Why I Am Still Amazon Exclusive: Simple Math

Last December, I expressed my enormous disdain with Smashwords and stormed out of my two-plus year relationship with them in a giant huff. You can read about that here. I said it was possible I could wind up going back to them after a certain period of time, but that it was unlikely.



Nearly eight months later, that remains true. I haven't gone back to Smashwords and I have no plans to, and I haven't diversified with other retailers either, like Nook Publishing. Ganxy was also a major consideration, but I backed out of that too when it became clear how unrefined their system still is. Same with Kobo. And even more so with Apple and Sony, because uploading to those stores independent of Smashwords is not only very difficult, but procuring the ISBNs they require, without the facilitation of someone like Smashwords who provides them free of charge, (or without having my own publishing imprint), becomes a costly enterprise that would not pay off anytime soon with short story royalties.



I also had the choice of asking Hobbes End to release my e-books The Last Supper and Strings through other ebook retailers, and they would have. But ultimately I chose to stick with Amazon there too. I'll explain all my reasoning behind these decisions in a minute, but I want to get something out of the way first.



I know this will put some readers out. I know in my own personal circle of friends about a half dozen people who do not buy ebooks from Amazon. They're Nook users or iBooks users. Not everyone has a Kindle. Not everyone wants to deal with Amazon or use the Kindle app. Hell, even *I* don't prefer to read on my Kindle or Kindle app, though I will if I have to. I predominantly use a Nook, a platform I bought into before I started selling e-books, because I wanted my books to have the EPUB format. I am certainly not an Amazon sycophant, and I'm not going to pretend that being with one retailer doesn't have certain drawbacks. But I'm not going to be too apologetic about it either, because I have made a conscious decision to do this, and after the better part of a year, I haven't come to regret it.



There ARE a few loopholes you non-Kindle people can exploit, however. I publish all my Kindle books without DRM. If you are the determined tech-savvy sort, you could buy the books from Amazon and convert the .mobi files to your preferred format using Calibre, Adobe, or any number of available online converters and then uploading this file onto your preferred device. Also, if you do want something badly enough, email me through the Contact form here on the site, and I will send you one file of your choice, free of charge. I only ask that in exchange for the freebie, you provide an honest review on GoodReads or Amazon. And don't upload it onto a piracy site, or I will cut you.



Some authors sell really well through other venues. Classically, I never have. I did okay through Barnes & Noble, but it took a long time to build up that audience, and the lion's share of my sales with them (and the same could be said with Sony, iTunes, and Kobo) were through my free downloads. People never reviewed at these sites. Barnes & Noble's review section is rife with trolls and anonymous spam. All told, at my best, I had maybe an average of 150 paid sales a year across those other retailers.



That might lead some people to say, "150 is decent. That's still money, right?"



Yeah. At $.35 a sale, that comes to an astounding $52.50.



Divide that by the amount of time I'd spend uploading and maintaining and marketing a collection of nearly 20 e-books on those sites, waiting on 1099 forms at the end of the year and paying taxes on on what amounts to mere cents, doing the appropriate year-round accounting, and basically preoccupying myself with an empty exercise that nets me less money than it costs to fill my gas tank, and it's FAR from worth it. Hell, I'm already working far below the Federal minimum wage, but I'm not going to waste my time any further on something that doesn't really work. It's a whole lot of effort to keep 1% of the reading populace (or the tiny sliver of that 1% that I manage to get) happy. If for whatever reason in the future I get hordes of readers hounding me to release my work on another platform, I will consider it. But as the market changes and major bookstore chains sink, and people read e-books on tablets that support multiple reading apps, I have a feeling I won't have to worry about that.



It just doesn't make sense on a practical level, on a fiscal level, on a "how much of my time do I want to put into being a publisher versus being a writer" level. The money I made through other retailers over the course of a year, I make in the course of a single month (and then some during my busy season) on Amazon, between actual sales and Kindle library borrows. With Amazon, I can focus my marketing like a laserbeam. I can stick with the Kindle name, which is the biggest one out there when it comes to e-books (like it or not). It makes my Tweets shorter. It means I only have to post one link to a product. It means I only have to check one page for my sales, ranks, and reviews. It means I only have to wait for one check to deposit (and it does so predictably on the same day every single month), and that I only need a single 1099 statement for my taxes. It means, when I have a book ready to upload, I only need to do one product page.





In a nutshell, it simplifies my life. After feeling like my brain was fragmented into several pieces trying to keep track of so many moving pieces, I only have one thing to focus on, and that's Amazon. The place were 90% of the e-book readership convenes anyway. This leaves me a lot more time doing the thing in this industry I like doing most: working on my next book or story. I like that. I made the same decision with my traditionally published books because Hobbes End has a good relationship with Amazon. They sell very well through there, and because the book will also be available in print, that means those who truly do want to read my book can do so in that most universal and non-proprietary of all reading formats. You can order it from Amazon, you can buy it directly from the publisher's website, you can walk into any major bookstore and order it. And, hopefully, it will be available in some independent bookstores too. Finally, since the publisher would be put at the same mercy of receiving monies from multiple retailers before they can filter down to me, it saves me from even more accounting nightmares. It streamlines the process.



Look, I'm not trying to say that every author should do the same thing I'm doing. Some people are far more industrious about this whole self-publishing business than I am, and they do well at it. We all have to strike a balance between the publishing work and the writing work in such a way that both things work effectively. This is what has worked for me. Perhaps if I had a manager or assistant or slave of some kind who could upload my books, track the sales, do the promoting, endure the headaches, and basically take over that whole operation so that all I had to do was wonder when my money was coming in. I might consider it. But at this stage of my career, this is where things are. I hope you come visit me over on Amazon.