Rani Divine's Blog, page 27

How much could you afford to lose?

Well, we’ve reached the end of August. It snuck up on me, so I haven’t even decided what we’re going to discuss next month yet. You’ll find out on Tuesday, don’t worry. I’ll hopefully figure it out before then. ;-)
For our last post of August, our last discussion on the beast that is Amazon, I want to talk to you about costs.
How much could you afford to lose?
Did you know that authors only really make money off their books if a significant number of books are sold? Seems like an obvious thing, something that you all should know, and yet more and more I wonder if people even think about the authors behind the books. We’re all out for a bargain, a deal, a good price, without even considering the fact that someone put a lot of hard work into this book, and that they won’t really be able to make anything off their work if we buy it at bargain price, years after it came out.
See, authors make royalties based on the sale price, so if you buy the book at a low price, they’ll receive pittance of a royalty—and royalties are really the only money that authors make off their writing. Low royalty, low return, low incentive to try with another book.
That right there is the problem.
If you really want to support the authors behind those books, if you want to make sure that they never stop releasing work, then you really should be buying their books at list price, right around the time the book comes out.
And I know how difficult that can be. Believe me, I do. I’ve penny pinched, I’ve saved my pesos, and yeah, I know how expensive books can be. But I also know how important it is to those authors, that you buy their books asap. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have time to read it right now, or even if you don’t know when you’ll get around to reading it. Just buy it. Support your favorite authors. You’d do it for big name authors, so why not do it for the little guys too?
If you’re not convinced, which I know some of you aren’t, then let me at least talk to you about why you shouldn’t be book shopping at Amazon.
First thing’s first. Your main arguments, I assume, are that Amazon has the best prices and that you’ll have your books on your doorstep in two days. Allow me to refute those.
Amazon’s two-day shipping system is failing. Slowly but surely. Have you noticed lately that when you order something on a Wednesday, with Prime Shipping, it’s not scheduled to arrive until Monday, even though they now offer Saturday delivery? But hey, if you ordered it from B&N, it’ll ship tomorrow and get here around the same time that your Amazon package would’ve.
Oh, but Amazon has free shipping? So does B&N, if you sign up for an account. It’s only $25 a year. Besides, do you really need your books to get here that quickly? If you did, then why didn’t you just go to a store and get them? Then you’d have them now, without having to wait for shipping at all.
Boom.
Plus, if it’s the price you’re worried about, let me remind you of something. Barnes & Noble is only ever a few cents higher in cost than Amazon, and they have a much better system for paying the publishers and authors who back them.
Why’s that? Because B&N knows that they’re in a business that needs to work with publishers and authors, rather than against them. B&N knows that if they push prices too low, publishers will crumble and authors will give up. They don’t want that. None of us want that.
Oh, and just as an added consideration for you, most local bookstores actually have very competitive prices on your favorite novels as well. So no, you don’t have to go to a big name store. You can go to the cute little bookstore next to the coffee shop, and have a much better experience than you would’ve had anywhere else.
You have options, my friends. If you’re insistent on finding the best deal, you still have options. If you’re like me and you want to make sure authors get paid, yeah, you have options for where you get the book. You get to decide who you give your money to, what part of our economy you want to help.
Personally, I’d pick the backbone of America. We’re not the United States of Amazon. This isn’t Amazon’s world.
Make up your own mind.
[love]
{RD}

