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To Amazon or not?
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message 51:
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Ian
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Feb 14, 2022 06:02PM
Interesting comment, J.J. I had never heard of Gumroad - I must look into this. Most of my sales still come from Amazon, but I am starting to get disillusioned with KU Select - like you it doesn't seem to help me much. Much to think about.
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In similar news, I got an email last week that D2D had bought out Smashwords.
Ian wrote: "Interesting comment, J.J. I had never heard of Gumroad - I must look into this. Most of my sales still come from Amazon, but I am starting to get disillusioned with KU Select - like you it doesn't ..."I'm not sure how good discoverability is on Gumroad. A lot of the traffic I see comes from off-site...links I've put up elsewhere. You would have to promote your Gumroad store.
With Gumroad though, you are not limited to the ebook - you can sell any digital file or collection of digital files. If you wanted to make a short video and package it with your book, you can. Or if you want to package separate artwork to compliment the book, you can. You can offer multiple formats of your books on the product page like you see on the Smashwords store. If you wanted to create a bundle, you can group the individual books instead of having to build a new, single ebook of the entire bundle.
You can create coupons for your books. You can limit how many are redeemed, and you can limit who gets them. I did this the other day. Created a coupon code for a free book, limited it to one redemption, and gave the code only to the intended recipient. You could use the coupons to target an audience. If say you wanted to run a promotion only for us here in Nik's forum, you could either send us all the code privately, or post it on the board and nowhere else.
Sounds like a sensible and flexible venue. Gotta check it out
Recommend using Amazon and making friends with people like myself who have book review YouTube channels and affiliate links for Amazon!
In the event it helps anyone - Most of the books I have bought in the past years have been Amazon. I shop used books stores whenever I travel looking to add to my collection of paperbacks of certain series, but I can also access a lot more of those stores through Amazon when not traveling.
I have purchased printed books through B&N, Amazon, thriftbooks, and BAM. Generally, I find Amazon to be least expensive. When the prison disallowed Amazon books (because of 3rd party vendors and the public not realizing the difference), I did direct comparisons of books I purchased for my son and B&N was more expensive. I was purchasing an old series for myselve and printed, used paperbacks were cheaper on thriftbooks than amazon.
Having a paperwhite and an oasis for ereading, I prefer to do my purchasing from Amazon as then I know what I bought and as I have ruined a few ereaders, it allows me to have the storage for the books and be able to re-download.
I have a lot of e-books from the funnel that many authors use and that is my preferred method for freebies.
It doesn't matter how much I like an author or how many books I have from them, I have no desire to pay a monthly fee to sign up for something. I don't want to read books a chapter at a time. Both of those options lack appeal to me.
According to my Amazon account, I have over 1,100 orders of books in some form or another, free and paid, since Jan. 2010.
Lizzie wrote: "According to my Amazon account, I have over 1,100 orders of books in some form or another, free and paid, since Jan. 2010...."Impressive! Amazon should pay attention and reward such volumes :)
Nik wrote: "Lizzie wrote: "According to my Amazon account, I have over 1,100 orders of books in some form or another, free and paid, since Jan. 2010...."Impressive! Amazon should pay attention and reward suc..."
Would have been nice if they had replaced for free my ereader as I had a habit of dropping them in the tub. However, after the 1st two losses, I paid for the replacement plan and got my money's worth having maxed out the replacements during each 3 year period. Sadly, that whole downloading and figuring out which books are what genre for those not purchased through Amazon (ARC from authors, bookfunnel, Baen freebies) do not automatically download. Now, they are waterproof so not as big an issue.
(Yes, I have been known to drop paperbacks and a hardcover or two into the tub over the last 40 years, too.)
Lizzie wrote: "Nik wrote: "Lizzie wrote: "According to my Amazon account, I have over 1,100 orders of books in some form or another, free and paid, since Jan. 2010...."Impressive! Amazon should pay attention an..."
I am just dying to know, why would you want an ereader in the tub?
I am just dying to know, why would you want an ereader in the tub? I'm going to hazard a wild guess and say Lizzie likes reading when she is having a bath.
Nick wrote: "I am just dying to know, why would you want an ereader in the tub? I'm going to hazard a wild guess and say Lizzie likes reading when she is having a bath."
An ereader? Why not a radio too?
Papaphilly wrote: "Nick wrote: "I am just dying to know, why would you want an ereader in the tub? I'm going to hazard a wild guess and say Lizzie likes reading when she is having a bath."
An ereader? Why not a rad..."
I'm not sure why this is controversial. Lots of people read in the bath - not my thing, I usually opt for a shower, so a waterproof magazine is all I take in there with me :-)
Yes, I like to read in the bath. It used to be actual book. Loss of vision has resulted in an e-reader making it much easier. Pappy - I do listen to the radio in the bathtub too. However, that's my phone or the Alexa speaker.
My daughter reads in the bathtub. But she also takes long showers during which time she listens to audio books.
Nick wrote: "I'm not sure why this is controversial. Lots of people read in the bath - not my thing,..."It is not controversial, but the idea of any electric appliance near a tub full of water, brrrrrr.
Papaphilly wrote: "Nick wrote: "I'm not sure why this is controversial. Lots of people read in the bath - not my thing,..."It is not controversial, but the idea of any electric appliance near a tub full of water, b..."
Lots of electrical gizmos are waterproof these days. I advise against using anything plugged into the mains at bath time - not that I would have thought anyone over 5 would need me to warn them.
Nick wrote: "Papaphilly wrote: "Nick wrote: "I'm not sure why this is controversial. Lots of people read in the bath - not my thing,..."It is not controversial, but the idea of any electric appliance near a t..."
You have heard of the Darwin Awards?...8^)
I don't keep anything plugged in in the bathroom. No Darwin award necessary.When I was younger, between work, kids, husband, phone ringing and so on, the bathtub was the only place to escape to read a book for fun. Like all things you do often enough, it becomes a habit.
There's a whole list of books on KU that have come about since my last free round of KU for x months. I haven't tracked all the borrowed books from Amazon beyond them being on my read list in Goodreads. I am not sure I can track them unless I have an active subscription.I do like the KU from Amazon for books I want read but don't want to buy. I just prefer not to pay for a subscription. Amazon gets a good portion of my money for shopping from detergent to paper products to food. Generally, with subscribe and save I get better prices for the majority of the household staples.
