[Worldwalker]

There are several reasons people get irked at Amazon-only authors. For one thing, it smacks of arrogance. "I'll settle for what I can get Amazon's market share, I don't need your money" might be satisfactory from a marketing point of view, but from the person who's been told their money is no good, it's tends to produce annoyance. For another, if you really do want to read that book and it's only available in a format that won't work on your ebook reader, it's highly frustrating. Yes, I know Amazon will let you have a program to read the book on your computer, but the whole point of buying an ebook reader is so you can use an ebook reader, not so you can read books on your computer. I've seen authors actually, quite literally, say those things: "Amazon has the majority of the market, and that's all I need" and "I don't care about other formats; use one of the Kindle-for-whatever programs if you need to." These did not make me want to give that person money. Nobody on MobileRead is going to gratuitously insult an author; the whole reason we're here is we're bookworms. But when an author starts out by insulting us, the gloves may well come off. And insulting your customers is not good business anyway.

So, all you need to do, really, is distinguish yourself from those people. "I want to offer this in other formats and from other stores, but I haven't found a way to do it yet; check back for updates" would work nicely.

You might want to take another look at your book promotion, too. I didn't read it. Why? Two reasons: One, you didn't give me the name of the book, its formats, or anything else useful, in the title; you quoted a review. You decided that marketing, rather than information, would sell me the book. The only time I'll read a promotion post whose title doesn't even tell me what the book is, just quotes reviews at me, is if I'm reading through every single new book announcement looking for something to read, in which case the title could just as well be blank and it would work exactly the same. Two, you used a post icon. I can hear you already. "Wait, what? Why does that matter? I just wanted my book to stand out." Exactly. You wanted your book to stand out. This makes it look like you think you're more important than other authors. To you, you are; to me, you're one of hundreds, and you're not more important than any of the rest. And I'm the one reading the post.

Other people, of course, don't think the same way. No doubt there are plenty of people who are more interested in a book's marketing than its identity, and are eager to buy books by authors who consider themselves special, and better than the run-of-the-mill MobileRead author. I'm not one of them, though, and I didn't know your book was for the Kindle only because I never even got that far; your "read my review, and remember I'm special" ad didn't work for me. It's up to you to decide whether you're satisfied with only part of the market, and if so, which buyers you want to reject. But it's something you should think carefully about.

Edit: Since I'm responding to this post, I went and took a look at the book promo, even though I normally wouldn't. It does look very interesting, and I would probably have bought it if you had it for my ereader. The "crocodiles" on the wall struck me; if they are indeed what I suspect, I have a caged "crocodile" who screams his mating cry at unholy volume at random hours of night, and I've a weakness for lizards. So it's even more to be regretted that you don't offer your book in a format (epub) I can use. Though if you're selling on Amazon, you probably think DRM is a good thing, and I don't buy DRM-locked ebooks.