Sales Stealer

It’s finally the last week of August! This month has been insanely long and has led to some very interesting situations for me, but it’s been a good month, nonetheless. I hope you’ve all been learning a lot from this series. I know it hasn’t exactly been the easiest topic to focus on, but from the response I’ve gotten, it sounds like it was something you all needed to find out more about. I’m glad to have filled that void for you.
This week, I have two things to talk to you about, that I want to remind you of, because you really should know them already.
Amazon Takes Sales from Everyone
If you didn’t know that, you really must’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t shop on Amazon. Know what that means? Those people are not shopping other places. So money that would normally have been spent in shops or stores in town is now spent online, and it all goes to one big company: Amazon.
That’s not a good thing, unless you’re Amazon.
See, our economy was not designed so that everyone would shop in one place and give their money to one store. It was intended that people should shop at many places, that small businesses would receive a very large portion of people’s spending dollars. The United States was built off small businesses. It’s our backbone. We even have systems in place to prevent monopolies, so that small businesses can still afford to operate. (I’m going to try really hard to not make this political… but man I have opinions on this stuff) Cities operate on businesses: small, medium, and large. But if everyone is taking their shopping to Amazon, then those businesses that keep your city running… well, they struggle.
If you’re a constant Amazon shopper, you’re contributing to that struggle.
The thing is, Amazon is convenient. They give you two day shipping if you pay them a large stipend once a year. You can shop in your underwear, whatever you want.
But many small businesses now allow you the same thing, or very near to it. Sure, you’ll have to pay for shipping, but here’s the thing: you’re paying for shipping if you’re paying for Prime. That’s what that big payment is. You’re paying them to ship things for you. And if you’re like me, and you really only buy a few things there in a year, then you’re not getting your money’s worth. And, let's be honest, you have to get dressed to go to work, so why not go shopping while you've got your clothes on?
Let’s take this to the publishing scene.
Do you know how many bookstores there are in your city? How many of them have you been to? Which ones do you shop at? Can you even answer those questions?
Sure, Amazon is hurting a lot of companies with their sales strategy, but do you know how badly they’ve hurt the bookstore industry? Thousands and thousands of local and privately owned bookstores have been forced to close their doors because people would rather buy their books from Amazon than from a local store.
We should never have allowed that to happen.
Oh, and by the way, in my experience Amazon has not been packaging their books properly anymore, so the majority of them that I’ve ordered in the last year (before I stopped altogether a few months ago) came damaged. So if you’re one of those people who orders books because you can’t trust the store to find you an undamaged copy, please realize that Amazon won’t guarantee an undamaged copy either.
We need bookstores. We really do. People love to read, and I know lots of people who prefer to go to a bookstore rather than shop online,. You’ll find a million more options in a store, options that Amazon’s algorithm won’t show you, options that you wouldn’t find if you were to do a Google search. So why not go to a store?
The moral of the story is, we need to be shopping local. We need to be taking our business to other stores, other businesses, and set Amazon aside for a while. If we keep giving them 100% or even 50% of our book sales, we’re putting more and more local stores out of business. We’re hurting our local economy, and in turn, our national economy. 
What's more, we're hurting the authors behind the books that we love. 
Let’s not let that happen.
[love]
{Rani Divine}

It's a Business (Welcome to the Jungle)

Hey guys! Thank you all so much for checking in today! I have a very special guest blogger in today, from RAD Writing. I hope you learn something from what she has to say. If you guys like her, I'll have her back on as a guest every so often. :)
~Rani

