overheads should be considerably less than they are at present, bringing the bar for profitability within reach for far more books.
Offer these authors the typical, negotiable contract from a new, boutique imprint, with a modest up-front advance and the typical back-end profit split. The book will be published in ebook formats only to minimize upfront costs, and the author will receive training and support from your social media expert team. Any book in this track that proves to be a hit could also be offered in print formats later, with terms either negotiated at the same time as the ebook deal or later/separately.
3. Modest Seller, Quality Work, Motivated & Social Media Savvy Author Who Could Grow - Offer these authors a negotiable contract for an ebook only release from a new, boutique imprint with no upfront advance, and a back-end profit split that's higher than for acquisitions made under items #1 and #2 above. The author will receive the same training and support from your social media expert team as all your other signed authors.
For this type of book, you would essentially be taking what you would've paid as an advance and investing it in the production costs of the book. The backend profit split begins with sale #1 since there's no advance to be repaid. You're partnering with the author in a way that helps him to cultivate a larger following while minimizing your upfront investment and risk.
4. Unpublishable, For Whatever Reason - Reply with an honest rejection, do not offer to sell any professional services.
--------------------
Step Six: Open A Totally Separate Author Services Division
Open a new business, totally separate from your publishing business, to serve indie authors who wish to remain indie. This business would offer paid pro services from the same stable of in-house or freelance / contract experts you employ on all other books. The key is to ensure your service offerings are priced only slightly higher than what those authors would have to pay if they sought out and contracted for the services themselves.
Your slightly higher price points can be justified on two counts. First, you would be offering a one-stop shop of pre-vetted service providers, saving authors the time and trouble of locating and vetting individual service providers themselves. Second, you could provide a certification seal to service division clients, allowing them to place a seal on their book covers certifying the book has been professionally produced by the experts at [insert company name here]. This certification would be buyers' guarantee that at the minimum, the book they bought has been professionally edited and designed.
Unlike your current ASI clients (if any), these authors are being allowed to remain completely independent and you would merely be offering services they would have to acquire on their own anyway if they intend to stay the course of top-tier indie publication. With this model, the author retains all rights to the work and there's no backend split - you are offering 'for hire' services only.
To eliminate even the appearance of any conflict of interest, anyone to whom you offer 'for hire' services cannot resubmit the book for later publication consideration under items #1-4 above. No writer should be led to believe that if he invests in the for-hire services you have to offer, a publication contract will be forthcoming.
Step Seven: Lather, Rinse and Repeat. Class Dismissed.
April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat.com, founder and Editor in Chief of The Digital Media Mom, and Editor in Chief of Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Simon & Schuster / Archway Update
Today I received a follow-up email from a different S&S staffer. It reads:
Hi April,
Veda forwarded your e-mail to me. I manage Archway Publishing for S&S, and would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you about the service. There are a lot of options available to self-publishing authors today, and we believe Archway delivers real value. Please let me know if you'd be interested in speaking, and we can schedule a time.
Regards,
[name, with a simon and schuster email address]
And here is my response to that email:
Unless one of those options is to detach AuthorHouse from Archway, I have no interest in hearing anything more you have to say.
You cannot partner with Bernie Madoff to offer investment services and expect people to ignore the fact that your partner is Bernie Madoff.
---------------------
'Nuff said.
Hi April,
Veda forwarded your e-mail to me. I manage Archway Publishing for S&S, and would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you about the service. There are a lot of options available to self-publishing authors today, and we believe Archway delivers real value. Please let me know if you'd be interested in speaking, and we can schedule a time.
Regards,
[name, with a simon and schuster email address]
And here is my response to that email:
Unless one of those options is to detach AuthorHouse from Archway, I have no interest in hearing anything more you have to say.
You cannot partner with Bernie Madoff to offer investment services and expect people to ignore the fact that your partner is Bernie Madoff.
---------------------
'Nuff said.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Simon & Schuster Is Trying To Bribe People Like Me
...to refer people like you to their new vanity imprint, Archway, which they formed in partnership with AuthorHouse (aka "ASI") late last year. A couple of days ago, I received the following, kind of astonishingly brazen email from a Simon and Schuster staffer:
-------------------------------------------------
Simon & Schuster recently launched Archway Publishing as a new type of offering for self-publishing authors. With services delivered by Author Solutions, Archway was developed to help authors achieve their publishing goals and reach their desired audience. S&S has provided guidelines on book design, introduced certain unique self-publishing services, designed packages tailored to meet specific author objectives, and will monitor titles for potential acquisition.
