I first saw a post by Hugh Howey discussing the potential cost versus befits of going exclusive with Amazon a few days ago. I was thinking of saying something about it, but it kind of takes on added significance with the news about Barnes & Noble removing the “Download” button from its e-book library.
Howey’s post is worth reading, but lends itself to easy summarizing. Essentially, Amazon provides a number of added benefits and incentives to writers who publish exclusively via Amazon either temporarily or continually: free giveaway days, or inclusion in e-book subscription services such as the Kindle Owners Lending Library or Kindle Unlimited that pay a fee per checkout, for example. Amazon has allowed some top-selling authors, including Howey, to try the service out temporarily without going exclusive to see how the numbers stack up.
After a couple of months, Howey reports that the readership gains he’s seen from Kindle Unlimited “more than covered the readership I gain from the iBookstore, Nook, and Kobo combined.” He might be earning slightly less money, he writes, but gets considerably more fans out of it.
He spends the rest of the post ruminating on whether it’s better to have more readers at the cost of being exclusive to just one platform. He’s leaning strongly toward yes for himself. He justifies it in part by comparing it to publishing exclusively with one major publishing house. (I’m not so sure that’s the best comparison, given how many big-name authors I know of who write for several publishing houses at once.)
It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Amazon is already such an 800 lb gorilla of the e-book industry that naturally any incentives it can offer will be magnified by the network effect inherent in the huge number of people that use the system. Even a 5% bump in Amazon readers could provide more eyeballs than a 50% bump in readers from a smaller service. And if Howey might be giving up some money in the short term by going exclusive, he’s considerably growing the pool of readers who might be inclined to buy more of his books in the future.
It might surprise some folks, but for all that I boisterously take Amazon’s side in the disputes against Apple and the publishers, I’m not sure that I’m entirely comfortable myself with how dominant Amazon is in the marketplace. They’re playing very nice with consumers and independent authors right now, but there’s no guarantee that will always be the case. (It’s not even clear that Amazon necessarily will be able to continue offering consumers and authors such good deals into the future; investment analysts can’t seem to agree on whether Amazon is hiding the fact that it’s screwed or an unstoppable juggernaut.) And even if other competitors can spring up should Amazon fall down, that still leaves a period of turmoil that could harm consumers, authors, and everyone else.
I’d love to see some decent competitors to Amazon spring up, but at the moment, nobody really seems to be even trying to compete. Apple locks its books into one specific platform—and what’s more, it even requires writers to use that platform only if they want to upload their books directly rather than via an intermediary!
(Seriously, only writers who own a Mac can publish through Apple? These are the people who honestly expected their new e-book platform to rule the world if Amazon could no longer compete with them on price? And iOS isn’t even the top mobile platform anymore, which means they’re excluding the majority of potential readers from buying their e-books!)
Sony’s thrown in the towel. Barnes & Noble’s just taken a major step backward in consumer-friendliness. Kobo…well, the most I can say about Kobo is that I haven’t heard about them doing anything overtly stupid lately, but I haven’t heard about them doing anything especially smart lately either.
Amazon lets you download its e-books directly. It lets authors choose whether they want DRM on their books, unlike some other stores that require it, so many books purchased from Amazon can be converted into other formats and read on other readers without having to crack DRM. And it makes it easy for even the technologically-challenged to buy those books from whatever platform they’re using. You can hate Amazon for its success, or for the way it plays hardball in its negotiations, but you can’t deny that it effectively created the modern e-book market practically from scratch just by being so big and so willing to sell cheaply. And it offers the best deal to authors and readers alike, even if its concentration of power is rightfully a cause for concern.
So, if Amazon is capable of getting Howey significantly more readers—something practically every author wants—why shouldn’t he go exclusively with them? What concrete benefit is there to him from foregoing the benefits Amazon wants to offer in return for putting his books into other stores with anemic readerships and lack of customer focus?
The only answer I can come up with is to try to keep limits on Amazon’s power by supporting its competition. But is that really Howey’s job? Why should he be obligated to support a bunch of lackluster companies who don’t even seem to be interested in trying to compete themselves—and at least in Barnes & Noble’s case seem determined to alienate what few long-term customers they have?
But the readership he is gaining are readers who could have read his books before but didn’t bother to invest in him in the first place. In exchange for gaining these new readers, he is alienating readers from other e-ink platforms – readers who did take a risk on him and pay upfront for his books. If I were one of those readers, I would feel like he was telling me he doesn’t value me as a reader/fan just because of my preferred device and that would put me off from reading him in the future.
