# Abandoned



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

I work alongside several other authors in what we refer to as a guild. We have a romancer and a fantasy writer and a journalist. And then there's me. I write editorial. All four of us have published on Amazon. Of all of us, the romancer has done the best. Between us all we've sold over 1400 books from all sources combined. We've all had our share of five-stars and one or two of us have gotten some excellent critical reviews.

But it's the events of the last two weeks that have soured us all on the so-called "Kindle e-book revolution" we've heard so much about. I'll break this down to its simplest terms as I plan to write a longer piece about it later. When our romancer took her books out of Select, her sales went to *zero*. They've stayed there for *nine days* now. She has fifteen titles published, one of which is responsible for nearly 20% of our combined sales. Her sales were turned off like a light switch the very moment she pulled her catalog out of Select.

The rest of us had given up on Amazon some months earlier when we saw that our sales increased and decreased in direct proportion to the number of paid advertisements we ran to send traffic to our book pages. When we advertised heavily, sales and borrows went up at an average rate of two sales/borrows for every one without ads. When we stopped advertising, sales dropped at *exactly* (average sales over a standard time interval) the same rate they increased. We ran our ads on BKnights. We ran 17 promotions in a single month recently. We got no traction at all.

It was then I suggested that Amazon was rewarding us for sending traffic to Amazon. People weren't buying our books because of the ads. People were buying our books because Amazon was making them visible as a result of whatever "credit" we received for being good little marketers and driving up our pageviews. It would be a trivial programming challenge to key Amazon's "make book visible" function to the number of pageviews that book gets from external non-affiliate sources.

My question became this: what exactly is Amazon doing for its 65%? When our books sell, Amazon gets paid. So why aren't they working harder to promote our work?

The fact is they aren't doing anything to help sell our books. I'll give you an example of why this is true. Our journalist member, who recently published a non-fiction work sold in our bookstore (and not Amazon) made more money in three weeks than all of us combined had made in four years on the Amazon Kindle. Why? Because he had control over the price, the blurb, the cover, the length of the work, the marketing, the retail options (like special deals, bundles and discounts/sales), the keywords, categories and so forth. He could even give the book away free if he wanted for as long as he wanted.

He can also put video on his book page, link his book to any other book and publish excerpts, bonus materials and an audiobook version right next to the e-book.

His statement was instructive: "If I'm going to do all the marketing work, I'm going to keep all the money. If Amazon wants a cut of the cover price, then lets see Amazon move some books."

I can't say I disagree. Amazon does exactly nothing in exchange for it's 30-65% of the cover price. Amazon has done nothing to advance the cause of e-books in the last five years except drive prices to zero. At this point, given their resources, we should be able to go to Amazon's site, enter criteria for a story and get a list of books that match those criteria. In fact, we should get a daily e-mail with a continuously updated list of those books.

Instead, we get charged exorbitant rent for a page nobody visits unless we figure out the puzzle Amazon puts between it and our readers. And even if we make a sale, we have no idea who bought our book. Amazon hides every detail that would give us the information we need to improve sales. All we are told is "write more books." Well, we have an author who did just that. She published fifteen titles in less than a year. What is her reward? Zero sales.

Without putting too fine a point on it, I think e-books are the candies in the little glass bowl by the cash register. They are freebies Amazon likes to give away to customers who buy other products. Amazon doesn't care at all whether they sell or not. All that matters to them is that hopeful authors spend the last of their unemployment benefits buying Bookbub ads to drive traffic to Amazon.com, where hopefully that traffic will buy something substantial, like a prime membership or a big screen TV. Authors have been relegated to the role of an unpaid marketing department whose job it is to send Amazon traffic. We've been had.

Kindle Unlimited is simply a means by which Amazon forces us to compete with ourselves. It also gives them license to alter our royalty at their whim and regardless of what cover price we set. True, some authors have found success on Amazon, but far fewer than should have. Parading the lottery winners before the hopefuls is a great way to keep the losers invested in a deteriorating market where the rent-seeker gets all the upside, and the only way the author can succeed is to pour titles into a bottomless ranking system that rewards incumbents and punishes everyone else.

My books and my guildmates' books can get all the promotion they need on our own sites (far more, it turns out, than we can expect on Amazon). We have excellent ways of driving traffic to our new book pages that don't cost us anything, and when we make a sale, we know who bought it. We also don't have to pay more than half the cover price to a $180 billion company that hasn't spent dime one to promote our work yet.

Good luck to you all.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Hiya, Justphil!

Amazon is an outlet.  Moreover, they are like a consignment shop.  They provide the means for you to present your product to the public for easy and convenient sale through a trusted intermediary. 

If you thought Amazon had some sort of vested interest in your personal books, that's where the mistake was. They have bazillions of products offered- it's not their responsibility to promote and sell each and every one of them.  Their job is to provide a delivery mechanism. 

You may want to rethink your business strategy.  If you don't think the Amazon distribution channel is worth the price, don't use it.  But you seem extremely bitter, as if the Zon owes you more than you got.

In any case, best of luck with your future marketing!


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Handling returns. Complying with international requirements for the sales of digital content. Customer support. Centralized browsing.

Nope. Nothing for the 30%.

Trust me. You do not want to deal with customers who can't load your file, can't download the file, can't read the file, purchased by accident, etc. until you a have a plan to deal with that.


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## Lionel&#039;s Mom (Aug 22, 2013)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Trust me. You do not want to deal with customers who can't load your file, can't download the file, can't read the file, purchased by accident, etc. until you a have a plan to deal with that.





SawyerPentecost said:


> I have said the same thing in less words before: "Waaaah. My book isn't selling. Amazon is broken." Funny thing is it seems to be working for other people (besides myself) just fine!


Just quoting for truth.


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## C. Michael Wells (Feb 26, 2014)

I guess I would have to ask how you propose amazon promotes ALL the books listed in their store. 

Amazon does not owe authors anything. They provide your books with a high traffic website and the opportunity to sell your books. I would hazard a guess many authors make 100 or 1000x on amazon what they would make if they simply listed their books on a personal website. That alone is worth whatever percentage Amazon recieves.

The ebook revolution is about bypassing the previous gatekeepers for the opportunity to find readers who connect to your work.  Amazon provides the infastructure to do so.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Waaaah. My book isn't selling. Amazon is broken.


I pointed out the books stopped selling when they were taken out of Select. Bit of a difference there.



> I guess I would have to ask how you propose amazon promotes ALL the books listed in their store.


They already came up with a plan for that. We pay them for advertising. 



> I would hazard a guess many authors make 100 or 1000x on amazon what they would make if they simply listed their books on a personal website.


I have four years of data that proves otherwise. And these figures can't be blamed on the cover, or the blurb, or the quality of the writing. The facts are that sales went up in direct proportion to the number of paid ads we ran, then went down at exactly the same rate they increased. Sales then went to zero when the books were pulled from Select.

Meanwhile, another author out-earned our whole team in a matter of weeks because he priced his book adequately, kept 100% of the cover price and managed to effortlessly build a mailing list of 200 people in the process: three things that are impossible to do on Amazon.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

justphil said:


> I pointed out the books stopped selling when they were taken out of Select. Bit of a difference there.


Okay, so did any sales happen on the other platforms? Was it a wash or a total loss? What percentage were sales vs. borrows? Finally, did she put her books back in Select to see if sales picked back up again?

Also, there's no real context here. We have no idea what these books are or what they look like to give an educated opinion on why this may or may not have happened.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

No.  You pay Amazon to distribute your book.  Distribution and advertising are two different things.    All Amazon agrees to do is distribute your book to readers.    Did you pay anyone else for advertising?    
But thank you for the long and informative posts.  
Now that will be 5 bags of belly flops please.


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## Peter Spenser (Jan 26, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Handling returns. Complying with international requirements for the sales of digital content. Customer support. Centralized browsing.
> 
> Nope. Nothing for the 30%.
> 
> Trust me. You do not want to deal with customers who can't load your file, can't download the file, can't read the file, purchased by accident, etc. until you a have a plan to deal with that.


Now that I've calmed down&#8230; this, too. Very much so.

Elizabeth will tell you (as she has us, more than once, with our thanks) that selling books is hard work, constant work, wide-ranging work. If you don't do *all* of the work, don't expect all of the good results.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> No. You pay Amazon to distribute your book.


Amazon disagrees.

"Independently publish with Kindle Direct Publishing to reach millions of readers."

"Reaching millions of readers" and simple distribution are also two different things. We've been waiting on our millions of readers for four years.



> selling books is hard work, constant work, wide-ranging work. If you don't do all of the work, don't expect all of the good results.


We out-earned our entire (40-title-ish) Kindle catalog with one book in three weeks by doing more work than any Kindle author does.

People have incorrectly presumed I'm complaining our books don't sell. On the contrary. Our books sell just fine. I'm simply pointing out our guild is unanimous in its conclusion that paying Amazon 65% of the cover price in exchange for processing returns and various other clerical tasks is unreasonable. Especially when we can do that ourselves with a trivial time investment.

We're also resolved that our sales dropping to zero the very day our last title left Select is... curious.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

justphil said:


> We've been waiting on our millions of readers for four years.


That is just so sad.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

justphil said:


> "Reaching millions of readers" and simple distribution are also two different things. We've been waiting on our millions of readers for four years.


So...Amazon owes you millions of readers? Got it.


