Amazon Exclusivity

Over the course of the first month of 2016, I experimented with removing the Amazon exclusivity from Hand of Mars (Starship’s Mage Omnibus had never been exclusive with Amazon) and running promotions to see if I could get the non-Amazon retailer sales of both books to equal, at least, the December Kindle Unlimited royalties for Hand of Mars alone.

I won’t go into exact numbers here, but the final number for both books in January 2016 outside of Amazon was a little over 50% of the December Kindle Unlimited number for December 2015. Those royalties only barely covered the cost of the promotions I ran in January.

While this experiment has left me with some confidence that I have the tools and catalog to move outside of Amazon if their KDP Select requirements grow too onerous, it also shows that doing so would be expensive and time-consuming… and would, in the current environment, make me less money than Kindle Unlimited does.

Therefore, as of this writing, Starship’s Mage Omnibus and Hand of Mars have been taken down from all retailers other than Amazon and placed in KDP Select.

To be in full compliance with KDP Select’s Terms of Services, I could not have Episode 1 available elsewhere, which made it impossible to keep it free. Therefore, I have taken Starship’s Mage: Episode 1 down completely. The individual episodes of the Omnibus are no longer available in any form, however, please note that the Kindle Sample of Starship’s Mage Omnibus covers a significant portion of Episode 1.

This also means, sadly, that Voice of Mars (Starship’s Mage Book 3) will likely not see a release outside of Amazon. However, I can confirm that Voice of Mars will be released on schedule in March, most likely in the first half of the month.

Happy reading!

Glynn Stewart

 

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