Category: Amazon

Amazon, self publishing, self publishing a book

A closer look at our self-published books on Amazon

In yesterday’s post I included a screen shot of our Outskirts Press books on Amazon.com, showcasing the 7,302 total title count (as of July 1). Let’s take a closer look at that screen shot and what it tells us about the breadth and quality of books being published by Outskirts Press:


The circled title count of 7,302 shows the number of books, in all formats, published by Outskirts Press.

The “New Releases” just to the left of the circled total title count shows 46 new Outskirts Press books were added to Amazon in June, while 298 were added over the months of April, May, and June, for an average of roughly 100 titles a month in that time period. The number of books we’ve put onto Amazon is actually much higher than that.  With our Private Label publishing option, many authors and publishers use our high-quality, full-service packages “behind the scenes” and publish their books under their own publishing imprint name. Therefore, those titles don’t appear on a search for “Outskirts Press” nor contribute to any of the stats seen here.

In the “Department” column under the “New Releases” you can see Amazon’s categorical break-down of the types of books Outskirts Press has published onto Amazon.  These categories are based upon the BISAC codes we and our authors assign to their books during the pre-production stage.   Our two most popular categories are “Literature & Fiction (2,945)” followed by “Religion & Spirituality (1,456).” In other words, Literature & Fiction represents roughly 40% of our total output, while Religion & Spirituality represents 20%.    With 60% of our business focused on these two categories, it’s no wonder we excel at both.

We’ll examine more stats next time…

Amazon

An author’s experience with Amazon advantage

Amazon has been the subject of my blog for the past several postings, so why change now?  I recently received a letter in the mail from an author (not one of ours at Outskirts Press), who contacted me after reading my book Sell Your Book on Amazon.  A lot of authors contact me as a result of that book (evidence in itself that publishing a book can open up opportunities for new business).

This was the interesting paragraph from his two page letter: “I decided, based on your book, to try marketing a new book I just completed through the Advantage program. It has turned out to be the worst Internet experience I have ever had. To begin with, as you probably know, there is no way to communicate with anyone at the Advantage Division. Amazon’s corporate Customer Service reps [I have spoken to 5 of them] simply say Advantage has no phones. Even these customer services reps can’t contact Advantage by phone. That would be bad enough but they either do not receive faxes or do not respond to them. I tried to upload a picture of my book, following their instructions. That didn’t work at all and I should have been suspicious about what was to come.”

He goes on to elaborate on his frustrations in dealing with Amazon, including sentences like “The whole Advantage system is hopelessly, and needlessly, complex…” and “This Advantage program is a blot on Amazon’s otherwise good reputation.”

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, the only part of his entire letter that I disagreed with was the part where he entered the Advantage program as a result of reading my book.  Perhaps my book was too subtle – so that’s my fault.  Sell Your Book on Amazon encourages authors — as diplomatically as possible —  to AVOID the Advantage program.  This author’s letter covers just a couple of reasons why.

So let me be more clear now.  Amazon’s Advantage program is only advantageous to Amazon. There are much better ways to get your book on Amazon, Outskirts Press being one — How’s that for a blatant plug?

Amazon

Fulfillment by Amazon notifies its users of a price increase

Speaking of Amazon, Amazon customers engaged in Amazon’s FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) services recently received notification of a price increase.  It may have been easy to miss the intent of the notice, since the increase was cleverly disguised as a “discount” but it was ultimately difficult to miss the fact that, on average, Amazon would start charging its FBA customers approximately $1.10 for each book Amazon held unsold in its inventory for longer than one year.

If there is yet another advantage to publishing through Outskirts Press, this is it.  Outskirts Press authors are not assessed this new fee by Amazon.

Amazon

Does Amazon represent the future or the end of books?

One has to marvel at Amazon.  In spite of the warnings provided by the music industry and iTunes, authors and publishers keep right on giving (yes, giving!) away their content to Amazon for the “privilege” of being listed on Amazon’s store and having a “Kindle” version of a book.  Do authors or publishers get a percentage of the Kindle device sales? No.   Should they? Well, for an answer to that question, you might want to ask a few unemployed music executives who thought a 70% margin on $0.99 iTunes downloads was sufficient, never realizing that Apple’s real cash cow was the device itself (the iPod), sales for which the music industry received nothing, even though without music the iPod was useless.    Does that sound similar to the Kindle?