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## D.L. Shutter (Jul 9, 2011)

> I'm simply pointing out our guild is unanimous in its conclusion that paying Amazon 65% of the cover price in exchange for processing returns and various other clerical tasks is unreasonable. Especially when we can do that ourselves with a trivial time investment.


Um...OK. Thanks for the announcement. Sounds like your Guild is a great little collective of minds if you can do everything that Amazon does. Why are you wasting your time here? Don't you and you Guild have an indie e-book site to take live?

Or is another shoe on it's way down?


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Amazon owes you millions of readers?


They brought it up. 



> Don't you and you Guild have an indie e-book site to take live?


We've been live since last summer.


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## Guest (Mar 3, 2015)

OP is correct though; I stopped promoting my books 2 months ago, because I also saw shenanigans  every time I  promoted one of my books. I told the tory before that I promote 1 book hard, see huge sales, but also immediately see the sales of all my other books dry up. In the end total revenue for all books remained the same. Guess what 2 months after stopping all promos, I still get the same revenue as I was getting when I was heavily promoting my books, only now all the money goes to me and not some promo site. On the other hand promos seem to work for writers like Wayne Stinnett, so trying to figure out the algos is a losing game.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

justphil said:


> They brought it up.
> 
> We've been live since last summer.


Ok. So is this the part where the music swells and we all rise up in indie solidarity and yell "F*** Amazon!" and join your Guild or praise it or something, but otherwise get back to writing and publishing?

'cause, then, good on ya:


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I'm back.  
The way I read "reaching millions of readers" is they are giving you access to their customers.  It does not mean they are going to show your book to the millions but that millions can if they choose to buy your book.
Rather like Dish Network does not promote one news network over another but gives all of them equal access to their customers.    Not all viewers/readers are going to like the same thing.


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## Guest (Mar 3, 2015)

PS: I'd like a link to your guild website. I'm all in with KU, but that does not mean I don't want to see how others succeed or fail.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

justphil said:


> I pointed out the books stopped selling when they were taken out of Select. Bit of a difference there.
> 
> *Many, many writers have posted that their sales dropped when they left Select. It takes a while to build a presence on other retailers, so we'd all suspect this would be what happens to any of us.*
> 
> ...


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## Deborahsmith author (Jul 23, 2013)

I agree with Abandoned. She/he nails some important points that are discussed widely in the world outside these boards. Amazon charges an exorbitant commission for a minor amt. of service to the authors. It manipulates algorithms constantly in order to drive traffic to the main store. The ebook biz is a come-on for customers, more than anything else.  Yes, regardless of its brutally eff-u business practices, it provides potential for a few authors to make some money. But that doesn't mean that what Abandoned says is inaccurate. Amazon built a factory and we choose to work in it or not. Sort of like a mill town where the workers are just happy they have a job. Yassir, bossman, yassir.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Deborahsmith author said:


> I agree with Abandoned. She/he nails some important points that are discussed widely in the world outside these boards. Amazon charges an exorbitant commission for a minor amt. of service to the authors. It manipulates algorithms constantly in order to drive traffic to the main store. The ebook biz is a come-on for customers, more than anything else. Yes, regardless of its brutally eff-u business practices, it provides potential for a few authors to make some money. But that doesn't mean that what Abandoned says is inaccurate. Amazon built a factory and we choose to work in it or not. Sort of like a mill town where the workers are just happy they have a job. Yassir, bossman, yassir.


Amazon offers a platform and an opportunity...not a guarantee. This industry has *never* offered a guarantee. Heck, this industry has never offered particularly good odds period. There are those who are going to make the most of that opportunity and there are more who will not. Among those who do make the most of it, there will still be many more that fail than succeed.


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## Mark Tyson (Sep 22, 2014)

500 people could be visiting your book a day and only 5 decide to press the buy button. You can't say that in 4 years you didn't get a million readers to visit your book. Amazon says they will get your books to millions of readers not that the millions of readers would actually READ your books, or even buy them. There is also coincidence and luck involved as well!


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Amagod helps those who help themselves.

With the caveat that nonfiction often does well on authors' personal platforms because nonfiction is a totally different marketing beast than fiction is, Amazon stands ready to provide any book that can "prove" its worth with marketing support via Amazon's recommendation engine(s). 

The algos are set up to reward books that are attractive to the buying public, not just on the day they're advertised, but ongoing. As a publisher/marketer, (generic) your responsibility is to convince the algos that your book is worth promoting over another book since there are limited alsobots, onsite recommendations, emails, etc to go around. That means keeping sales going at a certain level for more than just a day or two. 

Those automated algos will churn you in just as fast as they'll churn you out. 

If you were to sell your books through a physical retail store, you'd need to discount your price by 40-60%. Without paying for book dumps or endcap, front table or window positioning, your book gets treated the same as any other book -- stocked on shelf, spine out. There is no obligation for a bookstore to sell YOUR book. You have responsibility for generating the word-of-mouth needed to help your books sell. 

Selling from a digital store gives you the *opportunity* to make your book more visible to more customers. It's your responsibility to figure out how to do that, not Amazon's. Nowhere in the TOS does it claim you're paying for marketing services. Nor will you find a statement to that effect in ANY of the online retailers' TOS's.  

And frankly, if a guild of authors can't figure out to play on Amazon (the retailer with the most ad-hoc information about how it works available), I'm not holding my breath about them being able to play with any kind of effectiveness off it.


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## B&amp;H (Apr 6, 2014)

Deborahsmith author said:


> I agree with Abandoned. She/he nails some important points that are discussed widely in the world outside these boards. Amazon charges an exorbitant commission for a minor amt. of service to the authors. It manipulates algorithms constantly in order to drive traffic to the main store. The ebook biz is a come-on for customers, more than anything else. Yes, regardless of its brutally eff-u business practices, it provides potential for a few authors to make some money. But that doesn't mean that what Abandoned says is inaccurate. Amazon built a factory and we choose to work in it or not. Sort of like a mill town where the workers are just happy they have a job. Yassir, bossman, yassir.


Exorbitant commission?

You realise before Apple introduced the agency model, ebooks were sold by the trade to retailers on wholesale contracts at up to 60 percent off list; same as print books.

Look how hard Hachette et al had to fight to get the same 70 percent deal KDP authors get.

By retail standards 30 percent is low.

What do they do for their cut?

Billions of dollars in IT infrastructure investment & R & D into developing the kindle so you can even sell ebooks with them. You know how many books you'd sell without kindle?

Zero.

Because unless you are a big six imprint and capable of dropping 250k on a print run, offering 180 days credit with unlimited returns no physical retailer will stock you. And then they'll want 60 percent discount.

Constant investment in brand building to drive customer opportunities.

Lots of very clever UX tools like also-boughts that retailers like Kobo don't have, that drive visibility to books.

As far as I'm concerned, compared to the cost of doing business in traditional publishing, 30 percent retailer cut is the deal of the century for writers.

As Bezos says, complaining is not a strategy.

If you could have sold a million books, you would have sold a million books. The fact you didn't is because readers weren't interested in buying your books, not because Amazon is developing some sort of anti-retailing persecution strategy to set you up for failure.

Amazon wants you to sell a lot of books, that's how they make money: selling things.

They're not hosting your ebook files simply to keep their servers warm.

Regarding advertising, even brand names like Coca Cola get less than 0.1 percent click through. Advertising is notoriously inefficient at converting impressions to sales.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Two basic possibilities. The poster is being truthful, or not.

If not, we can ignore the post.

If so, he is generalizing from anecdotal data. "It seems this way to us, so it must be true."

See "Who Moved My Cheese."

Some stuff works. Some doesn't. Most stuff works some of the time, when appropriately handled, if the environment remains constant. But sometimes, stuff seems to simply happen.

See "The Butterfly Effect." The principle, not the movie.

That is, chaos theory. The universe is far from deterministic. Some events are genuinely uncaused. (See: quantum physics). Most have hidden causes that are long past by the time their effects are felt. Correlation does not equal causation. Occam's razor does not always apply. If it did, I might presume Earth's gravity fluctuated while aboard an oceangoing ship *because that's what I feel,* rather than conceiving of the complex interaction of the moon, tides, wind, seismic waves, temperature, weather, my heading, my motive power, the loading of the ship, etc. _ad infinitum._


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## SB James (May 21, 2014)

justphil said:


> Amazon doesn't care at all whether they sell or not.


Not particularly, no.
And BTW, I had a book in KU. I had not one iota more consideration or advertisement for my book than any other book in KU at that time, aside from the Harry Potter books.


cinisajoy said:


> Just ran to the store,
> Handing out peanuts and popcorn and jelly bellies and Cracker Jacks.
> Have hot dogs too.


Thanks!


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## SawyerPentecost (Jul 11, 2013)

My feeling is that it would be silly to have an independent site and no presence on Amazon. There are many readers who would never think of buying outside of the Amazon ecosystem. Really, it's like building your own book store and wondering why everyone buys the books at Wal-Mart and not your own...they trust Amazon for all of the things they provide, security, quality assurances, service delivery, etc.

Now, do I think it is a good idea for you to have your own site that allows your true believers to buy and give you a bigger share of the profits? Absolutely. Do I think it should be the only place? Absolutely not. There's always the off chance someone will hear about your book on a website or podcast or some other place. They may hear the link to your site, but they will probably ignore it and head to Amazon to buy it.

