Besides the chance at author discoverability through also-boughts, what is the value of all those to-be-read books you and I will probably never get to? (I say this with love and without judgment, as an author and fellow hoarder of books and ebooks.)
To shine a light in the dark, I spoke recently with an author who has her books for sale everywhere but Amazon.
(It matters little why she wasn’t on Amazon, except to say it was a misunderstanding of the platform’s requirements, not a principled, moral stance.)
“But we have to be on Amazon,” I told her. “Exclusive or not is your choice, but if you want to reach more readers, you must be on Amazon.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where so many readers are. Amazon is out front and will remain so for the foreseeable future.”
“Why?”
“Because their customers are locked in.”
“What do you mean ‘locked in’? Everyone could switch to Kobo tomorrow.”
“But they won’t. Amazon has millions of customers whose first device was a kindle and so their library is on kindle. Kindle devices have come down in price and improved, so those readers will stick with kindle. They’re suffering the delusion that someday they’ll win the lottery, move to the French Riviera and finally have time to read all those hoarded books on a topless beach.”
“That’s not rational,” she sniffed.
“If I switched devices, it would be like burning all my books. And maybe that’s irrational, but we are talking about humans, yes? I have so few Vulcan readers.”
“But devices and companies go away. Look at MySpace and AOL and Kodak.”
“And the not-so-bright future of the Nook,” I added. “Yeah, companies go away if they fail to adapt to competition. But all those free downloads to long TBR lists give Amazon an immense legacy advantage. Kobo might be #2 in the e-reader market, but they’re a distant #2. Amazon’s the greyhound out front chasing the rabbit. The others are three-legged purse dogs running in circles around the starting line.”
“That’s ridiculous. If I wanted to switch, why couldn’t I just port my Kindle downloads over to Kobo?”
“Amazon would have to permit that, I’m guessing. They’re different systems. There are workarounds, but most readers won’t do it. For instance, I’ve got Calibre but I hardly ever use it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s harder to use and more time-consuming than the one-click buy that shoots straight to my kindle. People stick with what they know and what’s easy. For instance, everyone complains about Facebook, but they hardly ever leave and a bunch of those who do leave come back for more abuse. They don’t hang out at G+ because all their friends and family are still on Facebook. Their network is locked in, even if they don’t want to be. For Amazon and Facebook to start to worry, they must have a real threat of competition.”
“I heard Instagram is getting even more popular than Facebook with young people,” she said. “Facebook has serious competition there.”
“For that niche and possibly into the future, yeah, which must be why Facebook bought it already. No competition.”
“Oh,” she said.
“To compete with the greyhound, the little yappy dogs have to take steroids and get going in the right direction. But the greyhound will probably eat their steroids. The big dog always has more money for R&D.”
“You’ve lost me in the canine metaphor. I don’t hang out at the dog track.”
“Come up with a new way to reach customers and someone will finance it. If it’s a really good idea, it will probably be the leader of the pack buying you out, making sure they stay the pack leader.”
“But what about all those companies that fail?”
“Nothing lasts forever, sure. Apple seems to have lost some direction since Jobs died and the stock’s down. Mostly, big companies fail because they lower their standards or try to hold on to the old paradigm instead of improving and evolving. Like how the Big Six publishers became the Big Five. Soon to be fewer, probably.”
“Ah. So…you really think I should sell on Amazon?”
“It’s up to you, but for me, it’s the only platform that’s not optional. There are exceptions. Some authors seem to move romance and crime better on B&N and Kobo. If they choose to pull you out of the haystack and promote you, you might have a shot. But mostly, and for me? If I wasn’t selling on Amazon, I wouldn’t be selling books.”
“So all those free ebooks on my TBR cyber-pile is just Amazon insuring customer loyalty?”
“I wouldn’t call it loyalty. No matter what the Supreme Court and Mitt Haircut say, corporations aren’t people, my friend. Companies rarely inspire love. Call it inertia. Also, I’m sure they really do hope you’ll buy somebody’s books and make a ton of money the way they say it was intended. I’m talking more about customer behavior here, not whether Amazon’s packed to the rafters with cynical geniuses who can see into the future.”
“So what do you think of free ebooks as a promotional tool?”
“It’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but most of the discoverability tools are pretty dull.”
“Sounds like you love Amazon,” she said, her eyes narrowing.
“No. If the little dogs started running faster, I’d bet on them. Until then, I’m riding the big dog. And you know…sometimes…once in a long while, I’ll find an author in that TBR pile I thought I’d never get to. And sometimes, I’m blown away and I want to read more of their books. Then I’m in true buying mode. Free ebooks is fake buying mode. But it does happen that I find someone I like there and spend real dough.”
“Name one,” she said.
“I’ll name three. Alex Kimmell, Jordanna East and Armand Rosamilia.”
“I’ll add them to my TBR pile,” she said.
“Make sure you get to them.”
~ Robert Chazz Chute is an author with ten books in your TBR pile you still haven’t gotten to. How will you ever fall in love?
Filed under: Amazon, author platform, book marketing, Books, e-reader, ebooks, free ebooks, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Writers, alex kimmel, Amazon, Armand Rosamilia, book lists, books, discoverability, ebooks, hoarding, jordanna East, publicity and promotion, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, TBR, TBR pile
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