Quote:
Originally Posted by latepaul
|
In general, it's always been a two-tier (or more) system. Those who sell well can negotiate an advantage. The trad authors have agents and publishers to negotiate for them, and there aren't too many publishers who are going to back off getting their typical payment (some 40 to 60 percent of list) just to be in a subscription program on Amazon. They certainly aren't going to go exclusive. Of course, the supposed bonus for the author is that the publisher does some advertising for the author. The supposed bonus for an indie participating is that Amazon does some advertising for the author.
What happened with previous exclusivity deals with Amazon is that Amazon did less and less "ads" and "placement" for authors over time. When they first started the Prime lending, just getting in the program meant more visibility for the book. It was also speculated that your ranking bumped higher with a "borrow" than just a buy. That advertising lasted a while and it helped if you put your book free because Amazon did some additional visibility things for those.
Problem: Free doesn't really generate as many sales as everyone would like to believe. Yes, it works for SOME authors SOME of the time. Yes, for a while there it worked for quite a few authors...but that is not the case so much now. Worse, some readers expect free, so the barrier to finding new readers actually got worse instead of better for some authors.
Problem: Amazon stopped doing much of anything for authors in the exclusive deal. They didn't have to. Author participated anyway, did advertising FOR Amazon and books offsite and helped drive traffic.
Problem: Trad publishers SUPPOSEDLY offer advertising for authors. Well, they sort of do, but a lot of authors get left by the wayside. Some get no ads or help at all.
The bottom line is that authors have to do a lot of marketing themselves--regardless of how they are published. From where I sit, there's very little advantage to being exclusive to Amazon. I've worked hard to gain fans across the spectrum of e-readers. That means reviews, ads, forums, and so on. Going exclusive is a tool and doing it for 90 days can bring some benefits, but you have to really weigh those benefits and hope for good odds.
Right now, with KU being a new program, Amazon is likely to help out with placement to get things going. For an author with more than one book, putting one book in there to see how it goes might make sense. Putting everything in one basket, probably doesn't make a lot of sense.
Any author has to hope to get to a level where she can negotiate a better deal for herself. The Amz programs are tools that may or may not help. But no one is going to offer anyone a free ride so the best thing you can do is position yourself as high on the totem pole as possible.
No one said it would be easy.