Or you may want to ask musicians ranging from Garth Brooks to AC/DC, who believe iTunes is “killing” music, according to Prefix Magazine.  The analogy is right on point with what is happening in the publishing world today.

While I would never think to suggest that authors who choose to publish directly through Amazon are literally digging their own graves, it is worth considering.   I was reading the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of Boston Review article “Books After Amazon: Publishing’s Race to the Bottom” by Onnesha Roychoudhuri, and I wanted to share this excerpt:

Cheap books are easy on our wallets, but behind the scenes publishers large and small have been deeply undercut by the rise of large retailers and predatory pricing schemes. Unless publishers push back, Amazon will take the logic of the chains to its conclusion. Then publishers and readers will finally know what happens when you sell a book like it’s a can of soup.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

Amazon

Is Amazon the Wal-Mart of Books?

Here’s another excerpt from the interesting article I read recently in the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of Boston Review titled “Books After Amazon: Publishing’s Race to the Bottom” by Onnesha Roychoudhuri — which is available to read in its entirety by clicking here. 

Many in the publishing community mock Amazon as the “Wal-Mart of books,” but it’s important to remember that Wal-Mart is also the Wal-Mart of books. Last year, Target, Amazon, and Wal-Mart fought a price war over a handful of new hardcover bestsellers. Books with $25 and $35 retail prices were being offered for nine dollars or less.

In response to the price war, the ABA wrote a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ), requesting that it investigate possible “illegal predatory pricing.” David Gernert, a literary agent who represents the novelist John Grisham and was quoted in the ABA letter, told The New York Times: “If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen King’s new novel or John Grisham’s Ford County, for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25?” People who tend to read Grisham and King aren’t necessarily reaching for a brilliant first novel, but Gernert’s point still has some force: devaluing the books produced by an industry already squeezed to the brink is not likely to benefit the reader in the end.

Amazon

Does Amazon sell books like cans of soup?

I read a fascinating article in the Nov/Dec issue of Boston Review recently. The article is titled “Books After Amazon: Publishing’s Race to the Bottom” by Onnesha Roychoudhuri.  It was a well-written and astute view of the world’s largest book retailer.  I strongly encourage you to read the article in its entirety by clicking here, but just to whet your appetite for what’s in store for you if you do, here’s a small excerpt:

Jeffrey Lependorf, Executive Director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and of Small Press Distribution, suggests that the difference between Amazon and brick-and-mortar bookstores is most evident in how they market books: “I think even people at Amazon would say that it’s essentially a widget seller that happens to have begun by focusing on books. Many people, like me, will say you can’t sell a book the same way you sell a can of soup.”

At the heart of the soup-can analogy are the algorithms that Amazon uses to “recommend” books to customers. Most customers aren’t aware that the personalized book recommendations they receive are a result of paid promotions, not just purchase-derived data. This is frustrating for publishers who want their books to be judged on their merits. “I think their twisted algorithms that point you toward bestsellers instead of books that you might actually like [are] a shame,” Gavin Grant, cofounder of Small Beer Press, laments.

Amazon, self publishing

How to link to your book on Amazon

If you don’t yet have a published book on Amazon, it’s time to get published. And if you have a book on Amazon, you probably spend a lot of time trying different online marketing tactics to send people to your book’s sales detail page.  If you don’t you should – -they’re not going to know about your book unless you tell them. And don’t just tell them about the book, send them to it.

So how do you “send” a link to a specific book on Amazon?  I often see people include long, unwieldy links that are filled with superfluous Amazon code.  Sometimes they even work.  And often, those links contain information like affiliate codes, or cookie codes that could result in the link working for you, but NOT working for someone else.  It’s best to use as clean and short of a URL (webpage address) as possible.

Amazon makes this easy.  Just follow this convention:

domain name/program name/10-digit ISBN

Amazon’s “program name” for its forwarding function is called “dp,” perhaps short for “direct point.”  So, for instance, to aim directly to Self Publishing Simplified on Amazon, which is our sample book and publishing guide, you would go to: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1598000810

That’s pretty short, and much better than the longer URLs you might be using, especially if you’ve ever wanted to TWEET the location of your book on Twitter or Facebook.

