When I first began this digital publishing journey in 2011, I used Smashwords founder Mark Coker’s Smashwords Style Guide (which is free, BTW) as my bible to format an eBook, even though I was mostly planning on selling books on Amazon. At the time, Amazon had a true lion’s share of the market (something like 80-90% of e-Book sales were through Amazon—historically at that time). The market for eBooks, eReaders, and eAuthors was arguably at its most unstable, fluctuating state. Many (including me) rang the death knell for Kobo, Sony, and even (perhaps most definitely, Nook).

I really believed when Amazon rolled out KDP Select, they were going to woo every Unknown/Indie author away and make them all Amazonian forever. Honestly, I think they blew it. When they started, they gave credit to the thousands of free downloads and did not penalize authors in their SALES ranking for the days they offered their books for free. Oh but then they stopped that business. You might enter a two-day free promotion at a decent ranking only to find yourself in the hundreds of thousands when you exited because you hadn’t made one actual sale for that 48 hour period.

And lending? I don’t know about you, but I see 1/100th at best borrowing versus buying. A pittance each month, all to swear my allegiance to the great digital Amazon?

Excuse my British but fuck-all on that.

So I said a tearless adios to KDP Select and I spent the week REALLY using Coker’s guide to get my manuscripts ready for the infamous Smashwords Meatgrinder (if you don’t know, the Meatgrinder is what takes your .Doc and turns it into every format known to the eReader populace, including PDF, TXT, LRF, Palm, Plain Text, and HTML for online reading). See, I cut a few corners formatting my eBook for Amazon (like using Word’s really quick and useful TOC-creator, which won’t pass the strict standards of Smashword’s Vetter, yet another formidable beast standing in the way of the premium catalog and then, after human review, the promised land of ultra-distribution).

But you know what? It wasn’t so bad. It was a lot of work (tedium is a better description). But almost all my titles are now in the Smashwords premium catalog, which means they will now distribute to Apple, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo, and more.

Just for the record, I know a lot of authors that fiddle with their pricing outside Amazon (i.e. in other sales channels) to affect their price within Amazon. Here is the updated law from Amazon as of December 2012:

You must set your Digital Book’s List Price (and change it from time-to-time if necessary) so that it is no higher than the list price in any sales channel for any digital or physical edition of the Digital Book.

But if you choose the 70% Royalty Option, you must further set and adjust your List Price so that it is at least 20% below the list price in any sales channel for any physical edition of the Digital Book.

By “list price in any sales channel,” we mean the suggested or recommended retail price or, if you sell your book directly to end users, your own sales price, for an edition of the book available outside of our Program. 

I’m not a member of the Pricing Police, and frankly I say whatever risks an author is willing to take are his or her own business (and I’m no rat either), but it’s clear that you can get into hot water setting prices to get Amazon to lower theirs but still give you the 70% commission on, say 99 cents, and by making your book free elsewhere, you are not fulfilling your contractual obligation to Amazon to “set your Digital Book’s List Price [on Amazon] so that it is no higher than the list price in any sales channel for any digital or physical edition of the Digital Book.”

And if you think they’re not looking, think again. I’ve twice received emails from Amazon, once when I was in KDP Select and there was still a copy of my book on another site (I thought I’d removed them all), and another when my price was 99 cents on another site and $2.99 on Amazon.

You all can do what works best for you, but I’d hate to be banned from Amazon, so I plan to stick to the rules.

And now’s not a good time to piss off the giant. I think Amazon is moody because they haven’t dominated the entire eUniverse quite yet—and I’m not sure how to feel about them buying Goodreads, but let’s face facts, in most decisions, Amazon has proven to be one smart, double-stuffed cookie. That being the case, I know more than a few authors that have reported upwards of 20-25% increases in overall income by leaving KDP Select and getting their books out in all the other lonely places.

I know that sounds intuitive, but trust me, back in the day, I didn’t sell squat on B&N—true, I was driving traffic toward Amazon, but even incidentally I was sell 10:1 on Amazon versus B&N. I just don’t believe that’s true any longer and I am the first to admit when my prediction comes, goes, and is unfulfilled.

So we’ll see. I’ll tell you this: I have a bunch of super-clean manuscripts. Of course my eyes are as read as the sun when it sinks behind the gulf coast, but (whew) I’m finally done. Except for the manuscript I am currently working on, which is almost done.

But I’m an expert now.

I wonder if I can get Smashwords to give me my own my own prose Meatgrinder?

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)

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Typing Image credit: pressmaster / 123RF Stock Photo

Falling Letters Image credit: z_i_b_i / 123RF Stock Photo

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