The Amazon Conundrum
The Amazon Conundrum sounds like the title of one of my thrillers, but it’s about thrillers rather than being one.
See, Amazon has this “Prime” program for Customers and for Kindle books.
For customers, the select program starts with paying $75 per year to get unlimited free shipping. It’s a damned good deal. I’ve been a member since the program began. And for the same $75, my wife and son both get free two-day shipping.
Customers also get to “loan” certain Kindle books to other Kindle users. For free.
That’s where the author … and the conundrum happen.
THE CONUNDRUM FOR AUTHORS
If you’re an author or publisher you can enroll a book in the “KDP Selectprogram. And you can make $2.40 every time a Prime customer loans the book. Given that most of my books are priced at $2.99 or $3.99 and Amazon gets 30% of that, my net looks pretty good.
The conundrum starts when the book is enrolled in the Select program. You have to agree to make your book an Amazon Kindle exclusive for 90 days (renewable if you choose.) Amazon has a pretty good robot that spiders the web and will get on your case if they find it for sale as an ebook somewhere else.
That means no Nook, no Kobo, no Smashwords, no Apple iBookstore.
Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and others cry “foul” at the program.
But you don’t have to be in the Select program to offer your book on Amazon as a Kindle. That seems fair enough.
BUT DON’T YOU LOSE SALES?
In the past nine months I have had six ebooks for sale — one original and five of mine that I got the rights back from their legacy New York publishers.
For half of that nine months, my books were not in the Select program and for sale everywhere. And they have been in the Select program for the other half.
At this point, the money I have made from the $2.40 “loan fee” for books in the Select program is a bit over $1,200 — more than 12 times the total amount of money I have made from all other ebook sales combined.
In essence, I lost more than $1,100 during the months I was not in the Select program.
MIXED EMOTIONS
My head and my bank account have no problems with the Select decision. My heart is another matter.
I would like my books to be for sale everywhere.
And the Chief Technology Officer for Smashwords, Bill Kendrick, is an incredibly talented developer (and hugely intelligent and likeable guy) whom I mentored when he worked for me at winebusiness.com as a college sophomore in the mid-1990s. I’d like to see Bill succeed.
I also like Bill’s boss, Mark Coker who founded Smashwords. I’d like to see them and Smashwords make it big.
I don’t have an answer to this head/heart conundrum.
The solution is for Barnes and Noble and Apple’s iBookstore and everybody else selling ebooks to learn how to compete so they can sell more ebooks. Right now, they spend all their energy kvetching, moaning, groaning and bemoaning Amazon’s dominance.
