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>, but I enjoy writing books. The best way to sell books, is to build a mailing list of fans so that you can reach them when you have another book ready. It is

by jasode 5y ago

>, but I enjoy writing books. The best way to sell books, is to build a mailing list of fans so that you can reach them when you have another book ready. It is not about reaching people who do not want to receive your comms. It is about having a direct and reliable connection to people who actually want to engage with you. I have a friend who is a voracious reader of Kindle ebooks. She uses Amazon's tools to "follow" certain authors and get notified by any new releases. Yes, she has visited some authors' websites directly and even though they have the aggressive popup for "sign up for my mailing list", she deliberately avoids submitting her email and having a direct relationship with the author. She'd be one of the buyers that's "really Amazon's customer" instead of soapdog's customer. But being shielded from you via Amazon is what she wants. Have you considered that millions of customers think like her?

soapdog 5y ago
Let me go on a brief tangent about Amazon. First, they are very hostile to the author. They force the price down on the eBook by leveraging their royalty range. Basically ~75% if the book costs up to ~9.99, if the book is more expensive than that, you get 35%. This means that the author loses money if they price a book higher than 9 bucks but less than 20 bucks (these numbers are not exact, treat them as an impressionist painting, not a botanical drawing). An author on Amazon has the option of being exclusive to them, which unlocks some perks. Amazon algorithm will push exclusives more often then it pushes non-exclusives. The reason I mentioning this is because Amazon makes it harder for the author by disguising all its non-competitive practices as them thinking about the reader. It is not, all these are vendor lock-in schemes. There are many other stores for eBooks. Selling on them prevents you from being exclusive to Amazon, which in turns makes it push your book less often than it pushes those in the exclusive program. Trying to price your book higher makes you lose money. Your friend has every right not to be forced into contact with an author. That is how it should be. The reason why most authors are trying to get your friend on a mailing list is so that they can have a platform that is not 100% controlled by Amazon algos. It is a hard business being an author, and it is much harder if you have no control whatsoever over your own platform. I think that they key aspect I want to highlight here is that I don't think your friend or anyone should be put into a mailing list against their will. I hate upsells too. What I'm saying is that all those platforms make it extra hard for you to make sure you can contact the customers who actually want to be in contact with you.

by jasode 5y ago

soapdog 5y ago

Let me go on a brief tangent about Amazon. First, they are very hostile to the author. They force the price down on the eBook by leveraging their royalty range. Basically ~75% if the book costs up to ~9.99, if the book is more expensive than that, you get 35%. This means that the author loses money if they price a book higher than 9 bucks but less than 20 bucks (these numbers are not exact, treat them as an impressionist painting, not a botanical drawing). An author on Amazon has the option of being exclusive to them, which unlocks some perks. Amazon algorithm will push exclusives more often then it pushes non-exclusives. The reason I mentioning this is because Amazon makes it harder for the author by disguising all its non-competitive practices as them thinking about the reader. It is not, all these are vendor lock-in schemes. There are many other stores for eBooks. Selling on them prevents you from being exclusive to Amazon, which in turns makes it push your book less often than it pushes those in the exclusive program. Trying to price your book higher makes you lose money. Your friend has every right not to be forced into contact with an author. That is how it should be. The reason why most authors are trying to get your friend on a mailing list is so that they can have a platform that is not 100% controlled by Amazon algos. It is a hard business being an author, and it is much harder if you have no control whatsoever over your own platform. I think that they key aspect I want to highlight here is that I don't think your friend or anyone should be put into a mailing list against their will. I hate upsells too. What I'm saying is that all those platforms make it extra hard for you to make sure you can contact the customers who actually want to be in contact with you.