From what I’ve read about the “new
world” of publishing, visibility seems to be one of the most important factors
in sales. I don’t mean this as a rant against Amazon, but they certainly aren’t
making things any easier for small-pubbed and indie authors.
Here’s a great post by Russell Blake, who understands Amazon’s new system of weighting better than I ever
will.
In essence, they’re skewing the
visibility factor toward bigger publishers who price their books higher. That
way, Amazon will see greater profits because they’ll rake in greater
percentages from those bigger pubs.
Did someone toll the death bell for
big publishers? Seems to have been premature. They’re adapting to the new
market, with the assistance of distributors like Amazon.
It’s discouraging. Just when I
thought the playing fields were leveling out, they’ve padded the other half,
the one with the goal. Like Russell Blake, I’ve jumped on the KDP Select
bandwagon, held free days and rode the crazy roller coaster of seeing thousands
of downloads. The after-bump sales held for awhile, which was also fantastic.
But if Amazon has weighted their system against indie pubs, what’s the use?
I’d love to get this @&!! cloak
of invisibility off my books. And then a little alchemy to get them to
spontaneously combust and light sales on fire would be great, ha.
Any industry
news you can share that’s in a similar vein? I try to keep up but Blake’s
article surprised me.
Thanks to Alex J. Cavanaugh for launching
the Insecure Writers group!