Is Amazon giving preferential treatement to KU books? Maybe. That is what freedom guarantees. Remember, if your book doesn't sell, they don't get any money from your book. Do they want people driven to their site? Absolutely. Do they want them to buy lots of books? Yes. They want them to buy your book, my book, and everybody else's books.

Hey, I get it. My books dont sell what I want them to. Most of us are in that same boat, thankfully it's pretty big.


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## Mark Tyson (Sep 22, 2014)

Even in the days of the traditional gatekeepers this business was about perseverance. When my creative writing teacher had a published author come speak to us in college (back in 1991) The author told us a story about trying to get published and nothing happening, then one day she was about to give up and she went to the cemetery to visit a loved one and cry and complain. When she looked down she was standing on a dais with the word perseverance inscribed on it. She took it as a sign and was published soon thereafter. (this author was Jody Thomas by the way) I never forgot that story. (I paraphrased it for time) As the kboarders are fond of saying, its a marathon not a race. Go on, give up, it just leaves more room for those of us with perseverance!


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

I listen to all opinions about self-publishing, the good the bad and the ugly. 

There is truth, subjective or otherwise, in most of those opinions. Would I like Amazon to be my slave, to extol my books above all others? Hell ya! Not going to happen, so I muddle along in my own world.

I do recognize one truth absolutely. Sometimes writers write books and stories that no one wants to read--let alone open their wallets for. And that is not Amazon's fault. 

Some books are destined for the invisibility bin. I know because I've written a couple.


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## scribblr (Aug 20, 2010)

justphil said:


> But it's the events of the last two weeks that have soured us all on the so-called "Kindle e-book revolution" we've heard so much about.


As you can see, if you were hoping for sympathetic ears, you may have trouble finding them on this forum. A number of the posters here are such rah-rah cheerleaders for anything Amazon that they should get paid for it by Amazon. And I've long suspected that a few of them do since I know for a fact that Amazon KDP people do come to this board.

Regardless, I sympathize with your situation. One of the things Amazon could do to lessen the anguish would be to report the visits to an author's page. I know they collect that information, but Amazon never shares such data. When we publish our books on Amazon, we agree to accept their terms, or, as been said, we can take our ball and go home. I've done exactly that and no longer publish my new ebooks on Amazon. When the KU program began, my sales tanked. Since Amazon represented less than 50% of my sales prior to that point, it wasn't a hard decision to remove Amazon from my distribution network and focus my sales on other resellers. The alternative was to forget the six or seven dollars (less the 33% Amazon cut) that I normally get for most of my books and accept the $1.33+ they've been paying. It wasn't a hard decision, although I admit I first gave serious thought to enrolling part of my collection with the KU as a test. I never had a problem with Amazon starting the KU program, but I refused to accept the exclusivity requirement. Since my fans followed me to the other reseller sites, I saw a considerable uptick in sales elsewhere, including the store I maintain on my website. The wonderful thing about being an author is that you, and you alone, control the legal distribution of your product, unless you surrender those rights with licensing or enrollment in the Select Program.

My suggestion is to begin an email announcement list, if you don't already have one, and begin distributing your 'guild' books everywhere you can. You can do that now that the 'romancer' has withdrawn from the Select Program. It takes time to establish yourself on other reseller sites, just as it takes time on Amazon, so be patient. Some people believe Amazon is the only game in town, but that's absurd. And it's become more absurd each year, which is why Amazon is desperately trying to force Indies to become exclusive. If Amazon can control a significant portion of the book distribution, it can continue to ignore calls for changes.

I wish you and your 'guild' associates the best of luck in resolving your issues.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

I'm going to assume, as a working hypothesis, that the post is genuine.

The thing that jumps out at me is the numbers. 1400 sales for four authors. Number of books, unknown, but one romance counts for 20% of that (280 sales), the other 14 romances plus whatever the others have published is 1120 sales. Let's assume 1 book each, then 1120 div 17 = 66 sales per book (average). If the other three have more books out, the average is even lower.

Yet the OP says that they've promoted heavily, and even did 17 promos in one month. 

You have to conclude that, either these books are in VERY specialist niches, or they're doing something very wrong.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Scribblr, 
Oh no.  Not number of visits please.  Then we would have 3456 visited my page and 2 bought.  What am I doing wrong Threads.


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## Sarah09 (Dec 14, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> I'm going to assume, as a working hypothesis, that the post is genuine.
> 
> The thing that jumps out at me is the numbers. 1400 sales for four authors. Number of books, unknown, but one romance counts for 20% of that (280 sales), the other 14 romances plus whatever the others have published is 1120 sales. Let's assume 1 book each, then 1120 div 17 = 66 sales per book (average). If the other three have more books out, the average is even lower.
> 
> ...


This. I have been self-publishing for less than three months and I have already sold/borrows over 3000 books on Amazon. I love Amazon. Sorry it didn't work out for you.


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## B&amp;H (Apr 6, 2014)

cinisajoy said:


> Scribblr,
> Oh no. Not number of visits please. Then we would have 3456 visited my page and 2 bought. What am I doing wrong Threads.


3454 of the visits would have been from the author hitting refresh every two minutes checking their sales rank.


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## Charmaine (Jul 20, 2012)

PaulineMRoss said:


> I'm going to assume, as a working hypothesis, that the post is genuine.
> 
> The thing that jumps out at me is the numbers. 1400 sales for four authors. Number of books, unknown, but one romance counts for 20% of that (280 sales), the other 14 romances plus whatever the others have published is 1120 sales. Let's assume 1 book each, then 1120 div 17 = 66 sales per book (average). If the other three have more books out, the average is even lower.
> 
> ...


Yeah, I got 3 lines in and knew it would turn into one of those woe is me threads. 'I'm not doing well, so there must sabotage'.
Although, the posters of these threads never listen to alternative reasons why they're not doing well.
Your math, which I appreciate because I was too lazy to do myself , shows somethings amiss.
17 promos and crickets? 
Start looking at your blurbs, covers, and content.
Sales may have dropped because, readers were willing to take a chance on a product with not-great presentation, because a borrow is risk-free.
Remove that risk-free entry and... well, the river runs dry.


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## DanaG (Feb 13, 2011)

Since we're throwing purely anecdotal evidence out there, here's mine: I write romance. I made twelve thousand dollars by my fourth month on Amazon, and I did absolutely no promoting, didn't even have a website or a mailing list at that point. I did nothing but read a bunch of romance bestsellers and try to analyze what they had done, and write like them.  I hardly ever advertise. I made slightly over $300,000 last year.  Therefore, Amazon DOES somehow mysteriously promote books for everyone, because what happens to me must happen to everyone.  And congrats to everyone here for also making $300,000 last year! 

Oh, wait - I talked a close friend of mine into publishing on Amazon and she writes in the exact same subgenre that I do and only sells a few books a day.  So, actually the OP is - half right? Amazon must randomly promote some authors and not promote other authors at all. Just on a whim. For funsies.

Or - you're not writing what your market wants to read. Doesn't mean that you're a bad writer, but if you're writing multiple books and they're not taking off, you're somehow not appealing to your target market. It's not Amazon's fault that some authors sell well and others don't.

As for what Amazon does for authors, they provide them the opportunity to showcase their books on a marketplace that receives massive amounts of traffic. If you feel that you earn more on your own website, that's where you should be. I do not know any writers who earn more on other websites than they do on Amazon, but you may be the lucky exception.


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## scribblr (Aug 20, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> Scribblr,
> Oh no. Not number of visits please. Then we would have 3456 visited my page and 2 bought. What am I doing wrong Threads.


Playing ostrich is not a solution.  At least you'd know that the problem is not exposure, and you could work on correcting the real problems instead of continuing to place ads to get people to your page(s).


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## scribblr (Aug 20, 2010)

B&H said:


> 3454 of the visits would have been from the author hitting refresh every two minutes checking their sales rank.


You don't think that Amazon doesn't already know how many hits are unique visits? Every site counter software I've seen tracks that. It's done by using your IPv4 address.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

members behaving badly -- and I haven't read past the first page.

may re-open after some clean up.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

To add to Ann's comment....

Thread clean up has commenced and is still in progress while we also discuss whether to reopen the thread. Right now, I'm inclined to leave it locked as I'm not sure the OP is here to actually have a discussion. OP, if you want us to reopen the thread, please PM me. Everyone else, lots of threads here.

Let me add that I am disappointed by the lack of civility exhibited by some of our members. Be civil or don't respond. Kudos to those who were able to express strong opinions while also being civil. It is possible. One member has already been placed on post moderation. More may follow.

Feel free to PM me or Ann if you have any questions.

Betsy
KB Mod


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> You know how many books you'd sell without kindle?


As a matter of fact, I do. About 12% of our unit sales...

... in seven weeks. That 12% out-earned everything else we've ever sold on Amazon combined.



> 17 promos and crickets?


43 promos. 23400-ish free downloads. 334 borrows 1400-ish sales Our top book had double-digit sales every month until December, when it tanked and never recovered. It was like someone threw a switch and that was it. It sold more copies last November than it has sold since.

As far as the promos were concerned, everyone but the author made money. Sound familiar?



> Remove that risk-free entry and... well, the river runs dry.