Welcome to the Jungle
Or at least jungle adjacent. 
So you’ve finally picked the virtual nits off that manuscript, run it through an editing comb or fifty, slapped it between some glossy royalty free cover art and gotten your fan base to trade signed copies and free editing of term papers for life for a gushing review. Your blog is up, you have a Facebook page and you even managed to crop a headshot that takes ten years and ten pounds off your face. Well boy howdy. You may be an author. Now all you need to do is sell the 500 copies you keep tripping over in your basement. Hey, here’s a thought: Amazon! Everybody sells on Amazon, right? Sure they do, at least theoretically.
And therein lies the burr betwixt the galloping stallion of success and the happy saddle blanket called your book. While everyone CAN sell on Amazon, not everyone does. My book’s been on Amazon for nine years. Ask me how many I’ve sold. Go ahead.
You see, everybody sells EVERYTHING on Amazon, and Amazon is in the business of making money off stuff it sells. Just like you. Wait, what? You’re just an author? You’re not a business person? Well permit me to show you the error of your dreamy little writin’ ways. If you want to sell the book you have written; then you must consider yourself a business person and your writing is your commodity, your product. And the simple truth is, Amazon is not going to help you do this, just like Walmart doesn’t help you sell those cool table mitts your gramma knits. Nope. Amazon is going to let you set up an account with specific parameters, enter your information and charge you money to use them for potential reader’s access to you. And that is ALL they will do. Truth is, your gramma will probably sell more books on your behalf and she won’t charge you a monthly fee to do it.
I get it. You’re excited and you want everyone to read your tome; but if you believe in your work that much then do the right thing the right way to get it in front of readers. Get online. Seek out local book fairs, arts and crafts festivals, local bookstores and small publishers. Many of these entities will allow you to show off your talent by selling your book on consignment, allowing you to set up a booth, schedule a signing or reading etc., or they will sell through their own mechanisms and actually work to market you. It’s called networking and it’s something business people do. Get some business cards made up and some touch cards with your book title and hand them out everywhere to everyone with YOUR email contact and your website. Many websites allow payment buttons for product sales and if you have a site, you probably already have this option. Consider Square software and take credit card payments using your phone. The ideas are endless. Amazon isn’t the only game in town. Trust me.
So dream big. But don’t be afraid of small starts. It’s very simple. If you are an author who sells books, you are a business person. Don’t pay a faceless entity your hard earned income to do something you can do better.
Need help? I know some great people at RAD Writing who can assist you. They’re authors, just like you. And they’re business people. With machetes. We can lead you out of the jungle.
Peace.
Tammy Boehm, Associate Editor, RAD Writing

Too Many Things To Count

Hey guys! Happy Tuesday, and welcome to Too Many Books to Count! Thanks for checking in on this sunny-but-supposed-to-be-cloudy day. At least, that's what it's doing where I am. I don’t know what the weather is in the rest of the world… it doesn’t generally occur to me to check things like that on a daily basis. 
Anyway, today I’m talking to you guys about something that you might have already noticed, especially if you’re on Amazon a lot and you buy a lot of kindle books. It’s also something you may not have thought much about, which is why I wanted to bring it to your attention.
Putting out too much product
Amazon practically forces authors to put out more than one book per year, which drastically reduces the quality of those books. Don’t try to deny it, if you’re an author who does this. You should know that those books are hurriedly written, not well edited, and could use some help. If you won’t admit that, then it’s probably time to take a good long look in the mirror.
See, with the way Amazon works, with the way Createspace and kindle work, authors basically have to be putting out masses of product every year, just to be seen. If you only have two or three books, then nobody cares about what you’ve written. At least, that’s what people will tell you—and that’s what Amazon will tell you, too.
Like I’ve been saying all month, Amazon is a company that works on sales. If you’re not selling product, then they don’t want to work with you. If you’re not making them money, then they don’t want to work with you.
The trouble with that, when it comes to writing, to novels, is that the two don’t work together very well.
Books take time to write. I can usually finish writing one in about six months, but I take a further two years to get it edited to the point that it’s ready to publish. That’s two and a half years before my books hit shelves. Two and a half years of prep before it gets in your hands. And a lot of big-name authors will take at least that amount of time as well.
Have you ever noticed that big-name authors maybe put out one book per year? If that?
That’s because they know readers would rather read something amazing than something mediocre, and that by putting out book after book after book, you’d be putting out increasingly mediocre work time and time again.
Why is it that people will always go back to authors like Stephen King and Orson Scott Card? It’s because they put out amazing works that we love, that we cannot get enough of.
When we read a mediocre book, there’s a slight chance that we’ll go back to that author again, yes, but it’s a near guarantee that we’ll get bored with it along the way. We will. Because that’s the way people are. We want to be amazed—we don’t want to be able to predict the ending. And when an author is putting out book after book after book, three to seven times a year, we get to where we know what you’re going to do in the end.
That’s not a good thing.
Amazon wants sales. That’s why they’re pushing authors to get more product out.
But the thing is, if you apply yourself to the marketing of one book a year (if that; many times one every other year is plenty), you’ll be able to accrue a higher amount of readers who love your work and can’t wait for the next one, rather than a high number of one-time readers, which is what you’re more likely to get by publishing multiple books a year.
Readers are smarter than you take them for.
If your work is mediocre, readers will notice it. Sure, you might get some decent reviews from people who don’t know any better, but those aren’t the readers you really want. Those are readers who don’t care, if I’m being honest.
We want true fans, readers who seek us out at every chance they get.
Those are really hard to come by, unless you’re publishing amazing work. And the only way you’ll be publishing amazing work is if you give yourself time to make it amazing.
It’s high time we stop letting Amazon control the way the publishing industry works. Too many authors are going with the flow, following the pattern Amazon sets for them. It’s time we break that chain and break the power of this company.
We don’t want to write mediocre. We want to write amazing.
That’s what readers want, too.
Why doesn’t Amazon see that?
Because they put money over product.
We can’t make the same mistake.

