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Originally Posted by Top100EbooksRank
Amazon Publishing has two "million copies" selling authors: Oliver Pötzsch & Helen Bryan
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Given how many authors that Amazon itself actually publishes, those are impressive percentages. Not to mention those who don't hit the Million-dollar club, but manage to eat well.
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Since Barnes and Noble, indie bookstores etc..refuse to carry Amazon Publishing books, most of the sales are probably digital.
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That's more urban myth than reality. The reality is, most self-pubbed books wouldn't get picked up by indie bookstores even if they were trade-pubbed. So...{shrug}, it's a trade-off. Look at all of the blather from Wylie about AL Kennedy's book, and how BIP claims it only sold 800-ish copies
in bookstores. Yes, but
online? That's sheer confirmation bias. And we all
know that, trade- or indie-pubbed, online is now king in terms of booksales, print, digital, whatever.
OMG! The JACKAL is upset! Stop the presses, because the guy who has made nearly his entire literary career
poaching other agents' clients is upset because
Amazon is poaching HIS clientele?
Seriously? And has anyone else noticed that his clientele increasingly shows "estate of..." over (publishing new now) clients? Of
course he's upset. An agent gets bupkus from an author's deal with Amazon or from one self-pubbing with Amazon. Does he think that Barry Eisner is starving? (Granted, that's self-pubbing, but 0% of $0 is the same, whether it's self-pubbing or Amazon-pubbing).
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Amazon Publishing is rumored to pay authors 50% of net royalties compare to the Big Publisher 25% of net royalties.
50% net royalties on a book sold at $9.99 is $3.5 (50% of 70% of $9.99)
25% net royalties on a book sold at $9.99 is $1.75 (25% of 70% of $9.99)
Self-Publisher gets 100% of net or $7 (100% of 70% of $9.99)
The disadvantage of signing with Amazon: no sales at B&N and indie bookstores.
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{sigh}. I know of several pretty darned successful self-pubs who opted to be published by Amazon (Baker & Taylor, et al) rather than continuing in self-pubbing, for the SAME damn reasons that authors have chosen to be published, rather than publish themselves, for near-eternity;
they don't want to have to do all the work that publishers do, and don't want to have to upfront the costs that publishers front, (and risk). They don't want the onus of marketing, or finding/hiring/paying editors, etc., etc., etc. So, instead of taking their 70% from KDP, they are taking a smaller percentage (not a boatload smaller, mind you) from B&T, Encore, and the like. Everyone behaves as though the publisher's percentage is some unearned gift...trust me, it's not.
The vast majority of authors, given the option, wouldn't choose to self-pub. They wouldn't. They do it because they don't believe that they'll make it into an agent's arms, won't get picked by BPH's or midlist imprints; OR, (and this is a big "OR"),
they don't want to WAIT. They don't want to put in the time, to do pitches, to learn how to write inquiries; don't want to write magazine articles, don't want to do critique groups, don't want to take courses, and they damn sure don't want to read rejection letters...they just want to be "published authors." We see those folks
all over the KDP forums, as well as in books that we stumble upon at Amazon and SW and Scribd and Wattpad, et al. This is not to say (to forestall misunderstandings) that all self-pubs are crappy authors; that's not what I'm saying. But there's a huge ocean of people who can't even construct sentences that are publishing themselves, and this is hardly a secret.
Back to Wylie: The Amazon Enmity is sooooooooo much like the Microsoft Hate.
(Quick aside: I look at a company like Microsoft, that's supported XP--XP!--since nearly the millenium, and Office 2003 for 11 years, has a founder that used his
personal fortune to nearly single-handedly stamp out infant polio in India, [2.5 billion+ vaccinated children] which is roundly despised as "corporate evil." Then I look at Apple, with
millions of slavishly-devoted fans, that tosses
any remote pretense of support for a product within a few short years of selling it (not to mention iOS's, etc.), which has a founder that not only didn't donate any of his
own billions to charity, but
forbade and ceased all Apple corporate giving programs when he was reinstated, and the cognitive dissonance of all this selective "evil corporate hate" boggles me.)
More Back to Wylie: It's not rocket science to understand why an agent would loathe Amazon. They cut into his income, pure and simple. He gets a piece of his clients' action, and if their sales decrease because more competition exists, his income decreases. If authors that might have gone to him go to Amazon (like
little a) or even self-pub, he gets nothing. Of course he's going to sound contemptuous ("Nothing that Amazon publishes is worth reading"). When you think about it, what are his options?
Hitch