Your blog is an important resource to help authors navigate the variety of self-publishing options. We believe Archway is a unique new service for authors, and would be valued by your readers. The Archway Affiliate Program enables partners to earn a $100 bounty for each author they refer who publishes with Archway*. Click here to learn more about the affiliate program. In addition, we’d like to extend to your audience a 10% discount off any Archway package, when referred though affiliate links on your site. We can also create contests, webinars, and creative for your site, or discuss other ways to work together.
-------------------------------------------------
[*emphasis added by me]
Note that when industry people write to me and make reference to my "blog", they're generally talking about Publetariat.com, not this blog.
Anyway, it's obvious that this person has zero familiarity with me, aside from the fact that I own and operate a site that's very popular with writers, authors and publishing professionals. Anyone who bothered to peruse this blog would've very quickly discovered there's no way I'd ever sign on for such a thing, and I'd be inclined to publicize the offer.
After re-reading the email a couple of times to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding anything, and giving myself a couple of days to put together a more reasoned (and less pissed off) response, I hit Reply on that email, and this is what I said:
-------------------------------------------------
I have always advised indie authors to avoid vanity publishers, and AuthorHouse is one of the most notorious among them. The reputation of AuthorHouse as an overpriced, under-performing scam agency far precedes its name. I have warned many a writer away from AH in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.
I am very disappointed to see such an august and respected publisher as S&S moving into this new, arguably predatory market area: pairing up a respected publisher with a vanity press to offer desperate would-be authors various, fee-based "services"---any of which the writer could retain him- or herself from freelancers at a fraction of the cost---and/or a publishing contract offering terms that virtually ensure the publisher will turn a profit, but the author will not. Surely the strongly negative reaction to Random House's Hydra imprint hasn't escaped your notice?
I'm also troubled by your affiliate offer, as I fear many others you've approached with the offer will accept it and be motivated to lure naive aspiring authors to Archway like so many lambs to slaughter. The mere fact that Archway can afford to pay affiliates a $100 "bounty" per referral attests to unnecessary fees your author-clients are being asked to shoulder. I have little doubt that bounty is being paid by the author who was referred, probably bundled together with many other fees under an innocuous, yet vague heading like "book set up".
I am sorry to be so negative, and I understand you are not personally responsible for the existence of Archway. However, having been a supporter of indie authorship since the days when people scoffed at the possibility of brick and mortar bookstore chains failing, I've seen far too many companies like yours take advantage of far too many of my peers. To say I feel very strongly about this sort of thing is a gross understatement. Nevertheless, I am glad to have received your email for one reason: now that I am aware of Archway, I can warn others about it.
------------------------------------------------
So if anyone on any site you frequent is starting to advertise Archway, refer site visitors to Archway, or running content or contests provided by Archway, in all likelihood it's because that person said "yes" where I said "no".
It would've been more honest for Archway to offer a "bounty" of thirty pieces of silver per referral, because anyone in the indie community who takes them up on this offer is a Judas.
*UPDATE* See S&S's response to me, and mine back to them, here.
-------------------------------------------------
Simon & Schuster recently launched Archway Publishing as a new type of offering for self-publishing authors. With services delivered by Author Solutions, Archway was developed to help authors achieve their publishing goals and reach their desired audience. S&S has provided guidelines on book design, introduced certain unique self-publishing services, designed packages tailored to meet specific author objectives, and will monitor titles for potential acquisition.
Your blog is an important resource to help authors navigate the variety of self-publishing options. We believe Archway is a unique new service for authors, and would be valued by your readers. The Archway Affiliate Program enables partners to earn a $100 bounty for each author they refer who publishes with Archway*. Click here to learn more about the affiliate program. In addition, we’d like to extend to your audience a 10% discount off any Archway package, when referred though affiliate links on your site. We can also create contests, webinars, and creative for your site, or discuss other ways to work together.
-------------------------------------------------
[*emphasis added by me]
Note that when industry people write to me and make reference to my "blog", they're generally talking about Publetariat.com, not this blog.
Anyway, it's obvious that this person has zero familiarity with me, aside from the fact that I own and operate a site that's very popular with writers, authors and publishing professionals. Anyone who bothered to peruse this blog would've very quickly discovered there's no way I'd ever sign on for such a thing, and I'd be inclined to publicize the offer.