How does that explain the double-digit sales every month from last March until December? By all rights, that particular book was just starting to gain momentum. It was in Select last December, when the river "ran dry." *Average sales dropped 70% in a matter of a few days.* Why? Does that sound organic to you? Sales dropped another *50%* in January (traditionally the best month). 60% of our sales that month were refunded. We had more refunds in January than we had in all of 2014 for that title (and all our books in general). Why? The book didn't change.



> Or - you're not writing what your market wants to read.


It's not a question of sales, as I've stated numerous times now. When our books are visible, they sell just fine. They get good reviews. They just don't earn us any money. The problem is a) our books are rarely visible unless we pay for the marketing or b) even if our books sell, we don't earn anything.

My question remains: what are we getting for the big chunk of the money Amazon keeps? If I'm going to pay for the marketing, and do all the work myself, why does Amazon get 65% other than rent-seeking?



> As for what Amazon does for authors, they provide them the opportunity to showcase their books on a marketplace that receives massive amounts of traffic.


Good. I'd like to see some evidence of this "massive" traffic to our book pages. Why doesn't Amazon show us those numbers? Why doesn't Amazon show us a conversion rate? They have the information. A conversion rate would give us historical data we can use to improve our sales over time. Sounds like a win-win to me.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

If you want feedback on why your books aren't continuing to sell despite promotion, links would be good so we can see if there might be problems beyond Amazon somehow keeping you down...  I'd guess it is things like cover, blurb, content, writing quality, etc... There are tons of reasons books don't sell.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> There are tons of reasons books don't sell.


Any information that would shed any light on the relative visibility of our books is carefully concealed by Amazon, including the names of our customers.

Until Amazon provides proof that our books are adequately visible and not selling at the same time, there is no evidence product quality is the problem.

In the meantime, I'd like to know what I'm getting for giving up 65% of the cover price.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Instead of railing against something that might not even be happening, that you can't prove, and definitely can't control, why don't you either a) change the things you can like content, genre, covers, blurbs, etc or b) stop selling on Amazon since you don't feel their system is providing for you. 

Sometimes books just don't sell. If anyone had a fool-proof method, we would all know by now. I mean, even Amazon's own imprints don't have a perfect record of success with books they buy (they put out duds as well and books that sink quickly and just don't sell), and they have ALL the things going for them. Some books do better than others. It's kind of how the entertainment industry works.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

justphil said:


> Any information that would shed any light on the relative visibility of our books is carefully concealed by Amazon, including the names of our customers.
> 
> Until Amazon provides proof that our books are adequately visible and not selling at the same time, there is no evidence product quality is the problem.
> 
> In the meantime, I'd like to know what I'm getting for giving up 65% of the cover price.


For one, you might start charging more than $2.99 so that you get at least 70% of the cover price. Then Amazon gets only 30%. Sounds like a much better deal to me.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

justphil said:


> 43 promos. 23400-ish free downloads. 334 borrows 1400-ish sales Our top book had double-digit sales every month until December, when it tanked and never recovered. {...} the double-digit sales every month from last March until December? {...}
> It's not a question of sales, as I've stated numerous times now. When our books are visible, they sell just fine.


Putting all the numbers together, I estimate that your top-selling book was selling maybe 25-30 copies a month. That's around 1 a day, or a ranking of perhaps 70,000-100,000. The others are selling less. Sorry, but that's not 'selling just fine'.

You are talking here to the best resource on the internet for marketing self-published books. If you point folks here to your books, and ask why they're not selling, they will tell you, and no messing about. If you listen to them, they will help you get those books selling.

There isn't any magic to it. If you write a book that people want to read (most likely a genre, or a non-fiction topic that's not too niche), present it professionally (cover, blurb, sample) and promote it strategically, you WILL sell, and you will, in time, make money from it. Probably. There are no guarantees. But it can be done, and Kboards is stuffed with people who have already done it, or are in the process of doing it, and are sharing what they've learned, for those who are willing to listen.


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## Kirkee (Apr 2, 2014)

Thank you Betsy & Ann for reopening this thread, because I, for one, am interested in the topic.
Not all threads are worth opening & getting into––this one definitely is. I don't see a problem at all when members disagree, so long as it's done in a sensible/logical manner...and mud isn't being slung.
Honestly? I didn't see any mud being flung/slung/tossed here. What I saw was folks expressing themselves in a civil manner.

I have no opinions on why the OP's sales dropped, simply because I don't have all the facts, but have patiently followed the thread in order to see what others have had to say in response to this (justifiably) sensitive topic.

My general opinion of amazon? Thank (all the gods) 'Zon exists. Because without Jeff B. & his amazing company, I wouldn't have all those otherwise hard-to-find books, jazz CDs & films in my collection.
In fact, I will go so far as to say I love amazon, with the exception of KU & the Select exclusivity clause.
Did anyone twist my arm to get into either? Nope. And that's why I got out. Sales are slowly crawling back up. Am I looking to move into Bill Gates' neighborhood? Not anytime soon. But that's okay. I doubt that neighborhood would have suited me anyway.

Oops! There goes the bell. Round #2 is about to commence.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Sorry, but that's not 'selling just fine'.


You speak as if you possess some knowledge I lack. Your book _The Plains of Kallanash_ which, according to you, cost $2200 to produce is selling about one copy a day according to http://www.kdpcalculator.com/index.php That's roughly what our romance writer's top book was selling before the December switch flipped.

I think I've made it clear at this point my concern is not unit sales. We know how to get unit sales. The solution is not pouring a torrential flood of mediocre titles into the Amazon abyss hoping to move the needle, nor is it swapping out covers and blurbs like you're trying to solve a puzzle in _Myst_.

My concern is what we're getting for our money, considering we're doing all the marketing work.

The bottom line is this: if Amazon will do nothing to make our books more visible, then there is no reason for us to give them any percentage of our cover price, nor is there any reason for us to give up control over our pricing, blurbs, search visibility, cover, content, rights or reviews. There is no reason for us to put our books on Amazon at all. It doesn't make them more visible. All it does is subject us to rent-seeking.

Amazon has simply replaced traditional publishing with a web site bolted on to traditional publishing. Except in this model, there are no advances and no advertising. Our better royalty is canceled out by our book being hidden in the Indiana Jones warehouse, and Amazon is clearly using our books as loss-leaders and gimmes to entice customers into the store so they can be sold something Amazon is more interested in, like a prime membership or a new Kindle, or a movie. (The only e-books advertised on the front page are freebie borrows)

And now that we have to contend with Kindle Unlimited, we are competing with our own books and we've given up the royalty that was most of the justification for self-publishing in the first place. To be clear, the 2015 Amazon KDP value proposition is far from what it was in 2011.

Then there are issues like the famous "disappearing categories." Our top romance book was in no fewer than nine browse categories last October. As of this evening it was in two. Our romance writer spent days updating all the keywords so they would match the right categories before the holidays last year. The keywords are still there. But the browse categories aren't.

It's as if someone just turned the book's visibility from ten down to two with a dial. And this is the only book we've ever published on Amazon that has gotten any traction at all. Amazon knows it sells. But they still decided to turn its visibility off. They did it deliberately. For example. That book uses the keyphrase "new adult" According to https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A19G4ONBAU6NO3 that puts it in the "romance/new adult and college" browse category. It was in that category last October. But it isn't now.

Being absent from an entire browse category directly affects the book's visibility. Does this explain the sudden drop in sales? Only Amazon knows. Do our book pages rot if we don't continually update them? Only Amazon knows.

Frankly, I'm a little tired of Amazon having all the information (information we should have) and presenting us with a puzzle to solve before we can sell our books, then charging us over half our cover price plus a download fee for the privilege and then expecting us to do all the work.


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## Shawn Kobb (Aug 14, 2014)

I think people on here are willing to help and most are sympathetic, but it feels like you're not willing to listen.

As others have said, Amazon is providing distribution. They sell millions and millions of items (not just ebooks.) They can't possibly promote each item equally. Do you think there is a mousetrap manufacturer in China wondering why Amazon doesn't properly promote their product? You do not have to sell with Amazon. You can sell direct from your own website and keep 100% of the profit, but what you are giving up is the known entity that is Amazon. If someone wants to buy your romance ebook, they probably don't Google "romance ebook" and go to page 12 and find your website. They go to Amazon and search (or Kobo, Apple, etc.) As a comparison, you could decide to sell toasters from your garage, but Walmart will still beat you because if someone wants a toaster, they go to Walmart. It isn't that Walmart is vigorously promoting toasters.

With more information about your books, people might be able to offer some tips to better market them through Amazon. With no real data, that is hard to do.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

The Plains of Kallanash is ranked at 40k. Which, looking at my own sales data, means closer to 3-5 sales a day on .com not 1. A book ranked around 90k-100k would be a sale a day roughly.  At 3.99, the book is making 2.70 a sale, more or less. So that book is likely making at minimum $335 a month. 

Is your romance in the right broader romance categories as its two master categories? If it isn't, the new adult tag won't do much good. Also, it's possible your book got dungeoned if you have too sexy of a cover or keywords suggesting taboo or illegal content. 

Frankly though, a sale a day isn't traction. It's not much indication of real sales. I know it can feel great, especially when you are used to books that can't even do a sale a month, but in terms of staying sticky and visible, a sale a day isn't going to cut it. I'd want at least 10-15 sales a day to really expect any help from the Amazon algos, personally. And books don't sell forever. They aren't steady. A book can sell hundreds or even thousands and just fall off one day. Without things like sequels, steady advertisement, making sure you are staying on top of current trends in covers etc, there's no way to know what a book will sell month to month and no way to keep it visible, especially if it wasn't visible to begin with.

