Newly appointed Kobo President and Chief Content Officer Michael Tamblyn took to Twitter today to post a rambling diatribe on why Amazon might not be the best call for indie authors to self-publish with. If you have a bone to pick with our favorite e-commerce whipping boy, you might take a depraved amount of glee from the complete notes below.
1) Indie authors take note: Amazon is, among other things, a machine designed to optimize product prices in order to gain share and sales.
2) Amazon, like every retailer that reaches a certain size, turns to its suppliers to grow profitability by demanding more favorable terms.
3) The Hachette-Amazon fight is an especially public manifestation of that Big Retail process. Nothing new there (Walmart, Target, B&N et al)
4) Some vocal traditionally published authors (but not all) support Hachette and criticize Amazon andâĤ
5) Some vocal independent authors (but not all) support Amazon and criticize Hachette…
6) Defense of Amazon by indie authors makes sense on one level. For them, Amazon is the well-spring, where the self-pub revolution started.
7) But it seems like self-published authors believe they are protected somehow – that what is happening to Hachette wonât happen to them.
8) Some indie authors even muse that the best possible strategy is exclusivity with Amazon, leaving readers on other platforms behind.
9) In the long run, I donât think that Amazon makes a big distinction between a publisher and an indy author – they are both suppliers.
10) Hachette and the rest of the big 5 sit at the top of a list of suppliers to be âimproved” from Amazonâs perspective.
11) Hachette is first because one negotiation with a big publisher makes a lot of bestselling books more profitable. Thatâs efficient.
12) I donât think anyone believes that Amazon will stop with Hachette. With a successful conclusion, all pubs will go through the same thing.
13) They will move down the list. Midsized or smaller publishers come next. (Assuming this all isn’t being pursued quietly in parallel.)
14) From Amazonâs perspective, how is an independent author any different than a publisher? Still a supplier, to be made more profitable.
15) The indie authorâs situation is most tenuous of all. If >80% of sales come from Amazon, *no leverage when itâs your turn to be âoptimized”
16) An indie author, like any publisher, can take her books away if in conflict with Amazon. But it hurts the author *way more than Amazon.
17) A reasonable author response to the Amazon threat wdb: “they won’t need to do that to us. Our prices are already where they need to be.”
18) (Indy authors on Amazon are penalized if their books are too expensive, so thatâs largely true.)
19) But that assumes that the Amazon battle is about price. Itâs not. Itâs about profit. And _any_ supplier can be made more profitable.
20) If indie authors are 20% of Amazon’s total sales, then itâs hard to imagine that indie authors aren’t on that list to be improved.
21) But if the Amazon battle extends to indie authors, authors will have less leverage. Especially if they are exclusive.
22) The mechanisms for the Amazon squeeze are in place, agreements allow it. Self-pub inclusion in Select, Unlimited, KOLL are early examples.
23) Selling other publishers and authors, Amazon can survive without Hachette, but uncomfortably and less profitably.
24) With a diverse base of retailers, Hachette can survive without Amazon, also uncomfortably and less profitably.
25) Both parties having other options is why this dispute wasn’t over in a week or a month.
26) The litmus test for an indie author: could your income survive a conflict with Amazon? If not, itâs worth thinking about how you could.
27) To paraphrase: “First they came for the big New York publishers, but I wasn’t published by a big New York PublisherâĤ”
28) Then they came for the mid-sized publishers, but I wasn’t published by a mid-sized publisher…
29) Then they came for the academic presses…
30) Then they came for the literary presses…
31) Then they came for me.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
