ROBUST discussion

http://kriswrites.com/2014/12/23/busi...

This is amusing. Remember how I was abused in 2010 for pointng out the irrationality of those who announced "Amazon is my best friend"?

I never could understand those people who were gaming the system with the algorithms. All I could do is write what I wanted to write and try to market it. If it doesn't sell, it's a combination of my fault and luck.

In March 2014 an algorithm change cut my sales by 65% on everything except the paperback of Teen Guide to Sex and Relationships, which goes up a little each year. I abandoned all marketing except an automated twitter feed. The sales continued dismal. During the summer, my automated twitter feed provider went out of service for retooling. I also suspended doing my author interview series, which I felt was taking away my writing time and not producing the publicity I wanted, partly because of a poor platform (webs.com free site). Accordingly, I had no marketing and no advertising.

My sales went back up slowly, from 30% of what they had been up till February, to 60% of what they had been, where they now reside. I did nothing to make that happen. It was all the Amazon algorithm change and the vagaries of the market, and whatever residual from what I used to do, which I assume to be close to nil.

I'm not smart in business like Rusch, but I learned a lesson from this. My sales were all along driven by Amazon's recommendation system and not much else. Everything else I was doing might have had rewards -- meeting other authors has been richly rewarding -- but sales was not a reward.

I am also mindful of the concept of 10,000 hours practice, established by the visionary Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success and I know that I don't have 10,000 hours in the self-published author business. I have it in writing, I guess, but the author business includes WHAT to write these days, and I still need my 10,000 hours in that. So really, I have no right to resent my low commercial presence.

Rusch's business talk has great value. I read her stuff whenever anyone links to it. That said, for me, these things are more interesting than relevant. I need to figure out what I can write that people will buy. The other factors are, at my level of energy and with my financial resources, out of my control.

It's easy to make money on Amazon, Matt.

You need to publish a pornographic (you should lie that it is"erotic") short story (which you will of course lie is "a novel" or at least "a book") once a week, building up into several series. The titles, according to the best advice on KBoards, should currently all contain the words BBW, Alpha, and Billionaire. It's called "staying on top of the wave".

Andre Jute wrote: "It's easy to make money on Amazon, Matt.

You need to publish a pornographic (you should lie that it is"erotic") short story (which you will of course lie is "a novel" or at least "a book") once a ..."

Sheesh!

Matt wrote: "I never could understand those people who were gaming the system with the algorithms. All I could do is write what I wanted to write and try to market it. If it doesn't sell, it's a combination of ..."

It's interesting to hear this because I'm coming to the same conclusion. I've had my books on other platforms but sales there don't get you any more visibility. At least on Amazon, the more you sell, the more likely people are to find you. Without that we'd be stuffed. Apparently, a lot of big sellers are leaving Select because KU has cut their incomes by up to 25%, but I'm doing the opposite, because, as a low selling author, it allows me to reach new readers. So far it's working. My KU books are 'selling' more than the non-select books. I have at least one more I'm planning to add to select.

Tahlia wrote: "Andre Jute wrote: "It's easy to make money on Amazon, Matt.

You need to publish a pornographic (you should lie that it is"erotic") short story (which you will of course lie is "a novel" or at least "a book") once a ..."

Sheesh! "

I know. I'm just reporting the advice from some people on KBoards who say that rather than listen to the "failure" Rush, we should listen to them because they make a bomb on Amazon (one reports an income of $10K+ per month, or perhaps per week).

Many of us seem to be having the same problem. But, sorry Andre, I can't bring myself to write pornography. How about a simpler solution. We buy each other's books and exchange thoughts and critiques. If we agree on the quality of one another's books, then we add positive reviews to Amazon and copy to blogs or social media. Weak proposal perhaps, but something. Of course, we have the risk that we thoroughly dislike one another's books. Then all bets are off.
Happy NewYear,
David Hillstrom

David, I'm not advising anyone to publish pornography; everyone on ROBUST will reject such advice scornfully. I'm just being sarcastic about the tide of excrement drowning literature, pandering to the lowest common denominator.

In any event, I'm long gone from Amazon. When my ebook publisher asked all her authors whether they would rather not be on Amazon, the vote was unanimous. I had suggested it, and of course I voted for it; I was certain there's a different, superior, quality of readers outside Amazon. We left Amazon, there was a momentary drop in sales, but Apple has since made it up and even sales on on B&N are much better. Our readers have followed us, and we've found new ones.