So you might feel like you had something, but from the information you've shared, it sounds like you published a book into a hot category, got a few sales off the bat, and then the book wasn't able to get real traction or sustain. I doubt it was Amazon, but without seeing the book in question, I can't tell you for sure. I'd almost be willing to bet money though that there are other issues with your title, even if you didn't get stuck in the adult dungeon for something.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> but it feels like you're not willing to listen.


With all due respect, Shawn, that statement goes both ways. I have made it clear I am not complaining about our book sales. I am pointing out that Amazon is taking most of the money and almost all of the control and giving us nothing in return. Reduced sales are an effect. They are not the cause.

The people in this thread are frantic in their attempts to change subjects. They want this to be about our covers and blurbs, because that gives them an unassailable argument based solely on their personal opinion. When presented with facts regarding the inadequacy in the business model, they can only respond by beating the blurb drum harder. The reason is because they are emotionally invested in the world-according-to-Amazon.

And to be fair, the overwhelming majority of people on this site cashed in years ago when the Amazon kimono was a little looser than it is now. They got the benefits of one to one free downloads and learned to manipulate the system with permafrees and early adoption of a young Bookbub service. A lot of them came to Amazon with established readerships as well.

Kindle Unlimited overturned what many of us spent 3.5 years building. It annihilated our ability to price our books fairly. It forced us into exclusivity and at the same time forced us to compete with our own books. To make what one sale earns us in our store, we would need to sell 35 copies of a romance or get more than ten borrows on Amazon. Our store might get a tiny, tiny fraction of the traffic Amazon gets, yet our store out-earns Amazon with fewer titles. From a dollars standpoint, Amazon is a complete waste of time.

Meanwhile, we're asked to churn out multiple titles a month on the unproven theory that constant new releases make our books sell better, only to find we are punished for their mediocre quality. We're stuck. If we polish too much, we can't get sales momentum. If we shovel them out the door faster and faster, we end up with a really big pile of invisible books instead of one invisible book.

We're asked to do all of this with not a shred of real factual data about our book sales, nor any information about who our customers are. We're handing over considerable value and getting nothing in return.



> The Plains of Kallanash is ranked at 40k. Which, looking at my own sales data, means closer to 3-5 sales a day on .com not 1.


According to http://www.kdpcalculator.com/ it's one a day.



> Is your romance in the right broader romance categories as its two master categories?


It was three months ago. It isn't any more.



> it sounds like you published a book into a hot category, got a few sales off the bat, and then the book wasn't able to get real traction or sustain


It sold consistently for eight months and then disappeared about the time our other books started cycling out of Select.



> I'd almost be willing to bet money though that there are other issues with your title


I'm quite certain that linking the book would result in a tremendously entertaining six-page thread of reasons why you don't approve of it. I'm not here to sell books to you. I'm here to question a business model that is working against us regardless of how many books we sell.

*And please forgive me for reiterating the one fact that started this series of questions*: The day our last book cycled out of Select, *all* our sales went to zero, and have stayed there for ten days straight. We haven't gone ten days without a sale in well over a year.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I'm saying the calculator you are using is off. Going on my own rankings and sales, 40k rank is about 3-5 sales, not 1. That's hard data from my own sales (I have multiple books in one of my series ranked in the 25k to 45k range and they consistently do 5 to 15 sales a day). So... data. It's nice to have.

Plenty of people are making money here without a Bookbub or without getting in early. I've never had a BB and I pull in five figures a month, all because of a series that wasn't launched until August of 2014, so not exactly an early adapter. It's tough these days, sure. But not impossible.

What do you mean it was in the romance categories and now isn't? Can't you look at the page on your dashboard and make sure you have romance categories selected? I'm not talking about keywords, I'm talking about the two master categories you select when you publish the book. If you want the keywords to get you into the subcats, you need to be in the big categories first by selecting them on the publishing page in your KDP dashboard.

As for what Amazon does, they provide a store front, deal with money and taxes, provide excellent search options and optimization, etc. They do all the drawing in and retention of people who want to buy things, bringing customers to the site through branding and name-built trust. I think of Amazon as a search engine that sells things, because they have the best discoverability of any of the bookselling sites. The others are way behind.

And you are probably right, we would pick on things like cover/blurb/content/whatever, because I'm betting those are more of an issue than Amazon the corporation personally taking notice of a book that barely sold and trying to bury it out of spite or something...


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> I've never had a BB and I pull in five figures a month, all because of a series that wasn't launched until August of 2014


That makes you one of the best-selling authors in the world. Congratulations. Why are you anonymously arguing about Amazon's business model at 3AM?



> What do you mean it was in the romance categories and now isn't?


I mean the book was in nine browse categories last October, and now it's in two.



> And you are probably right, we would pick on things like cover/blurb/content/whatever, because


You're emotionally invested in a company that writes you five-figure checks every four weeks.


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## Charmaine (Jul 20, 2012)

> How does that explain the double-digit sales every month from last March until December? By all rights, that particular book was just starting to gain momentum. It was in Select last December, when the river "ran dry." Average sales dropped 70% in a matter of a few days. Why? Does that sound organic to you? Sales dropped another 50% in January (traditionally the best month). 60% of our sales that month were refunded. We had more refunds in January than we had in all of 2014 for that title (and all our books in general). Why? The book didn't change.


Double Digit sales every month is NOT something that is starting to gain momentum. It's fizzling out. 
The high number of returns just supports my opinion of the river runs dry theory. People are more forgiving of borrowed books. I'm sure if you look at your data, the borrows were much higher than sales.
Mass returns? Means that cover and blurb are doing their job fine, but the content isn't. 
It may not be bad writing, but it probably isn't what the readers want or expect out of the genre.



> And please forgive me for reiterating the one fact that started this series of questions: The day our last book cycled out of Select, all our sales went to zero, and have stayed there for ten days straight. We haven't gone ten days without a sale in well over a year.


As I've mentioned, create another risk-free entry. Have her write a short story lead-in to her best selling series and make it perma-free.

Again, double digit sales means at most 3 sales a day, that can dry up at the drop of a hat.
If it were a couple of thousands of sales a month, then you would have good reason to be alarmed.



justphil said:


> That makes you one of the best-selling authors in the world. Congratulations. Why are you anonymously arguing about Amazon's business model at 3AM?


Just wanted to let you know that I know for a fact No Cat isn't lying, I'm a fan of her books and I happen to believe it's smart to be anonymous.
Also, It's 6:30 where I am...Reasonable waking hour.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

justphil said:


> That makes you one of the best-selling authors in the world. Congratulations. Why are you anonymously arguing about Amazon's business model at 3AM?
> 
> I mean the book was in nine browse categories last October, and now it's in two.
> 
> You're emotionally invested in a company that writes you five-figure checks every four weeks.


I am up at 3am cause I have a book due and here because I'm procrastinating writing the next chapter. 

Five figures a month is nice, but hardly puts me in the best-selling in the world category. Plenty of authors make a lot more than I do, quite a few who post here, even.

Why did your book lose categories? Did you re-publish it with different keywords or change something? If you didn't, have you tried emailing KDP support and asking why the book is no longer in the categories it should be in?

As for emotional investment, not really. It's called business. Right now, Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple, etc are all places that make it easier for me to reach my audience and get monies. So I do business with them. If I sold rakes, I'd want to get my product in Lowe's and Home Depot and Ace Hardware etc and I'd do what it took to get them to carry my stuff and make my rakes attractive to buyers so they get mine instead of some other rake. It's just business. Books aren't much different. If my rakes weren't selling, I'd look at what I could do to about the rake, not rail against Home Depot for not making me sell better.


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## Guest (Mar 4, 2015)

Here's what I believe: Amazon are the best and easiest platform to sell books on, as they have the bulk of readers / traffic. I have zero idea how to sell direct but there is no way that I would believe that selling direct would produce the same results as selling on Amazon. That's why they get their cut.

If you don't believe any of that, or don't believe Amazon deserves their royalty, don't publish with them. It's that simple.


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## B&amp;H (Apr 6, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> Here's what I believe: Amazon are the best and easiest platform to sell books on, as they have the bulk of readers / traffic. I have zero idea how to sell direct but there is no way that I would believe that selling direct would produce the same results as selling on Amazon. That's why they get their cut.
> 
> If you don't believe any of that, or don't believe Amazon deserves their royalty, don't publish with them. It's that simple.


With that kind of common sense Shane, you are at risk of breaking the internet.


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## Peter Spenser (Jan 26, 2012)

B&H said:


> As Bezos says, "Complaining is not a strategy."
> 
> If you could have sold a million books, you would have sold a million books. The fact you didn't is because readers weren't interested in buying your books, not because Amazon is developing some sort of anti-retailing persecution strategy to set you up for failure.
> 
> ...


Very much this. 100%


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## Kate. (Oct 7, 2014)

justphil said:


> To make what one sale earns us in our store, we would need to sell 35 copies of a romance or get more than ten borrows on Amazon. Our store might get a tiny, tiny fraction of the traffic Amazon gets, yet our store out-earns Amazon with fewer titles. From a dollars standpoint, Amazon is a complete waste of time.