Thursday, I have an awesome guest post from the one and only Tammy Boehm, my fellow associate editor over at RAD Writing! Be sure to stop in and give it a read—you won’t be disappointed.
[love]
{Rani Divine}

Amazon vs the Author

Good afternoon, everyone! Thanks for checking in at Too Many Books to Count today. I really look forward to seeing what you guys think of my posts, and this series has (strangely) been a lot of fun.
Since last time I talked about things that RAD has had to deal with concerning Amazon, I thought the logical progression would be to talk about my own dealings with the company.
Now, remember, when I first published Telekinetic, it was through Xlibris. I paid them to publish my novel, to edit it, and to market it. And Xlibris works with Amazon, in what little capacity they can. Xlibris sells their books on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, pretty much all over the place. They also jack the price up so that they’ll make money on it, which lowers the amount of buyers and lessens the amount of money an author can make through their work... but I digress.
Amazon vs. the Author
In publishing through Xlibris, I initially thought I was working with a company that could work with Amazon, a company that was used to dealing with them.
Here’s the thing with Amazon though. Because they set the prices, because they’re determined to have the lowest prices around for every book they sell, the people who publish through Createspace sell their books for pennies. I’m not even joking. You’ve seen it. You can get the ebook for under a dollar, or the paperback for twenty.
Xlibris couldn’t compete with that. They couldn’t afford to sell the ebook for such a small price. And I’ll tell you why. While people will tell you that ebooks are pure profit, that nothing goes into making them, it’s a complete and utter lie. Time goes into it. The time you took to write your novel, and the time to edit it. The time it took to format it, to insert the scene spacers and make everything look pretty. Not to mention the money you paid your editor.
Unless you publish through Createspace (and skip the editor), there’s just no way for it to be worth it.
That’s my personal experience with them. I manage my own KDP account, I put out ads and do everything I can to get people to buy the book, but it generally amounts to nothing. And why? Because people would rather pay ninety-nine cents than five dollars. And I can’t say that I blame them, but those people are not the readers I’m looking for, the people I want to buy my books.
My books are long. They just are. They’re five times the length of the average kindle book. Yeah, I’m not even joking.
Thing is, even when I’ve tried catering to readers who like longer works, I’ve struggled to get any traction on Amazon. Why? Because Amazon doesn’t like to push sales from anyone who isn’t published through Createspace. Oh, sure, you can pay for them to advertise, but you’ll have to pay an arm and leg to reach the same level of exposure they automatically give to their authors.
And again, it makes great business sense! Amazon is a very smart company. They’re really good at what they do. But they’re also pushing everyone else out of the way while they do it.
Think about it: when’s the last time you bought a book that wasn’t on Amazon?
That right there was the biggest problem I had with Amazon. There are millions of authors on there, most of whom published through Createspace, and most of whom are willing to sell their book for a pittance of what it’s worth.
I can’t bring myself to sell out. I just can’t. I can’t price my book lower than what it’s worth. And I can’t bring myself to work with a company that doesn’t want my business anyway.
Can you?
[love]
{Rani Divine}

