New Options

After so many months of wishing that Amazon had some sort of program for Indie authors to promote their work, it has finally happened. They have gotten their KDP Select Lending Library up and running and given Indies the opportunity to enroll their works in it. Of course, the author must allow Amazon to be the exclusive eBook retailer of the title for 90 days, but that's no hardship. At least not for me. Maybe it is for other authors, but everyone's opinion and outlook is different. My opinion happens to be that any positive exposure is good for sales.

Along with this, the author also will be allowed to promote his/her book free of charge for 5 days every 90 days. That means that for the duration of the promotion, that title will be free to prospective purchasers. At one time, we (Indies) were able to set our price at $0.00 for any period of time, and that helped to drive sales. It got the author's name in front of the public and anyone who liked his/her work, would normally begin searching for other books by that author. When the Agency Model was forced on Amazon by Apple and the Big Publishers, that option was taken away from the Indies as part of the marketing agreement with Big Publishing. That's when the option to make free eBooks available to readers was reserved for Big Publishing alone. I believe that to be something like restraint of trade. Now, of course, the U.S. government and the European Union are both investigating Apple and the Big Publishers regarding price fixing. And that's a good thing. I don't believe that any reader should be forced to sometimes pay as much for an eBook as they pay for a hardcover or Trade Paperback book.

For those who don't know; most of the paperback books that people buy are called mass market paperbacks. Trade Paperbacks are generally about the size of a hardcover book, with somewhat larger print and better production quality. Trade paperbacks are more expensive than mass market paperbacks, too. So, you can see what I'm getting at here. Apple and Big Publishing forced readers to pay more for an eBook than was previously necessary. There is no reason for an eBook to cost more than $2.99. Many authors, like me for instance, price their books anywhere from $.99 to $1.99, and that pricing model seems to work very well. I know of an Indie author who routinely earns royalties in the six figure range every year while pricing his books at $2.99.

No, I don't expect to earn that much from my books. Anyone would be a fool to think that. In the meantime, I'll be reasonably content to sell a few books to people who have come to trust and like my work.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy