Principles or income – what’s a self-published author to do?

I don’t know what to do. I’m having a helluva time making a decision, and I’m hoping that if I can lay out the issues, that perhaps some of the very smart readers of this blog can help me out. For the sailors who read my posts, my apologies. This is going to be a very techie, writer-centered post.

So, here’s the deal. I did it. I quit my job and moved onto my boat to write – and now I am completely dependent on my income from my ebooks. I’ve had some great months – and some not-so-great months of sales. So some months I’ve been able to install my new refrigeration and my new head – and other months I’m eating frijoles.

I spent about an hour today on the Engadget site today watching their liveblog of the Amazon Press Conference where they introduced the new Kindles you see in the photo at the top of this post. They are some very impressive pieces of hardware offered at incredible prices, but what sets Amazon apart from Apple, who currently has the majority of the tablet market, is that Amazon sees themselves as content providers, and they don’t mind losing money on their hardware – hence these prices. Apple, on the other hand, sees themselves as hardware providers, hence their lousy search capabilities in the Apple iBookstore. As a part of their announcement today, Amazon announced Whispersync for voice. This is something I have been longing for. See, I love audiobooks and I also love to read ebooks. Now, if you own both the audiobooks and the ebook, you can listen to the audiobook while on watch, and when you climb into your bunk at night, your Kindle will ask you if you want to sync to the same place where you left off listening to the audio. Pretty cool, huh? See, Amazon gets what content consumers want.

There’s a big issue in the world of ebooks today – for authors and booksellers – as to whether or not Amazon is going to completely overtake the market and become a monopoly (a claim made by Barnes and Noble, Apple and the Author’s Guild) especially given the decision reached Thursday by the court concerning the settling parties to the DOJ lawsuit. And, yes, I am now a Thomas & Mercer (an Amazon publisher) author, and I am proud to say that the new T&M version of Circle of Bones now has a release date of February 19th. So, theoretically, I should be 100% in the Amazon camp.

However, I am a hybrid author in that I kept the rights to self-publish my Seychelle  books, and I think I will always want to remain partly independent and partly traditionally published. So, it is the self-published part of me that is having this difficulty making a decision. The self-published part of me does not like the idea of exclusivity. For the past several months I’ve had my books enrolled in the Kindle Select Program which requires authors to make their books exclusive to Amazon. I had to take them down from all the other sites to participate. In return, I was allowed to make my books free for 5 days out of every 90 day period, and this helped to propel my books up the Amazon bestseller lists and when they came off free, I sold lots more books. But I know there are other folks out there who own iPads, Nooks,  Kobos and Sony readers as well as those who are invested in other online stores like Diesel and Smashwords and Bookbaby, and I would occasionally get emails from people asking me why my books were not available for their ereaders.

So, gradually, I have been rotating my books out of the Amazon Select Program and trying to make them available on other sites. But here’s the issue – nobody, I repeat NOBODY is as good at providing content as Amazon. And the question is, can I afford to lose money while the others try to figure it out?

Okay, so you may very well ask what IT is? What does Amazon do that is so much better? It’s all in the algorithms, baby. The consumer reviews, the ability to LIKE a page, the categories and the multiple best seller lists are what make the difference. And clearly the Kindle Select program has made it possible for Indie Authors to compete against the big NYT bestsellers. None of the other bookselling platforms have giving Indie authors a similar tool for success. And as for brick and mortar stores- furgettaboutit. They still don’t even want to talk to Indie book folk or even to Amazon imprint authors.

When a customer used to walk into a Borders, they were often overwhelmed by all the books. Inside Amazon, readers can drill down through lists that connect to lists and find books they want via subject and price point. And there’s no need to encounter a bookstore employee who’s a book snob and will flinch at your request for a thriller or vampire book or erotica.

But, after a full month of having my books listed on Kobo, I have sold a total of 17 books. I can’t figure out how to promote myself on Kobo. There don’t seem to be any Kobo-selling blog sites like there are for Kindle where I can buy advertising, and even though I’ve had Surface Tension priced at 99 cents, I can’t figure out how to make it more discoverable to readers.

I’ve been trying for a couple of days to get my books on the Nook Pubit site and for some reason, it won’t take my info and the site keeps timing out on me. I didn’t have this problem back when I listed Circle of Bones on Nook and I don’t know what the problem is now. The site is just not cooperating with me.

Meanwhile, in the first six days of this month I have sold 443 books on Amazon.

Back when Microsoft decided to invest several million dollars into the Nook in May, the amazing author Libby Fischer Hellmann wrote an open letter to Microsoft trying to explain to them what they would need to do to make the online Nook store competitive with Amazon. So far, I haven’t seen any changes for the better and by remaining exclusive to the USA, I think the Nook has already sealed their demise. Their recent forays into the UK market are too little, too late.

It seemed to me that Kobo with their new author portal called Writing Life was the real significant competitor to Amazon. Kobo has over 2.5 million ebooks in its catalogue, they claim they have readers in over 170 different countries, and as an originally Canadian company (since bought out by the Japanese), they claim to have over 50% of the ebook market in Canada. They, too, have recently released new versions of their ebook readers that are very competitive on price and performance.

However, I recently attempted to change the prices of a couple of my books on Kobo and Amazon at the same time. Amazon made the price changes effective within 18 hours, but they also found that the books had not changed on Kobo, so they noted the new price, and they price-matched and discounted my books to match the Kobo price. I found that the Writing Life interface gave me trouble for changing the price on Kobo, and it took me 5 days with repeated emails to their Support staff to effect the change. In fact, most of their emails to me were junk that sent me canned responses that did not address the issue I was dealing with. Clearly, their support for indie authors is understaffed while Amazon has always provided personal emails that addressed my problems within 24 hours.

And, of course, Apple is going to be announcing some sort of new hardware this month and the rumor mill is running full tilt about a mini-iPad at an affordable price. With all these new tablets and new e- readers, is Amazon going to hold on to their market share? With the holiday season approaching, would I be crazy to commit to another 90 days of Amazon exclusivity? With the various reading apps on iPad, iPhones and Android, do individual hardware makers matter anymore?

So, that’s my conundrum. And I know it is a conundrum shared by all self-published writers. Should I  I hold to my principles and continue to try to make my five self-published books available to a larger market outside the Amazon ecosystem and lose sales in the process in the hope that these other sites will eventually become as author-centric as Amazon, or should I give up on the rest of the lame ebook sites and return to the Amazon exclusivity that has previously sold thousands of copes of my books?

I would welcome any input to help me with this difficult decision. What do you think?

Fair winds!

Christine

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