But, of course, I can't advise that as a general policy. We have safety nets (we can go back to trad publishing individually, or the entire publising house has an offer on the table for it and all its authors, or go back to Amazon, even), though they haven't proven necessary. However, others who've bitten the bullet without the safety nets Continuing its policy of making authors and publishers pay for market share for the Kindlehave survived and some have prospered. I've concluded that for the quality writers, Amazon is a dead end, a nasty attention-soak.

As for Amazon's changes, for instance Kindle Unlimited, which openly discriminates against indies, I predicted in Jauary 2011 that Amazon would recover falling profits from the indies, the only people who can't hit back: "Why Amazon will recover falling profits from indie writers", see http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/ar... The key par reads: "Or will Amazon lower the 70% “royalty” they pay authors in an effort to boost their own corporate profits?" That's exactly what Kindle Unlimited did.

It wasn't the only time I took up the theme. at http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/ar... in October of 2011 we find "Continuing its policy of making authors and publishers pay for market share for the Kindle..."

As usual, on both occasions I got howled down on KB as a "traitor".

Andre Jute wrote: "As usual, on both occasions I got howled down on KB as a "traitor".

Andre, during his speech, the entire speech that is, Patrick Henry was also howled at as a traitor. He wasn't of course. He's a patriot. "Give me Liberty or give me death!"

You sir, are no traitor. You're a Patriot. Indies everywhere should be aspired, but there are Torries out there, my friend, who still bow to the 'Zon while it sits on that lofty throne.

When a true regime change hits, whenever it may come, Indies such as you and I and all others here on Robust will do more than survive. We'll be watching the loyalists wonder what happened to their market share, and to their sales.

Sony was the first huge one to lose ebooks for a better bottom line. Amazon recently reported the worst loss in revenue for 2014.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/20...

Their investors are seeing red, and they want their pound of flesh when this trend repeats at the end of Q4.

Guess who will lose their 3 Million lending bonus when that corporate ax goes cutting expenses, as a nice, small start?

You can hold me to that prediction. ^_^ If I'm wrong, I'll be just as surprised if I wake up one morning with my head sewn into the carpet.

The KB pornography crew aren't going to lose their sales unless Amazon curbs erotica in some way. I just can't figure out who is reading all that stuff. I know pornography in general has the largest media share in the U.S., but I don't know why.

I go back to K-boards every so often to see what has happened and try to accomplish some networking or learn something. I may learn something, but I can't network. It hasn't changed. The players may be different, other than the mods, from when I joined in 2011, but it's not an open forum in the sense that the only way to get a dialogue going is to be blatantly offensive or to know already the person you are in dialogue with. I used to contemplate finding a partner with whom to stage a Kindleboards battle; we would pre-script our insults and hostile rhetoric and laugh at those that we fooled. I know I couldn't just go pick a real fight. I'd be banned and the other person would win the day with aplomb. Were this not so, I would have taken on David Dalglish back in the day, that smug orc that he is.

Matt wrote: "I know pornography in general has the largest media share in the U.S., but I don't know why."

Sex sells, my friend. The more lewd, the more erotic, the more taboo, the more people will buy it. Hefner didn't make his fortune from writing articles. He made it from publishing photographs of sexy naked women.

When reading, the people in your imagination has a level of acceptance, a level of perfection for what you think that character should look like, and thus it becomes easier to get 'turned on' by the steamy sex scene that is embedded into the human mind. There is no challenge of 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' as what you imagine they look like is already supremely acceptable in all visualized aspects.

An example: The woman he was staring at displayed well formed breasts.

It doesn't matter who is doing the mental picture, what they envision as 'well formed breasts' is their personal idea of perfection. A picture of a woman, or any hired actress, has preset limits on what they look like, and while attractive, not all men will find her boobs to be well formed. Too big, too small, all sorts of opinions form. This is not the case with imagining the woman in an individual's mind.

So that is why the more gnarly the encounter, the higher degree of taboo, those readers get off on it.

Sad, but true. I refuse to go that route myself. All it would do is put a price on my soul, and I'm not that cheaply bought in the markets of whatever afterlife is waiting for us.

