Entrepreneurs small and large, don’t need a crystal ball to see some of the biggest shifts in business. Mark Coker has proven time and again that he has an eye for predicting how the self-publishing markets will change – or must change! And that the future should be in the hands of every publisher and author and not in that of online retailers!
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KDP Select: Writer Beware!
Mark Coker: “December 8, 2011, was the day Amazon launched KDP Select and began stripping indies of their independence. It was a brilliant strategy in retrospect: Convince indie authors to hand over exclusive distribution rights to Amazon for short 3-month (auto-renewing) increments. And it encourages readers to get books for free with KU. Readers of indie ebooks have over a million reasons to never purchase another single-copy ebook again.”
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THINK ABOUT IT
“Authors could kill KDP Select tomorrow, along with its KU spawn, by simply refusing to participate. KU would collapse overnight (or within three months) if all the books disappeared.
Instead, authors and the industry complain about Amazon’s dominance while continuing to surrender more independence to Amazon every day.”
Or as a comment laid out:
They TELL authors:
- where they can distribute their e-book,
- when they get to put their e-book on sale,
- remove a review if the author “knows” the fan on social media,
- reduces your ranking if you advertise through a 3rd party instead of them,
- pay you not even half a cent for each page read (while squeezing your pages to reduce page count) on your valuable/hard work, and whatever rule they choose to do next…
Just imagine what they would do if they had a monopoly on the book market!
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2018 Book Industry Predictions:
Mark Coker writes: “Are indie authors losing their Independence? When I think about the future, I start by looking at the past and then I look for patterns and trends.
Authorship has always been a tough business. Even before the rise of indie authorship, most traditionally published authors still had to maintain day jobs to make ends meet. Ten years ago, publishers controlled your fate. They decided which writers became published authors, and they rejected most who came knocking, pleading and begging at their door. Publishers were the gatekeepers to the printing press, retail distribution, and readers.
Now, thanks to the tools of indie authorship, you’ve wrestled your fate away from publishers. You decide how and when you publish your book. You can reach readers without a publisher. Between 2008 and 2010, the e-book market grew exponentially as millions of readers transitioned their reading from paper to screens, and as retailers opened their virtual shelves to all indie ebooks.
2011 was another phenomenal year for e-book sales growth. Indies started hitting retailer and national bestseller lists with increased frequency. Indie authors proved that it was possible to self-publish with pride, professionalism and commercial success.
The democratization of publishing was here and everyone was happy, right? Wrong. It now appears that we have traded one gatekeeper for another: Amazon! It is a future where other e-book sellers have been decimated and have either gone out of business or become irrelevant. It’s a future where no other ebook retailer can build a profitable business.
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December 8, 2011
It was the day Amazon launched “KDP Select” and began stripping indies of their independence. The independence of indie authors wasn’t stolen from them. Instead, indies were coaxed, prodded, browbeaten, extorted and tricked to gradually surrender it. It was a brilliant strategy in retrospect. Convince indie authors to hand over exclusive distribution rights to Amazon for short 3-month (auto-renewing) increments, making authors more dependent upon a single retailer.
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July 14, 2014
Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited (KU) which offered customers unlimited book reading from a catalog of titles sourced almost entirely from indie ebooks enrolled in KDP Select. A key feature of KU is that the author’s list price is irrelevant. Authors are compensated less than half a penny per page read.
Today, over one million indie ebooks are exclusive to Amazon via KDP-Select and KU. Those books act like leeches to slowly drain other booksellers of their lifeblood. Readers of indie ebooks now have over one million reasons to never purchase another single-copy ebook again. Authors who now derive 100% of their sales from Amazon are no longer indie authors. They’re dependent authors.
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Can’t Indies say NO to Dependence?
“It’s not too late for self-published authors to reclaim their independence, but time is running out.
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Authors could kill KDP Select tomorrow, along with its KU spawn, by simply refusing to participate. Kindle Unlimited would collapse overnight (or within three months) if all the e-books there disappeared.”
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READ the “2018 Predictions”, a long article by Mark Coker including the comments – line-for-line and THINK about it. And act: Leave KDP Select, sell your books everywhere, including your own website, and stay independent – not a slave of Amazon.
http://blog.smashwords.com/2017/12/2018-book-industry-predictions.html
P.S. Writing not only means Book-Writing.
There are better-paid ways of using your
literary talent out there.
Check it out: http://bit.ly/2ABF1tx
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