Category: self publishing

self publishing

Borders Bankruptcy?

The industry has been ablaze this month with “will they or won’t they” guesses concerning the future of Borders Bookstores.  Are they declaring bankruptcy? 

Borders is the second-largest chain of bookstores behind Barnes & Noble, which is having its own share of financial difficulties in the current economy. I’ll discuss more about Barnes & Noble next time.

But the future looks even less bright for Borders, which may have to file for Chapter 11 if it is unable to successfully renegotiate terms with its vendors and lenders. 

What led Borders to this position? Some could say it over-extended itself with the opening of gigantic “superstores” while statistics seemed to strongly indicate that more and more people were buying books online.  It’s true. Perhaps 95% of our authors’ books at Outskirts Press (and most other self-publishing firms) sell online via Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s website.  

Others have hypothesized that Borders was “too late” joining the e-book game, following in the wake years after Amazon and months after Barnes & Noble. Personally, I’m more inclined to believe the first reason than the second.   A physical store typically makes just over $5 selling a $10 paperback  novel.  You know how many books each store must sell every month to pay for 50,000 square feet of retail space?  And that’s before heating and lighting it. Plus there are the employee costs and other expenses typical of running any business.   

 Of course, to supplement that income, it’s a little known fact that most large retail chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble make a large portion of their revenue selling advertising and “premium” space in the store to traditional New York publishers (many of whom are having their own set of financial difficulties, which may be contributing to a decrease in those advertising dollars at the store level).

Here’s hoping Borders pulls through.

branding, self publishing, Social Networking Sites

Adding Facebook Plug-ins to your Author Website

Last time I suggested that having an author website, webpage, or blog was the single most important aspect of promoting a book after it is published. This was also the consensus of the “Promote Your Book” panel I was on during the recent Writer’s Digest conference in New York.   This next suggestion is admittedly further along the “promotion tactic timeline” but is worth mentioning now for a number of reasons. For one, this is also a suggestion I made while at the conference, albeit to the attendees of the other panel I was on, involving social networking.  And secondly, we just recently performed this enhancement to our site at Outskirts Press.

In fact, as you surf the Internet, you may notice this specific functionality cropping up more and more, on a wide variety of sites, both informational and commercial in nature.  What functionality am I talking about?  The Facebook “Like” button.  By adding a Facebook “Like” button to your own web presence you give your visitors an opportunity to interact with your site in a “fun” easy way that they are already accustomed to.  Additionally, their act of “liking” your site is reported on their Facebook account to their friends, which theoretically helps increase your exposure.

We recently added “Like” buttons on our site for all our products and services.  We haven’t yet invited our Facebook community to visit our site and tell us which services or products they like, but that is a recommended course of action once you add the “Like” functionality. After all, the benefit of adding this functionality is so that people recognize that a large number of other people “like” what you have to offer.  And, of course, when you first add the functionality, the number of “Likes” is zero.  So you want to take steps to increase that number.

The good news is that Facebook makes adding this functionality very easy.  They offer a variety of “plug-ins” that are easy to add to your site.   Just go to developers.facebook.com and see if any of their plug-ins will help you.  Of course, gettting a large and growing number of people to “like” what you offer is a different challenge entirely.  If only Facebook offered a plug-in for that…

blogging, self publishing

What is the most important thing an author should do to promote a book?

Sorry for the delay in updating. I had a bit of a medical situation when I was in New York.

Speaking of New York, I participated in two panels for writers last weekend. One was on all things “social networking” related and another one covered the topic of book promotion.  On both panels, we (me and the other panelists) had the opportunity to answer questions from the audience.  To benefit those who were unable to attend, I’ll report on some of the information that was shared on the panels along with some of the questions we fielded (and the answers, of course).

At the book promotion panel, the first question we received was this – perhaps a bit paraphrased: “You’ve thrown a lot of information at us. It’s all a little overwhelming. If we only had the time/money/resources/interest in doing ONE of the things you suggested, what would you recommend doing first?”  

All three of the panelists and the moderator agreed upon the answer: You should have a website or a blog, not unlike this one.    Most blogs can effectively act as an author website as long as you’ve added a widget or some other form of functionality to sell your book from it.   Outside of that, as long as your book is sold on Amazon, your Amazon “sales page” can act as your website and accept book sales for you.  Amazon’s sales page also posts reviews of your book and can broadcast your blog if you have one — by setting that up through your Author Central account, which I’m positive I’ve blogged about in the past.

