I just got my first sales payment of 2016, and it wasn’t from Amazon. I have a few offerings available on a niche website for teachers, which just sent me $1.74 for my January sales.
Many authors naturally focus on Amazon because it’s a much bigger market. But the niche sites do have their conveniences. Confession time: Amazon has yet to send me money. I am a bit of an Amazon fangirl sometimes, so it pains me to admit this. But it has been a challenge to interface my Canadian bank with Amazon’s direct deposit system. So they will be paying me by cheque, and that means I have to accumulate $100 in sales before I get a payout. And they don’t aggregate together, either—my one sale at Amazon Japan might never get paid out to me since I have to get $100 worth before they send me out a cheque!
Teachers Pay Teachers, in contrast, pays me like clockwork every month via PayPal. It may only be a dollar or two right now. But it’s an actual payout. And as I accumulate more stuff, that will likely increase just as my Amazon sales are. So where does this leave me as a self-publishing author? Should I be putting more of my stuff on TPT?
I am still struggling a little to work out a production schedule which is achievable for me given my diverse interests. I suspect the end result will be a little for them on the teaching stuff, a little more for Amazon on the salable non-fiction (I have a nascent blog for my art-themed titles), and an outlier or two in different categories as my needs and interests produce them.
I am mindful that Amazon is currently the biggest market in the world. But I am aware, as well, that so far, Teachers Pay Teachers is the only market that has actually cut me some money.
Image credit: Here.