{"id":1359,"date":"2010-11-21T12:14:43","date_gmt":"2010-11-21T16:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=1359"},"modified":"2010-11-21T12:14:43","modified_gmt":"2010-11-21T16:14:43","slug":"is-amazon-feeding-the-kindle-by-starving-createspace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/21\/is-amazon-feeding-the-kindle-by-starving-createspace\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Amazon Feeding The Kindle By Starving Createspace?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It's tinfoil hat time again.\u00a0\u00a0I snuck into Mr. Quack's secret room<\/a> and borrowed one of his.\u00a0 To get it I had to break the code to unlock the secret box<\/a> where he stores the alien abduction\/blocking government surveillance gear (most of it is multi-purpose).\u00a0\u00a0Chasing the snark I sent him after<\/a> won't take\u00a0long, so I better make this post quick.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For some time I've been checking my book and ebook\u00a0sales\u00a0with a fervor and dedication unmatched by most religions.\u00a0\u00a0But as time passes it has perturbed me more and more that so few of those sales are for the paperback versions of my books available through Amazon's Createspace<\/a>.\u00a0 I sell a couple of paperbacks a month and that number should be much, much higher.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CS<\/a> now distributes paperbacks to\u00a0other retailers, so my paper books are\u00a0not just available at Amazon, they're sold\u00a0at bookstores across the net - from Barnes and Noble<\/a> to Books a Million<\/a> and to\u00a0scores of other retailers.\u00a0 So the books are out there for purchase in lots of places.\u00a0 Plus, not everybody owns an ereader (yet) but\u00a0everybody\u00a0can read paperpacks. \u00a0Everybody has bought paperbacks for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So why\u00a0is it that my ebooks\u00a0far, far, FAR outsell the paperbacks?<\/p>\n

It's the price.\u00a0\u00a0CS<\/a> is a POD<\/a> (print on demand) company.\u00a0 Under the old system, indie authors had to\u00a0pay big up front fees and pay to have their books mass produced.\u00a0 Then they had to market and sell the books themselves.\u00a0\u00a0I understand that Dan Brown<\/a> used to sell paperbacks out of his automobile trunk.\u00a0 But under the new POD systems, there are no upfront fees and the company will market and distribute your books if you enroll\u00a0in the \"pro\" plan for $39 per\u00a0year.\u00a0 So most folks - nearly all indie authors these days - have long ago dumped the old paperback companies and are going with one of the POD companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It's a great idea in theory and it would be a great idea in practice - except for the price structure.\u00a0\u00a0A writer could opt out of the pro plan and put the books up on just Amazon and charge a \"fairly\" reasonable rate for them.\u00a0 But everyone wants their books out in more venues.\u00a0 So we opt into the distribution system.\u00a0 That comes with big old royalties to Amazon.\u00a0 Under the structure, a paperback that a writer could buy directly for just over $4 has to be sold for like $16.99 to net a writer $2.75 in royalties.\u00a0 Ouch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And you know what?\u00a0 $16.99 is a hell of a lot of money to pay for a paperback.\u00a0 So very few buyers purchase indie paperbacks.\u00a0 They skim over them and wonder what kind of nut thinks their book is worth that kind of money.\u00a0 Most probably have a vision of authors expecting the Brinks truck<\/a> to drive to their house and drop off money.\u00a0 The big\u00a0price tag keeps sales of indie paperbacks low.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I got to thinking about all of this the other day while I was\u00a0doing my blog post<\/a> for the Marianne's blog<\/a>.\u00a0 I do appreciate the fine folk at Amazon and CS.\u00a0 As I wrote, I'd just appreciate them a lot more if they charged a lot less in royalties.\u00a0 I even emailed CS and suggested the company fix the royalty structure.\u00a0 I pointed out that selling more for less can work out well.\u00a0 I suggested they just ask Walmart.<\/p>\n

Then it occurred to me to wonder what it all means.\u00a0 Amazon is the King of Marketing.\u00a0 Why does Amazon have in place such a ridiculous royalty structure for paperbacks, when they charge nothing to a writer to sell on Kindle.\u00a0 Not only that, but AZ just\u00a0put in place a new royalty structure at Kindle where writers can make 70% of their set purchase price as royalties, instead of the former 35%.\u00a0 Amazon\u00a0clearly must know that they'd sell a lot more paperbacks if they lowered the royalty structure.\u00a0 So why aren't they doing that?\u00a0<\/p>\n

That's when it hit me.\u00a0\u00a0Amazon is pushing the Kindle at the expense of every other platform and at the expense of writers who write for those platforms.\u00a0 Amazon is feeding the Kindle by starving Createspace.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It probably shouldn't come as such a surprise.\u00a0\u00a0Amazon bought a little company called Mobipocket<\/a> quite a few years ago so that it could siphon off the technology and use it to create the Kindle.\u00a0 Once Amazon had drained the goodie out of the deal, it left Mobi sitting around to molder and hopefully die of its own accord.\u00a0 I bet\u00a0Amazon was surprised to learn that so many Mobi authors won't\u00a0take their books off the Mobi platform until they get paid.\u00a0 See, right now Amazon, which pays its Kindle and\u00a0CS royalties religiously, is holding in its big corporate pockets\u00a0a huge debt owed to Mobi authors who were signed up under contracts that no pay out would be made until sales reached $150.00.\u00a0 Amazon hasn't changed that policy, even in today's reality when it could pay through Paypal accounts or direct deposits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amazon bought Mobi to kill it.\u00a0 Has it decided to do the same with CS?\u00a0<\/p>\n

A little while ago Amazon was crowing because ebook sales for the Kindle were more than doubling hardcover and then paperback sales on the site.\u00a0 Amazon's founder had predicted a few months earlier<\/a> that the Kindle would kill print.\u00a0 And then the sales predictions seemed to prove it out.\u00a0\u00a0It was a self fulfilling prophecy.<\/p>\n

If Amazon wanted to grow its CS affiliate, it'd be working on changing the royalty structure. It would put a structure in place that made it possible for a writer to sell a paperback for less than $10.00 and still make money.\u00a0\u00a0Amazon would sell a lot more paperbacks and it would make more by charging less.\u00a0 All of that is true but - it wouldn't help the Kindle.<\/p>\n

Now, I've got to go.\u00a0 I hear Mr. Quack's car pulling up.\u00a0 He's bagged the snipe<\/a>.\u00a0 I've got to get his tinfoil hat<\/a> back to its hiding place before I'm caught.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It's tinfoil hat time again.\u00a0\u00a0I snuck into Mr. Quack's secret room and borrowed one of his.\u00a0 To get it I had to break the code to unlock the secret box where he stores the alien abduction\/blocking government surveillance gear (most of it is multi-purpose).\u00a0\u00a0Chasing the snark I sent him after won't take\u00a0long, so I better ...continue reading \"Is Amazon Feeding The Kindle By Starving Createspace?\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1359"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1362,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions\/1362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}