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}

It's Time You Make Your Own Decisions

It’s Thursday! We’ve made it through most of the week. I’m going to assume that means we’re ready to take on another tough topic, another subject that a lot of us don’t like to think about—much less talk about, for fear of being called a conspiracy theorist.
I’d say I’m just enough of a conspiracy theorist that this was an easy one for me to grasp. Let’s see how you guys do with it.
Amazon decides what you’re going to read.
Now, I don’t mean that they’re going to pick one specific book and get you to read it. I mean that they’re going to give you a list of maybe (and I stress the word maybe) fifteen books that they’ve handpicked just for you, and they’re reasonably sure that you’re going to read them. Oh yeah, and they’re right most of the time. Oh, yeah, and those books are the ones they're going to make the most money off you buying.
See, I know it’s something nobody likes to think about, but we’re being watched all the time. We really are. The difference between being watched in the US and being watched in Europe is that in Europe, they’re at least polite enough to tell you. Here, we pretend it isn’t happening. But I’m not talking about the government watching you. I’m talking about businesses.
Amazon is watching you, and they have been since you signed up for an account with them. They know what you like to watch, what kind of music you listen to, and yes, what kinds of books you read. And they’re going to use this information to push the titles that will make them the most money.
Let me give you an example.
I went on a hunt recently, on Amazon, for a book one of my friends had told me about. Only I couldn’t remember the name, and I couldn’t remember the author. I knew what was on the cover, what the book was about, and it was all fairly unique, so I thought it couldn’t be that hard to find. I searched for the genre, refined my results down by what I knew about the book, and do you know what I found?
Nearly all the results were Createspace books.
I thought that was a little strange, being that I was looking for something by an established author who’d been published through a large publishing house.
Then I thought about it a little more, and it all began to make sense.
See, when Amazon works with other companies, like Random House, for example, they don’t make as much money. They have to give some of the profit to the other company, and so they lose something in the transaction.
On the other hand, when they’re only working with an author, they don’t have any overhead charges. There’s no secondary company they have to work with to make that sale. It’s simple profit for them, with a little handout to the author on the side.
It’s a brilliant business strategy, if I’m being honest. Amazon is really good about those, and that’s what’s built them up into such a big business to begin with.
The problem is, they’re preventing us from finding books that have been edited, that have gone through the real process and have reached their full potential. Instead, they’re pushing books that aren’t properly edited, books that still need some help, stories that have plot holes hidden in their subplots.
Some readers won’t notice. That’s true. But the real readers, the devout readers that we’re all striving to reach, they’ll notice. And those are the ones who won’t come back. They’re the best kinds of fans to have, and they’re the ones we have to fight to keep once we get them.
Amazon is doing everything they can think of to keep those fans from reaching us. Everything. It’s up to us to stop them, to step in and make our own decisions on what is and is not good writing.
Don’t let Amazon tell you what to read. Don’t let Amazon’s pages be the only ones you look at when you’re deciding what you want to read.
Go to a bookstore. Check out other websites. Go look at direct from publisher sites, see what else is out there that Amazon would never allow you to see. There’s some gold out there, hidden amid the drivel.
All you have to do is find it—but Amazon’s not going to help you do it.
[love]
{Rani D.}

