Wal-Mart is Selling eBooks and it’s Awesome!
Get your eBooks on Walmart
Walmart is teaming up with Kobo to offer eBooks. It’s already underway and it’s really exciting. You do NOT need a Kobo reader, you can download the app from GooglePlay or the Apple App Store.
For the big launch Wal-mart is offering thousands of eBooks at deep discounts.
You can read on almost any device (still testing to see if it will download on the Kindle). You can grab your app here: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/apps.
They’ve got some really great deals going now for the launch, A Vampire’s Thirst: Grey is one of those deals. You can snatch him up for only 99 pennies! Go get it now!
Why is this so cool?
only served KindleUnlimited books. You will have to do a specific search for an author or title to find a book that’s not in KindleUnlimited. Amazon also gives preferential ranking and visibility to books in KindleUnlimited on their website.
Bottom line is, if our book isn’t in KindleUnlimited and we aren’t selling a TON of copies our visibility is about zero. That’s where I am – I’m at zero.
Put my books in KindleUnlimited you say? I have a few titles enrolled in KindleUnlimited, but did you know that Amazon pays us a FRACTION of a penny for a “page read”? Of course, the payout each month varies, but the average over the last year has been .004~ per page read. Here are the recent numbers:
January 2018 – $0.0044794811
February 2018 – $0.0046601
March 2018 – $0.00449
April 2018 – $0.004561157
May 2018 – $0.004543
June 2018 – $0.0046
July 2018 – $0.0044936099158692
Based on the most recent payout numbers that would mean if a reader read Saint, cover to cover I could possibly be paid .75. If a reader buys a copy at 2.99 I would be paid ~2.04 for that purchase. I used the word “possibly” because Amazon doesn’t tell us what they are paying per page read until the 15th of the NEXT month. This would be like you showing up for work for a month, then two weeks later your boss saying, “We’ve decided that your work for last month was only worth $2/hour.” Would you be okay with that?
I’m not crying in my Wheaties over what I’m being paid. I made a choice to put Saint in KU because I wanted to gain more visibility and get my work to more readers. But, the simple truth is I felt backed into a corner. I felt as though I had to put Saint in KindleUnlimted to hopefully gain a few readers.
Most of my other books are published “wide”, which means you can find them on iBooks, GooglePlay, Kobo and Barnes & Noble. But honestly, because Amazon has the market cornered I sell very few books on any of those platforms.
This is why Wal-mart selling eBooks is important to me. A real contender out there that can gain marketshare, that’s going to give authors (and readers) some breathing room. Really open up the free market again. That will be a game changer for the passionate writers and readers seeking quality.
I did a poll on my Facebook page, the question was: How many of you use KindleUnlimited. The results were mind blowing. Of the 82 comments, 92% only read books in KU. Now here’s the compelling part and this really baked my noodle. So many of the folks that said they use KU commented on the quality of the books. That they were okay with the poor quality of many of the books, they’d rather read a bad book than no book at all. I completely understand that. When you want to read you want to read. I personally have never compromised on the quality of the book I’m reading.
I try desperately not to compromise on the books I’m writing. I’m certainly not saying I’m the best writer out there, I honestly live in fear that one day y’all are going to figure out that I have no idea what I’m doing. But there is something in my work that can’t be “mass produced” or faked.
Passion.
You may not like my writing style, it’s okay, it’s my style and when I’m writing that’s my beautiful place I go that I want to share with you. I’ve definitely got a couple of stinkers out there, I think every author does. But largely if you read any one of my books, I promise you will FEEL. The emotion will pop off the page and grab you somewhere deep down. That’s what I want to do, I want to touch you in some way and I pour that into my work. Good or not, great story line, hook, plot, all of the things I’m always working to improve I promise you, there will be passion in every book I publish. If you didn’t get a little misty-eyed when Aunt Rain was killed or chill bumps when Maddox proposed to Wren I question whether you have a soul, lol.
I see so many “authors” in groups that are specific to publishing on KU to make that six figures a month. They’re doing it, they’re making a ton of money. But it doesn’t sustain because the quality and the passion isn’t there.
That’s why Wal-mart is important.
I’m not saying you’re not going to find bunch of stinkers on there. But I would bet dollars to donuts that you will find a much higher quality there in general. I can’t speak to their search results yet, the jury’s still out on that. But they are serving eBooks in a partnership with Kobo. Kobo is not new at this game, they’ve been in the eBook distribution biz for quite a while.
You started reading because you wanted to escape. You read good books as a kid. If it didn’t grab you, you didn’t finish it. Now, with how the world has changed just in the last ten years there is NOISE everywhere. Social media is largely a cesspool of negativity (accept on my page, I only post happy things). Don’t get me started on the news, I can’t watch it anymore. Marketing is everywhere telling you that you are defined by the label on your jeans or the emblem on your car. Get back to your happy place as a reader and spend that time wisely reading good books. Books that move you, provoke thought or just allow you to escape.
I’m a tiny little fish in this sea. I love writing and I hope if you’ve read my work you can see my love and passion flow from the pages. I want to write until my fingers won’t work anymore, I want to tell you stories until my brain is too feeble to form them. Without a free market, without a way to pay for publishing my books I’ll keep writing, but I won’t be publishing. There are thousands of others out there just like me, who will keep writing. The problem is they will no longer be able to share their stories either.
Encourage and support a free market for writers, before all of the hidden gems become extinct.