The good news is, between your Amazon sales page and WordPress.com or Blogger.com, it is relatively easy and free to get started on the right path toward book promotion.  The only cost is time.  Blogging takes commitment.  But it is also the one thing all the panelists agreed upon was the first most important thing you should do to promote a published book. Blog consistently, professionally, and respectfully. After all, you’re building your author platform, here.

I’ll talk about other things we covered on the panels in New York in future posts, along with more Facebook stuff as I promised.

blogging, branding, marketing, self publishing, Social Networking Sites

Social Networking Sites

Outskirts Press has its sights set on social network publishing this January as we launch our first ever “Facebook Anthology” set for publication this quarter.  This is an opportunity for our Facebook Fans to submit material for free publication, just for being an Outskirts Press Facebook Fan.  In my last posting I referred to this as an “experiment” and it is one.  In fact, any social networking initiative or engagement is something of an experiment because it evolves in real time, with real participation by real people. It’s impossible to duplicate that in advance within a “testing environment.” 

Engaging in social networking sites was one of my New Year’s Resolutions last year and it continues to be equally important this year.

So we are launching our Facebook Anthology experiment this month and we don’t know how successful it will be, or how engaged we can get our Facebook Fans to be.   But it looks promising so far. Since announcing the Anthology on January 1, our Facebook Fan base has increased by 10%.  Now it remains to be seen how many fans actually submit material for the anthology.  Of course, it doesn’t help that Facebook makes the submission process somewhat convoluted.  You see, in an effort to engage the “social” part of this anthology, we wanted to encourage our fans to submit their material directly through Facebook (as opposed to submitting it to us via email, for example).  But, as a result, submissions are victimized by Facebook’s character limitations:

A “Wall Posting” has a character limitation of 1,000 while a “Status Posting” has a character limitation of 420.  Since our fans are only allowed to post “Status Updates” on our wall, that means their submission is limited to 420 characters — not very many at all.

So the solution to this was to encourage them to Post a “Status Update” announcing their submission, and then Comment on their own Status Update to submit their actual creative content.  You see, for some reason, Facebook allows 8,000 characters in the comments section, even though the status posts are limited to 420.  Why? That’s a question for Mark Zuckerberg.  While this is relatively easy to do in practice, it sounds overly complicated when just reading about it on a blog posting.  It’s my hope we can encourage our fans to participate by stressing the “free publication” part and the fun social aspects of this anthology.   It’s a fun, free, fast way to get published by Outskirts Press — and perhaps will allow new authors the chance to “dip their toe” into the self-publishing pool to see how it feels.   

It is also my hope that many of our Facebook fans will appreciate the opportunity to donate to a worthwhile charity. You see, the royalties of this Facebook Anthology are going toward a charity that our Facebook fans themselves will vote on.  And more on that next time….

outskirts press reviews, self publishing

Top 5 Outskirts Press Reviews – Self Publishing Review

Outskirts Press receives a lot of positive reviews  and comments from the people we care about pleasing the most — our authors. We publish many of their comments on our website every month, but the fact is, we receive more kudos than we have time to publish. Interestingly, our most vocal critics are often individuals who have never published with us (and in some cases, have never published at all). Either that or they are competitors — hardly impartial sources. 

Nevertheless, authors are often left with the question of where to go to investigate self-publishing options from impartial, unbiased sources (rather than relying on the comments of competitors or overzealous individuals/consultants who have both a vested interest and a suprising amount of time on their hands to devote to nay-saying). 

Over the next five posts I will discuss five 3rd party review sources. 

The first review site is Self Publishing Review, run by Henry Baum. 

The site used to review the services of self-publishing companies on a consistent basis, although now has veered away from that.  It also refers people looking for reviews to Mick Rooney’s Self-Publishing Review Blog, which to date has reviewed 32 self publishing companies, including Outskirts Press.  Of course, my favorite excerpt from Mr. Rooney’s review is this: “Overall, Outskirts Press is run by a CEO with a thorough knowledge and background in self-publishing and marketing, and in a few short years they have established themselves as a leading POD solutions provider for authors. One only has to browse reputable POD writer forums in the United States to see how popular this publisher has become with authors looking to utilised [sic] the print on demand publishing option.”   Why, thank you, Mr. Rooney.