Exclusivity may make business sense and might be more profitable, but it limits your potential audience. That might be okay for the author if he is making more money, but the reader/consumer suffers. If the content is DRM-free and available in multiple formats to be compatible with all devices (for those who do not know how to convert), it would be a different story.
As a publisher, I don’t believe in exclusivity. In fact, I did more business on B&N, Apple and Sony EACH last year than I did Amazon.
Things changed this year, and these same retailers either gave up or have made decisions to make things even more difficult for their customers. I’ve lost track of how many readers have contacted me, angry about whatever stupid thing these retailers have done. You think they would try to offer something unique for customers. Instead, their very behavior is driving those same customers to Amazon.
Another ebook retailer with a lot of potential who’s not even trying is Google.
If I recall correctly, Amazon lets you download your ebook files only if you own a physical Kindle device.2GD
Paolo: Re Google, indeed. I didn’t even think of them when I was going through the alternatives, which ought to say something about how actively they’ve been trying to sell e-books.
And as for Amazon, no, you can still download e-books directly from them, though the link is a little more obscure than B&N’s departed button. You go to your library listing, click on the button with the ellipsis (…) on it, then choose “Download and transfer over USB.”
Susan: I know what you mean. If I were in the book trade directly, the whole thing would be driving me nuts. The very thing that makes Amazon so powerful is that nobody’s even trying to compete for customers’ hearts and minds the way Bezos is—and instead of actually trying, those erstwhile competitors are just throwing in the towel. Granted, competing with an entrenched interest like Amazon is really really hard, but then that’s why businesses exist, to do things that no individual could do on his own. You can’t win the race if you don’t enter it.
I was seriously thinking about going all in with Amazon right after Unlimited launched, but then I got an amazing review from a well-respected Goodreads reviewer, and she found me on Smashwords. I can trace a good number of sales to that particular review, and that made me hesitate about going all in.
Instead, I’m leaving my current books where they are and am writing a book intended to be an Amazon-exclusive. I’ll see what happens.
One change I am making, though, is pulling out of direct publishing to B&N. I’m going to start distributing to them through Smashwords. My B&N sales have dropped so much it doesn’t make sense to go direct.
Hugh Howey is NOT the fellow I want to take advice from.
Neither – (for example) – is Stephen King.
Howey has carved himself out a football field wide platform. Stephen King has got about four or five good-sized islands worth of visibility. What works – or doesn’t work – for dudes like Howey or King or any other big gun writer you can name is NOT necessarily going to work for a little bitty low profile dude like myself.
An awful lot of Howey’s readers know him well and look for his work no matter WHERE it is. He is a known commodity and has a strong readership-base.
A lot of independent writers – such as myself – are out there banging on every door just trying our darnedest to reach new readers.
Which is why I am currently experimenting. I’ve recently placed a few of my books in Amazon Select – while leaving the rest of them in the many other vendors I have previously books in. If publishing Amazon exclusive e-books turns out to work for me then I just might jump in whole hog.
But writers like myself – with our skimpy little mini-subs worth of visibility cannot follow the strategies of fellows like Howie with their great mucking aircraft carrier’s worth of visibility.
I do not care for the notion of being an indie writer in a universe where Amazon is the ONLY e-market in sight – but for now I have got to play both sides.
I’ll stop now before I further mix and mangle any more poor battered metaphors.
How about looking at simple logic .
Amazon has 65% of ebook market share. 3,500 out of every 10,00 ebook sales are happening elsewhere. Fact.
The ONLY way you can reach more readers by being available in fewer places is if you are getting very special treatment by the retailer concerned to boost your visibility – at the expense of other authors who aren’t among the chosen few.
It was obvious from day one Howey was going to do fantastically well, because Amazon selected him for that purpose. There would have been no point giving Howey the special treatment unless he was going to fly.
But how many lower-profile indies get that sort of red carpet treatment? Very few.
Amazon is now throwing money at KU top authors to keep them on board, and obviously Howey and co are the ones who are going to be getting these fantastic payouts.
And of course they will tehn shout about how well they’ve done, and lesser indies will fall for the scam and rush to go exclusive in the hopeless belief they can somehow do as well.