After re-reading the email a couple of times to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding anything, and giving myself a couple of days to put together a more reasoned (and less pissed off) response, I hit Reply on that email, and this is what I said:
-------------------------------------------------
I have always advised indie authors to avoid vanity publishers, and AuthorHouse is one of the most notorious among them. The reputation of AuthorHouse as an overpriced, under-performing scam agency far precedes its name. I have warned many a writer away from AH in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.
I am very disappointed to see such an august and respected publisher as S&S moving into this new, arguably predatory market area: pairing up a respected publisher with a vanity press to offer desperate would-be authors various, fee-based "services"---any of which the writer could retain him- or herself from freelancers at a fraction of the cost---and/or a publishing contract offering terms that virtually ensure the publisher will turn a profit, but the author will not. Surely the strongly negative reaction to Random House's Hydra imprint hasn't escaped your notice?
I'm also troubled by your affiliate offer, as I fear many others you've approached with the offer will accept it and be motivated to lure naive aspiring authors to Archway like so many lambs to slaughter. The mere fact that Archway can afford to pay affiliates a $100 "bounty" per referral attests to unnecessary fees your author-clients are being asked to shoulder. I have little doubt that bounty is being paid by the author who was referred, probably bundled together with many other fees under an innocuous, yet vague heading like "book set up".
I am sorry to be so negative, and I understand you are not personally responsible for the existence of Archway. However, having been a supporter of indie authorship since the days when people scoffed at the possibility of brick and mortar bookstore chains failing, I've seen far too many companies like yours take advantage of far too many of my peers. To say I feel very strongly about this sort of thing is a gross understatement. Nevertheless, I am glad to have received your email for one reason: now that I am aware of Archway, I can warn others about it.
------------------------------------------------
So if anyone on any site you frequent is starting to advertise Archway, refer site visitors to Archway, or running content or contests provided by Archway, in all likelihood it's because that person said "yes" where I said "no".
It would've been more honest for Archway to offer a "bounty" of thirty pieces of silver per referral, because anyone in the indie community who takes them up on this offer is a Judas.
*UPDATE* See S&S's response to me, and mine back to them, here.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
The Free Kindle Book Ride May Be Over
Many authors have been taking advantage of the Amazon KDP Free Book promo option ever since KDP Select was rolled out, and many a bookish website and blog has sprung up specifically around promotion of free Kindle books.
All of that may be about to change, thanks to an Amazon Associates agreement revision that's set to take effect March 1 of this year:
March 1, 2013 version
The following is added at the end of the sub-section:
A Little Background On Amazon's Associates Program
Amazon Associates program participants can provide a link to virtually any page or product on Amazon (including links to free Kindle books) with their Associate ID attached to it, and that ID piggybacks on most purchases the customer makes on the Amazon site during the same shopping session. So Associates have historically had an incentive to share ANY Amazon link, including links to free Kindle books.
If anything, links to free Kindle books have been very desirable for Associates program participants to use because shoppers' resistance to clicking through on such links is low: the product in question is free, after all. But very often, once on the Amazon site, the customer will start browsing or will think of some other item they've been meaning to buy, and commissions for those purchases are paid to the Associate whose ID first brought the customer to Amazon.
Possible Chilling Effects of the Associates Policy Change
There are two factors to consider when trying to forecast possible outcomes of this change:
1. This new policy puts ALL of a given Associate account holder's commissions at risk in any month where "sales" of free Kindle books from that Associate's links are high.
2. With this new policy, authors and Associate link / promo providers who used to have the common goal of maximizing click-throughs on free Kindle books are set in opposition to one another. The author still wants to maximize downloads during the free promo period, but the more free downloads are generated, the greater the risk that the Associate link provider will lose all of his commissions for the month.
In my opinion, this will be a pretty effective discouragement for many Associates to promote free Kindle books. Even if the bar for commission loss is set pretty high (both of the above-quoted conditions must be met for a given month's commissions to be forfeited), the mere possibility of commission loss may steer many Associates away from continuing to promote free Kindle books.
What's Amazon Up To?
This policy revision speaks to some business changes on Amazon's end.
Amazon is surely aware that the free Kindle promo option has been a major driver in getting authors to sign up for their KDP Select program, but recent changes to Amazon's book sales rank algorithm have drastically reduced the formerly positive effects of large numbers of free downloads. While a given book's sales rank isn't exactly penalized for free downloads, free downloads are no longer driving the kinds of sales rank leaps and bounds that drew authors to take advantage of free book promo periods in the first place.
