An online retail giant, but not a distributor…
We just finished Prime Weekend. Did you have any fun? While I have a long list of complaints about Amazon, the main one is about their arrogance in thinking they’re the only book retailer in the world. They’re not, but how can authors and publishers get to the others?
For print versions, authors and publishers often do this the traditional way via bookstores, preferably independent ones. (Big book barns like Barnes & Noble are like Amazon—a book gets lost in them. One B&N put my mystery/thriller Rembrandt’s Angel in the art section. Yes, one BISAC Subject Heading was ART015080ART/History/Renaissance—which is wrong because Rembrandt’s art is technically classified as Baroque—but no one looking for mysteries or thrillers would ever find the book where B&N shelved it!). I suppose some bookstores sell or will order ebook versions if the customer asks for one, but that’s an unusual request.
In fact, most ebooks are sold online. But there are many online retailers besides Amazon, and there are other ebook formats besides Amazon’s .mobi. Amazon doesn’t distribute to other retailers either; they ignore them. (No wonder bookstores are hesitant to deal with Create Space, although many small presses use that printer, if only to store printed books in their warehouses.) Most people don’t like monopolies; authors and publishers shouldn’t either.
A huge competitor to Amazon in just about everything retail is Walmart (even in groceries, which is why Amazon bought Whole Foods). They’re competing with Amazon on many fronts, and one of them is ebooks. (Twenty-five years ago Bezos started selling books out of his garage. Now books are just one of many product lines for him.) Walmart has signed a deal with Kobo, a large ebook retailer that’s a subsidiary of Rakuten. A book buyer can purchase an ebook in most Walmart stores or online with Walmart. In other words, Kobo distributes to Walmart. You can bet Amazon never will!
But who distributes to Kobo? Authors and publishers can do it directly (some small presses and self-published authors do this). Or they can do it indirectly by putting an ebook on Smashwords, which distributes to Kobo as well as Apple’s iBooks and Barnes & Noble. In either case, authors and publishers enjoy Rakuten’s worldwide retail reach, providing an alternative to Amazon’s. And Smashwords increases that worldwide reach, distributing to both retailers and lending services.
There’s a meta-theorem in merchandising: Maximizing the places where your product is sold maximizes your sales. The reason is simple: Even without advertising, more people can see your product. An additional plus to maximizing your number of retail outlets is that Amazon only sells ebooks with their proprietary ebook format .mobi. Many readers want .epub or .pdf formatted ebooks. I’d avoid the latter—it’s too easy to pirate. But .epub is an important and popular format. (Visit the Smashwords website to see the possible formats for ebooks.)
These ebook retail tactics come with a price. You can’t choose them if you want to have access to Amazon marketing; you have to be exclusive to Amazon for that. That doesn’t bother me—Amazon’s marketing options never did anything for me. I’d rather promote my books to all readers, not just those who buy books from Amazon! Especially overseas, where readers often frequent other retailers.
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Comments are always welcome.
“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” the National and International Novels. In Angels Need Not Apply, the two NYPD homicide detectives join a national task force to go after a drug cartel leader who has an insidious plan. In Aristocrats and Assassins, the detectives are in Europe, fighting a terrorist who is kidnapping European aristocrats. In Gaia and the Goliaths, they learn about a plot conjured up by a US energy company and a Russian oligarch and set out to stop it. All these ebooks are available on Amazon and Smashwords and the latter’s affiliated retailers (Apple iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.). Current, pithy, and exciting, this is great summer reading!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
