I know what you’re thinking:
“Simon – what the hell is up with all the bird-themed articles lately?”
Well, as you will soon discover, this ties in quite nicely with my previous blogs (Have you ever tried lining up ducks?, Duck! (part deux), and “Quack” 3.0). Furthermore, I couldn’t make the blogs work using marsupials.
So, without further ado (no, it’s not adieu – I’m not going anywhere)…
The albatross is the world’s largest seabird. It’s big, with a wingspan up to 3.5 meters (11.6ft.), and up to a 135cm-long body (4.5ft.). They can glide without moving their wings for several hours at a time. If you were a seagull, you’d feel pretty top-feather in the ‘hood, clucking next to say, a chickadee (do seagulls cluck?), but ruffling up to an albatross? From the less-than-intellectual turkey to the majestic eagle, the whole ornithological community is damned glad there’s not a breeding run on these colossal poo bombers. Ask any beaker; they’ll tell ya: variety is good. If these babies could hover, however, Jeff Bezos would start cloning the waddling 747’s and strap a Blue Origin rocket-booster with a carry case to their asses for some international book deliveries.
Which is a perfect time to drive home my smooth segue into dealing with that retail albatross, soon to be buzzing your home with delivery drones that do hover, with your groceries, meds, insurance package, books, driverless cars and every single thing you’ll ever need in life other than a paycheque (oh yeah, and rockets ships – and they might own Norway…but don’t quote me on that).
That’s right – none other than…
Walmart.
Oops. Sorry. Got a little confused there – I’m old-school and out-of-touch – they’re so 2010 – you know, like Lululemon.
Nope. I’m talking Amazon!
IRRELEVANT SIDEBAR: So, here’s the thing – Goody and I live in the middle of nowhere. Two nearby villages provide a barest semblance of creature comforts. The only businesses operating in one of the them is a gravel truck company, a building supply store, and dentist. In other words, we have great driveways, white teeth, and we’re constantly able to screw things. Outside of that, we’re forced to drive great distances – or order online.
But this is becoming the norm in the city as well as remote countryside. The idea of the corner-store-anything is vanishing. It’s almost impossible to compete, pay employees, the rent, and lower your prices down to nothing and still be higher priced than Amazon. Now some would say, pshaw! Delivery costs make that unaffordable. Local retailers are gougers, etc, etc.
Well, no.
I recently mailed some supporters paperback copies of my book. We’re talking 500km at best. $18 per book FOR POSTAGE. That’s a buck more than the book’s retail value.
But Amazon?
$1.00.
It’s all about volume, and they’re doing swimmingly at it when I last checked their bottom line (Canada may be purchased shortly and converted into a cold-storage shipping container).
Same applies to the goods. Bob’s book store buys 20 copies for inventory. Amazon buys 20 million, or doesn’t buy them at all. Now, they’re in the publishing game also, on demand, producing millions of copies of books that local retailers can’t hope to compete on because their buy price from Amazon is just under what the behemoth sells them for direct. Add shipping and they’re out of the game before the first die roll. This applies to just about everything Amazon sells.
What about selling your product through Amazon? Again, it’s all about volume and algorithms. Amazon wants to make money, and they move what sells, or what triggers a buying cycle in you. They know buyer behavior and trends. They have unprecedented access to big data and individual personality profiling that recently made headlines when both Amazon and Facebook disclosed that they basically have a personality profile of every human alive in the US. In other words, they know that you’re going to buy a nose hair remover before you’ve discovered you have a nose.-hair outcrop (honestly though, you should really get that dealt with – they’re on sale, btw).
This process, many worry, has started to reduce choice and independence in the buying process because of what you will see. Every click, visit, like, and wish list generates more about who you are and what type of things you like and want; and soon, as the algorithms expand, you will only see what you are most likely to buy – unless you break that pattern consciously.