Now add the disincentive for Associates to promote free books, and it definitely starts looking like Amazon is moving to discourage publishers and authors from offering their Kindle books for free.
Has Amazon Finally Turned On Indies, As So Many Predicted Would Happen?
Since the great majority of authors and publishers who have been willing to offer their Kindle books for free are indies, some may conclude this is some kind of long-planned attack from Amazon on indies in general, but I doubt it.
Sales rank algorithm changes levelled the sales rank playing field again to a great extent, but maybe sales rank integrity wasn't all that was troubling Amazon. Maybe Amazon never anticipated how popular and widespread free book promotions would become, and how large a percentage of their monthly Kindle book "sales" in any given month would eventually come to consist of free downloads. Every free Kindle download represents a loss to Amazon, since Amazon is absorbing overhead costs to host and sell the book but isn't earning any profit on it.
Given that Amazon only earns money on downloads of Kindle books people are actually paying for, I think the most obvious and simple answer is the correct one:
Amazon is tired of losing money on free book downloads.
But once the genie was out of the bottle and indies everywhere had made free downloads an entrenched part of best practices for any new Kindle book launch or promotion, nobody outside of Amazon or mainstream publishing was motivated to stop the runaway freight train of free Kindle books.
Even indie authors and publishers who don't want to offer free promo periods have felt pressured to do so, since others who did offer their books for free have sometimes seen such great results.
You May Have To Start Making Money On Every Kindle Book Download, Whether You Like It Or Not
I can only speculate about the long-term impacts of this most recent policy change, but after thinking it over I've concluded that in the end, it's probably a good thing. The change gives indies a good, solid business reason to move away from offering their Kindle books for free; what's that old expression, about how a rising tide lifts all boats?
When the majority of us are selling our books at a price instead of giving them away, the majority of us will be making money on every download.
When free Kindle books become the exception instead of the rule, book buyers will stop 'waiting till it's free' or even having an expectation that a given book should be free. I was never one of those who backed the 'devaluation of books and literature' argument, I've always thought that within reason, ethics and the law, any promotional tack that gets an indie author more exposure and sales is worth trying. Even so, I think the prevalence of free Kindle books has shaped---some might say distorted, or even dominated---the ebook market in ways that few predicted, and it has ultimately hurt indies overall more than it has helped most of us.
The former, nearly guaranteed sales rank boost one could expect from a free promo period is all but gone, thanks to algorithm changes. Yet many have continued to cling to the free promo gambit like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood, because it has worked for so many authors in the past.
In the face of the very daunting book launch and promo task, a free book promo was at least something an indie could do pretty easily to get his or her book in front of as many eyeballs as possible, and an easy "in" to book blogs and sites. Like I said before, a free product is an easy "sell". And if most customers who were taking advantage of those free promo downloads were actually just book hoarders, collecting but never actually reading hundreds of free titles, well, most of us preferred not to think about it.
Amazon may be trying to force authors, publishers and book bloggers alike to stop offering and promoting free Kindle books, but in so doing they're forcing us in the direction of more profit for everyone. It's hard for me to see that as anything but a positive development.
All of that may be about to change, thanks to an Amazon Associates agreement revision that's set to take effect March 1 of this year:
March 1, 2013 version
The following is added at the end of the sub-section:
“In addition, notwithstanding the advertising fee rates described on this page or anything to the contrary contained in this Operating Agreement, if we determine you are primarily promoting free Kindle eBooks (i.e., eBooks for which the customer purchase price is $0.00), YOU WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE TO EARN ANY ADVERTISING FEES DURING ANY MONTH IN WHICH YOU MEET THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:
(a) 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links; and
(b) At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks.”
(a) 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links; and
(b) At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks.”
A Little Background On Amazon's Associates Program
Amazon Associates program participants can provide a link to virtually any page or product on Amazon (including links to free Kindle books) with their Associate ID attached to it, and that ID piggybacks on most purchases the customer makes on the Amazon site during the same shopping session. So Associates have historically had an incentive to share ANY Amazon link, including links to free Kindle books.
If anything, links to free Kindle books have been very desirable for Associates program participants to use because shoppers' resistance to clicking through on such links is low: the product in question is free, after all. But very often, once on the Amazon site, the customer will start browsing or will think of some other item they've been meaning to buy, and commissions for those purchases are paid to the Associate whose ID first brought the customer to Amazon.
