By:
Grace Allison, Author
Imagine you give birth to a
story that comes from the deepest part of yourself. The place where divine
creativity resides. As a new parent your baby cries in the middle of the night
as your characters keep you up while staring at the ceiling or show up in your
dreams. The birthing process of your new creation could take more time than
giving birth to an elephant. What keeps you going is the passion of your idea
and how you just know people are waiting for your new book.
To make sure your child looks
good, you create a jaw-dropping cover and have the story edited by
professionals. And to protect your creation you have taken care to have your
work copyrighted and registered at the Library of Congress.
Then comes the christening day
when your bright, shiny newly minted child is published and comes out into the
world. Where do you present your new work to the world? Well, on-line of
course.
Most authors sell their books
on Amazon.com because it is the biggest on-line bookstore. The behemoth of books provides an extensive inventory of books ranging from bargain
books, children's books, textbooks and digital books. Good for the book buyer
however not so good for authors.
The
Independent Book Sellers Association sent out an announcement recently, “If you
are an Ingram, Create Space or any other print on demand service, Amazon is
pushing down your “buy button” to the bottom of the “order the book” options
list.
On March 1, 2017
Amazon enacted a policy that allows third-party sellers to compete for the Buy
Box for books in new condition. Where books are concerned, the Default Buy Box
has always belonged to publisher. When you buy a book, Amazon would pay the
publisher 45% of the list price. This means your purchase is supporting the
entity that published the book, namely the publisher, and authors are making a
profit (albiet small) every time you buy because the publisher is paying an
author a royalty on each sale.
Now Amazon is
giving that priority spot to third-party sellers, relegating the publisher
button to a far less favorable positon, below the landing page screen line,
often last in a list of third-party sellers offering the book for a
significantly lower cost in addition to free shipping.
The Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) believes
Amazon’s policy change, allowing third-party sellers to compete for the Buy Box
for books in “new condition,” hurts authors and publishers. Here’s why:
• Amazon,
once again, is attempting to drive down the value of books, and therefore
intellectual
property and creative work in general. Under the new policy, Amazon is
rewarding
the seller that conforms to its rules (“competitive pricing”) by granting them
the coveted Buy Box. Often this means dropping the publisher listing, and it’s
not unlikely that publisher listings may fall off the buy page completely—at
Amazon’s discretion.
• When a
book is not obviously for sale by its publisher on Amazon, the author may not
be making royalties. Although for now, it seems that publisher listings are on Amazon, it takes a savvy
consumer to even understand what they’re buying—and most will go for the lowest
cost item, especially if it’s in the coveted Buy Box position.
In all
cases, the books sold on Amazon would not qualify as sales for the purposes of
author royalties because they’ve already been sold or originally existed as
promotional
copies.
And even for those third-party sellers buying books through wholesale channels,
the question arises of how Amazon is measuring “new condition.”
If
consumers don’t see the option to buy new, from the publisher, then Amazon is
promoting piracy. Authors get nothing from used books because the consumer is
buying something that’s already been bought and tracked as a sale. If this new
policy takes hold for most backlist books, authors’ and publishers’ revenue
will dry up, and more and more books are at risk of going out of print more
quickly. Publishers will not be able to afford to keep books in print that are
not selling on Amazon. So, this policy is essentially driving books to an
earlier death—and thereby hurting authors.
Amazon
suggests that one of the ways you can win the Buy Box is to keep books “in
stock.”
This
poses a major problem for self-published authors and any backlist author whose
books are print-on-demand. Print-on-demand automatically means there’s no
stock. The books are printed to order. If Amazon is penalizing books that are
set up as POD titles and favoring third-party sellers who have stock due to any
of the abovementioned means of procurement, authors will again be dinged when
their own listing, or publisher listing, ranks low on the list of “Other
Sellers on Amazon.” We can only suppose that Amazon will not penalize or remove
books that are listed with CreateSpace—and as Amazon moves away from
CreateSpace to consolidate its print and e-book self-publishing program onto
Kindle, it will be interesting to note how often those books get the coveted
Buy Box position for doing business with Amazon.
If indie
publishers can’t get into bookstores and are being cut off at the knees by
Amazon induced piracy, then the future is grim indeed. As a community of indie
publishers, we should be very bothered by this new policy. Amazon is a mammoth
player in the publishing space and it can do much to either help or hurt the
publishing industry. Their new third party seller policy is potentially
terrorizing, in that it is likely to result in publishers selling fewer copies
and ultimately being forced to declare backlist books out of print.
My book,
“Do You Have a Dream Workbook 5 Keys to Realize Your Dream” went on sale last
week for $9.95. Today there are five third-party booksellers listed with a low
price of $7.32. Where did they get the books to sell? I have not seen a sale to
them. Maybe they are selling at a low cost to get you into their bookstore. All
I know is that I will not see one penny from this book pirate. My hard work and
money invested in raising my child has ripped from me, stolen. Now, what can an
indie author like me do when they sell on Amazon?
Grace is a successful award-winning author, modern Christian
mystic, wellness consultant, business development advisor, marketing coach and
workshop facilitator. She has faced many life challenges, including a
life-threatening disease, and used what she encountered as a stimulus to gain
greater happiness and fulfillment. She lives in Lubbock, Texas, with her
husband John Blair, and maintains a private health and success coaching
practice.
Do You Have a Dream Workbook? 5 Keys to Realize Your Dream
by Ms. Grace Allison
Link: http://a.co/4muIa83
by Ms. Grace Allison
Link: http://a.co/4muIa83
Grace
Allison
4408 14
Street
Lubbock,
Texas 79416
806-543-3308
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