If you want to look at why other retailers do less well for indies take a look at the pernicious MFN clause whereby Amazon threatens to de-list indie authors if they run a promotion on a rival store that is cheaper than the Amazon list price.
I AM a reader and given the availability of the Amazon ereading apps, I don’t think that consumers on other formats will feel anything other than a mild (if that) irritation at books which are available only on the Kindle.. Most readers that I know who are exclusively Apple have long tired of iBookstore books being unavailable to multiple platforms and gone Kindle.
Unfortunately, my longtime ereader friends who were around when the iBookstore was opened started out as Kindle readers because of pricing. It’s just easier to maintain a single library.
I don’t like or dislike Amazon… I just prefer not to buy my eBooks from them. Out of the 3,500+ eBooks I have purchased over the years, less than 50 have been bought from Amazon. Whilst I would prefer to be able to order from just one retailer, it is impossible. Geographical restrictions are also a factor for me. A higher priority to me is to be able to use just one app when reading on my tablet, so maintaining my Calibre library and purchasing in ePub rather than Kindle/mobi is the choice I make.
If an author I read self-publishes through Amazon, and still releases their eBooks through Kobo; Smashwords; or ARe at a later date then I will wait for the release to be available at one of the other retailers. If the author is exclusive to Amazon, then I simply don’t buy that particular eBook, or stop reading that author if all of their eBooks are available only at Amazon.
@Shelley – Since Amazon books can be transferred to Calibre (I do the same), I don’t understand your point. And since all my books from Amazon (about 2K) are available to me in two formats via Calibre, your statement that don’t like or dislike Amazon seems a bit disingenuous. If you don’t like or dislike, why avoid them altogether?
“I’d love to see some decent competitors to Amazon spring up, but at the moment, nobody really seems to be even trying to compete.” –
I think the comments point out a lot of what’s wrong in this article’s points.
I’ll add that Apple just expanded it’s iBooks app into all its phones, and has bought BookLamp, which guides readers to other work they may like, regardless if it’s exclusive or a best seller.
Also the article completely leaves out Scribd.
“Amazon has allowed some top-selling authors, including Howey, to try the service out temporarily without going exclusive to see how the numbers stack up.” –
But, they are not in Scribd. Not a valid comparison in my view.
As with all things e-book, one size does not fit all.
Amazon with the Kindles and the Kindle Reader application for other devices simply makes it easier to use and a better experience for me the reader. I can read on any of my devices, Kindles and smart phone and computers and I can take up where I left off on my other device. Not available on other ecosystems.
Amazon has almost all the books I want to read and I can get the others in a form that can be read directly on the Kindle or converted so I can from Project Gutenberg or Google or elsewhere.
Amazon makes it so very easy to purchase and use. Why would I want to put up with the trials and tribulations to use anything else?
Yes, it is possible that Amazon may become less friendly to users and authors in the future. Compared to how ‘friendly’ the major publishing houses are to authors and readers? How abut Apple’s iBooks? Are they author friendly?
Yes, using Amazon is riding the tiger. But what else is out there that even compares?
Ross, re “I can read on any of my devices, Kindles and smart phone and computers and I can take up where I left off on my other device. Not available on other ecosystems.” –
I believe Scribd and Oyster are available to use on any devices (though Oyster may be working on android, not sure), Kindle Fires, smart phones and computers.
I read on both my Scribd and Kindle apps everyday. On all the devices above.
It’s a comparison worth noting.
Read preference of course is personal.
But I read almost all my work, except for a few things, in a subscription programs.
I think KU and Scribd are both top notch.
Vonda, not sure about that. Apple refuses to make its own e-books available to other platforms.
Amazon, on the other hand, makes its Kindle books easily readable via free apps for Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows phone, PC and Mac desktops, so I don’t buy the part about not making a writer’s books available outside. If there are two or three good stores, I’ll go to all of them and buy at one what I can’t from the other…
@ Jesslyn H.. for me it is simply a matter of personal preference and convenience.
Your preference is to buy from Amazon, and it obviously works for you. It doesn’t suit me. The fact that eBooks bought through Amazon can also be loaded and converted in Calibre is irrelevant to me, l have found that not all of the eBooks I have purchased from Amazon were easily converted. To make less work for myself I just avoid buying from them. Geographical restrictions mean that some eBooks are unavailable to me, shopping at Amazon isn’t going to change that. Buying from Amazon isn’t going to enhance my buying experience in any way whatsoever so why should I change what works for me?