Hi! A few times through the thread you've mentioned your frustration at not being able to control your books' prices, and this post makes it sound like you're selling books on Amazon for $0.99, but for $10 on your own site. If it's not too rude, may I ask what's behind that? Do you publish through a company that controls the pricing?

I keep my short stories at $0.99, but my novellas and novels are $2.99 or higher. The 70% royalty is much more palatable! 

(Just to add: No Cat's sales numbers are accurate. I had a book hovering around 70k-100k for a few weeks, and it averaged just over one copy a day. Of course, a lot of things go into rankings - your historical sales, borrows, and possibly even reviews, but a sale a day will keep most books at a little under 100k.)


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## Matthew Stott (Oct 22, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> If you don't believe any of that, or don't believe Amazon deserves their royalty, don't publish with them. It's that simple.


Yeah, basically Amazon owes us nothing. It would be cool if they did all sorts of helpful things for us, but if they don't want to, then that's how it is. Just do what works or feels best for you. If that means not using Amazon, then don't use it.


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## Daniel Knight (Jul 2, 2013)

justphil said:


> According to http://www.kdpcalculator.com/ it's one a day.


I followed the link to the calculator you listed above. For a rank of 40K it says that means sales between 1 and 10 (note that this is very different from 1 sale a day). This is is just one example of you selectively ignoring what doesn't fit your narrative. Plus as others have pointed out, actual sales data from authors confirms that the unit sales falls neatly between these two numbers at about 3-5 sales a day.

You also keep saying that Amazon keeps 65% of the cover price - except that is only true outside the $2.99-$9.99 price band. So either you are pricing your books very low (like $.99) or you are pricing them excessively high (above $9.99). If you are outside those price bands - you also do not pay a delivery charge so it is disingenuous of you to say Amazon is keeping 65% and charging you a delivery charge.

Even if you don't want to share a link to your actual books (which would be helpful if you want genuine advice from the very helpful people here on kboards) - surely you can at least tell us the price you were selling your books at on Amazon, and the price you are selling them at on your own site.


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## Charmaine (Jul 20, 2012)

justphil said:


> With all due respect, Shawn, that statement goes both ways. I have made it clear I am not complaining about our book sales.
> *With all due respect, Justphil, you are complaining about your sales. *
> I am pointing out that Amazon is taking most of the money and almost all of the control and giving us nothing in return.
> *So access to 1,000,000+ readers, ability to price how you want, have access promotional tools is giving us nothing in return?*
> ...


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## ArchangelEST (Jan 19, 2015)

I do agree with one major point the OP is making. That Amazon is absurdly tight-lipped when it comes to sharing the analytics data of the products they sell with the sellers themselves.

I simply cannot comprehend why one of the biggest digital stores on the planet, in the year 2015, is incapable of providing us with something as simple as basic visitor tracking. One little number. The amount of visitors our product sale's page gets in a day (heck, even a monthly number would be great). It would go a ridiculous distance towards helping us improve our product and its presentation and earning Amazon more money.

I mean, you used to be able to track visitors with a little extra code in the description box. But not any more. Why not?

What exactly is Amazon hiding? And why? Do they not want us to polish our product? Our presentation? Do they not want to make more money?

Currently, trying to perfect your book's title, cover, blurb, keywords, categories, free preview etc. is made absurdly difficult. There is no feedback numbers to work with other than sales numbers. And those fluctuate wildly as it is. And for many authors, the sales numbers are too low to even notice the effects of any changes. An author that sells 10 copies of his book a month, might improve his sales numbers by 20% by optimizing keywords for example. But how would he know this? The extra two sales he'd get in a month would still be within normal variation. Heck, he could double his sales and still not be confident that the increased sales came from anything he did.

It's just frustrating to operate in the dark.

Now, I understand that you have to play the hand dealt to you. I get that. But I've been an internet marketer for a few years now. I'm used to making informed decisions. Working off of facts. Being able to split test what works and what doesn't and get near immediate results. I'm not used to wasting my time, first waiting for several days for Amazon to re-adjust their algorithms to pick up keyword changes I've made and then wait several more weeks and hope to figure out if the changes had any effect using nothing but total sales numbers for analysis... And if I desire to run a promo during that time, I might as-well throw out all the data altogether because the sales numbers are now influenced by too many things and it's all worthless.

Argh!

But never-mind me. I'm just whining out loud because I don't see the reasoning behind the way Amazon runs things.

It's exactly this kind of behavior from Amazon that is making people think up conspiracy stories. It's why what the OP says actually tends to make sense from many angles. 

It's like Amazon wants to hide all the important data from us because they're afraid we might find that we're being ripped off or something. Is this a legitimate danger? Sometimes it feels like that.


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## Daniel Knight (Jul 2, 2013)

ArchangelEST said:


> I do agree with one major point the OP is making. That Amazon is absurdly tight-lipped when it comes to sharing the analytics data of the products they sell with the sellers themselves.
> 
> It's like Amazon wants to hide all the important data from us because they're afraid we might find that we're being ripped off or something. Is this a legitimate danger? Sometimes it feels like that.


I agree that more information would definitely be helpful to authors. Not sure why they don't at least share pageviews type information with authors. Maybe this is a suggestion that should be passed along to the likes of Hugh Howey or Joe Konrath, who are sometimes asked for feedback on the Amazon KDP program (though this might be something they have already brought up in the past).


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## ArchangelEST (Jan 19, 2015)

Daniel Knight said:


> I agree that more information would definitely be helpful to authors. Not sure why they don't at least share pageviews type information with authors. Maybe this is a suggestion that should be passed along to the likes of Hugh Howey or Joe Konrath, who are sometimes asked for feedback on the Amazon KDP program (though this might be something they have already brought up in the past).


What boggles the mind is that they used to allow people to add a piece of code to the description that gave visitor numbers. I think it was removed early last year.

Even though the code was basically a third party work-around, not something that Amazon specifically provided themselves, it showed that it was possible. For a company as large, rich and powerful as Amazon, it should not be a matter of technical difficulty to include it by default, and it would a pretty obviously benefit not only to the sellers but to Amazon themselves.

A large scale petition would probably be a good idea. Couldn't hurt.

*Gonna wake up to find the sales dashboard gone as-well one day.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I want to respond to the more information.    Let's say Amazon gave you what you wanted.  In minutes, how long would it be before someone started gaming the system? 
Now I know most of you are good writers, would you really want to know you had 100 visitors but only 1 buy.  Amazon couldn't tell you why unless they want to annoy customers with why didn't you buy this item.    I don't think Amazon wants to annoy customers.


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## Leanne King (Oct 2, 2012)

> That Amazon is absurdly tight-lipped when it comes to sharing the analytics data of the products they sell with the sellers themselves


Whilst I agree page views would be nice, I can see reasons why Amazon wouldn't want to share them.

For one thing, most folks selling through KDP (and I'm not talking savvy KBers here) would probably a) not have a clue how to use that information to their advantage, and b) be shocked by the conversion rate of page views to sales. This would lead to KDP support being inundated with messages of the _"500 people looked at my book page and only 1 person bought it, obviously you're misreporting my sales"_ type.

Even if we had page view information, we can't do proper controlled split-testing on Amazon, so it would be of limited utility.

Also, that's commercially sensitive data. None of the other major retailers share their numbers, as far as I know. There may be sound commercial reasons not to share extensively.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> would you really want to know you had 100 visitors but only 1 buy.


I have a better question. Would you really want to know you had no visitors?


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## wtvr (Jun 18, 2014)

No Cat said:


> The Plains of Kallanash is ranked at 40k. Which, looking at my own sales data, means closer to 3-5 sales a day on .com not 1. A book ranked around 90k-100k would be a sale a day roughly. At 3.99, the book is making 2.70 a sale, more or less. So that book is likely making at minimum $335 a month.
> 
> Is your romance in the right broader romance categories as its two master categories? If it isn't, the new adult tag won't do much good. Also, it's possible your book got dungeoned if you have too sexy of a cover or keywords suggesting taboo or illegal content.
> 
> ...


^^^ All that. Some sales ranks are stickier than others. Any book higher than 30K can fall right off the edge in a day or two and as more books enter the field that will continue to get more significant.

If you want a book to have a nice long tail, you have to try to get under 10K, preferably under 3K. If you can't get there, you'll see a lot of volatility in ranks and sales.

As Nocat said, a lot of immediate sales that go nowhere fast is a sign of a swing and a miss in a good category. Try again! You were close.

Personally I like the puzzle. ;-)


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

justphil said:


> I have a better question. Would you really want to know you had no visitors?


Yes. Because you should get busy sending interested readers to your page instead of blaming Amazon for your lack of sales.

Putting a product on Amazon's site doesn't_* guarantee*_ that anyone's going to look at it. If you want to sell books, you need to market them. If you can market and sell them on your own, clearly you don't need to post them on Amazon.

Amazon does a great job of providing tools to allow people to search for what they want. If no one wants your book, that's really not their problem.


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## Indigo W (Dec 27, 2014)

justphil said:


> I have a better question. Would you really want to know you had no visitors?





