The problem with Amazon and Indie Publishing.
Hey fam, this is just a heads up from myself and all the others involved with the Weird and Wonderful Holiday Romance anthology regarding the paperback edition.
It’s been brought to our attention that some serious nonsense is happening regarding Amazon and Amazon-owned distributors (looking at you Book Depository) stating falsely that our books are either out of stock (false) going to take two months to ship to you (FALSE) or allowing scalpers to set the price at ridiculous amounts such as these, instead of our actual price:
ID: An image showing the cost of our paperback anthology costing $45.25 instead of our set price of $17.99.
PLEASE DO NOT BUY FROM THIS SELLER.
The marketplace has been hijacked by a scalper who does not represent us or any of our distributors. The anthology should never cost more than $17.99 (+tax/shipping), and it should NOT take two to three months to get to you. It is in stock and ready to be shipped from our printer, Ingram Sparks, today.
As is evident from our Barnes and Noble link:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/weird-wonderful-holiday-romance-anthology-caitlyn-lynch/1133948930?ean=9780998168425
ID: An image showing the cost of our paperback anthology being sold through Barnes & Noble for $17.99, fully in stock and ready to ship and also available for delivery Friday 8th of November with Expedited Shipping, something they would not be able to do if the book was out of stock.
And also here from Ingram Spark themselves:
Sorry for the Potato Quality of this one, but if you click it you will see it is fully ready to ship/download without delay.
So what the heck is going on with Amazon then? Well, as I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to learn: Amazon is a complete bag of dicks and are actively throttling our sales because we chose not to use their printing service. Yep, I’ll say that again: Amazon actively throttles the sales of Indie Authors who choose not to use Kindle Direct to Print as their main printer and distributor and then tries to get you to buy the Kindle Version so THEY can get the sale:
ID: An image showing Amazon giving false information stating the paperback of the anthology “usually ships within 1-2 months. Why wait? Try the Kindle Edition instead and start reading now!”
And if you think that sounds like playing a game of Monoply with your hands tied behind your back, you’d be right!
So what’s the big deal, Joy? Why not just bite the bullet and print things through the KDP store? Well person who was no doubt going to ask this in the comments, I’m glad you asked. Here are multiple reasons:
Number one: Kindle Direct pays less in royalties than other more reputable printers. The difference is about a dollar and change less, but when you factor in the cost of production and how little the indie author actually makes in take home sales, that dollar matters.
Number two: Kindle Direct quality control is an absolute shit-show, and it’s not unheard of for books to be sent out either missing pages, printed upside down, with pages cut in half, or just plain blank! For an example, please check out this post from Nicole Autumns’s twitter dated Nov 4th 2019 to see what we’re dealing with, and also understand why many Indie Authors are starting to drop KDP like the rotten hot potato it is.
Number three: here’s a funny thing, there’s no reason for the KDP quality be be Like That, because with the exception of Australia, KDP’s main printer is (drumroll please!) Ingram Sparks! Yes, that’s right! OUR PRINTER. The one they are saying is out of stock. Now isn’t that interesting. (NB: The article is wrong about earning more through KDP and does not reflect the experiences of our authors or the publisher.)
Number four: we actually did submit for KDP after we realized they were going to throttle our sales, meaning we now go to print at a loss, and also risk shoddy quality control and
Number five: We Shouldn’t Have To!
That’s it, that’s the tea. We shouldn’t have to use KDP for them to represent us honestly and act fairly as a distributor, but unfortunately for you me and everyone else who isn’t Jeff F*#!%$NG Bezos, Amazon has no such qualms about things like honesty, fairness or transparency.
So, why sell with Amazon at all? To put it simply: Because we have to.
Amazon is the #1 retail seller for books, and for a lot of us it’s the only chance we’ll get at gaining any real income from our work. Not everyone has the luxury of a book deal from a Big Publishing house that pays to keep the lights on. And even those are few and far between, and often not as much money as you think they are.
And in case you weren’t boiling mad already? Want to know what else Amazon throttles? Reviews! So if you’ve read our work and enjoyed it? PLEASE leave a review, either on the amazon page out of spite, Good Reads (also owned by Amazon, fyi) or wherever you got your copies of the books from.
Reviews matter so much to authors, they’re not just a nice way of letting people know you liked something, they also keep us relevant to the algorithms and not shunted to the side in favor of people who pay for their reviews, which yes is a thing, and maybe we’ll go into that another time.
So to bring this long ass and extremely worn out post to a close: if you were one of the people who contacted us about this, thank you.
If you were one of the people who expressed interest in the anthology but were put off by Amazon’s bullshit: please take a look at our other paperback distributors.
If you read our anthology: please consider leaving a review! We’re fighting an uphill battle against an unethical multibillion dollar conglomerate that’s got a stranglehold on the industry and we’re all very small and very tired, and speaking for myself, very queer and disabled, so you can imagine the kind of stress we’re under right now.
I dunno how to end this. Support your local author. Eat the rich.
Be excellent to each other.
