Over the course of the next year I will talk a lot about Amazon. Amazon is the king of indie publishing. Depending who you ask, Amazon is, like, 145% of the self published ebook market. OK, that’s not a real percentage, but if you tally up Nook (Barnes and Noble), iBooks, Google Play (I've read one on there) and the handful of other eBook platforms, they're the Dairy Queen and Tastee Freeze of the eBook market. (Although I’m not sure you can’t order an Oreo Blizzard from Amazon.) If you're going to do it yourself, you’re putting it on Amazon — or just have a yard sale and sell them at your house.
So, let’s get this out of the way. Amazon apparently works their people really hard, practices predatory pricing to establish dominance in whatever it is they choose to sell, and also has a special machine that crushes kittens (order by 9 p.m. and get it tomorrow with Prime!) But, oh my goodness, they just saved me a trip to Wal-Mart to buy that vacuum cleaner belt — and it was $1.87 and it showed up in two days! So, I’m sorry, if you’re going to do this, you’re getting in bed with Amazon. Now… you don’t have to be monogamous. There are those other platforms. But, if you do marry them, they merely double your royalty for exclusivity. Hard to turn that deal down. Truth is, for all of their alleged evil, they may be the greatest thing to ever happen for independent writers.
Case in point: With a lot of help, I did a big promotion to get my book in front of readers. For two days, I gave the Kindle version of my book away for free, then bumped the price to 99 cents for a few days, and then $2.99. This little strategy helps Amazon “see” your book and recommend it to readers. After all, they make money on this, too. In one day, I gave away over 18,000 downloads of my book, got a bunch of good reviews, then sold… oh, a few thousand downloads when it became a paid item again.
I have friends with traditional book deals who will never sell a thousand books, so giving away 18,000 free eBooks (at no cost to me) was a great way to get exposure for a writer no one had ever heard of. And I don’t have boxes of books piled up in my garage. In fact, I’ve never had more than 10 copies of my book on hand. Hell, I got fan mail! It was a blast. Then reality set in, and a year later I’m selling a few books a week. (Bing! Hey I sold one!) No big deal since the real push comes when this becomes a series (more on that later.) Ask your average traditionally published author if sales of their first book earned enough to exceed their advance and get them into royalty payments. Pretty rare.
The experience was also a little terrifying. It’s one thing when family and friends buy your book and lavish praise. “I can’t believe you wrote a book!” It’s another when total strangers — with the ability to crucify you with a review (and they will) — pick up your book. I’ve got a thick skin, but I won’t lie that it came as a relief to get an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars (read it and weep, Mr. Franzen.) People like my book.
As I get closer to the release of the second book in my series, manipulating err... working with Amazon becomes a major element of publishing a book, if I plan on actually earning money with it. Amazon sets the rules, then they change them. Then they change them again. And they don’t care what you think. They don’t care what the Big Five think. Hell, there used to be six and I’m pretty sure we’ll be saying "Big Four" soon. Jeff Bezos has five empty trophy spaces on his wall for their furry heads. My dear indie writers, in our world it’s the Big One. Get to know them.
The place to start is by reading David Gaughran's Let's Get Digital: How to Self Publish and Why You Should. I know, I've said don't procrastinate by reading more books on writing and publishing, but this is the textbook. Keep it as a reference. It takes a lot of work to write and publish, and just as much work to get noticed. With my second book fermenting in the editing process, I will listen to any successful writer who wants to play Cyrano de Bergerac to help me woo the beguiling Amazon Algorithm.
By day Jonathan Kile is a peddler of petroleum products, navigating a Glengarry Glen Ross landscape of cutthroat sales. By night he assumes the identity of novelist and child-wrangler. Jonathan’s first published novel The Grandfather Clock (available on Amazon.) He is writing his second and third novels, blogging at Well-Oiled Writer and cursing his editor. You can email him here.