How to NOT Rely on One Book Distributor

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Book-Distribution
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Today’s article on IndiesUnlimited – Amazon’s pulling of reviews from “friends” – encouraged me to write once more about this topic, you also might remember previous blog posts:

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Put Your Eggs in More Than One Basket!
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/put-your-eggs-in-more-than-one-basket/

 

Choose More Online Retailers to Sell Your Book
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/15-more-online-retailers-to-sell-your-book/

 

Sell From Your Own Website
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/why-sell-your-books-from-your-own-website/

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Learn From Trade Publishers.
Or from everyday brands. Would you buy a product as frequently, such as milk, if it would only be available at SaveWay, and not at each grocery or corner stone? Or would you buy a certain book if it would be only available at Barnes & Noble, and not at Kobo, Apple, Amazon or your local bookstore? Do you know of any trade publisher who doesn’t sell their books EVERYWHERE, from book chains, to online retailers, to brick&mortar bookstores and even from their own websites? So why would you sell your book ONLY at Amazon?

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Selling Your Books From Your Own Website.
Great benefits for Authors: Take advantage of these three fantastic benefits of selling your books from your own webpage:

  • You will have higher revenues
  • You get paid faster
  • You will have all the data of your readers

Here is just one example of many web shop providers: Gumroad, a company who charges just 5% + 25¢ per transaction. Working with them means: there are no hosting fees, no monthly fees, no bandwidth fees, no refund fee. You just give a link on your website to potential customers and all the transaction go through their website – but you will get and keep all your customers data.

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Choose More Retailers.
You too can sell your books, e-books and audio-books not only through Amazon, but as well on Barnes&Noble, Apple and Kobo websites, to have your “eggs in more than one basket”.  And don’t forget the potentially huge potential market for hardcover books, selling them to libraries all over the country!

However, there are way more online retailers for e-books and books than just Apple, Kobo or Barnes & Noble.  Oh, yes, and even Google sells e-books, but they pay authors and publishers a lousy royalty. I don’t know many authors, selling books through Google.
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Just to mention a few more online places to sell books:

www.Scribd.com
www.booksonboard.com/
www.ebooks.com
www.ebook-store-review.toptenreviews.com
www.ebookmall.com
www.indiebound.org
www.powells.com/ebooks/
www.kobobooks.com/eBooks
www.rbooks.co.uk/ebook.aspx
www.whsmith.co.uk/eBooks.aspx
www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/browse/ebooks/4294964587/

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Here are two more lists of online book stores with even more sales possibilities:
http://www.infoagepub.com/iap-ebook-retailers.html
http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/ebooks.html

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Put Your Eggs Not Only in One Basket
If you don’t want to upload your book yourself, get help from this aggregator for a yearly fee and reap 100% of your books revenue: eBookPartnership.com. It’s the only aggregator right now who doesn’t cut into your sales’ proceeds. Aggregators will handle distribution, sales, accepting payments, and are managing your account with the online retailers. Avoid aggregators who take a 10, 15 or even 20% commission for every book sold.
Read also about the experience of an author, detailed with all his sales numbers, costs associated and comparison of revenue on several online retailer sites from Amazon, Apple and Kobo to sales on his own website.

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More Steps:
Oh yes, and to be more independent from one major online retailer and to counteract any pulling of reviews from your “friends”, consider two more steps:

  • Be more active on Goodreads to get more reviews there (even though it belongs to Amazon, but they did not interfere with “friends” reviews to my knowledge)
  • Copy and paste each review as soon as it appears on Amazon, save it to your folders and if Amazon pulls them, just display snippets of them on your own website / blog or post them on social media

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Act as a Truly Independent Author
Relying only on one retailer is dangerous, and no business has only one distributor or one customer. Think about it: You are delivering goods “in commission” to Amazon, delivering a product for free, until it is sold, and until weeks or months later you receive a payment… Better protect yourself and sell your books at more places!

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To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing, please read also
“Book Marketing on a Shoestring”
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE

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