Amazon is excluding spicy romance & LGBTQ books from the affiliates program. It's Bezos obeying the fascists in advance. And it highlights how, with the flip of a switch, they can easily shadow-ban whatever books they want.
I'm removing all my Amazon affiliate links & will deprioritize Amazon links
I knew they would come for those books. I knew it. And that's only the beginning. (Although their greed may keep romance alive.)
I never used the affiliates program and never will. In fact, I stopped using Amazon ads this year (and yes, I see a loss of sales).
You can re-order links in Books2Read, and I have put my PayHip on top, followed by Bookshop org and Smashwords (which now pays 75% royalties), before I list Amazon.
Same on my website.
And I'm going "wide" with Print.
@Firlefanz @susankayequinn About ten years ago now (time flies), I did some research on costs, on how to set up an alternative to the POD system from Amazon, which leaves brutally little for authors or small publishers. In my opinion, this is holding back growth of small publishers more than so many other factors, because it's a complaint I heard over and over.
The TL;DR of it is, it doesn't seem impossible. The harder part is that the printers I spoke to were fearing an uberization of...
@Firlefanz @susankayequinn ... their services, i.e. where I provide a platform on which they compete, which ultimately drives down their price. I guess the experience with Amazon had burned them badly.
At the same time, mid-sized printers have invested heavily into POD-style printing solutions (TL;DR), so they are ready for this kind of thing, by and large.
I dropped that whole line of thought for a number of reasons back then, but I still feel it is missing. And more precisely, I think...
@Firlefanz @susankayequinn ... what is missing is a co-op style organization for this rather than a market-driven one.
Perhaps it is time to dig out my notes and have more serious conversations about this? 🤔
I definitely lean towards a co-op rather than market-driven. I would even be willing to share in the cost.
Indie Authors Unite! or something along those lines. 🙂
@Firlefanz Oh yeah, I mean, definitely a Co-Op. As it so happens, my day job has given me a bunch of insights there as well, so I feel way better prepared for this than I was when I first had the idea.
It's more that back then I was thinking of barriers to growth for indie publishing. Now I think about it more are "keep civilization running in the face of the threat the fascist-capitalist-complex poses". Both, really :)
What I have been thinking of is basically a Store List Central, where indies can list their stores or websites. A place where readers can go to find books and authors by genre or such.
Organizing this to keep out spammers and AI sloperators will be a bit tricky, but maybe a membership fee will help (possibly staggered according to income).
Members will have to provide the genres and keywords for their listing, and possibly volunteer some hours to keep the List clean.
@Firlefanz @susankayequinn Right, and that makes a lot of sense. We could actually use some ActivityPub magic here and federate content (TL;DR).
My thinking was a lot more along the logistics side of things. The basic problem is this: print on demand is great up to a certain number of printed copies. After that, the cost per copy becomes prohibitive compared to offset printing.
Which really means that the growth of indies is limited by their growth, and that's unsolvable in itself.
So.
@Firlefanz @susankayequinn Changing this for a smoother transition from one kind of print to the other, and/or sharing of costs to get onto offset printing faster, those are things one could look into *eventually*. They're complex to solve.
But what's simple - well, in comparison - is Kickstarter-like financing. It's pretty easy to precalculate costs per copy for N copies. What's harder to solve is the logistics: where to print, so that shipping is affordable?
There's a balance between...
@Firlefanz @susankayequinn ... trying to batch print runs into one location vs. having two or three across the globe, combined with regional distribution partners and warehouses, which is *really complex* if you want to do it yourself.
But as a service for a number of indies? It becomes tractable, moves from hair-pulling-out to something that spreadsheet wrangling or - wildest dreams - an algorithm can optimize for.
TL;DR:
a) get "crowdfund and print+distribute this book" solved
...
@Firlefanz @susankayequinn
...
b) move towards some sorts of systems where a small portion of the savings go to funds that help even smaller indies make that hurdle.
I spoke to a bunch of printers back then, and they're just worried such a platform will be used to set them in competition with each other and drive prices into the ground. OTOH I feel like they're pressured enough by Amazon, Bertelsmann, etc. that they wouldn't mind an escape route.