MyraScott said:


> Yes. Because you should get busy sending interested readers to your page instead of blaming Amazon for your lack of sales.
> 
> Putting a product on Amazon's site doesn't_* guarantee*_ that anyone's going to look at it. If you want to sell books, you need to market them. If you can market and sell them on your own, clearly you don't need to post them on Amazon.
> 
> Amazon does a great job of providing tools to allow people to search for what they want. If no one wants your book, that's really not their problem.


This ^^. I suppose if I felt like Amazon had absolutely nothing to offer, I'd move on to greener pastures instead of wallowing about in the negativity of my sales results. Amazon is obviously a very strong source of sales for many authors, but it would be silly to think Amazon is responsible for that success. And I think they make it pretty clear that they are a distribution engine, not a marketing engine. So if Amazon isn't working for you...well...you know, don't sell your books through them. Either way, the doom and gloom attitude probably won't be much of an asset to anyone no matter what endeavor they're tackling. Best of luck to you. I hope you find your happy place for book sales.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Because you should get busy sending interested readers to your page instead of blaming Amazon for your lack of sales.


I don't think it's a good use of my time to "get busy" sending customers to Amazon so Amazon can get paid.

I'm willing to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt under one condition: Prove to me "thousands" or "millions" of people are looking at our book pages and refusing to buy. Then I will freely admit I'm wrong.

But I want to see the proof first.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Hey Phil.  Since you said Amazon is only 12% of your sales, why don't you just pull your books from there.  Seems like a lot of aggravation for nothing.


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## Guest (Mar 4, 2015)

justphil said:


> 60% of our sales that month were refunded. We had more refunds in January than we had in all of 2014 for that title (and all our books in general).


That right there is a massive red flag. Returns that high tell me something is wrong inside the book, it's either the story, writing, not meeting genre expectations/in the wrong category or there was something funky wrong with the download.

With returns that high it could also explain why you only have a blip of sales when you heavily promote. People rush and one click because they see a bargain, maybe with an attractive cover, then crack it open and its returned.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Returns that high tell me something is wrong inside the book, it's either the story, writing, not meeting genre expectations/in the wrong category or there was something funky wrong with the download.


The same book had one return the entire year of 2014. It had double-digit sales every month from March through November and several favorable reviews. Nothing changed in January other than the fact we took it (and the rest of our catalog) out of Select.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

justphil said:


> I don't think it's a good use of my time to "get busy" sending customers to Amazon so Amazon can get paid.
> 
> I'm willing to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt under one condition: Prove to me "thousands" or "millions" of people are looking at our book pages and refusing to buy. Then I will freely admit I'm wrong.
> 
> But I want to see the proof first.


They haven't promised thousands or millions of people are looking at your book pages. Ever.

By publishing with them, they have made your book _available_ to millions of people who shop on Amazon. But they aren't forcing everyone that comes to their site to look at your book page and "refuse" to buy it.

You make it sound like you expected them to make a splash screen featuring your book to every person who ever pulled up Amazon to buy cat food or socks.

You can keep crying that Amazon isn't treating you special but you have the same opportunities on Amazon that anyone else has who uses it to sell their products. Playing the victim here isn't helping whatever cause it is that you think you are trying to get support for.


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## Indiecognito (May 19, 2014)

I've been trying to sort out what the original intention of this post is. Are you looking for someone to debate the merits of handing over 65%, OP?

It's all been said: raise your prices. 

Your return rate is exorbitant. Either people are mistaking your book for another due to a similar title or there's another issue. 

Take your books off Amazon.

I'm in the 5 digits a month club, and I don't think Amazon is displaying a solid gold bust of my likeness in its head office. I advertise, I write a lot. You keep talking about books that seem to have been written ages ago. Have you published anything in the last year?

Go into a brick and mortar bookstore and note who's on display. Recent releases and bestsellers. The rest are on an even playing field. That's where you sit as well.

It does feel very much like you're here to attempt to push buttons, and I can see that you're doing just that. We should all be spending our time on our next work, really, because there's no advice anyone could give that would change your views, and since you're not into linking your books (at this point I'd advise against it anyhow), there's not much that anyone can do to help. 

Good luck.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Indiecognito said:


> I'm in the 5 digits a month club, and I don't think Amazon is displaying a solid gold bust of my likeness in its head office.


Well....they are, but you just can't see it unless you put a hat on it.


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## Guest (Mar 4, 2015)

justphil said:


> It had double-digit sales every month from March through November and several favorable reviews. Nothing changed in January other than the fact we took it (and the rest of our catalog) out of Select.


You keep complaining but won't give K-Boarders anything concrete to help you. Where is a link to this book that is allegedly being sabotaged by Amazon?

"Double digits" sales could mean 10 or 99. That's a huge range.

Are the reviews verified purchase and acquired organically or ones you solicited? What is your price point? You keep saying Amazon is taking 65% of your royalty which means you're either pricing really low or really high (which is a known sales killer).

Stop being coy, if you genuinely want help then give people something to sink their teeth into, so they can come up with possible solutions and a course of action.


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## Kirkee (Apr 2, 2014)

Oh oh. I have a feeling the refs are going to step in again & break this up.

I do wish we could figure out what REALLY caused justphil's sales to suddenly
go south, though. One thing's certain: This has turned into a Rubik's Cube of a
thread.  

Miss. Marple around?


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## Indiecognito (May 19, 2014)

Jim Johnson said:


> Well....they are, but you just can't see it unless you put a hat on it.


Cheapest solid gold bust ever.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> But they aren't forcing everyone that comes to their site to look at your book page and "refuse" to buy it.


I didn't ask them to. So far, the only justification I've heard for selling books on Amazon is the "traffic" we allegedly get. Would you agree with me that a Pulitzer-candidate world-class masterpiece with a famous cover artist, a blurb by Stephen King and a hook that could land a 600 lb. tuna would sell poorly if only a handful of people visited its book page occasionally?

If so, then it is unreasonable to expect any other book to sell any better, regardless of its quality, cover, blurb or anything else.



> You can keep crying that Amazon isn't treating you special but you have the same opportunities on Amazon that anyone else has who uses it to sell their products. Playing the victim here isn't helping whatever cause it is that you think you are trying to get support for.


You seem awfully emotional and defensive for such a successful author.



> and since you're not into linking your books (at this point I'd advise against it anyhow)


Oh, I can't imagine the five-figures-a-month Albert Schweitzers in this thread would _dream_ of treating our books unfairly.



> I do wish we could figure out what REALLY caused justphil's sales to suddenly go south, though.


All that changed was we started taking books out of Select. Make of it what you will.

Until Amazon proves to me our book pages get sufficient traffic, I contend our sales, good or bad, are far more heavily influenced by Amazon's obscurity engine than anything else. Further, I contend that any author looking for a readership can expect nothing from Amazon except a bill.

I base my contention on the fact that Amazon withholds the one piece of information that would shed light on the answers. I know exactly how many people visit my book pages on our store. Amazon will never reveal the same information for our book pages on _their_ store. I know why they won't reveal that information, and so do all of you. Good day all.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

No Cat said:


> I'm saying the calculator you are using is off. Going on my own rankings and sales, 40k rank is about 3-5 sales, not 1. That's hard data from my own sales (I have multiple books in one of my series ranked in the 25k to 45k range and they consistently do 5 to 15 sales a day). So... data. It's nice to have.


The calculator isn't off. The calculator gives a range of 1-10 sales per day. The OP chose to quote the lowest number on the calculator as definitive.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

justphil said:


> You seem awfully emotional and defensive for such a successful author.


Indeed.

Good luck finding an outlet to do the work of selling your books! I expect soon you'll be back to cry about how Apple and Google won't show your books to everyone either.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> The calculator isn't off. The calculator gives a range of 1-10 sales per day. The OP chose to quote the lowest number on the calculator as definitive.


More accurately, the OP chose to quote the number listed for a sales rank of 41,288 which was the rank listed at the time it was checked. That sales rank returns a value of "close to 1 a day."



> I expect soon you'll be back to cry about how Apple and Google won't show your books to everyone either.


God bless you.


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## B&amp;H (Apr 6, 2014)

"Obscurity Engine"    

"I tell you what we'll do chaps, instead of helping our customers find products they are interested in buying, we're going to code everything like google hide and seek. The more people look fir something, the more we'll hide it from them. So if someone comes to Amazon looking for a book on haberdashery, we'll being up a page of inflatable novelty toys. Quick, ring Jeff. We'll win the internet with this one"

Yes, that's exactly how Amazon became the worlds biggest online retailer with 63 percent ebook share, by deliberately hiding products that people might want to buy.


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## 10105 (Feb 16, 2010)

Given justphil's report of his Select and post-Select sales, I would assume that the book is a good one, and, while it was in Select, amazon saw to it that it showed up in also-bought and also-viewed lists and other visible places, thus the successful sales justphil reports. I suspect that amazon ceased taking those positive marketing measures when the book left Select, simply because they prefer to direct their promotional activities to books in Select. They want us in Select. I don't think they "sabotaged" the book as has been suggested. They just took it off their face-out shelf.

They want us in Select for two reasons, I think. First, they want exclusivity--that should be obvious--in order to dominate the e-book market. Second, the KU subscription program is an encroaching model for e-book distribution, reflecting similar trends with commercial software suites.

