Let’s Talk About Amazon — Again

The topic of Amazon in relation to book authors and book publishers and book buyers is never ending. This is partly due to Amazon’s size of the marketplace and partly due to the innovations that Amazon and its competitors continually introduce.

I read with interest the Huffington Post May 14th article by Penny C. Sansevieri (@BookGal on Twitter) entitled “Cutting Out Amazon.com: Does It Still Make Sense to Sell There?”

Penn wrote an insightful post (link to it below) with ideas for authors who do not want to rely on Amazon to sell their books.

While I agree with Penny’s ideas (she always has great ones!), I do want to add my own opinion that authors who do NOT sell on Amazon are cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Especially telling is this anecdote Penny shared in the article:

Several years ago we had an author who sent his book to O Magazine, not thinking they’d feature it — it was just, well you know, wishful thinking.

As it happened O Magazine did run a blurb on the book which was great, yes? The problem was the author chose to not have his book on Amazon and his e-commerce system on his site wasn’t set up.

Consequently he didn’t sell a single book from the O Magazine mention. Lesson learned.

Leaving aside the question of why this author did not have his website already set up for e-commerce, there remains the question of why anyone would risk not having his/her book available on Amazon, an online book buying site that has such a huge percentage of the online book buyers.

In addition, as Amazon branches out into book publishing, movie making, TV series development and who knows what else is coming, authors should have an Author Central account on Amazon as one more way for book readers to find authors’ books. (See my Author Central account’s Phyllis Zimbler Miller Page.)

New book marketing experiment:

I have just started an experiment with THE EDNALOR MYSTERIES written by 93-year-old author Shirley Windward. I self-published this book as a paperback through CreateSpace several months ago.

Now I converted the book to ebook format (mobi) and entered it in the Kindle Select program. This means that for 90 days the ebook can only be sold as a Kindle ebook on Amazon and not on any other site. (The paperback can be sold elsewhere.)

I plan to watch how this ebook does with the benefit of Kindle Select before considering putting the ebook format on other sites. (At this time an author on Kindle Select can have five days in which the ebook is offered for free. I have been researching which combination of five days might be the best strategy.)

Please weigh in below with your comments about Amazon.

And consider buying THE EDNALOR MYSTERIES now available on Kindle.

Plus read Penny’s article now.

P.S. Did you see my U.S., U.K. and Germany Amazon stores on my author Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/PhyllisZimblerMillerAuthor?

I am also trying out a free Facebook app that allows a sample chapter to be included.

NOTE: Sign up to get the blog posts sent to your email.

(c) 2012 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter and @ZimblerMiller on Pinterest) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which helps clients with defining who they are and what they have to offer.