Is Amazon about to drop self-published writers? Is there any reason why it shouldn't if self-pubbed titles clog its Kindle Store, making it look like a hastily published slush pile? After all, the ebook market is reportedly
only worth 7% of total Amazon sales and it's not showing much signs of growing.
Yes, that's not a typo. Ebooks sales are worth only seven percent of total sales to Amazon. Think of Amazon as a virtual WalMart - in fact, I suspect that is the real goal of Amazon, to become the biggest digital department store in the world. The publishing industry is only a side-show for Amazon.
Yes, that's not a typo. Ebooks sales are worth only seven percent of total sales to Amazon. Think of Amazon as a virtual WalMart - in fact, I suspect that is the real goal of Amazon, to become the biggest digital department store in the world. The publishing industry is only a side-show for Amazon.
So, if much is wrong with Amazon's ebook market model, it is not likely that Amazon will care. And perhaps that explains the uneven performance of Amazon in foreign markets where it's not the only player in town, by a long shot. For example, it is striking to see how Kobo is ubiquitous in Italy, it has its devices on display in most major bookstores but you don't see Amazon's Kindle anywhere. According to Ebook Bargains UK, Kobo has made many mistakes in expanding abroad (see first article listed below). Maybe so, but it is still doing pretty well...
Let's list the challenges facing Amazon:
1. the payment system - Amazon's model for expanding abroad has proved to be antiquated; Amazon has followed the old system of expanding abroad with geographically based "offices/virtual store fronts" rather than going global digitally; this means, for example, that New Zealanders are forced to shop in its Amazon Australia beachhead. Why not have a global easy-to-pay system like Google Play (for example, they very successfully use carrier billing in the Far East)?
2. ebook subscription services and digital libraries: Amazon has ignored this new business model, presumably relying on its own Premium system - but how long will they stay out of that particular game? And if they do go in, how will the Big Five react? It's very likely that they won't like it and could withdraw their books from Amazon's shelves. A conundrum for Amazon.
I'll be honest with you, those subscription services really worry me. I'm speaking of Scribd, and Oyster, the two major subscription services and Overdrive, a digital library. The latter has managed to get one hundred million ebook downloads in 12 years, up to 2012! See here. A huge number.
That (to me) is terrifying, the start of a new trend that could change the shape of the book market forever.
The problem with an ebook is that it is not an object you hold in your hands. It's nothing, it's like a bubble of soap. You can't feel a liking for it the way you might view an old book as an old friend, sitting there on your library shelf in your home. You don't own it, it's essentially a digital service, a permanent access to a text available up there in the cloud, somewhere on the Net.
So why own an ebook at all? Why not pay less and get access to the text for the time you need to read it?
Many authors I know are complaining about a slump in sales. This is anecdotal, I can't prove it. My impression is that the slump which first hit the sales of new, emerging writers in early 2013 has now affected midlist authors (i.e. traditionally published authors that have recovered their rights to their backlist and systematically self-publish those out-of-print titles on Amazon). These are the very writers who were most successful in the Kindle Store, hitting (at least for a short time) the top 100 rank with every new title they uploaded. They could count on their fans to buy their new titles. Well, it seems they no longer do; 2013 was a stagnant year for many.
Where have all the fans gone? Who knows. But the expansion of subscription services and digital libraries surely acts as a syphon on the market. You as an author may get better known to many more readers thanks to such services, but you are also likely to make a lot less money in future. To what extent this will happen cannot be foretold.
Let's look at possible solutions.
One thing that could be done is to fix the Kindle Store. And re-organize good gate-keeping systems to help in book discovery and let "the cream rise to the top".
For the time being, the way things are in the Kindle Store, the cream cannot rise to the top. And the reason is very simple and can be told in one word: rankings!
To understand why this is so, let's look first at what's happened in the environment. Since 2012, the ebook market has changed dramatically. First, the
settling of the DOJ case against Apple and the way that has played out seems to have calmed the
nerves of the (now) Big Five. They have become more aggressive with their
pricing, slowly but surely edging out indies. Price was the self-published writer's biggest
weapon, it no longer is. We all know that "free"
doesn't work anymore and I fear that "cheap" doesn't work either. Books under $9 scream out to the readers "beware, this is a self-published work likely to be full of typos and badly structured".
In other words, the Amazon environment has become toxic. Even Kobo, the latest one on the Big Boys scene, also exhibits rankings. BIG mistake. Rankings should be reserved for the top 100 selling titles, maybe the top 1000 but no more! Then, and only then, if your book is good, you might have a fighting chance to rise with good reviews...
If you still have doubts, take a look at the ranking of books that you know for a fact are good. I'll do it here with just one book as an example, but do take time to navigate the Kindle Store and you will see. The example I want to use here is Amelie Nothomb's "Fear and Trembling" (see here). Now this is easily a masterpiece of French literature, one of the best books published in the last 15 years. She's a huge success with young adults, hardly your dowdy old writer. And it is probably the best book she ever wrote, lively, fun, suspenseful, not at all a high-brow literary bore. Yet, in the Kindle Store she is sitting at a ranking around the 300,000th range and has only 46 reviews!! This says a lot about the Amazon environment...
Perhaps what Amazon should do is set up a two-tier system, with customer reviews and expert critiques.
Most customer reviews are not professional in the sense that they are not comprehensive reviews touching on all aspects of a book (i.e. character development, plot structure, POVs and writing techniques etc).
They are merely opinions written by readers.
Don't misunderstand me. That is how it should be: a customer has a right to voice his/her likes and dislikes and we authors are very happy when they do, we love to be in touch with our readers! That's one of the best things about the digital revolution: it has given us, writers, the possibility to be close to our readers and that's wonderful. But a customer review is not the same as a professional critique, fully structured and substantiated by evidence and references to literary criteria.
This suggests that there is space for two different types of reviews, the customer reviews and the literary critiques. And perhaps an online website linked to Amazon should collect all those critiques and list them for each title...It could be a start towards a system to guide readers to the better reads and finally allow the "cream to rise to the top".
Any other ideas?
Photo credit: wikipedia
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