So offering them representation in a co-op...
@Firlefanz @susankayequinn ... might be the thing that'll get them interested. That way, the threat of bidding wars goes away, they will see more rather than fewer orders from an author/indie network, etc.
That's the hope, at least. It'd need to start with a few conversations.
Very interesting. I have a friend who just finished a successful kickstarter who is doing print runs. I plan to bug her later about the details because I think it's more of an option than I suspected. I also know a couple local printers and people who have done surprisingly small print runs with hand-crafted books and those are very popular (again surprisingly so).
It's a different model but an increasingly popular one.
Ah, I never thought much about print (because honestly, I sell maybe two print copies a year), but one of the biggest problems for small indies is simply visibility.
And if we can persuade a portion of readers to look at buying from a co-op rather than big tech, it's easier to start with eBooks and whichever stores authors have already set up.
That brings to mind an author co-op that I remember (and even bought books from), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_View_Caf%C3%A9
@Firlefanz @jens
conventional wisdom in self-publishing is that print doesn't sell, just ebooks
and that has been true
but print is having a moment and it's an entirely separate thing from regular selfpublishing
it's people buying at bookshop.org to support small bookstores
it's bookclubs
it's kickstarters with fancy paper craft for collectible editions with special art
Yeah, I have seen kickstarters go big with that, and Book Vault offers special editions even in combination with PayHip, quite a bit of what I se authors sell through Patreon, as well.
I just fear that all of that only really works if you have enough of a social media presence and plenty of followers/subscribers/fans.
I can't even sell my latest release. *sob*
marketing is for sure challenging, and you're right that kickstarters and such will only work if you've got some audience already (and an attractive book/campaign)
I think the bookshop thing is different — I think people are preferentially shopping there to support indie bookstores so that if you're on there, some people will choose that as an option
@susankayequinn @Firlefanz My experience has been that print sells very well, but the clientele and reasons are very different.
The thing that made it work is a bit different, though: it works great as merchandise next to a reading engagement, gets gifted, and develops from there. Basically how bands sell shirts.
Then there are other kinds of books, like role-playing games, which sell mostly because people want to have physical copies for the gaming table, or because of the art.
This is not..
@jens @Firlefanz
oh, for sure, not one size fits all... I was speaking mostly about general changes in the culture wrt print. Whether that's going to help any individual author is very specific to their circumstance.
If you write romantasy or enjoy fine book craft and art in whatever genre you write, and especially if you've already got a fanbase (even a small one), then a kickstarter could be very lucrative (I have a friend who just did one).
If you like to attend book events...
...you like setting up book displays and talking to readers and have a wide range of series with pretty art and especially *completed* series, you could do very well at book fairs. I did a bunch of those last year and was surprised how many people walked away with STACKS of book, completed series, from my table. Especially the stuff that's hopepunk/solarpunk, which was very surprising (it's barely a genre).
Cons are extremely difficult for me because
1) I'm Autistic and easily overwhelmed at cons and
2) I write in English but live in Germany.
The one con that I was considering to attend (in my town) has been canceled for this year. *sigh*
@Firlefanz @jens
I didn't do cons *at all* for the longest time (most of my 15 years of publishing).
Then I tried a couple because I was trying to promote this new genre (solarpunk). Last year was GONZO, I think I did 6 events?? I know there are definitely people who make an entire living at that, and I'm *very* outgoing, but it's just not what I want to spend my time doing.
So I'm not doing any this year (or probably next).
It's very individual what will work for folks.
Very much so. I still ponder ideas to have like online meetings for schools (class, meet an actual author), since I have two books that are suitable for classroom reading.
Here, it would be awesome for English classes.
But again, it all depends on visibility.
Yes, bookshop org works *because* it speaks to people willing to support local stores and indie authors.
I have put their link first in the Books2Read lists. Should put it first on my website, too.
And I can market to that.
Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
Hannah Steenbock
Jens Finkhäuser
Robert Kingett