Don't take the easy way out

Hey guys! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you’re sticking with me through this month’s topic—I know it’s been a little rough for some of you, but believe me, it’s all good to know.
Today, I’m talking about something a lot of authors don’t want to hear. Actually, it’s something I don’t really want to hear either, but something I’ve come to accept over the years.
Createspace is the easy way out, but that doesn’t make it the right way to go.
I know this not from personal experience, but from so many people I know who’ve published through Createspace: their system is incredibly easy to use, and feels like you’re doing something good, like you’re working toward an actual publication, like you’re finally moving forward with your book.
I know this, from personal experience as well as many of those accounts: you’re wrong.
I met an author over the weekend, at an event I went to, who was talking about how when she released book two a year after book one, it was too early. People were only just starting to discover book one by the time book two had come out. But Createspace authors will tell you that you have to be pushing out book after book after book, at least four a year.
Why? Because that’s what Createspace is.
It’s instant gratification for authors who weren’t patient enough to go about things the traditional (or “old fashioned”) way.
See, publishers know the market really well. That’s what they do, in general. Their primary focus is books, books, and more books. Logically then, they know what’s selling in the field of books and they know what to look for when they’re keeping an eye out for the next big thing.
Amazon doesn’t work like that. Createspace doesn’t work like that. Amazon has their fingers in so many pies that they cannot possibly focus even remotely on books themselves. Books are just something that they sell, and something they happen to be pretty good at selling. So they work their magic and keep selling, and keep authors putting out product because they’ve created a system of instant gratification that pleases the average American author.
Why’s that, you wonder? It’s because as a culture, we’ve grown very impatient, and we’ve stopped wanting anyone to tell us what to do.
Now, granted, I’ll be the first one to admit that a lot of publishers are wrong when they tell you what to write. They’re so focused on their niche that they might not notice anything else. But publishers, as a whole, have a far greater idea of what’s going to sell than Amazon does. Because publishers, you see, are built up of people like us. They’re readers, they’re writers, and they’re editors. So they know this field, they know what makes it up, and they know what will make it thrive. They also know what people want to read, because they have easy access to a reader focus group. They are a reader focus group.
That’s why we should listen to them in the first place. They know better than we do, and it’s okay to admit that. It really is.
Beyond that though, beyond just knowing the market and knowing what’s going to sell, publishers know books. Publishers are made up of editors who love to make books better, who love to work with authors to make a book all that it can possibly be. In the end, that’s what your book needs. 
Your book doesn’t need you to be instantly gratified by having it on the market. It needs you to love it, to nurture it and cherish it, to send it to someone who will mold it and train it and teach it to be all that it can be.
Your book is like your child, you know. It needs to learn, and not only from you. It needs an editor to look at it, to teach it how to be better.
Instant gratification, publishing via outlets like Createspace, is not what your book needs. Not every book is ready to be on the market. That’s a fact. What your book needs, before you even consider that stage, is to be better.
And honestly, the only way it’s going to get better, to reach its fullest potential, is through the editors in a publishing company. The freelancers, the ones who do it on the side just as a gig that pays, they don’t love your book like real editors do. The ones you can pay through a self-publishing firm like Createspace, they don’t love authors like real editors do.
You need to find a real publisher, a real editor, and get your book into the place where it really wants to be.
Instant gratification will never see the same dividends as putting the work in and taking the time to make your book reach its fullest potential.
Harsh? Yes. But true, nonetheless. 
[love]
{Rani Divine}

