Wow, I've heard of having a ready plan to change in place, but in this world of publishing, you better have a big eraser or lots of paper...
The game changes everyday it seems.
I myself find bad days such as yesterday - and even today for a little while - where things seem so hazy, you have to find your own peace to make it through the fog.
My peace is my writing.
It's really the only thing we have complete control over. I can't be sure to put my finger on Amazon KDP Select and the short term benefits vs the long term benefits but I've seen some changes because of it. I can say that right now the changes are negative, for me, but I'm assuming it's because I have nothing in Select.
That was my decision but I'm looking at the bigger market and the bigger time frame to see what can be done here to compete with all the forces swirling around.
I know that Amazon likes NEW stuff on their site. This makes sense because if you think of them as the "one stop store", you need new stuff all the time. Just think about it: when you go to a big store, they replace the end caps, the sale items, etc... right? I remember when I worked at a grocery store as a kid, on Thursday night we would stay late to get the end caps ready for that coming Sunday's ad.
The constant rotation of product keeps people grabbing.
Select gives Amazon that option without an extra work.
The interesting part to me... the part I'm keeping calm about for now is what will happen come February 1? Remember, those with Kindle Fires will see their free 30 days expire. How many will pay for Prime Membership? How many won't?
On the bad side of it... how many will just wait for books to be free knowing that in Select, authors have 5 days in the 90 day period to make their books free?
To me, with this happening, nothing seems more promising than a good series. I can't be sue where the stand alone novel will be - at least right now - because I've seen too many people say "I'll wait until it's free to read it"... I shudder at that seeing the monster that has been created.
I do know this... comparing anything to last year is apples to oranges. We're in the dark, without a flashlight, but we still have our hands to feel around. That's probably a bad example of whatever I'm trying to say here, but we need to take time each day now and figure out what our plan is and how to execute on it.
Sometimes the writing is the easiest part.
I'm looking at it to be a spark that goes out quickly, but I could be wrong. It's been said openly that most of the free book downloads are poorly written and/or edited. I just wonder how many people WILL pay for a feature that doesn't get them quality.
ReplyDeleteWhen I see book for free for a long period of time I wonder at their quality. I can see people doing it for a day or so as a promo or something every now and again, but to continuously give something away for free, 8 out of 10 times it's because its not good enough to pay for.
There are times to give promos and freebies, but the majority of the time, you have to stand by your quality and insist it get repected.
That's just how I feel about it anyway. That's why I don't self-publish anything but reprints. I only did my online serial so that I could draw in people who might not have read my stuff before. Otherwise, I wouldn't have even done that.