Okay, back to Self Publishing Review.  When SPR was reviewing self publishing services, Mr. Baum’s take on Outskirts Press was fairly accurate, as demonstrated by this excerpt: “Outskirts Press isn’t necessarily obscure, but it’s certainly not as well known as some of the bigger self-publishing outfits.  But Outskirts Press offers complete self-publishing services for a lower price than competing publishers: including book design, distribution, and marketing.”

The review goes on to summarize our five publishing packages and then covers some of the details of our cover design and marketing options before ending with this summary: “All told Outskirts Press is full-featured and affordable when compared to better-known self-publishers.”

As I mentioned at the top of this posting, the comments from our authors hold the most value for us, and I’d like to share one we received below:

“For over twenty years now I have had a story buzzing around in my head. Like others, I’m sure, I would read a novel and think: I can do that – even better! So I started to write this story back in 1997 after spending a week in Holland for research. I finally finished about a year ago and thought: Now I’m on my way!  But I wasn’t. I spent nearly a year trying to find a literary agent, using all the published guides on how to get one and became totally frustrated! I was rejected time after time based on a cover letter and maybe a few sample chapters (and I sincerely doubt that much of anything I submitted was ever read). I was pretty depressed at this point and then saw an advertisement for Outskirts Press in a writer’s magazine. I decided to make a move and have never looked back. Today I have a book to show for my efforts and OP has been great in helping me every step of the way. Now I start the marketing phase and I feel good about having OP in my corner. The book is beautiful and the cover image was exactly what I wanted. This is a book that can be judged by its cover! I am thankful to all of the fine people I’ve worked with at Outskirts Press.” – Frank Ridgley

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.

Amazon, self publishing

Amazon Self Publishing Royalties

Over the past few posts I have been comparing the distribution sales channels and the author royalties of a book published by Amazon (HCG Protocol) with a book published by Outskirts Press (Sell Your Book on Amazon).

To recap, Amazon’s book HCG Protocol is available through 8 unique sales channels while Outskirts Press’ book Sell Your Book on Amazon is available through over 50.   HCG Protocol earns $5.23 for the author every time a copy is sold on Amazon, while Sell Your Book on Amazon earns $6.58 every time a copy is sold on Amazon.

Actually, since we’re now going to discuss that paragraph in more detail, let’s be more specific. A few postings ago when I compared royalty rates for different distribution channels, I wanted to compare apples to apples, so we pretended HCG Protocol had a retail price of $14.95, so it compared exactly with the $14.95 retail price of Sell Your Book on Amazon.  The reality is that HCG Protocol has a retail price of $12.77, so in reality, it actually does NOT earn $5.23 every time a copy sells on Amazon. It actually earns 35% of $12.77, which is $4.47.

In my last posting, I revealed how Sell Your Book on Amazon’s pricing works at Outskirts Press, and how the 100% author profit of $6.58 is reached.

Retail Price (14.95) – Trade Discount (20%) – Production Base Price ($5.36) = Author Profit ($6.58).  That equates to a 44% retail profit.

So how does Amazon’s pricing work? Well, for books published by Amazon that are sold on Amazon, Amazon pays a 35% retail royalty. Obviously, that is less than a 44% retail royalty paid by Outskirts Press.  35% does seem good in comparison to most self-publishing companies, just not in comparison with Outskirts Press. But is 35% on Amazon good?  Let’s not forget that HCG Protocol is only 50 pages in length.  If you use the same formula above, you discover that Amazon’s publishing printing costs are pretty high:

Retail Price ($12.77) – Trade Discount 20% (this is probably actually 0%, since they’re selling it from their own website, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt here) – Production Price (X) = Some profit, a certain percentage of which is $4.47.

First, let’s determine the trade discounted price, which is 20% of $12.77, or $10.22. From that amount, the author is earning $4.47. Ergo, the difference is the production cost and whatever percentage of your profit that Amazon is taking (since they don’t pay 100% royalties).  $10.22 – $4.47 – (% of your profit) = the printing price, which must be less than $5.75 for a 50 page book.