I see no reason for justphil or anyone else to retaliate by unpublishing with amazon. Price each book in the 70% range and click Publish. It doesn't cost anything, and if your promotional activities bring your titles to the fore, many consumers will go first to amazon to find the books.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

B&H said:


> "Obscurity Engine"
> 
> "I tell you what we'll do chaps, instead of helping our customers find products they are interested in buying, we're going to code everything like google hide and seek. The more people look fir something, the more we'll hide it from them. So if someone comes to Amazon looking for a book on haberdashery, we'll being up a page of inflatable novelty toys. Quick, ring Jeff. We'll win the internet with this one"
> 
> Yes, that's exactly how Amazon became the worlds biggest online retailer with 63 percent ebook share, by deliberately hiding products that people might want to buy.


This totally explains the recommendation page.

You know since I looked at this they recommend something totally different. 
Oh wait I did totally different yesterday.


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## ArchangelEST (Jan 19, 2015)

Al Stevens said:


> Given justphil's report of his Select and post-Select sales, I would assume that the book is a good one, and, while it was in Select, amazon saw to it that it showed up in also-bought and also-viewed lists and other visible places, thus the successful sales justphil reports. I suspect that amazon ceased taking those positive marketing measures when the book left Select, simply because they prefer to direct their promotional activities to books in Select. They want us in Select. I don't think they "sabotaged" the book as has been suggested. They just took it off their face-out shelf.
> 
> They want us in Select for two reasons, I think. First, they want exclusivity--that should be obvious--in order to dominate the e-book market. Second, the KU subscription program is an encroaching model for e-book distribution, reflecting similar trends with commercial software suites.
> 
> I see no reason for justphil or anyone else to retaliate by unpublishing with amazon. Price each book in the 70% range and click Publish. It doesn't cost anything, and if your promotional activities bring your titles to the fore, many consumers will go first to amazon to find the book.


I believe it's very well documented that any book that leaves Select will suffer a massive hit in sales for at-least a few months and sometimes indefinitely. Of-course authors that rely on outside promotions and an established brand will notice it less, while smaller, less successful authors almost always take a big hit.

I've read countless posts by authors who have gotten out of Select in order to branch out to other stores and have suffered major losses for several months until the other stores started picking up enough sales to compensate.

Just yesterday someone on Pat's Facebook group said that he lost something like 70% of his sales the moment his dropped out of Select and even 2 months later he has not managed to compensate in any way. So he feels forced to return to Select.

I mean I get it too. Amazon wants to take all the money. They want to push out competitors. So they favor authors who only have their books on Amazon and rolled in Select. Jump out of KDP SELECT and it's like telling it to Amazon's face that you want to give money to their competitors.

I suppose it's hard to argue against 'Zon's logic when they decide to kill your book as a result in order to make you come back to Select.


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## Guest (Mar 4, 2015)

Al Stevens said:


> Given justphil's report of his Select and post-Select sales, I would assume that the book is a good one..


But therein lies the issue. The OP is being deliberately coy and not giving any definitive data or links to support his claim. Merely giving percentages and vague comments of selling "double digits" tells us nothing. Is a book ranked #100,000+ one doing well? Without knowing price point, perhaps the fall once pulled out of Select is no surprise at all. For example, if the book is priced over $10 I would expect more people would want to borrow it than actually buy it.


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

justphil said:


> I don't think it's a good use of my time to "get busy" sending customers to Amazon so Amazon can get paid.
> 
> I'm willing to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt under one condition: Prove to me "thousands" or "millions" of people are looking at our book pages and refusing to buy. Then I will freely admit I'm wrong.
> 
> But I want to see the proof first.


Well, aren't you just a little bundle of entitlement?


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Well, aren't you just a little bundle of entitlement?


When I'm paying the bills.


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## jillb (Oct 4, 2014)

My still a noob but I'm wondering why OP hasn't decided to put the books back in Select if pulling out hasn't worked for him? There is no right or wrong answer. Select/KU works very well for some authors but not so well for others. We don't know until we test OUR books for ourselves. Even still, I speak from personal experience when I say that not all books are created equally in terms of sales. 

I've had books drop off after the first 60 days (while still in Select). I also have a book that continued to sell at the same rate after I pulled it out of Select - that is sales rate remained the same but borrows of course dropped off since there is no more borrowing option. I'm now experimenting with price. Sales have tripled at $0.99 (out of Select). Of course, I'm making less now at $0.99 even with more sales but I'm hoping to get more visibility in exchange for royalties. 

There will almost always be some kind of opportunity cost regardless of what we decide to do. If OP feels that the guild was making more on Select then put the books back in Select! If the OP is making more on other platforms than they were in Select then just leave the book on Amazon but out of Select.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

justphil said:


> I don't think it's a good use of my time to "get busy" sending customers to Amazon so Amazon can get paid.
> 
> I'm willing to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt under one condition: Prove to me "thousands" or "millions" of people are looking at our book pages and refusing to buy. Then I will freely admit I'm wrong.
> 
> But I want to see the proof first.


Don't drive customers to your Amazon pages, then. It sounds like maybe you haven't been recently. Can you prove you're getting even 1 page view on your books that aren't selling? Have you done promo since coming out of Select?

Amazon, of course, has page view info. It shares with different levels of business partners. KDP is not a level that is privy. They made no promises about metrics other than providing you with sales numbers. Do you know another retailer who provides that info? You seem to be singling Amazon's practices out, yet they are pretty much industry standard.

Our publishing co-op thing has sold over 1M books on Amazon. And we've given away 1.6M+ books there. For 80% of our books, we find they don't sell much except when they or a book in their series is promoted. For those 80% we work for traction on Amazon every single day. Some achieve it, some never do. Some make money only twice a year during big promo campaigns and snooze the rest of the time. It's all book by book.

Some of our titles have been inserted in the recommendation engine and they sell fairly nicely on their own. But they earned a spot in the engine by selling hundreds of copies per day when they first released ... because we worked our behinds off promoting them. The engine doesn't reward one-day spikes.

Try other promoters. Start a newsletter. Lurk on KBoards to find other ideas for how to promote, if you're serious. Understanding your industry and how your business needs to be positioned to survive in it is key.

Arguing with folk who started out the same as you and have figured out the business of selling isn't going to get you anywhere. Many folk on this forum started out selling squat, then worked hard to learn how to market and to take advantage of the opportunities the Amazon marketplace affords. There are resources out there to help you. Or a wealth of info to be gleaned from the archives here. But it takes time and energy to learn just like any other business.

Amazon isn't going to change its policy. That means YOU have to do the changing. Put the time in. Learn. Listen to those who've had success. Try new things. Adapt. Evolve.

Ranting against the machine is useless. Turn that time into figuring out how to work WITH the machine.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Don't drive customers to your Amazon pages, then. It sounds like maybe you haven't been recently. Can you prove you're getting even 1 page view on your books that aren't selling? Have you done promo since coming out of Select?
> 
> Amazon, of course, has page view info. It shares with different levels of business partners. KDP is not a level that is privy. They made no promises about metrics other than providing you with sales numbers. Do you know another retailer who provides that info? You seem to be singling Amazon's practices out, yet they are pretty much industry standard.
> 
> ...


As usual, Phoenix wins the thread. This times 1000000000000.


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## Kirkee (Apr 2, 2014)

Gotta agree with Annie. Way to go, Phoenix!

Justphil, not meant to make you feel any worse, having had the carpet
yanked out from under you is no fun, but am still puzzled by the whole
thing. 

What really happened? Would it be possible to have a Q&A on the board (like we did
with the BookBub peeps) with a 'Zon rep (or two or three) one of these days?
Just so we can have a better understanding of how things are done
over there? 
Is that too much to ask? Mr. Bezos, sir?


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

Did you ever get to the bottom of your high return rate? It's not mentioned in your other thread.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

We don't have many returns nowadays.  Not sure why they happened in the first place.  I can tell you it was not taken well by most of us at the time.  We've never seen sales go south that fast all at once before.


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## RipleyKing (Mar 5, 2013)

Do things your way, period. 

I just started doing things different, my way 100%, and have yet to spend one thin dime. In the last week, doing things my way, I've sold two books and had one borrow. That makes three for this year. The two borrows this year, they read both, all the way through. One 5 star review on the first book to sell this year. 

None of my books are free. 

Three books in one week, doing things my way. For me, that's sweet.

What I'm doing has nothing to do with books. I'm working on book 17, and I'm not giving up, but I am forging my own path. I don't have to pump out a book a month. I just have to tell people I exist. People. Ordinary, off-the-street, people. People who have money, read for enjoyment, and have zero interest in being a writer. 

My last post here, too. I'll ghost, but that's it. Now to go out with a bang.

Self-publishing was based on the sole principle that no gatekeepers are wanted or needed. Let the people decide. 

Writers care about their books. Not your books. The marketing newsletters will continue to become ineffective as long as they adhere to solely marketing themselves to writers.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2016)

I don't agree, but it's always good to get a different perspective on anything, and I love your rant.

Good luck to you.

Will


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

n.b. the original post in this thread is about 18 months old, as are all but the last handful of responses.


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## 10105 (Feb 16, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> n.b. the original post in this thread is about 18 months old, as are all but the last handful of responses.


Another recent thread on the same subject by the same OP linked to this one, which is probably why it's been resurrected.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Thanks, Al...we were aware of that--but you've made me realize we should lock this one, since there is a more current thread,  to prevent parallel conversations from taking place.

Thanks to all for understanding.  Sorry for any confusion.  PM me if you have any questions.

Betsy
KB Mod


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