Monday, March 25, 2019

Does Self-Publishing Still Work?

Does Self-Publishing Still Work in 2019? Maybe. Here's What You Need to Know

In our last writing chat session, Jon Stars and I discussed methods and trends in self-publishing. Tune in Mondays at 7:00 to see the next live session. If you'd like to be a part of the next discussion, tune in or drop a comment! 

Self-publishing has been around as long as rebel writers have existed. But self-publishing as we think of it now started with the rise of the internet and, most pointedly, with Amazon’s self-publishing platform, now called Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Like many things Amazon has done, it started out great. And then... Well. We'll get to that. You may be wondering, does self-publishing still work in 2019? 

Self-publishing presents terrific opportunities for budding authors and eliminates gatekeepers that have been know to suppress alternative viewpoints and minority groups. More writers are self-publishing than ever before, and many are wondering why readers aren’t finding them when they self-publish. I’ve self-published eight books now and, while I definitely don’t claim to have all the answers, I could write an additional book about what not to do.

The Danger: Vanity Publishers


As the uncomplimentary name might suggest, vanity publishers are not groups you want to go to. Unfortunately, many vanity publishers disguise themselves—or attempt to—as legitimate publishers. There is one big red flag that marks vanity publishers: you pay them up front.

Does that sound like a scam? It should. Because it is.

Of course, nobody works for free. But traditional publishers work on a royalty basis, which means they take a cut of the sales post-publishing. That, in turn, explains why traditional publishers aren’t crazy about new, untested ideas or viewpoints unsupported by a large audience. Today, this is also why traditional publishers need authors to show they have support from readers beforehand.

Vanity publishers, on the other hand, turn profits from authors, not from the sale of books. Sadly, this often means deceiving and exploiting authors, claiming to provide editing, marketing, formatting, posting to particular platforms and a number of other shoddy, overpriced or unnecessary services. They use annoying and deceptive tactics, including mass amounts of spam and unwelcome phone calls. 

The start of one such promotional email. Working in internet marketing by day and a writer by night, I know this is a marketing tool designed to get me to move to the next "buyer funnel" stage. Note the vague language ("educate, motivate, and support" how?) and odd promises ("reach your goal of becoming a published author"). Stay away!
 

It’s good to know in this case that all businesses must follow the CAN-SPAM act. The CAN-SPAM act means, among other things, every business that sends you emails must give you a way to opt out (it’s supposed to be obvious, but it’s usually in tiny “unsubscribe” or “manage these emails” text at the bottom of each email). You can report CAN-SPAM violations to the Federal Trade Commission, and if a vanity publisher ran away with your cash, consider reporting false advertising to the FTC or Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as well. https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0038-spam#report

Note the "unsubscribe" option at the bottom of the email.  I received these emails--and calls, though I never submitted my phone number, which is super creepy--from a print on demand service I previously liked, and actually vouched for in our recent livechat. Not impressed, Lulu, not impressed--and I won't be making future recommendations.
Long story short, listen to your fellow writers to find reputable services, and never, ever give money up front!

Not a Scam: Print on Demand Publishers


Print on demand publishers are similar to vanity presses, but they provide a real function: they actually print your books. Some, like my previously beloved Lulu, have recently blurred the lines between print on demand publisher and vanity publisher.

Print on demand publishers are not really publishers at all, but printing presses. The process is fairly simple; you submit your manuscript as a PDF or similar file, do some formatting, and then purchase paper copies complete with the covers you uploaded. Your books are priced based on the length of the book, and other features. Since they operate on the advantage of economies of scale, each book costs less per book when you order more.

Be careful how many books you order.

It’s tempting to take advantage of discounts and get dozens of copies of your beautiful finished book. But, save some trees and order less. It doesn’t make your friends or family bad or uncaring if they don't read your book—many people just don’t enjoy reading, don’t enjoy the genre you’re writing, or they’re just busy. Don’t take it personally. Also, if you are a friend or family member to an author, do them and yourself a favor and don't make promises to read a book when you know you won't. It's okay.

Sadly, some print on demand publishers have become vanity publishers.  

I’ve published my previous books with Lulu.com, and I had previously had a good experience with them. Unfortunately and very recently, Lulu has blurred the line between print on demand publisher and vanity press, sending unwelcome calls and emails from “publishing consultants" (see pictures above from recent emails). I’ve never used Lulu’s others services, including editing, formatting and “marketing,” but they weren't pushy about these services before. For printing, I’ve always got what I paid for, but their recent scammy tactics have frankly disappointed me. The previous point still stands: pay for printing, but don’t pay for things like marketing, exposure, anything associated with social media, education courses, "connections" with agents, posting to this platform or that one, blog tours, press releases, webpages, etc. etc. etc.  The “publisher” may actually do these things to some extent, but it won’t help your book sales.

