At first, maybe you’ll take everything as a challenge but as you go through your self-publishing journey, you’ll probably be thinking about whether you’re doing the right thing or not. Learn about self publishing on Amazon pros and cons now.
Start With Amazon
Today’s article has three points. The third is the most important reason to consider using Amazon.
When you’re first getting started with self-publishing, there are a lot of decisions I’ve been thinking about.
There are probably around a thousand things you’re going to want to pay attention to when you’re getting started. But not all at once. We like to keep things as easy as possible here.
There are so many things and one of those decisions you’re going to have to consider is should you publish on Amazon? or shouldn’t you? There are many reasons we should or shouldn’t.
I mean you may have heard things like monopoly or how they use their money? Are they greedy? Or whatever the case might be or maybe you can make do better elsewhere.
There’s just so much confusion and it leaves you sitting there thinking “I don’t know where I should publish it”. And the worst thing is an author who has books and before you even have self-published your very first book, you’ve given up because of this Analysis Paralysis.
This is what we want to cut through today by looking at the pros and the cons of going with Amazon for your self-publishing. But before we get into the answers, grab a copy of my free 12-step self-publishing checklist.
It will help you get started in your self-publishing and also in terms of your marketing afterward. So go ahead and check that out. It’s free.
So let’s get into it from my own story. When I first got started, I was introduced to people who were hating Amazon. They were hating it for a lot of reasons, maybe they were hating it because of Jeff Bezos and the company itself.
They didn’t like anything about that or they were so greedy. They’re monopoly that’s killing and pop bookstores. There were a lot of reasons and I was listening to these people and considering that maybe I shouldn’t go with Amazon.
Check out this related article: How To Self Publish On Amazon Using A Book Template?
Or that they were so big that you really would just be lost among the other books that they had. So I considered publishing outside of Amazon. I even put my books in other stores and saw sales coming through them.
But the thing is, I was thinking maybe I could find a more ethical opportunity outside of the Amazon area. So what happened was in the end, I did opt to go for Amazon and I have seen my sales go up. These other locations that I attempted to sell my books did much poorer than Amazon.
There are several reasons for it which we will hit in today’s article. But the thing is we don’t stop with just Amazon. We start with Amazon, it’s a starting place to get our paperback KDP Print, our Kindle books out which are now EPUB files we can put there.
Then, in addition to getting our audio files through ACX Audible onto the market. But then we didn’t stop, we’d move on to Ingram Spark for both our EPUB books there and paperback and then hardbacks on Lulu and EPUBs on Draft2Digital, which reaches many other stores. This huge soup of distribution results in a win.
Using Click Farms
Amazon is definitely the biggest chunk of that. The thing is, do you want to put all your eggs in one basket? That’s another issue if you’re addressing only going with Amazon.
Let’s get into the main point. So, self publishing on Amazon pros and cons? Well, let’s hit the cons first, I always like to hear the bad side first before we go into the positive.
The cons would be this company has a near-monopoly. It is incredibly difficult for anybody else to compete with them. So maybe you shouldn’t stick with them, maybe you should punish them.
After all, it’s a monopoly, like Walmart or other companies that are always getting attacked because of them. Putting mom and pop places out of business. This is a consideration that might be a big issue for you with regards to just how much profit they’re making.
The other thing is they can shut your account down whenever they want. So don’t think for a second that you’re permanently going to be there. They can decide that you violated their terms and services.
As a result, all of your royalties for the last month will not be given to you. Also, they will simply take away all your stuff. Finally, if you happen to be playing games with them, here are the ones that I’ve seen previously used.
For example, paying VA’s to do reviews for you and having thousands of reviews. Having them taken down or doing click farms or selling reviews or anything along these lines. Amazon takes action against authors who break its rules, and some have lost their accounts and unpaid royalties. This made a lot of authors nervous as we were all trying to sell our books and trying different techniques, only to find out that Amazon doesn’t like some of them.
So even some of my students were using click farms to get more downloads of their books. This also is a very risky practice for which Amazon can do all sorts of stuff. This is one of the cons of going with Amazon.
You definitely should consider that. And then our second point is the pros, they have a pile of customers who’ve already given them their credit cards. And when they’re searching for books, they’re looking to buy, they’re one click away from buying.
Things To Consider
There’s nowhere else, it’s going to be so easy for your readers to buy your books. When they’re available when they want to and even find them or even find you as an author. Their intent when they’re searching is specifically to find your book.
The search engine on Amazon is one of the largest in the world. So this is something you’re going to want to have, your books competing within those books. The other thing is they are the dominant leader and they drive a ton of traffic.
If you’re going to be successful as an author and a self-publisher, there are two things you must consider. One is traffic and the other is conversions traffic. It is how many people are seeing your book, the cover of your book or you’re showing up in the search results.
Then the conversions, how many people are first of all clicking to read the description. And secondly, clicking-buy or clicking on the author’s name or clicking the look through. In other words, we’re looking at this click-through rate.
The people who are seeing your ads and clicking through to see the books and such. If your books are not on Amazon, you aren’t going to be able to even run ads against them. So this is something you need to consider if you’re not going to go with Amazon.
This is a huge pro and positive that we’re going to have with it. Something you should consider. And when you’re weighing out these two, here comes the third point.
It’s that Amazon is the easiest way of getting profits and increasing earnings. Things are already hard enough as a self-publisher. You have a lot of things that are going against you and you do not need one more thing to make your life so difficult.
Check out this related article: Is It Hard To Do Self Publishing Amazon Canada?
So it is highly recommended for you that you do not blow off Amazon and you push your books through Amazon. However, do not stop with just Amazon. Make sure your books are located on these other platforms.
You might be thinking “I don’t know how to format my books for these other platforms” or even for Amazon for that matter just seems so confusing.
I recommend the tool Atticus. So check that out for more information.
Have you found self-publishing on Amazon pros and cons that I haven’t mentioned above? Let me know in the comments.
If you want help getting your book on Amazon and the other stores, book a free 25-minute discovery call.
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