Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
And yet. If I were an author, I’d much rather someone bought a book to try it if they couldn’t be sure, especially if I were confident of my product. And even if I weren’t (taste is individual), what would I have to lose? The worst case scenario is that someone ended up not liking the book and bothered to return it, and I’ve lost nothing at all compared to the potential sale lost because someone couldn’t tell in advance. (And some of those sales will convert, too, because people forget or can’t be bothered even if they ended up not liking it. There’s also that ground between egregiously bad where the motivation to return is high, and garden-variety bad where you move on.)
The part about how more sales are made with a generous return policy is inconvenient to your high moral stance, so you continue to ignore it.
First commandment in the Church of Zod. How many converts have you picked up? Here’s another aphorism: “you do you”.
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I think I'm a pretty typical, high-volume reader on Kindle, particularly (also Kobo, but mostly Amazon). I try a lot of books/authors that I would not otherwise, because I can try and return if it's dreadfully bad.
I think that the Church of Zod thinks that when I talk about returning books, it's a whim or it is just because I didn't love it. That's not why I return them. They have to be pretty awful, or really go downhill after the first chapter or Act, for me to say
"enough of this crap." (I've even
not returned books from authors that I do know, that screw me and other readers over with sudden cliffhanger endings, which is a real pet peeve of mine.)
And I know that I'm not the only one that tries new (largely Indy/self-pubbed) authors. I'm grateful to Amazon for it--as a
reader. (As a small business owner that is utterly dependent upon self-publishing for her livelihood, that's a whole other thang.)
Frankly, most of my customers (authors, for those of you that don't know me) think that the whole return policy is
generally good for them. Sure, they worry that these TikTokkers will wreak havoc, but they know that they've found some devoted readers through the "try, buy and if you hate it, return" policy.
IF Amazon changed it to 7 days, or whatever, I'd have to significantly change my downloading habits. I frequently buy or dl books and don't get to them for weeks, sometimes longer. And who
knows if I'd remember my impulse to try that author, a month later? My new tries tend to be impulse buys--I see a recommendation, run across some reviews, yadda and I buy one to try. If I couldn't return it if it were truly awful...well. I don't think I'd be as anxious to try them.
That's pretty much it. I don't think that there's anything particularly deep or meaningful around it. And it's a huge part of how new Indy authors find and keep those new readers, too. Would it really be better for them to join KU and give away their books, for zip, to hundreds or thousands, tryin g to find new readers, than to risk that someone like me--gasp!--might,
might return a book? I mean...
sheesh. That seems a pretty simple choice.
Hitch