Another popular platform is CreateSpace, which Amazon bought in 2005. I would not recommend them either. Which brings me to my next point.

Is Self-Publishing on Amazon Worth it? The Short Answer is No.


Long story short, self-publishing on Amazon no longer works and isn't worth it. The company is covered in bad press and bad books, takes too much of your royalties and brings you no readers. Let's explain that further.

Full disclosure: I have published all my previous books with Amazon. I will not publish any more and I'm working on moving all books to a new platform permanently. While I personally don't agree with supporting businesses that use harmful business strategies, the simple truth is Amazon just doesn't work for authors anymore. 

You don’t have to dig very deep to see the dirt covering Amazon. In fact, a lot of journalists a lot smarter than me have written volumes on it:


Perhaps the saddest part is that this took me only about seven minutes to compile. That’s because you can look in any direction—fair pay, employment practices, privacy, free enterprise, taxes, and more—and Amazon is terrible.

You may be wondering how Amazon could be so horrible--they just sell books and do-dads online, right? Well, no.

“Despite Amazon's dominance in e-commerce, online sales are not actually a main profit engine for the company. Instead, its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, has actually generated the majority of Amazon's operating income since 2016. Profits from advertising and third-party sellers are also booming.”

Have you ever wondered where your data goes when you submit it? When post a picture, when you read an article on an online publication, when you submit a review, when countless companies track your movements across their site to send you ads later—where is all that information stored? It goes to Amazon. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the largest cloud-service data storage provider, meaning they store more data than anyone else in the world. An estimated 70% of everything you do online touches Amazon.  

AWS is so ubiquitous in fact that a journalist tried to stop using it—and it was impossible.

Amazon's empire is enormous, spanning everything from logistics to food to robotics to pharmaceticals and much more. This deeply concerning level of unchecked vertical and horizontal integration—combined with the fact that one of their services has actually become impossible to stop using—is the number one reason I, personally, avoid Amazon services in every way that is possible. 
 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-not-just-amazon-and-whole-foods-heres-jeff-bezos-enormous-empire-in-one-chart-2017-06-21

Why am I writing all of this in a post about self-publishing? Because Amazon Kindle Direct Services (KDP) is the go-to platform for aspiring authors. And it shouldn’t be.

You spend at least months, probably years on your book. For most writers, it’s an important part of who you are and an expression of yourself. It’s your art.

Is this the type of business you want your art to support? 

If you’re not moved by my (and many, many others writers’) Amazon chronicle, there’s another very obvious and perhaps more practical reason: publishing on Amazon doesn’t work.

Publishing on Amazon Doesn't Work


As the largest platform for self-publishing marketplace, Amazon seems like a good place to reach readers directly, organically. When I self-published my first book in 2011, that was my hope. And, to some degree, it did work. I was 18 years old, didn’t know anything about book marketing, but readers, strangers, found my work.

Unfortunately, now that there’s over 3,000,000 books in the Kindle Store alone, this frankly doesn’t happen anymore. If you do not direct people to your book, no one will find it organically on Amazon. About 95% of self-published books on Amazon are hardly ever seen by readers.

In fact, Amazon’s own data bears this out. I found this using Kindle data from one of my older books, but any author using the platform can find this info in Author Central under the Sales Info tab and Sales Rank selection. The book is a far cry from a bestseller, but it provides some interesting insights.
 



From these images, it looks like the book is getting weird activity spikes. In August 2018, for example, The King of the Sun goes from #2,400,000 in the Kindle store to #135,000. What makes the book jump over two million places in the sales rank? Must get a lot of sales all of a sudden, right? 

Well, no. Less than 1 reader a month.

While Amazon does explain (though not clearly) that changes in sales rank are also caused by sales of other books, it still doesn't bode well for every book lower than spot #135,000. Any book selling significantly better would not be surpassed and not subject to these volatile swings, so these lower spots must have comparably low activity. The more modest jumps earlier in the book's shelf-life also bode badly. The sales activity didn't change significantly over the book's life--the reason the swings become more dramatic is because about four times as many books were published from 2014 til now.

What does this mean?

It indicates that less than a book a month in sales can consistently make the difference between the bottom spot and spot #135,000. Spot #135,000 and higher represents less than 5% of the Kindle Store. So, 95% of books in the Kindle Store get less than a reader a month.

Amazon Discredits Your Book


One last point. Amazon makes your book look bad.

