On Forbes, Michael Wolf has an article looking at four ways to avoid the “Amazon tax,” the 30% agent fee (or 65% if your book’s price falls outside a certain range) that Amazon takes for selling a self-published book. Wolf notes that some authors are famous enough on their own that they drive many sales themselves, without Amazon’s help, which means that 30% fee is a “heavy tax” on the sales they do make.

So what can they do? Well, in today’s democratized publishing world, there are an increasing number of payment and delivery platforms that allow an author to sell their own books while side-stepping the Kindle tax, while also allowing them to truly own the customer (remember: Amazon always owns the customer, especially since authors never know who is buying their books).

Some authors have even more reason to be annoyed than that; last year we covered the author of an 18-megabyte travel book who found that Amazon’s Whispernet delivery fees were taking a big chunk of his revenue from each Amazon sale.

The four ways Wolf discusses are digital delivery systems such as Gumroad that allow people to sell digital goods through their own websites for just credit card fees (that travelogue author ended up using this), e-commerce platforms such as Shopify or BigCommerce, WordPress blog plugins such as WooCommerce, and build-your-own-website service Squarespace.

He concludes that not every author should forego Amazon, but some of those who are famous enough to have an easily-reachable “legion of true fans” might prefer to keep that 30% or (65%) Amazon bite.

Wolf’s article is correct as far as it goes, but I think he doesn’t give Amazon enough credit when it comes to frictionless purchasing power. Just being on Amazon could account for a considerable number of sales to non-fans. (To be fair, he does mention this, in his second-to-last paragraph, but doesn’t really emphasize it.)

For example, Baen books, which had run its own e-book store very successfully for over a decade, was willing to overturn its established order and risk alienating a number of its fans for the sake of getting its e-books into Amazon—because apparently buying their e-books somewhere else and sideloading them was too hard for the vast majority of Kindle owners and they preferred to get them through their magic book slate. And even Diane Duane, who runs her own e-book store and is not exactly an unknown name in fantasy and science fiction, also has her independently-published books such as A Wind from the South available via Kindle. For many or most Kindle owners, if you can’t push a button on your Kindle and buy it just like that, it doesn’t exist.

Unless their book is one of those special edge cases where selling through Amazon costs more than it helps, most writers would still do best to let Amazon take the 30% bite and celebrate that it’s not more. Even the tiniest bit of friction might be enough to overcome the benefits of selling elsewhere.

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  1. “For many or most Kindle owners, if you can’t push a button on your Kindle and buy it just like that, it doesn’t exist.”

    For me, a more important consideration is “if I buy a book from any place other than Amazon, will I remember it exists, where I bought it from, and how to download it (account/logon info) when I want it.” I haven’t really had a problem discovering books from other sources. However, when it comes to finding a book I already own – if it is not in my Amazon archives it is easy to forget it exists. If I remember I bought it, but can’t remember who I purchased it from, that is a problem. Over time, keeping track of books purchased from other sources becomes cumbersome and is an issue if you don’t read the books you purchase right away. You really need to use a tool like Calibre to keep your library organized and most people don’t want to have to deal with that.

    Thus, even if a reader can discover your book elsewhere, is it worth it to him or her to purchase it from somewhere other than Amazon and risk not remembering they have it or forgetting how to obtain it again?

  2. As an author, I’d never not be on Amazon. Or B&N. I do very little marketing of my books, but people find them and buy them. As authors, we need to be where our customers are. Which, mostly, is Amazon.

  3. Chris – thanks for the article on my piece. One thing I would say in retrospect that I didn’t make very clear was I don’t think Amazon and these alternatives are mutually exclusive. I think an author should be on as many platforms as possible, and if they have a “1000 true fans” who will do whatever they say, they should point them to their own site and then bring in more casual fans through Amazon and other online book marketplaces.

  4. I’m with Vonda Z.

    I used to buy from different retailers and maintained a worksheet to track everything.
    None of the other shops matched Amazon for ease and once the agency model went into effect, I had no incentive to look elsewhere. I can’t even imagine how badly Amazon would have to bungle something before I would consider going through the trouble of opening an account with another retailer.

    That said, I really wish Amazon would clean up their myk stuff. That needs some big time work. It’s really painful for anyone that has more 300-400 items in their library.

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