Here’s an interesting hypothetical situation,  particularly if you are the authors of HCG Protocol, Tiffany Prinster and Linda Prinster; or perhaps if you happen to have published YOUR book with Amazon…    The same book at Outskirts Press would have a retail price of $12.95, and would earn $5.84 instead of $4.47 for every sale, through 42 more sales channels, including Barnes & Noble.   Does that justify the $1000 publishing package price of our most popular Diamond package?  Well, it depends upon how successful the book is.  In their case, with a current Amazon Sales Rank of 1,851, the answer is an unequivocal “YES.”  They’re probably selling 100 books a month or more.  So if they were making $1.37 more in profit for every sale had they published with Outskirts Press, plus widening their distribution channels from 8 to 50, at 100 books a month, they would break even in 7 months and would then be reaping the increased benefits of higher profits and greater distribution.  Only the authors know exactly how many books they are selling, and perhaps how many MORE they could be selling through 42 additional sales channels. They might break even much faster.

And that brings us to perhaps the most ironic part of publishing with Amazon, which I’ll reveal next time when I wrap up this comparison of HCG Protocol with Sell Your Book on Amazon…

self publishing

Self Publishing 100% Royalties

Outskirts Press is among only a handful of self publishing companies that pay “100% royalties” – and by “handful” I literally mean less than 5.  In fact, while I didn’t do an exhaustive search, I’m only familiar with 2 others that pay 100% royalties in the same manner we do, which is to say, regardless of where the book sells.  Some others claim to pay “100% royalties” but then you quickly discover this is only if the book is sold from the publisher’s own website.

That example of the “fine print of self publishing” is why it becomes difficult for authors to truly know what to expect, or what they are going to get, when they choose a self publishing company.  I discussed another example in my last posting, with the Amazon-published book that earned over $5 every time the book sold from Amazon, but only $1.45 when that same book sold anywhere else.   

Outskirts Press pays 100% author royalties regardless of where the book sells.  So let’s discuss what “100% royalties” means in this context.  Regardless of where you see that terminology, you are almost always going to see some reference to “profits” within the same context, and that is because publishing companies that refer to “100% royalties” are actually referring to 100% of the “profits” of the book.      So regardless of where you publish, and regardless of what the publisher’s “royalty” claims are, please do not ever expect to receive $20 for a $20 retail price book.   That would be a 100% retail royalty, which no publisher pays.

Almost all self publishing companies make their royalty claims based upon the profit the book generates, so when you see that one company pays 100% royalties and another pays 20% royalties,  both those percentages are coming from the same number – the profit the book has generated.  The profit of a book is determined by the following calculation:   Retail price – trade discount – production cost = profit.

All publishers earn a “profit” on the book.  Then the question becomes, how much of that profit do they give to the author?

All hardcopy books must be printed, and all printers also earn a “profit” on the production cost of a book.  Authors who have independently self-published their own books (or explored that option) know that they often get different printing quotes from different printers even though the actual book itself might be exactly the same.  This is because different businesses build different profit margins into all phases of production.   And that is no different from a self-publishing company, where company X may have a “production” price of X while company Y may have a “production” price of Y.

And that production cost is why a 100% royalty for a $14.95 book doesn’t mean the author receives $14.95 every time the book sells.  Let’s use one of my books, SELL YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON, as a very specific example, since I don’t mind revealing all the pricing of the book.   It has a retail price of $14.95.  I earn 100% author royalties for my book, just as all our Outskirts Press authors earn 100% author royalties for their book(s).   So how do we determine 100% of the “profit” of a $14.95 retail price? We use the formula I mentioned above:

Retail price – trade discount – production cost = profit.

$14.95 – 20% (trade discount) – $5.36 (production cost) = $6.58 (profit).

I know this is confusing, so I’ll break it down even further.  20% of $14.95 is $2.99.  So $14.95 – $2.99 = $11.96.  This is the trade discounted price for my book.

Every copy of Sell Your Book on Amazon has a base production price of $5.36. This is the production cost we quote to the author (me) and this is the amount I pay for each copy from within my Author’s Center.   Other books we publish have different base costs, which depends upon the page count, the trim size, etc.

The trade discounted price of $11.96 minus the production base author copy price of $5.36 equals $6.58, the “profit” of the book sale.

Then, depending upon the publisher you choose, you get a percentage of that profit.  With Outskirts Press and two other companies I am aware of, that means you get 100% of the profit, $6.58.  With one of our largest competitors, on the other hand, you would get 50% of that profit ($3.29).

