Thread: Samhain Publishing is winding down and will close
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Old 02-10-2017, 01:44 PM   #139
Cinisajoy
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks View Post
I'd agree that Amazon is no longer courting indie writers. They offer advertising for us, but not the most lucrative ads.

Ad places are taking "for pay" books because indies have gotten tired of PAYING to advertise free books. They get lots of downloads but few reads. I've talked to a number of authors who used to advertise free books and their take is "It doesn't work anymore." And it's expensive. If you can buy the same ad for 100 dollars for a book that isn't free, it just makes more sense.

OTOH, I've had advertisers tell me they will NOT advertise my books unless they are free or 99 cents. Even those who used to do ads on 2.99 books, will no longer take those ads. They can't move the books so many of them won't do ads of 2.99 unless it's a boxed set.

There are, of course, places that will do an ad for just about anything you want if you pay their fees, but even that is slowing down because they lose their "customer" in the form of writers reporting no sales and then not coming back.

I will frequent an author site if they sell the books on their site. Otherwise, I rely on notifications from other sources (GR or Amazon.) I don't read a lot of author sites other than to check in occasionally on what is going on with favorite authors (Frank Tuttle, Briggs, Ilona Andrews...just a quick glance to see what is being worked on or talked about). I buy a number of books from Kobo these days and I would buy direct from authors, but it can be expensive to set up a cart system and most readers want to buy from a known, big store. It's always been that way. Even if I offer a discount on my blog, people will click on the Amazon link after looking at the options.
I thought maybe part of the $1.99 (most big published back list) and the $2.99 came partially from the new affiliate rules. Which did immensely help the authors not wanting to advertise free books. But even with that, it is still hard to find new books. I completely understand not putting your entire catalog on sale, but to me an ad every six or nine months would make more sense than the same book at the same price at the same site every three months without fail.
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