The Pricing Scheme

Hey guys! I hope that you enjoyed Tuesday’s post, or that it at least made you think a little bit about the company that we work with so often. It’s hard to find anyone these days who doesn’t shop with Amazon, or who doesn’t at least check their prices before buying something in store. But that’s part of the reason why we need to gain some knowledge about this business and about what they’re doing to the industry that we so love.
Let’s get to it.
Amazon sets their own prices for everything.
And I do mean everything. They do their level best to have the lowest price available on every product they have, to keep people coming back to them time and time again. But that means that they’re not always working with the people behind those products, to make sure everyone involved is getting paid. (and if you're an author on Amazon, thinking "but they let me set my own price!"—they gave you price parameters, didn't they?)
See, like I said on Tuesday, Amazon is only out for Amazon. Their primary goal is to make money. They’re a big business, so of course that’s the way it is. Really, that’s the way every business is. Amazon has developed a system that gets them a lot of sales. A system of low prices and free two-day shipping, which is really hard to ignore. Thing is, on the vast majority of those products, Amazon sets the price. At the very least, they define how you have to set your price, to make sure that they’ll still be making a decent cut off your sales.
Here’s the real thing though: although Amazon is known to have competitively low prices, they’re not pushing low-priced sales anymore. I’d be willing to bet that there aren’t very many people who noticed when Amazon started pushing higher prices, because a lot of us stopped looking anywhere else in our shopping. Amazon has what we're looking for, so we’ll get it from them.
Bad idea, anymore.
Here’s an example, from my own experience:
I want to buy a game. It’s called Dominion, and it’s a lot of fun. Look into it if you don’t know what it is. Anyway, I found Dominion on Amazon, and it was a good price, so I put it in my cart and I left it there so I could buy it in a couple days. By the time I got to it, the price had gone up. Except that when I wasn’t logged into Amazon, seconds before, the price was lower that what my cart now showed.
That’s only one example. I’ve seen it happen a lot, in several people’s experiences. Amazon is quietly pushing higher sales by slightly bumping the price up on a product that they know you want, since you put it in your cart.
But I’m sure you’re thinking that that’s just for regular products, and not for books. Sure, they might be pushing higher prices for things, but wouldn’t that mean that authors would be making a larger portion?
Nope.
Because Amazon is known for having the lowest prices on books. They very specifically price their book products to be around fifty cents less than the same product at the Barnes & Noble website.
So, though Amazon is raising prices on products, they’re not raising prices on books, which means that the royalty earned on books is still as low as ever.
Let me explain a little bit.
If you’re a self-published author, and you’ve published through Createspace, you have options on how much royalty you want. So let’s say that you’re in the 70% royalty program. Okay, so that means you’ll get 70% of what Amazon makes off every sale. But here’s the thing: if you’re not a Createspace author, you still have to go through the same system. So instead of getting that 70%, you’re getting a percentage of that 70%, because publishers can’t pay you what they didn’t get paid in the first place.
And I’m sure this is making some of you see Createspace in a good light, but it really shouldn’t. Createspace is dangerous.
The big name authors that you know and love are being pushed out of their royalty by this company. New authors with amazing books are being prevented from earning what they should be earning, because of this company. Authors who didn’t settle, authors who went through a traditional publishing house, suffer because of the way Amazon runs their business.
But Amazon is smart, you see, because they made you think their system was a good one.
Here’s what it all really boils down to:
As a reader, and as a writer, you have to support the industry. If you don’t, then you’re a hypocrite. Yeah, I said it. You’re a hypocrite if you won’t support the industry you claim to be a part of.
The only way to support that industry, however, is to buy books (and read them, obviously). If publishers don’t make money, they close their doors. If they close their doors, thousands of authors lose their pay. Books end up collecting dust or being burned rather than getting into the hands of people who would love to read them.
And here’s the crux:
By buying through Amazon, instead of through bookstores or direct from publishers, you’re taking money from authors and the publishers who back them. You’re contributing to the collapse of the industry and the rise of an Amazon monopoly.
We cannot have that happen, friends. We can’t. If Amazon is the only company left through which we can publish, then there will be billions of authors on only one site, with no way for anyone to find them except to scroll through endless pages of books.
If you’re on page fifty, how many people do you think will even see your book?
That’s the problem. That’s why we need to find a way to do what we do without resorting to giving all our time and effort over to Amazon.
That’s why I no longer buy books from them.
That’s a big part of why I’m doing this series, this month.
[love]
{Rani D.}

p.s. I had some questions yesterday, about whether this means my books will be leaving Amazon, and RAD will no longer be working through them. Let me assure you, my books won't be leaving Amazon. As always, whatever views I express in Too Many Books to Count are solely my own, and have nothing to do with RAD Writing. 