So how is my Outskirts Press book earning $6.58 on Amazon, when a book published by Amazon (HCG Protocol) earns just $5.23?  Next time I will discuss how Outskirts Press is beating Amazon at its own game by paying higher author royalties than Amazon’s publisher, even for books sold through Amazon.

self publishing

Self Publishing Amazon

In my last post about self publishing on Amazon I provided two screen shots from Bookfinder.com – one for an ISBN published by Amazon’s publishing company and one for an ISBN published by Outskirts Press. According to Bookfinder, the Amazon publisher provides a total of 8 unique sales channels while Outskirts Press provides a total of over 50 unique sales channels.  I identified this as one major difference — benefit — to self publishing with Outskirts Press instead of self publishing Amazon ‘s way.

I also alluded to other benefits, specifically royalties, and I will discuss that now.

There’s no doubt that Amazon pays fairly good royalties on its own books that it sells from its own site at Amazon.com.  It is subsidizing itself.  And, as I covered last time, books published by Amazon are rarely available anywhere else BUT Amazon.  So you may arrive upon the conclusion that there’s no downside.  Well, the downside is receiving only 8 unique sales channels instead of 50.  And if your self publishing Amazon book DOES happen to sell through a sales channel other than Amazon, your royalty is significantly lower — 10% of the retail price instead of the 35% of the retail price you may be expecting.   Why are you expecting 35% and only receiving 10% on “expanded distribution” sales?   Because Amazon does what all self publishing firms do, and in fact what all businesses do the world over: they market the “good news.”

So, let’s create a little chart comparing the “good news” (i.e., royalties) earned by the same two titles I used last time: The self publishing Amazon book:  Pocket Guide to the HCG Protocol (ISBN: 978-1442152663)  with a retail price of  $12.77 compared with the Outskirts Press book, Sell Your Book on Amazon (ISBN: 978-1432701963) with a retail price of $14.95.

HCG Protocol has a random retail price of $12.77, which is already kind of weird, but so as not to give unfair advantage to my book, which has a higher retail price of $14.95 (and therefore I would earn higher royalties), let’s say the retail price of the Amazon book is also $14.95.  In other words, we’re already granting the competition an extra two bucks to the retail price, just so you can see an apples to apples comparison of Amazon royalty payouts compared with Outskirts Press royalties.  Keep that in mind as you look as this side by side comparison of author royalty earnings in dollars and cents.

Sales Channels Royalties for HCG Protocol, published by Amazon Royalties for Sell Your Book on Amazon, published by Outskirts Press
Amazon.com $5.23 $6.58
Abe Books $1.45 $6.58
Book Webpages $1.45 $6.58
Biblio.com $1.45 $6.58
Alibris $1.45 $6.58
Biggerbooks.com   $6.58
Super book deals   $6.58
Textbooks R Us   $6.58
Valore Books   $6.58
Amazon.co.uk   $6.58
Textbook X   $6.58
Blackwell   $6.58
Powells.com   $6.58
Amazon.fr   $6.58
DEA Story Italy   $6.58
Bookbyte.com   $6.58
Buchide Germany   $6.58
Amazon.de   $6.58
Half.com   $6.58
BarnesAndNoble.com   $6.58
Books a Million   $6.58
Amazon.ca   $6.58

The first thing you may  notice is that the Amazon-published book, HCG Protocol, is not available at very many places.  You will also notice that the Amazon book makes two different amounts, depending upon whether the book sells from Amazon (the author earns 35% of the retail price) or elsewhere (the author earns 10% of the retail price).   So if a single copy of HCG Protocol, published by Amazon’s self publishing company, sells from all the unique locations in this chart that are available for its Amazon distribution, the author earns: $11.03.

By comparison, the book published by Outskirts Press earns the same royalty regardless of what channel the book sells through. Since this is my book, I know precisely how much I make on it: $6.58. That’s 100% of the profit of the book, and translates into a retail royalty of 44%. So if a copy sells from all the unique locations in this chart that are available for Amazon distribution, I would earn: $144.76.

I’ve often said that “book math” is tricky.  It’s a complicated subject that I’ve composed several articles about, and it is always the topic of “Q & A sessions” after my personal appearances at workshops, seminars, and conferences.   This is often the most important part of an author’s decision making process (or should be) and it is also the part they understand the least.  Self publishing firms know this – and they use semantics in their marketing to leverage that lack of knowledge.