Here’s an even shorter path:  http://www.amzn.com/1598000810  — When you only have 140 characters, every character counts. Here, Amazon has taken the “dp” program and put it within its own domain name “Amzn.com” which shortens the URL by 5 characters. Brilliant!

Amazon

How to add a Twitter Feed to your Amazon Author Central Account

If you’re a published author with a book on Amazon, you need to have an Author Central Account. This is pivotal advice I share in my book Sell  Your Book on Amazon.  And if you’re a business person, manager, entrepreneur or CEO and you don’t have a published book on Amazon, what are you waiting for?

Amazon’s Author Central functionality gives you some tools to establish your presence on Amazon. They recently added the ability to pick up your Twitter feed. Here’s how:

1. Sign-in to your Author Central account (or create one) at http://amazon.com/authors

2. Once you are signed-in click on your Profile button.

3. Along the right-hand side under “Photos” and “Videos” is a section headlined “Twitter.” Click the “Add account” link and provide your twitter username. It will start picking up the RSS feed immediately.

Amazon, branding, self publishing

How to add a video to your Amazon Author Central account

 If you’re a published author with a book on Amazon, you need to have an Author Central Account.  And if you don’t yet have a published book on Amazon, it’s time to get published.

Here’s how to add a video to your Author Central account:

1. Sign-in or register at http://amazon.com/authors

2. Once your are signed-in click on your Profile button.

3. Along the right-hand side under “Photos” is a section headlined “Video.” Click the “Add Video” link and browse the contents of your hard drive to upload a video. It must be under 10 minutes in length and under 500 MB.

In fact, that’s a good rule of thumb for any internet video.  In fact, 10 minutes is a bit too long.

If you don’t have a video to upload, you may be interested in our Book Video and Distribution option, which you can order by clicking here. It’s available to writers and professionals regardless of where you published your book (although you’ll get a substantial discount if you’ve published the book with Outskirts Press).

Amazon, self publishing

Book publishing on Amazon

Over the past few posts I have been comparing a book published by Amazon with a book published by Outskirts Press.  In my last post I referred to the irony, and here it is, revealed in these two screen shots that I took when I was composing these posts, on November 19th:

The circled area for the book above, published by Amazon, says “In stock, but may require an extra 1-2 days to process.”

Now let’s look at a book published by Outskirts Press:

By comparison, the book published by Outskirts Press says “In stock” and even offers the total amount still in stock and a rapid delivery option. This option is conspicuously absent on the Amazon-published book in the top screen shot — almost as conspicuous as the lack of distribution to the following sites for the Amazon-published book: Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.de.

Note: the last few postings have been using my Outskirts Press book Sell Your Book on Amazon as the comparison, but I realized when I was taking the screen shots for this posting that one could easily become confused about which book was the “Amazon book” and which book was the “Outskirts Press book” since “Amazon” is in the title of the Outskirts Press book.  Needlessly confusing on my part, I’ll admit.  So, rather than risk that confusion with this comparison, which clearly demonstrates the benefits of Outskirts Press, I took a screen shot for Self-Publishing Simplfied, another one of my Outskirts Press books, instead. This demonstrates the full advantages of Outskirts Press without the risk of people mistaking OUR benefits for Amazon’s. But these screen shots hold true for every Outskirts Press book.

So more to the point:   The book published by Amazon in the top screen shot is SLOWER to get from Amazon than the book published by Outskirts Press.  And the distribution channels offered by Outskirts Press are greater. And the royalty Outskirts Press pays to the author is HIGHER.

I mean, I realize I’m a bit biased, being the Outskirts Press CEO and everything, but still… is this really that hard of a choice?

And now over the past several blogs, we have the longer answer to the question I receive in person when I’m speaking: Why would an author choose to publish with Outskirts Press instead of Amazon? There’s your answer… 

Is Amazon cheaper? Sure. So, then the real question becomes, what is your book worth to you?

Better distribution, better quality, better royalties (even on Amazon),  and faster availability (even on Amazon) — only with Outskirts Press.