[dcw303]

> The sales that would go to that $15.99 book are going to lower-priced books from indie authors and self-published authors, like me.

> They actually proved the consumer will buy the cheaper option, but okay

I find it alarming that an indie author does not seem to be concerned with cheap product flooding the market. Amazon's attempts to lower barriers to entry means more aspiring authors competing for a piece of the pie. Look at how the race to the bottom in the App Store is destroying indie iPhone developers.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The indie author isn't concerned, because indie authors get much more per Amazon sale than they do from a traditional publishing contract.

The flooding already happened. There was a gold rush a few years ago when anyone who had any interest in writing slapped together an ebook and put it online.

Some of those authors did incredibly well for a year or two, then the market became saturated.

So there was a shake out. Authors who understand business - marketing, leads, keeping a mailing list, and running a blog that provides value - are doing somewhere between "ok, I guess" and "still earning well."

The opportunists and not-so-greats and other amateurs have given up and run away.

Now, the market for indies is stronger than it was - because as the post says, trad pub has strangled its own market share. And this is excellent for indies.

[x0x0]

I remain stunned the authors don't do mailing lists. There are a handful of authors that I will purchase everything they write. Until goodreads, there was no real way for them to notify me to buy something from them. And even now goodreads isn't particularly efficient about it.

I really think they would benefit from asking fans to sign up for an announcements list that is just announcements of new work. Plus it gives them the ability to sell smaller works published via kindle to their fans to pad out the gaps between full books.

[Semaphor]

I agree, I discovered some authors via Reddit and Kindle Unlimited whose books I loved. But keeping up with what they are releasing is a PitA. One only had a presence on twitter so I set up twitter to rss just for him, some others I check their websites once in a while and hope there's new info…

I wish goodreads would let me say "hey, notify me of every new release from this person, okay? No other mails, just release notifications of those I checked here." (maybe it's already possible? If so please tell me how :D)

[exolymph]

A lot of genre authors have mailing lists. Shit, I've self-published a couple of completely insignificant book-type things, and I have a mailing list.

[exolymph]

Also, if you can differentiate in a compelling way, you can charge more.

[kevingadd]

Aside from the obvious errors the publishers made, it's EXTREMELY SENSIBLE to see Amazon going 'we're going to sell your books at $10 but pay you like they were $16' and respond with 'what's the trick?'

Obviously, if you're doing something like that, there's some sort of upside for you. What's the upside? Is it... just speculating here... pushing literally every other serious bookseller out of the market by selling things at a loss, attaining near-monopoly status, and acquiring the ability to make publishers do whatever you want so you can crank your revenues up?

Of course, even if Amazon were doing something like that (how implausible! :-) ), the publishers weren't going to put a stop to it with the kind of antics they got up to...

There are already examples of how bad Amazon's pricing and fees are in areas where they have little competition - for example, the cost to deliver ebook downloads to users.

For example: In Japan, ebook download pricing is extremely low (in no small part due to manga). If it wasn't, nobody would sell their ebooks on amazon.co.jp, because they'd get utterly suffocated by the download fees. In every other country, the download fees are dramatically higher than those in japan. So much higher that it in fact drives independent authors to leave out illustrations and carefully optimize their PDF files to reduce costs.

You can see http://www.mhpbooks.com/what-does-it-cost-to-deliver-an-eboo... for an old article on the subject, but you can check the current rates and see that they haven't improved, and observe the very suspicious carve-out for japanese ebooks.

[jpatokal]

Alarming, isn't it? I mean, imagine the chaos that would result if everybody was allowed to put up websites, publish whatever they wanted and charge what they wanted.