Comments on: Nyet To Amazon, Says One Author

By: Maximum Persuasion

Maximum Persuasion — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 02:31:33 +0000

Hmmm.. and won’t Amazon at least pay royalties to this fellow? I can’t imagine them expecting them to engage in hokeypokey without getting caught.

Especially in this wired (wait- is it “unwired”) world

By: KathyF

KathyF — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 10:21:25 +0000

Actually, the publicity from this probably doubled his sales. Hey, 20 more books is 20 more books!

By: Janet Szabo

Janet Szabo — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:18:57 +0000

I am a self-publishing writer. Prior to the release of my (knitting) book last March, I signed up with Amazon’s program for independent publishers and was all set to sell books through them. However, it quickly became apparent that selling through Amazon was going to COST me money. I also sell my book from my website (and through several other routes of distribution). I had knitters tell me that they were going to order books from Amazon rather than from me just to take advantage of the free shipping option. So, I did the math. If I sold 10 books from my website, I made $180 dollars profit. If I sold those same 10 books through Amazon, I made $30 profit–and Amazon made much more profit per book than that. I didn’t self-publish a book to enable Amazon to make money. I self-published a book so that I could make money. Obviously, if I were doing print runs in the tens of thousands and my cost-per-book was much less than it is, selling through Amazon might make sense.

So although my book is still listed on Amazon, I don’t sell through them. It’s amusing, though, that people think that if it isn’t available through Amazon, it must not be available at all. I run an e-mail list for knitters interested in the topic I write about. A new member joined last week and posted that she looked for my book on Amazon and they said it wasn’t available, and did anyone know where she could get a copy? I responded that if she just Googled “Janet Szabo,” my website, and the websites of several hundred stores that carry my book, came up.

I’ve done quite well not selling my book through Amazon. I won’t sell the next one through them, either. Granted, it’s non-fiction and I am sure the realities are different for fiction. I just wanted to provide another perspective.

By: Brenda Coulter

Brenda Coulter — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 03:04:11 +0000

This guy is hilarious. Amazon wouldn't have sold more than a handful of his little books in any case. It's still a fact that the vast majority of bookbuyers do not make their purchases via the internet--and even if they did, Amazon has plenty of online competition. Yet all of the online stores put together don't hurt indie bookshops nearly as much as the "big box" retailers do. So may we assume that Mr. Walker has refused to allow any of those stores to stock his book?