So in my next posting, I will discuss exactly how my book at Outskirts Press can make MORE money on Amazon than one of Amazon’s own books. I will also explain how a “100% profit” translates into a “44% retail royalty.”  By understanding “book math” authors who are exploring all their publishing options will be able to make better financial decisions when it comes to choosing the self publishing partner that is best for them.

self publishing

Self Publishing on Amazon

As the author of Sell Your Book on Amazon, I speak at quite a few conferences, seminars, and writing groups on the subject of online book marketing. And since I am also the CEO of Outskirts Press, it is probably no surprise that one of the most common questions I am asked while at these events is why should an author publish with Outskirts Press rather than directly through Amazon.

When I am in-person and in “speaker mode” I strive to provide impartial advice and information, and I also strive to be very diplomatic. In other words, I prefer to not specifically answer questions that cannot help but shine a negative light on a competitor. That’s not my goal at events; my goal at events is to impart as much information about publishing and marketing that I can.

But on my blog, I don’t have to be quite so diplomatic.  The very short, glib answer to that question is, “You get what you pay for” and this is true in all areas concerning customer service and quality of the final product itself.   There is a reason Outskirts Press is called “full-service” and Amazon is called “DIY” (do it yourself).

But the answer is actually more complicated than that.

For one, many authors are, for some reason, under the delusion that publishing through Amazon is the only way to get their book listed for sale on Amazon.  This is due, in no small part, to a devious tactic Amazon undertook in 2008 to instill this very fear into new authors.  That exercise failed, yet the misconception lingers on.  Please allow me to officially dispel the myth.  Just about every self-publishing firm out there will get your book listed on Amazon.com.  I can’t think of one that doesn’t, although I can think of a few who accomplish this goal by using Amazon’s own Advantage Program, and that’s kind of silly — but that’s a topic for a different post, and I outline the silliness in my book.

I’ve even heard that Amazon’s customer service publishing reps will strongly imply this myth while courting new authors.  Do not be deceived; it is simply untrue.  All of us in self-publishing recognize the value of having our books listed on Amazon, and we’ve all made sure that our books appear on Amazon.

Ironically, this Amazon myth is perhaps also Amazon’s greatest weakness.  Up until the middle of 2010, if you published through Amazon, your book would ONLY appear on Amazon (and AbeBooks, if you really care).  Barnes & Noble? No.  Borders.com? No.  Books a Million? No?  Ingram, the largest book wholesaler in the US? Not on your life.

And, in fact even now, if you conduct a search on BookFinder.com for a book published by Amazon and compare it against a book published by just about any other self-publishing company (like Outskirts Press, for instance), you will see the major disadvantage to publishing through Amazon.  Hint:  Amazon doesn’t want anyone else selling books. Ergo, books published through Amazon typically receive far less availability. In other words, by and large, they are still only available on Amazon.

Let’s look at some proof.

The first screen shot below is for a book that Amazon published that I found by conducting a search on Amazon. I tried to select two books that had comparable retail prices to make this comparison fair. This book is titled Pocket Guide to the HCG Protocol with an ISBN of 978-1442152663 if you want to play along yourself at http://bookfinder.com  — Bookfinder displays all the online e-retail results for an ISBN search.

You will notice the Amazon book’s distribution is limited to 4 new sales channels (the left-column), although the first two are both the US version of Amazon, so it’s hard to count those differently. The right-column is for used markets, and there are 14, although 9 of those are Amazon.com, also. So if you count Amazon as just one, you’re looking at a total of 8 unique sales channels for this book published by Amazon.

For comparison, let’s look at my book Sell Your Book on Amazon, published by Outskirts Press. Its ISBN is 978-1432701963 for those who want to play along at http://bookfinder.com.

The Outskirts Press book’s distribution has 19 new sales channels (the left-column), of which 6 are Amazon. Interestingly, only the Outskirts Press book has new book distribution through Amazon’s own international sites (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de).  The right-column is for used markets, and there are 43.  Yes, yes,  Amazon plays a large role here, too. In fact, ironically again, Amazon’s presence for this Outskirts Press book is even greater than its presence for its own book, but with Outskirts Press, that presence does not jeopardize distribution through other book markets.   Perhaps even more impressive is that this isn’t even a comprehensive list, since I know for a fact my book is also on Barnes & Noble and BAMM.com, among others not found by Bookfinder. So if you still only count Amazon.com as one single source, that leaves a total of over 50 unique sales channels.

Books published by Amazon: 8 unique sales channels.

Books published by Outskirts Press: 50 unique sales channels.

You can do the math.

Speaking of math, numbers (royalties, etc.) are another good reason authors choose Outskirts Press over Amazon (and other) publishers. And I’ll discuss that next time.