I was buying eBooks before the Kindle came along so I have always bought from more than one retailer. To have all of my eBooks on one app for reading is more important than the perceived convenience of buying from just one place. I use Shubook (iPhone) and FBReader (tablet) as I don’t like using the Kindle app to read on. I also prefer the way Shubook and FBReader sorts my library once I have edited the eBooks metadata in Calibre.
One thing that keeps me from going exclusive with Amazon is the fact that it prevents me from being able to sell my own books on my own website. I prefer to sell direct to my readers, even though it’s a smaller percent of my sales. But an exclusivity agreement with Amazon requires that you do not sell your books anywhere else, including your own blog or website. For example, at conventions I would have to direct all buyers to Amazon rather than giving them a discount card for a direct download with bonus content from my site, which includes a multi-format bundle for the same price. If it was an exclusive agreement as a third party retailer that still allowed you to sell your own books directly I would consider it. But I can’t justify having my hands tied when it comes to selling direct.
I’m a bit of a skeptic. I assume that if someone wants to pay me to do something, that something must not be able stand on its own. It has some long-term downside that’s not to my advantage that necessitates blind-siding me with money.
With Amazon exclusivity, that ‘not to my advantage’ isn’t hard to spot. It’s not just that I’m contributing to Amazon’s market dominance, it’s that I’m boxing myself it, limiting my future options. The best time to publish a book everywhere is when it’s published anywhere for the first time. With each 90 days that passes, it not only become harder psychologically to move into other markets, technical barriers may get in the way.
I know. For my first four or five years of publishing I used Framemaker for the Mac. Then Adobe quit supporting it, and I’m now years and much technology beyond the point where I could republish the book without a lot of work.
Fortunately, I have a PDF version which is still valid and fortunately I released those books through Lightning Source/Ingram, which gives me near universal distribution, including to Amazon. But that does me no good when it comes to ebooks.
Notice what publishing to Kindle exclusively means. It means a proprietary format for a single platform. And if Amazon continues its current pattern, it’ll add a proprietary regular book creation app to its proprietary comic and children’s ebook app. Creating exclusively, I’d not only be inside Amazon’s walled garden in terms of sales, I’d be within a technological garden with barriers that make it more like a prison.
And keep in mind that those barriers don’t need to be impossible to cross, they merely have to be so difficult that many authors and publishers will feel they’re not worth the trouble. Wearing Amazon’s chains will be easier to removing them.
There’s also another factor. The latest version of InDesign exports marvelously to print/PDF. InDesign has always done that. What it now does is export marvelous epubs, reflowable and fixed layout.
Why doesn’t it also export to Amazon’s Mobi and KF8? Why did Amazon refuse to work with Adobe to add Amazon to the Adobe’s export list. After all this is a not-very open proprietary format. Adobe needed their help.
The why is why I know with near certainty that Amazon doesn’t mean me well. It’s not just that Amazon failed to do something that’d let me create better ebooks at less expense and trouble. It’s that Amazon only real motive for that has to be to lock me into their walled garden that’s going to slowly morph into a prison. Adobe lets me export to print and both varieties of epub within a few minutes. Amazon doesn’t want to merely be one item on that list of easy options.
——
I can give an excellent illustration from another field. Several years ago David Pogue, the technology editor of the NY Times, and I had an interesting email exchange. I said that I knew, almost for certain the the NSA/CIA was reading most email. He was more skeptical. We all now know that I was right.
How did I know? No big deal. I have no sources inside the NSA/CIA, but I did know one very relevant fact. It’d be quite trivial to add an easy-to-use, standardized public key encryption to every major email app on the market, one that’d automatically exchange those public keys in the first email exchange.
Yet that highly useful, very easy to implement feature didn’t exist on any of the common email programs. Why? Imagine a company mentions that it’s considering such a move. Guys who are very intimidating show up, suggesting that wasn’t a good idea, that—well there are certain irregularities in the company’s business practices that the IRS, SEC or whoever might be inclined to investigate. End of project. Email stays unencrypted.
That’s why I knew email was being read.
In much the same fashion, Amazon’s behavior is a clear and unmistakable signal that it intends to so dominate the U.S. ebook market, that it can dictate terms and conditions. Heck, that’s not even surmise. That’s what is going on with Hachette.