We have something to talk about

Hey guys! Thanks for joining me!
This month, I’ll be talking about something that is important both to writers and to readers. It’s something that I really want to draw your attention toward, and something that I think you all will benefit from, in the end. It might be a little rough; fair warning. I’m going to be explaining some things that you might not want to know. But, if you stick it out to the end of the month, you’ll learn something, and you might even have an idea of how to combat what’s going on.
What are we talking about, you ask?
Amazon.
Told you it might be a rough topic.
I’m a semi-frequent Amazon user. I have a Prime account, which I primarily use for watching occasional movies and listening to music when I’ve already outspent my music budget for the month. I buy a lot of music.
Know what I don’t buy from Amazon, on principle? Books.
Allow me to explain. Actually, I'll be explaining all month. I’ve done my research, and I have a lot to tell you about Amazon and their effect on us as writers and readers, along with the publishing industry as a whole. I guarantee that it’ll be an interesting month, and I hope you’ll stick it out.
Createspace is sucking the life out of publishers and writers
Why? How? Both very good questions, and very valid ones. And it’ll take a bit, to answer them.
See, Createspace is Amazon’s publishing company. Their self-publishing company. And because Createspace belongs to Amazon, anything published through Createspace will be pushed a little harder by Amazon. It’s actually a really good business strategy on their part, because it means they get far more profits. If Amazon sells a book published by Random House, Amazon only gets a small cut. If they sell one published by Createspace, the majority goes to Amazon (of course).
See, if you’re not making money for Amazon, you might as well not try to work with them. They’re a business, and they’re in it for the money. Of course they are. That’s what they are and what they have to do. I’m not saying they’re wrong in how they do things. They’re actually brilliant.
Know who’s wrong, to be working with them?
You guessed it: us.
Createspace is taking a lot of business from publishers, of which there are hundreds if not thousands in the United States alone. Trouble is, when you publish a book through Createspace, you’re settling for self-publishing.
Yes, I just said that. Self-publishing is settling. If you didn’t already know that, then you haven’t done your research. And I can say that it's settling, because my first book was self-published. Soon to be off the shelves, by the way.
I digress. 
See, publishers, traditional publishers, are the ones who know publishing. Duh. It’s what they do. They’re a business that deals in books, more books, and nothing but books. And they’re a business that’s also out to make money—by selling your book at a price that gets you a royalty, too.
The thing is, with Amazon controlling so much of the book market, with writers turning to Amazon at every corner to publish through Createspace, real publishers are suffering. They’re not getting the books they could be getting. They’re not getting your book. Besides that, if a publisher wants to work through Amazon to sell their books, Amazon is going to take as much of the sale price as they can get away with, which means the royalty for the author drop to diddly squat.
For now, trust me on that. I’ll explain in more detail later on in the series.
Publishers are the ones who want to take your books and make them amazing, make them a bestseller, something that might even be turned into a movie. A book with a cult following. A beloved book that people won’t ever forget.
Amazon is the company that wants you to publish through them so they can make a little money off you.
Harsh? Yeah. But it’s the truth.
Here’s more truth for you:
For every time you buy a book from Amazon instead of a publisher, instead of a bookstore, instead of nearly any other venue, you’re hurting the publishing industry. You’re giving more power to the biggest business around these days, and you’re hurting the people behind those books. Authors suffer because of Amazon. Most of them won’t admit it. Many don’t even know it. But for every book you buy from Amazon, for every sale you give Amazon that could’ve been given to another venue, you’re hurting the people behind the books you love so much.
This month, I’ll tell you all about it.
We’re only getting started, and by the end of the month, believe me, we’ll have only scratched the surface.
[love]
{Rani Divine}