Entrekin

There’s been a kerfuffle this past week, mainly among the small community of self-published authors who use print-on-demand technologies, and mostly again at Lulu. I’m not all together certain of all the issues involved in the debate, but it seems that Amazon decided to use a specific printer, and any publishers who didn’t use that printer were, so far as Amazon goes, basically out of luck. Over here, Emily Veinglory of PODPeep notes Amazon’s “scheme,” stopping just short of calling them the sort of villain Stephen King would make use of; while over here, Nick Mamatas first states that there is no POD industry, then claims that POD is dying anyway. He ends, unfortunately, with his best argument:

the glorious day when there will no inventory anywhere except for dumps of the Important Thriller, the Big Romance, This Month’s Diet Book, and All About Jesus, with everything else existing only as a month’s projected sales and digital files.

Personally, I find the whole thing a non-issue. While I buy just about everything from Amazon anymore (books, CDs, DVDs, videogames, and even my iVoice [an iPod speaker dock]), if Amazon didn’t exist, I’d still buy those things. In addition, my collection is available exclusively by way of Lulu. There is, quite simply, no other place on Earth to get it (well. Unless you happen to meet me on the street, and I happen to have a copy on me, and you buy it off me. So far, that’s never happened, and probably wouldn’t, for the simple fact that I don’t usually carry my book around [unless to give to someone]).

Know what? I don’t think its reception has suffered for it; so far as I can tell, it’s sold a remarkable number of copies, especially considering it’s a self-published, print-on-demand collection by a basically completely unknown author–I’m not really into numbers and such, but I’ll say it’s sold more than a hundred copies but less than a thousand. Mind you, that’s the collection itself; when you factor in the downloads of the individual stories, the numbers are substantially higher.

All without Amazon. Shit, my book doesn’t even have an ISBN, and I’m not sure I’d ever buy one. I mean, really, what’s the point? That someone could go to a bookstore and order one? That’s not a point, if only because they could go to Lulu and order one. To be honest, I think the whole ISBN/Amazon thing is counterproductive, certainly for what I’m doing and in addition for what I believe a lot of other authors are doing; Amazon’s mark-up is such that it reduces royalties often by nearly 75%. The plain and simple fact is that I get to charge readers less because I use Lulu exclusively, and I’ve been working since the beginning to bring the price to its most effective point (I think I’m there, now).

And seriously, how many self-published, POD authors are doing booktours? I haven’t done a single reading to support my book. Not even in my writing program (I may this month. We’ll see). I did a reading the week before it came out, before copies could actually be purchased, but otherwise?

Mamatas’ second-best point is the sales; most aren’t selling many copies to begin with. Most books, in fact, regardless of their distribution method, sell fairly few copies. There are exceptions, of course, like Rowling and Brown and King, but I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that more than 90% of all books published, in general, sell fewer than 1,000 copies (actually, I’m sure I did. here’s a source. In the interest of full disclosure, there is some debate over said statistics, but, then, 94% of all statistics are made up on the spot, anyway). In fact, according to same, 80% sold fewer than 99 copies.

But this isn’t about numbers. This is about the fact that, lately, it seems self-published authors will jump into any argument headfirst to rant and rave simply to start a kerfuffle for the attention, without every considering whether the argument is actually worth it.

Yes, I buy books from Amazon, but will it bother me, or has it ever, that Amazon won’t carry my book? That I won’t get some shiny frickin’ button to use to sell the damned thing?

No. Because shiny frickin’ buttons never sold shit. Might dupe people into paying for something they didn’t actually mean to, but quality is what sells. Good stories sell.

And good stories will sell whether people purchase them from Amazon or not.

And when self-published stories sell, I suggest the authors who sold them might want to use the proceeds to purchase a clue, rather than a shiny frickin’ button.

Or a good editor. Lord knows most self-published authors could use one of them, as well.