One major driver is not just sales but reviews. These little gems provide a mountain of buyer information but also limit all product that doesn’t move the volumes Amazon seeks. Watch what pops up on the ‘people who bought this also bought…’ and sidebar ads and promos as you browse Amazon. What you’re seeing reflects what you’ve been doing. The bad news is that for any product that doesn’t generate instant sales for Amazon won’t stay up. They don’t care which hair dryer you buy, just that you buy one and they profit. Impulse buying online is huge and the algorithms are there to capitalize on exactly that.
So why am I going on about this?
I’m an indie author who must have his book on Amazon.
A large percentage of books sold in the world went through Amazon last year. In fact, in the US, 83% of all ebook sales were sold by Amazon. Indie author sales are up, traditional publishers are in a tailspin, and everyone is making less money – except Amazon. The drive is on to force authors into exclusivity contracts if they want to be a part of those algorithms that bring the money by signing away autonomy and removing their books from iBooks, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and all other online retailers. Heard of Kindle Unlimited? That’s the neck noose that Amazon created to pigeon-hole every indie author into. The temptation is massive because the albatross is the biggest bird in the pond. In a way, Amazon is moving the industry away from being ‘indie’ and being at the mercy of a newly-forming monopoly. Royalties are falling, rates are being cut, authors are encouraged to lower their prices, etc. What’s worse is that if you don’t sign your ‘indie’ness away, your book languishes. There’s no ‘fairness’ or democracy at Amazon, only profit. This negatively impacts all new and indie authors. If you would like to get a better sense of just how much of the book market Amazon now controls, click here.
The only way to beat the monster that is Amazon is driving reviews. Authors have learned this and have gone to drastic measures to get the ‘Fabled 50’. What that means is that if you don’t have a minimum of fifty consumer reviews, your book is invisible unless someone already knows about your book and types in your name or the book’s title. There are dubious ‘review mills’ that package reviews in bundles for authors, at a hefty price, and this only drives the bar on indie quality into the toilet. Unfortunately, this has also lowered the bar on the value of viewer ratings. The moment consumers no longer trust the reviews, they become meaningless. We’re not there yet, and Amazon has tightened the noose in order to keep their coveted review system in top form.
If you are a reader and you constantly hear from authors about reviews, this is why. Their very survival depends on generating them, beyond actual sales at first. Without reviews, an author has no hope of selling books online.
Have you ever wondered how books launch as bestsellers and within a day of launch have 3,000 reviews? The big publishing houses know what moves books, and they line up hundreds, if not thousands of beta readers and pre-launch reviewers to ensure their top gun gets all the spotlight.
An indie has no such luxury. So, the next time you finish a book, and say, “wow, that was awesome,” immediately go online to where you bought it from. If you are one of those strange individuals like myself who still haunts the shelves of bookstores, go on Goodreads or something similar and write a review or at least rate it. It can be as short as “great book” or “I highly recommend it.”
More importantly, if you see that an author has chosen to take the risk to offer their book on many platforms, they have done it more so for you, the reader, than for themselves. In that case, maybe consider buying your ebook from something other than the place where you just bought your nose-hair remover. For example, my book is on Amazon but it is also available on iBooks, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. In fact, if you own a kindle reader you can even purchase a .mobi file (a kindle ebook) from Smashwords.
Why do it? When I look up and see flocks of colour and variety buzzing the skies and bombing the parking lots of the world with white birdie shrapnel, I know things in the world still hang on to a sense of balance. I fear the day when we look to the sky and there’s not a single bird, only thousands of drones –
And one massive albatross.
Happy Trails!
Simon Lindley is a former publisher and Luddite of old-world printing, and has been banging out ideas since the days of correction tape and typewriters (hey, it wasn’t that long ago). He lives in the Canadian Rockies with his wife and two dogs, and spends most of his time daydreaming, playing music, chopping wood, hiking in the alpine and hammering on the keyboard, usually with a little too much fervor. You can order his new book, Mannethorn’s Key here. He is currently working on Book Two of the Key of Life trilogy and a new urban fantasy series entitled, Gaia’s Assassin.
You can follow Simon on Twitter: @Simon_Lindley, on Facebook or at his website/blog
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