4 ms·

I have friends who self-publish to KDP, and it seems that around 103% of indie authors hate KDP. Obviously, Amazon has reach, vertical integration blah blah bla

I have friends who self-publish to KDP, and it seems that around 103% of indie authors hate KDP. Obviously, Amazon has reach, vertical integration blah blah blah, but still, feels like someone could build a KDP competitor relatively quickly and win out without even going full compassionate-platform (although obviously that would be better). Just, like, 20% less Kim Jong Bezos? Please?

sigmoid10 2y ago
>build a KDP competitor relatively quickly Build? Yes. Establish as such? Almost certainly not. At least not without someone big pushing it hard. So even if something like that ever comes to light, it will be the spawn of another corporate overlord who only seeks to screw over customers in the long term as soon as they get a hold on them.
mananaysiempre 2y ago
There are a few ebook stores, aren’t there? I’ve encountered some fiction on Smashwords, 'munificent sells Crafting Interpreters on Payhip, and I’m sure those are not the only options I’ve seen.
- rfarley04 2y ago
  Yea there are some genre specific storefronts for self publishing. They do ok, I think. No "unlimited" offering (see my comment above) and usually fairly small catalogs because of their choice to stick to one genre
vidarh 2y ago
There are many places that sell ebooks. Including Google, Apple, and Barnes and Noble. None of them have managed to make much of a dent in KDP.
- rfarley04 2y ago
  Do any of those have an "unlimited" monthly subscription? Honest question, I don't know. Not sure that's the magic ingredient but based on conversations with my friends it's a factor.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    No idea. Kindle Unlimited is however a large part in creating this problem. When you enroll your books, you need to agree to make that e-book exclusive to Amazon. Especially for less known authors (like me) it's tempting - it's satisfying to see the page reads stack up instead of waiting for the much rarer purchases. The money might not be that different, but when the amounts are small any kind of signal like that becomes a disproportionate reward. I finally took my novels off it because the money is a small enough factor to me that I'd rather avoid contributing - however little - to entrenching Amazons position. The biggest problem a KDP competitor would have to deal with is that a lot of advice to aspiring selfpub authors is to just focus on KDP and ignore everyone else, because even e.g. Google Play Books and Apple Books produce rounding errors of revenue for most writers. If you're going to compete in that space, I'd say if you manage to compete with e.g. Webnovel you might stand a better shot, because the non-Chinese owned competitors to Webnovel all appear to be DOA (but you might want to ask yourself why that is, and why Webnovel works, and consider that Webnovel is wildly writer-hostile, using exclusive contracts and encouraging brutal publication schedules)
    - packetlost 2y ago
      > the non-Chinese owned competitors to Webnovel all appear to be DOA (but you might want to ask yourself why that is, and why Webnovel works, and consider that Webnovel is wildly writer-hostile, using exclusive contracts and encouraging brutal publication schedules) I feel like the brutal publishing schedules are part of why they work, unfortunately. I'm not a regular consumer of Webnovel, so I'm curious what your take on what makes them successful is?
      - vidarh 2y ago
        I agree, and it makes it far harder to get it to work in places where you'd need to offer substantially more for that to be attractive. My son reads a lot there, and expect hundreds of chapters to bother starting a series, and gets annoyed if there isn't a new one every day. Meanwhile most authors of fiction write 3 novels or less in a lifetime... Though I guess at least in part because most get disillusioned once they don't get readers.

sigmoid10 2y ago

>build a KDP competitor relatively quickly Build? Yes. Establish as such? Almost certainly not. At least not without someone big pushing it hard. So even if something like that ever comes to light, it will be the spawn of another corporate overlord who only seeks to screw over customers in the long term as soon as they get a hold on them.

mananaysiempre 2y ago

There are a few ebook stores, aren’t there? I’ve encountered some fiction on Smashwords, 'munificent sells Crafting Interpreters on Payhip, and I’m sure those are not the only options I’ve seen.

rfarley04 2y ago
Yea there are some genre specific storefronts for self publishing. They do ok, I think. No "unlimited" offering (see my comment above) and usually fairly small catalogs because of their choice to stick to one genre

vidarh 2y ago

There are many places that sell ebooks. Including Google, Apple, and Barnes and Noble. None of them have managed to make much of a dent in KDP.

rfarley04 2y ago
Do any of those have an "unlimited" monthly subscription? Honest question, I don't know. Not sure that's the magic ingredient but based on conversations with my friends it's a factor.
- vidarh 2y ago
  No idea. Kindle Unlimited is however a large part in creating this problem. When you enroll your books, you need to agree to make that e-book exclusive to Amazon. Especially for less known authors (like me) it's tempting - it's satisfying to see the page reads stack up instead of waiting for the much rarer purchases. The money might not be that different, but when the amounts are small any kind of signal like that becomes a disproportionate reward. I finally took my novels off it because the money is a small enough factor to me that I'd rather avoid contributing - however little - to entrenching Amazons position. The biggest problem a KDP competitor would have to deal with is that a lot of advice to aspiring selfpub authors is to just focus on KDP and ignore everyone else, because even e.g. Google Play Books and Apple Books produce rounding errors of revenue for most writers. If you're going to compete in that space, I'd say if you manage to compete with e.g. Webnovel you might stand a better shot, because the non-Chinese owned competitors to Webnovel all appear to be DOA (but you might want to ask yourself why that is, and why Webnovel works, and consider that Webnovel is wildly writer-hostile, using exclusive contracts and encouraging brutal publication schedules)
  - packetlost 2y ago
    > the non-Chinese owned competitors to Webnovel all appear to be DOA (but you might want to ask yourself why that is, and why Webnovel works, and consider that Webnovel is wildly writer-hostile, using exclusive contracts and encouraging brutal publication schedules) I feel like the brutal publishing schedules are part of why they work, unfortunately. I'm not a regular consumer of Webnovel, so I'm curious what your take on what makes them successful is?
    - vidarh 2y ago
      I agree, and it makes it far harder to get it to work in places where you'd need to offer substantially more for that to be attractive. My son reads a lot there, and expect hundreds of chapters to bother starting a series, and gets annoyed if there isn't a new one every day. Meanwhile most authors of fiction write 3 novels or less in a lifetime... Though I guess at least in part because most get disillusioned once they don't get readers.