I’d be a fool to think that an Amazon that’s trying to bully one of the largest publishers on the planet doesn’t intend, some day in the future, to put the squeeze on me, perhaps reducing my top royalty rate to 40-50% if I don’t give them an exclusive.. That’s why I’m not only keeping my options open, I’m exercising those options.
Those who don’t are as foolish as those who thought, not so very long ago, that no one had software scanning their email or logging who they talked with over the phone. The evidence was there. They simply ignored it.
My suggestion. Not only publish widely, with ebooks you should steer your readers toward Apple, B&N or whoever. A few months back I compared royalties. Every other ebook retailer pays more royalties than Amazon at every price level and in some cases (ebook sold by Apple outside the price range $2.99 to 9.99) they pay twice as much. One way to do that is to publish first everywhere else, let sales level off, then publish with Amazon, where you may get those sometimes meager 35% royalties.
It’s a no-brainer. Publish everywhere you can and steer as many of your sales away from Amazon as possible. You’ll be glad you did. Otherwise, you’re likely to find yourself inside a walled garden that slowly morphs into a prison where escaping, while possible, will seem to be too much trouble.
Juli, you’re right. Reaching the smaller ebook retailers is often not worth the bother. I go directly to Apple and Amazon, but reach the rest, including B&N, Kobo, and library distribution, through Smashwords.
The only downside it that Smashwords isn’t a good middleman. It wants to run Word manuscripts through its meatgrinder and feed retailers from there. They’ve added pass long epub distribution, but the last time I checked it’s epub 2.0 rather than 3.0. They need to spread out enough to be a distribution platform for epub 3.0, both reflowable and fixed format, created by authors. I use InDesign for laying out my books, so going back to Word rtf would be incredibly troublesome and time consuming.
Your finding that Nooks are no longer worth the bother of going direct illustrates how a harmful progression works. Each step back makes taking a stand harder.
Some people hate Nazi examples, but they fit well here. The Treaty of Versailles did what it could to protect the smaller countries of Eastern Europe created after WWI from future German aggression. Both Poland and the Czechs got buffer zones that were partly German-speaking to make them harder to invade. For the Czechs that included mountain defenses.
But both Britain and France had, to be honest rather than charitable, fools for Prime Ministers. Occupying the Rhine meant Germany’s industrial base was secure. Annexing Austria opened up SE Europe to German pressure. Giving up the Sudetenland at Munich meant the rest of Czechoslovakia was indefensible and soon fell. That then flanked Poland, making it harder to defend, a situation made far worse by a Nazi pact with Stalin that led the latter grab several small countries on his borders.
Business competition works similarly. Each step backward may seem to be the best that can be done under the circumstances. But each step back also means less and less freedom of movement. Soon, those in a market are facing a single competitor that’s got them boxed in.
One illustration of that was Amazon’s proxy-DOJ attack on the major publishers. They have every right to work together to fight market dominating Amazon. They’re merely doing what the DOJ ought to be doing and it will have no impact on their competition with one another. Ah, but not they face a nasty DOJ and judge if they do what mere prudence dictates. There freedom is severely curtailed.
Another factor in these sorts of things are little people who harbor grudges. The Irish are a good example. Britain would have been greatly helped in the Battle of the Atlantic, but the Irish refused to let them base warships there, despite the boost that would have given their poor economy. In the larger scheme of things, if the Germans had managed to conquer Britain and then began to put pressure on the Irish would you have felt sorry for them? I wouldn’t. Not at all. Reap what you sow and all that.
Some authors are like that. They’re so bitter at the big publishers, at Apple, or whoever that they lack the sense to see where the real battle is or how they’re being boxed in, one step at a time. By the time they wake up, it will be too late.
There’s another factor. In the mid-nineties, the smart move if you were in computers was to go with Microsoft. It owned computers to a greater extent than Amazon owns ebooks. And yet what happened. It bullied a bit too much, the feds came in, morale at the company fell and now, while Microsoft remains large, the smart money is on Apple.
Much the same could happen with ebooks and some other retailer, perhaps one that’s not even that well known today. Go exclusively with Amazon, and you may find yourself locked out of a growing market with your ebooks only as outdated, proprietary Amazon files held by a company that’s been locked in by a thousand federal anti-trust restrictions.
Not smart. Never put all your eggs in one basket or all your ebooks in one retailer. It doesn’t even make much sense. I spend months writing books. I spend about a day publishing them all over. Why abandon a viable market for what’ll only take me a couple of hours at most?
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