Selling Through the Beast

Hey all! I hope you all had wonderful weekends, and that you’re well-rested for this week. I, for one, am not. And so, I have a bit of a rant for you today.

First things first though.

What I’m going to talk about today relates to RAD Writing. I’ve gotten permission from their senior editor, Kristina, to talk about this stuff—but only pertaining to my first book, Coetir. From what I understand, Amazon's system hasn’t changed in the slightest. From the research I’ve done over the weekend, nothing has altered since this data was gathered, a couple years ago. I’m not allowed to say exactly when it’s from. Sorry about that. But this is a topic that I thought you all ought to hear, and one that I thought might help to inform some of why I started this series in the first place.

Selling Paperbacks through Amazon

In case you hadn’t noticed, RAD doesn’t do this. Their books, while available on Amazon, are not available in print. That’s what I want to discuss today, through the lens of my book. Coetir has been out for a few years now, so I thought it was time to discuss.

See, I would very much like to have the paperbacks on Amazon. I would. It would be an extra bit of exposure, which I would like to have. Right now, Coetir is only available in a few places. We’re working toward getting it in more, but it’s a process. It takes time.

Thing is, in order to have the Coetir paperbacks on Amazon, RAD had to lose $2.00 per sale. Not even counting shipping costs.

I’m sure I don’t have to explain how utterly ridiculous that is, or tell you what bad business it would’ve been for RAD, if they’d stuck with it. Obviously, we can’t be losing money on every sale. The point of sales is to make money, not lose it. Duh.

We tried other methods, too. We tried Amazon Advantage, we tried making our own storefront within Amazon, we tried all sorts of things—but no matter what we did, we ended up losing money on every sale.

That’s what Amazon is about, if you’re not working through Createspace. If you’re working with their self-publishing company, then of course you’ll make a little bit of money. Otherwise, they’re going to milk you dry.

Again, as a business strategy, it’s brilliant. It limits what other companies are able to work through Amazon without losing money, and prevents the little guys from gaining any traction against them. But that’s also exactly why it’s a bad thing for us, the authors and small presses. Amazon is doing their level best to prevent us from doing what we want to do, and making money on it, unless we’re working through them.

But remember, Createspace is the easy way out. It’s giving up. And we don’t want to do that.

Amazon knows this. They know that a lot of authors struggle with the idea of self-publishing, of doing it on their own without an editor and a business to back them. So they worked it out to make it nearly impossible for authors to work with them, unless those authors published through Createspace.

Brilliant on their part, right?

Which is exactly why we should be avoiding them. They’re creating a monopoly for themselves, making themselves the most appealing way for authors to be published. Monopolies mean Amazon is controlling far more than we even know. Monopolies mean we, the little guys, will hardly make a thing in the end.

I see it. Do you?

Amazon is a control freak. They want to have the power. Obviously. They want to be the giant of book sales, no matter what, and we're letting them do it. Too many authors buy into the lie that Amazon is the only place to sell, to the point that it's quickly leaning more toward true. And why? Because authors have bought into Amazon's lie. 

You've been marketed to. All of you. And many of you bought it, because you didn't know what to look out for. 

There's nothing wrong with that. Seriously. It's happened to me, too. But it's time we thought for ourselves, time we realized that Amazon isn't the only venue to sell through, and time we recognize the monopoly that's building right in front of our eyes. 

Monopolies are bad for business, or didn't you know? 

[love]

{Rani Divine}