Possible Chilling Effects of the Associates Policy Change
There are two factors to consider when trying to forecast possible outcomes of this change:
1. This new policy puts ALL of a given Associate account holder's commissions at risk in any month where "sales" of free Kindle books from that Associate's links are high.
2. With this new policy, authors and Associate link / promo providers who used to have the common goal of maximizing click-throughs on free Kindle books are set in opposition to one another. The author still wants to maximize downloads during the free promo period, but the more free downloads are generated, the greater the risk that the Associate link provider will lose all of his commissions for the month.
In my opinion, this will be a pretty effective discouragement for many Associates to promote free Kindle books. Even if the bar for commission loss is set pretty high (both of the above-quoted conditions must be met for a given month's commissions to be forfeited), the mere possibility of commission loss may steer many Associates away from continuing to promote free Kindle books.
What's Amazon Up To?
This policy revision speaks to some business changes on Amazon's end.
Amazon is surely aware that the free Kindle promo option has been a major driver in getting authors to sign up for their KDP Select program, but recent changes to Amazon's book sales rank algorithm have drastically reduced the formerly positive effects of large numbers of free downloads. While a given book's sales rank isn't exactly penalized for free downloads, free downloads are no longer driving the kinds of sales rank leaps and bounds that drew authors to take advantage of free book promo periods in the first place.
Now add the disincentive for Associates to promote free books, and it definitely starts looking like Amazon is moving to discourage publishers and authors from offering their Kindle books for free.
Has Amazon Finally Turned On Indies, As So Many Predicted Would Happen?
Since the great majority of authors and publishers who have been willing to offer their Kindle books for free are indies, some may conclude this is some kind of long-planned attack from Amazon on indies in general, but I doubt it.
Sales rank algorithm changes levelled the sales rank playing field again to a great extent, but maybe sales rank integrity wasn't all that was troubling Amazon. Maybe Amazon never anticipated how popular and widespread free book promotions would become, and how large a percentage of their monthly Kindle book "sales" in any given month would eventually come to consist of free downloads. Every free Kindle download represents a loss to Amazon, since Amazon is absorbing overhead costs to host and sell the book but isn't earning any profit on it.
Given that Amazon only earns money on downloads of Kindle books people are actually paying for, I think the most obvious and simple answer is the correct one:
Amazon is tired of losing money on free book downloads.
But once the genie was out of the bottle and indies everywhere had made free downloads an entrenched part of best practices for any new Kindle book launch or promotion, nobody outside of Amazon or mainstream publishing was motivated to stop the runaway freight train of free Kindle books.
Even indie authors and publishers who don't want to offer free promo periods have felt pressured to do so, since others who did offer their books for free have sometimes seen such great results.
You May Have To Start Making Money On Every Kindle Book Download, Whether You Like It Or Not
I can only speculate about the long-term impacts of this most recent policy change, but after thinking it over I've concluded that in the end, it's probably a good thing. The change gives indies a good, solid business reason to move away from offering their Kindle books for free; what's that old expression, about how a rising tide lifts all boats?
When the majority of us are selling our books at a price instead of giving them away, the majority of us will be making money on every download.
When free Kindle books become the exception instead of the rule, book buyers will stop 'waiting till it's free' or even having an expectation that a given book should be free. I was never one of those who backed the 'devaluation of books and literature' argument, I've always thought that within reason, ethics and the law, any promotional tack that gets an indie author more exposure and sales is worth trying. Even so, I think the prevalence of free Kindle books has shaped---some might say distorted, or even dominated---the ebook market in ways that few predicted, and it has ultimately hurt indies overall more than it has helped most of us.
The former, nearly guaranteed sales rank boost one could expect from a free promo period is all but gone, thanks to algorithm changes. Yet many have continued to cling to the free promo gambit like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood, because it has worked for so many authors in the past.
In the face of the very daunting book launch and promo task, a free book promo was at least something an indie could do pretty easily to get his or her book in front of as many eyeballs as possible, and an easy "in" to book blogs and sites. Like I said before, a free product is an easy "sell". And if most customers who were taking advantage of those free promo downloads were actually just book hoarders, collecting but never actually reading hundreds of free titles, well, most of us preferred not to think about it.
Amazon may be trying to force authors, publishers and book bloggers alike to stop offering and promoting free Kindle books, but in so doing they're forcing us in the direction of more profit for everyone. It's hard for me to see that as anything but a positive development.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
