Yesterday, Amazon’s Kindle Scout opened for business. Writer Beware has done an excellent job of dissecting the program and its contract, so I will send you over there for the details; here I will only address the one issue that all Amazon programs are intended to do: build up Amazon’s dominance through author exclusivity.
In the third edition of The Global Indie Author I take the position that authors who give Amazon exclusivity through programs such as KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited are potentially shooting themselves in the foot,
especially in light of expected shifts in the European market (I’ll be blogging about that more in the coming weeks); and Amazon-exclusive authors are already losing out on potential sales outside of North America and the UK where Amazon have not achieved the same dominance. While many authors may think this inconsequential since they primarily write for and sell to the English-language market, one must consider lost potential sales in countries like Australia and New Zealand, or in India where ebook sales are not dominated by Amazon but by Flipkart with their 80% market share. And if you are an author writing in a language other than English, Amazon and the Kindle format may not be your best option for maximizing sales and distribution.
More importantly, we need other retails players to achieve a balanced and robust industry. A failure of the likes of Kobo, Google Play, B&N, Apple, the host of European national retailers, and the retail players in emerging markets, would be a failure for all of us.
Yet many indie authors, having witnessed comparatively anemic sales on other platforms, willingly give Amazon exclusivity in exchange for the opportunity to enroll in Amazon’s promotional programs. However, the anemic sales on other platforms is a reflection of Amazon’s dominance in the United States, which is where most indie authors focus their marketing efforts, yet this approach ignores the biggest advantage digital publishing gives us: easy access to a worldwide market. The U.S. is the largest market for ebooks, but it is not the only market: my novel, Baby Jane, has sold more copies in Canada and Australia than in the United States. The Global Indie Author has been sold as far away as Pakistan because I did not limit myself to Amazon. And Baby Jane has sold 93% more copies on Kobo than on Amazon because I took advantage of promotional opportunities on Kobo that did not require me to give them exclusivity.
All Amazon indie programs are designed to benefit Amazon much more than they benefit authors (for one example, Kindle Countdown, see here).
Kindle Scout makes a lot of vague promises, and it will benefit only a few outliers while demanding exclusivity from thousands of indie authors. As Writer Beware points out:
On the other hand, Kindle Scout seems to occupy an uneasy middle ground between publishing and self-publishing, embracing characteristics of both while offering the benefits of neither. As with a traditional publisher, you must agree to an exclusive contract that takes control of certain of your rights–but you don’t get the editing, proofing, artwork, or any of the other financial investments that a traditional publisher would provide. As with self-publishing, your book is published exactly as you submit it, with no developmental input or support–but you don’t have control of pricing and you receive a smaller percentage of sales proceeds than you would with KDP.
For Amazon, Kindle Scout is super-low risk publishing with the potential for substantial yield–not just from books that prove popular but from the influx of new users to its website. For authors, it’s the usual dilemma: does what you may gain outweigh what you don’t get, and what you must give up?
I would answer no” Once again, the biggest advantage falls to Amazon.
I keep going back to Amazon’s KDP because that is the best way for an unknown like myself to get known. I’ve tried other platforms, but they don’t help with marketing like Amazon. Those free days in KDP (though maybe not as great now) get me out to hundreds of people. Sure, they aren’t paid downloads, but people are reading me. It gives me sales, and reviews most of the time. I wouldn’t mind to expand beyond Amazon, but they just offer so much.
In what ways do Amazon help with marketing? Sure, you can put your book up for free, or on sale, but you still have to drive the traffic there yourself through your own marketing efforts. The hot site right now is Bookbub, but Bookbub is VERY expensive. So you spend money to give your book away for free?
Kobo regularly put on indie ebook promotions in which Kobo do the marketing. The cost to the author is the value of the promo discount, which is deducted from revenues. So the more you sell, the higher the cost of the promotion, but if you sell well you likely won’t care, and it will still be cheaper than Bookbub. Authors on Kobo can also put their ebooks on sale simply by setting up a promo date, just as one does on Amazon, except that Kobo do not require authors to give Kobo exclusivity for the option to do so.
Many of the sites like Bookbub focus on Amazon because the site is an Amazon affliate; not only does the site make money off the author’s ad, but the site also makes money off any Amazon sales of the book, and any other purchases the consumer makes during the same visit, if they enter the Amazon site through the third-party link. If sites like Kobo want to achieve the same traction, they need to set up affiliate programs, which is the main incentive to the website developer.