Quote:
Originally Posted by garygibsonsf
Choice is fine, assuming people are making use of those other choices. But Fergus Bannon's Judgement (which I publish) hasn't had a sale or download on Smashwords in over a year, whereas there's been a tiny but more or less constant tick-over of sales on Amazon ever since it appeared there.
Kindle's the big giant tentacled monster in this box, and that's where people are going to get their ebooks in their droves. And I mean droves. I put Judgement up for free for a very short while, using KDP's new program, and in just a day or two it's had very nearly ten thousand downloads. I don't disagree about being able to have choice, but at the same time Amazon might be taking advantage of you, it might be an opportunity to take advantage of them back.
|
I make use of other choices whenever possible. When I buy Angry Robot Books, I use their store. When there's an author who I'm familiar with and I trust (both indies and non-indies) I'm happy with purchasing books from a not-Amazon/Smashwords/B&N site like Book View Cafe or their small publisher site or whatever, especially since they get a bigger cut of my dollar.
While a book may not have been selling well at one retailer, making it exclusive shuts out readers who want to read .epub, or doesn't want to deal with Amazon, or would prefer to have purchased it in a different way knowing that the author gets a bigger cut.
I'm not anti-Amazon. I love my Kindle, but I want to continue being able to use other options, and this huge company needs to know their fracking limits. My two cents. My other two cents is here
http://adarnasf.com/2011/12/09/ebook-hell-kdp-select/