Agreed... and I've come to this realization in the past months. The only way for an unknown indie author like me is to own up that no one (Amazon included) is going to get my stories out there for me. That's all on me to light the fire 🔥
Putting it on Amazon as a non-exclusive is likely still going to be worth it if you want integration with goodreads for instance, though indie sales are overall abysmal. If you look at indie groups, most will report zero sales for months.
I totally agree with your diagnosis of where things are going, but there is still the problem of discovery! These 1,000 superfans have to find us somehow, somewhere. Instagram and other SM are as crowded as Amazon storefront is.
However, once you build the fanbase, there's no better business model and that's my ultimate goal.
I actually think the rise of micro-communities will be a good thing. A smaller group of readers who genuinely care about your work is worth infinitely more than anonymous algorithm traffic.
It’s interesting too how closely this mirrors what’s happening in music. Streaming giants turned music into a kind of utility where every platform offers the same catalog and most artists are paid fractions of a cent: https://joelgouveia.substack.com/p/the-death-of-spotify-why-streaming.
So musicians are starting to pivot toward owned channels and private communities too.
We're all realizing the real value is in owning the relationship with the people who care about our work.
I have spent 3 years publishing on Amazon. I published a lot of extremely short satire, and a few larger (about 20k words each) comedy books wrapped in sci-fi settings. I did everything myself: I wrote, I proofread, I made the covers. I am still very proud of these books. But only one of them was sold in the beginning. At some point I was just overwhelmed with frustration and decided to stop doing in. I used the keywords, the covers (in my opinion) are pretty good. But no one noticed them. Shame. I guess what you're saying is correct, gotta stop relying on Amazon to find your readers.
Interesting. How do you find such problems like this? More authors should know about them.
A combination of getting suckerpunched and reading other people's experiences!
Where do you read other people's experiences? I need to find the sources of this problem.
Agreed... and I've come to this realization in the past months. The only way for an unknown indie author like me is to own up that no one (Amazon included) is going to get my stories out there for me. That's all on me to light the fire 🔥
So... there's hope for us new authors then? Appreciate the post!
Thanks for this. I'm working on my first eBook and must confess to being unsure of the best way to publish.
Putting it on Amazon as a non-exclusive is likely still going to be worth it if you want integration with goodreads for instance, though indie sales are overall abysmal. If you look at indie groups, most will report zero sales for months.
I totally agree with your diagnosis of where things are going, but there is still the problem of discovery! These 1,000 superfans have to find us somehow, somewhere. Instagram and other SM are as crowded as Amazon storefront is.
However, once you build the fanbase, there's no better business model and that's my ultimate goal.
This was a great breakdown.
I actually think the rise of micro-communities will be a good thing. A smaller group of readers who genuinely care about your work is worth infinitely more than anonymous algorithm traffic.
It’s interesting too how closely this mirrors what’s happening in music. Streaming giants turned music into a kind of utility where every platform offers the same catalog and most artists are paid fractions of a cent: https://joelgouveia.substack.com/p/the-death-of-spotify-why-streaming.
So musicians are starting to pivot toward owned channels and private communities too.
We're all realizing the real value is in owning the relationship with the people who care about our work.
I have spent 3 years publishing on Amazon. I published a lot of extremely short satire, and a few larger (about 20k words each) comedy books wrapped in sci-fi settings. I did everything myself: I wrote, I proofread, I made the covers. I am still very proud of these books. But only one of them was sold in the beginning. At some point I was just overwhelmed with frustration and decided to stop doing in. I used the keywords, the covers (in my opinion) are pretty good. But no one noticed them. Shame. I guess what you're saying is correct, gotta stop relying on Amazon to find your readers.