To Amazon or Not to Amazon – THAT is the Question
“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.”
–Molière
Like so many things in life, one choice can look much better than the other, especially where the choices seem to be only two. The pros and the cons are also rarely equal weight or quantity.
For many years and numerous reasons, the downside of having a book on Amazon screamed out at me. In my view, the negative reasons overshadowed the plus side that authors and book consultants were dearly touting including the now highly popular and very formulaic Best Seller Campaigns.
Then I started seeing solutions to dilute, minimize, or even completely circumvent the negatives. Many of the book advisors saw some of these solutions before I did, and quite a few did not. Or the author was unaware of these tools themselves and saw the only ways to sell books was in brick and mortar bookstores and online at Amazon, one copy at a time directly to the end-user.
More often than not, book authors who were new to the industry and flying on their own, posted their book onto Amazon and then did what I characterize as wished, hoped, prayed, and sprinkled pixie dust on that book upload, expecting sales to magically appear because the book was listed on Amazon. Period.
Those authors typically did little else to market the book. They either didn’t know how, didn’t want to take on that task themselves, thought marketing was a real drag, didn’t have Money to hire someone knowledgeable or available to assist in promoting them or their book, didn’t have time to dedicate to marketing or to filling orders on their own, and many other reasons.
After all, the book is on Amazon. Won’t Amazon be marketing the book? Those are small samples of reasons prompting the disappointing results. And yet, authors still choose to have Amazon be The Answer to getting their book out into the world. After all, the author has taken however long they’ve taken to WRITE the book. Now it’s time to hand it off for the behemoth Amazon has become to do the heavy promotional lifting, in minds of many authors.
As a book author, you’ve got a business to run, a website to keep current, a life to live. There’s no time or energy to market your book, right? Besides, as it turns out, you’re quite satisfied you sold over a thousand copies of your book this past year (or two), all from its availability on Amazon and some from bookstores.
Speaking of those thousand books, has it occurred to you that you have no idea who bought those books, since Amazon doesn’t give you any information at all about those buyers? A thousand books, one at a time (which is NOT the only way books are sold.). Unless you were ahead of the game or was well-advised by one of your book advisors, those buyers have no real way to find you unless they did a bit of research to hunt you down on the Internet. Do they need to work that hard to reach you?
And yes, Amazon processed the order from start to finish, capturing the contact information of who bought it, packaging and shipping the order to the customer, and sending you a very small portion of what the buyer paid Amazon. After all, Amazon took care of all that “back office” activity for you. Oh, and did I say that Amazon paid you a very small portion of what the buyer paid Amazon?
What if you had appropriate, simple ways (notice the plural) to capture the name and contact information of your customers who loved what you wrote that they bought from Amazon? Imagine you having that name and contact information.
It would mean:
You’d have a list of people already interested in your book to buy it.
You can explore what else to offer those same customers for sale.
You keep 100% of the profit from direct non-Amazon sales
The great news is that there are ways (plural, as I mentioned) to quietly and strategically gather such vital details whether your book is done, still being written, or the publication date was years ago with content that’s still useful.
Some book advisors know some of the ways. As a fact, the odds are very high that they know different and fewer ones than I do.
More and more book advisors suggest offering a bonus right within the text of your book that guides the reader/buyer to your website to collect a bonus from you in exchange for their name and email address. That works wonderfully if you’re still writing your book or finished writing it. Even once your book is done, you can have your graphic designer add the Bonus offer into an early page of your book. Of course, that presumes you can think of something of value to offer that’s downloadable from your website.
Amazon can actually be helpful to you with a different solution without ever realizing it when your book is already done and for sale on Amazon’s site. It is a high integrity strategy that’s not intended to be anything other than a straightforward action you take to achieve your goal. No rules get bent, and no animals are harmed in the process. It’s legal, moral, and ethical. And I’ve got a lot of suggestions about that for you.
Are you chomping at the bit to find out what those ideas are? If so, check to see when the next session is scheduled for “How Tips Booklets Can Accelerate Your Amazon Sales Before, During, and After Your Book is Done.” You can find it https://www.tipsproducts.com/shop listed under Upcoming Events as Savvy Author.
Paulette Ensign, founder of Tips Products International, is always looking for ways to help subject matter experts like you differentiate yourselves in the market place and be ready to best serve those who want what you’ve got. Are you frustrated by selling only single copies at a time directly to end users? Whether it’s printed or downloadable versions of your product on your website, Amazon, or any other information seller, there are ways to help more people at a time and make more money. Would you rather accept 4 and 5 digit (or more!) payments from your sales rather than 1, 2, or 3 digits, with recurring orders throughout the year being the business model you maintain?
We are offering trainings and other services to shine a bright light on these topics in the very near future. Watch this space or subscribe to our month newsletter, Tips on Tips at www.TipsProducts.com
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