^_^

Matt, the way I understand it, from reading a single thread on KBoards (I have neither the time nor the stomach for more):

a) everyone but the pornographers have lost sales because of Kindle Unlimited,
and
b) everyone, including most of the pornographers, have lost income because of Kindle Unlimited, in some cases drastically,
but
c} Kindle Unlimited has favoured the pornographers above the respectable novelists; it pays a flat rate, regardless of length, and the pornographers have almost always published very short pieces (perhaps because their market has a short attention span) at very short intervals, so they collect many times the same income as a full length novelist.
so that
d) a number of constant pornographers have not only done well but better under KY than under the previous arrangement
because
e) of the indies the pornographers are the only ones who are more visible under KU than under the previous Amazon arrangements

Amazon pays the trad publishers full price for even a partial read on Kindle Unlimited, because they have to as Scribd (where I have a membership) pays the full whack. But Amazon pays indies a part-share of a pot arbitrarily fixed in advance (some big-selling indies also got a signing-on bonus but it didn't make up for losses and many are now dropping out). This is blatant discrimination against the indies in favour of trad-published books, and it also depresses the visibility that the indies previously enjoyed on Amazon by pushing the perennial bestsellers from the trad houses up the ranks. Even this little bit of income is under threat as Amazon tries to turn losses to profitability, as noticed by the USAToday article Daniel refers us to above; I pointed out this likelihood on my blog *three years ago* -- and one of the idiots who abused me for it was the same David Dalglish you mention as particularly objectionable (who also waspishly told me "Amazon is my best friend" and then promptly went away to trad publishing the first time they offered!).

Well written erotica is hard to find in the indie arena, but Pavarti K Tyler writes them like literary fiction. Very nice. Most readers, unfortunately, don't know the difference.

It's good to hear you can survive without Amazon, Andre. I've come to the realisation that my work is just too far out of the box to appeal to a mass market.

I have no problem with well-written erotica which answers to the same critical evaluation as all other literature. I'd welcome the author of The Story of O. But crude pornographers do not belong in my profession.

The people on Amazon must obviously include some of my market but on the whole I think they're new people, the kind we never saw in a bookshop or a library before because they would have felt uncomfortable there. I was shocked by their attitudes to writers when as an experiment I mixed with them on Amazon's own fora. Those active on the fora or not book people by any definition I am familiar with.

I founded ROBUST specifically as a place for Sierra to say whatever she wanted, because she was badly scared by the people on Amazon fora reporting her to Amazon, and the mindless behaviour of the Amazon customer service clowns. Nobody is likely to consider me oversensitive to how a bunch of 22 year old failed programmers perceive me, but eventually even I got tired of having some kid threaten me once a week. Amazon is very clearly not a publisher by any definition I would use.

So neither the customers nor the vendor were my sort of people, nor of the other CoolMain Press authors.

However, our sort of readers are opinion-formers and early adopters. So the next quesiton was, what happened to them when they joined the electronic revolution? It turned it out it was the same answer that curled our mouths with distaste. Amazon is crude. Everything it makes and sells is crude. It's manner of selling stuff is crude. Once you bring an upmarket niche marketer's logic to bear on the question it is pretty obvious that the people who read our books also sense this and migrate instead to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, and so on. They may even do it consciously, deliberately, from a sense of superiority. Can't say I blame them.

In any event, Gemma boosted the prices, sales on those outlets actually rose at the higher prices (perhaps because we were no longer perceived as grubbing it out at the bottom of the barrel), and nobody got short-changed. Bur that wasn't even a consideration in the decision; we just didn't feel at home on Amazon.

That, unfortunately, doesn't mean I can recommend leaving Amazon to everyone else, or even to anyone else who needs the money. The safest way to proceed is to distribute through every possible channel, meaning at least Smashwords and D2D and Amazon. The first two will put you in Apple, B&N, Kobo, libraries, Scribd's subscription service (which is said to be dancing on Amazon's). Split your work in half, use one half to see if Amazon's exclusivity deals work for you, use the other half to build up a presence in other markets.

The key thing to understand is that the readers in these markets are not the same people, nor the same kind of people, as on Amazon.

This exclusive focus on Amazon is the worst thing that the indies have done to themselves. Amazon is not your friend.