First off, most publishers will refuse to read any self-published works. Self-publishing on Amazon has become synonymous with cheap and badly-written. Since Amazon uses no apparent editorial process and enforces no content guidelines, the platform has attracted hundreds of thousands of books which are unedited, careless, ridiculous, even disgusting. I won’t list any of these books by name so as to not give them any further credit, but these topics vary from the eye-rolling—like the so-called ‘monster porn’—to the disgusting, including incest and rape. Amazon removed some of these books following strong public backlash, but many still exist between the holes in the approval process—bots looking for no-no words in the text. https://www.businessinsider.com/monster-porn-amazon-crackdown-sex-fantasy-bigfoot-2013-12


So, this begs the question, if Amazon is a terrible business to support, takes 30% of your profits, brings you no readers and puts your book next to garbage smut—why would you use that platform?

If Not Amazon, Where? 12 Alternatives to Amazon


If not Amazon, many authors wonder—what else? How can we avoid the Big 5 publishing gatekeepers and still get in front of readers? This essentially becomes a question of beating capitalism and monopolies, and there’s never been an easy answer to that. In publishing, many claim to have one (spoiler alert: they don’t) and, of course, try to sell it. 

While I can’t easily answer this question, I can provide a few alternative methods that provide the same advantages as Amazon--making your book available for sale online--without putting your book next to the likes of dinosaur porn. (I wish I was kidding)

Most businesses wouldn't consider it very smart to compete with Amazon, so there aren't many other exactly similar platforms. However, there are other strategies that can be just as effective or more effective. Here are a few ideas to look into more. With each method, there are many sites, platforms, plugins etc. that can support it.I look forward to expounding on these more in future posts. 

  • Sell via Social: You certainly won’t get any ethical high ground using Facebook, but you can sell products directly to your followers on the platform. Instagram (owned by Facebook) and Twitter offer similar functions.
  • Crowdfunding: Crowdfunding platforms are traditionally used to fund business ideas or charities, but they essentially connect supporters and creators and process sale transactions. These could be used during a book launch to fulfill pre-orders, or any orders after. GoFundMe, FundRazr and Indiegogo have low processing fees.
  • Website: if you already have a website, you can use plugins or addons like WooCommerce or Shopify to sell your books from your website.
  • Blog: Release your book on your blog and you can monetize through advertisements. The more readers you have, the more your ads will be worth.
  • Membership: Services like Patreon operate on subscription services and allow patrons to support creators directly (Patreon takes 5% and charges a 5% processing fee).
  • Other Ecommerce: Lulu (despite my aforementioned reservations, Lulu does make your book for sale online if you choose), Etsy (while welcoming authors and entrepreneurs, Etsy also emphasizes environmental responsibility as an added bonus), and Scribd are all options here. 
  • Other Ebook platforms: Apple’s iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play Books, Smashwords (no guarantee these platforms don’t also showcase smut)
  • Podcast: similar to a blog, you can read your book on a podcast, get listeners and monetize your podcast eventually with advertisements
  • Livestream: similar to a blog, you can read your book aloud on a livestream and monetize through subscribers. (However, the largest livestreaming platform, Twitch, is owned by Amazon, so you risk walking the same path from a different start using this method)
  • Magazine: make your story into a magazine with platforms like Issuu, MagLoft, Joomag or others and you can monetize with a large readership.
  • Monetized articles: Platforms like Medium award small amounts of money for articles, including fiction, based on the approval of their readers. 
  • IRL: I'm not really good at real-life networking, but it's effective for some. Talk to libraries, local book sellers, coffeeshops, community centers, go to local events--go where readers are.  

Self-publishing authors aren’t big publishers, and won’t benefit from copying their strategies. Connecting to your audience and like-minded people, being authentic, and thinking creatively are new authors’ best assets. That means thinking outside the box and working outside of the same strategies and platforms. And don’t forget to enjoy writing along the way. 

Despite all this this, don't let your hobbies and your outlets become a business. In our next writing chat session, we'll be discussing the importance of taking pleasure in writing, and how to keep today's "side hustle" culture from going too far. Tune in Mondays at 7:00 to see the next live session and share your thoughts. 
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2 comments:

  1. Jonathan StarsMarch 25, 2019 at 11:15 PM

    The easier it is to get our writing out there, the harder it is to get attention for it. As you say at the end, it's probably better if you simply enjoy writing for its own sake. That way you'll never be disappointed. One of the most financially damaging things anyone ever wrote was in the movie "Field of Dreams." "If you build it, they will come." Let me say it straight: if you build it, they might come, but they probably won't. You're not likely to win the lottery either, but you can spend a lot of money trying, and there are some very greedy people standing in line with their hands out, hoping that you will.

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  2. MD Imtiaz AhammadApril 17, 2020 at 6:48 AM

    Really good writing, Thanks.
    PSL Handyman

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