Why are things the way they are??
I have a question:
Why is it that Amazon seems to have cornered the market on Ebooks—or at least everyone seems to assume they will?
Why isn't…say…Smashwords more successful? They offer the books in more electronic formats, they're just as easy to find, download ect.
Is it the reader? I mean, I'm sure Kindle is good, but is it really that much better than the Kobo, Sony Reader, Libre etc, not to mention the vast menagerie of tablet PCs out there from the iPad to whatever it is Samsung, HP, Gateway, Motorola, Blackberry etc ad nauseum is offering now?
And even if the Kindle made all those other platforms look like cheap colouring books, Smashwords formats for most of them, including the Kindle. I'm sure there are other ebook sellers that do as well.
Is it advertising? Sure, everyone knows Amazon, but I'm sure by now most avid readers know about Smashwords, and let's face it there's this thing called Google. I bet if you type eBooks into it you'll find plenty of other places. Let me check….yep, I'm right.
It can't be PR. Everyone hates Amazon.
Is it the authors themselves? Are we giving Amazon this power over us? I know it was the first place I went when I decided to ePublish my novels. But does it have to be?
Maybe it's the traditional publishing houses themselves. If they make Amazon the ebook publisher of choice, why shouldn't we follow suit?
There's nothing saying I can't set up my own website and sell my books from there. The problem becomes drawing traffic to your site. Maybe what we need is not something like Amazon, but a definitive site which lists where to find the various author sites.
Seriously, Amazon takes from between 30-65% of the profit for what essentially amounts to hosting your novel. They certainly don't advertise it—well, not unless you're one of their top sellers. For most authors on the site the only hope they have that you'll find their book is that you somehow stumble across it, maybe drawn to it by whatever PR the author can dream up and which Amazon has absolutely nothing to do with.
What we need is some way to draw readers to our own sites, or at least make them aware of them.
Unfortunately I don't know what that way is…but I'm working on it.
Why is it that Amazon seems to have cornered the market on Ebooks—or at least everyone seems to assume they will?
Why isn't…say…Smashwords more successful? They offer the books in more electronic formats, they're just as easy to find, download ect.
Is it the reader? I mean, I'm sure Kindle is good, but is it really that much better than the Kobo, Sony Reader, Libre etc, not to mention the vast menagerie of tablet PCs out there from the iPad to whatever it is Samsung, HP, Gateway, Motorola, Blackberry etc ad nauseum is offering now?
And even if the Kindle made all those other platforms look like cheap colouring books, Smashwords formats for most of them, including the Kindle. I'm sure there are other ebook sellers that do as well.
Is it advertising? Sure, everyone knows Amazon, but I'm sure by now most avid readers know about Smashwords, and let's face it there's this thing called Google. I bet if you type eBooks into it you'll find plenty of other places. Let me check….yep, I'm right.
It can't be PR. Everyone hates Amazon.
Is it the authors themselves? Are we giving Amazon this power over us? I know it was the first place I went when I decided to ePublish my novels. But does it have to be?
Maybe it's the traditional publishing houses themselves. If they make Amazon the ebook publisher of choice, why shouldn't we follow suit?
There's nothing saying I can't set up my own website and sell my books from there. The problem becomes drawing traffic to your site. Maybe what we need is not something like Amazon, but a definitive site which lists where to find the various author sites.
Seriously, Amazon takes from between 30-65% of the profit for what essentially amounts to hosting your novel. They certainly don't advertise it—well, not unless you're one of their top sellers. For most authors on the site the only hope they have that you'll find their book is that you somehow stumble across it, maybe drawn to it by whatever PR the author can dream up and which Amazon has absolutely nothing to do with.
What we need is some way to draw readers to our own sites, or at least make them aware of them.
Unfortunately I don't know what that way is…but I'm working on it.
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