Indie Means Indie

The post Indie Means Indie emerged first on Fiction Notes.

Smashwords’ Mark Coker is sounding the alarm about indie publishers( those who write and publish their own works–let’s get the terminology right-it’s INDIE publishers , not the deprecating “self-published”) relying too much on Amazon.

I agree with Coker.

Two and half years ago, I started advertising on Amazon’s AMS platform. It doubled my sales. But then, everyone else noticed the programme and the cost of advertising has sky-rocketed. I get it. There’s competition, as there should be. But what I don’t get is that the scaffold is baffling, baffling, and most of all, inconsistent. You may advertise applying Keyword A and get stupendous decisions. If you try to duplicate that with a similar designation, say the second in a series, however, you’ll probably get zilch. Good-for-nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. There’s no consistency. That’s a simple example, but the incongruity gives throughout the platform.

I’ve been a member of a Facebook group devoted to figuring out Amazon’s algorithms and advertise programs for about those same two and a half years. In that time , no one can consistently figure out, well, anything. Conjectures abounded. I’ve tried them all.

Respect for My Own Creativity

So. A duo days ago, I prepared a attempt at a high level of $ 0.83. Except, I accidentally mounted it at $83.00 instead. Fortunately, I monitor the ads closely and caught it within 24 hours. Here’s the thing: it sold books. The ad sufficed, and there were auctions. Of route, at the high proposal( it billed me about$ 4-5/ bid ), I wasn’t rewarding. But everything else was right on. I know my public; they like my diary; the keywords were solid; and, alteration frequencies were solid which wants the make/ description were doing their jobs. It’s exactly that Amazon won’t serve my ads without crazy-high pricing. For whatever conclude, Amazon’s algorithm deprecates my entitlement and won’t serve the ads.

I remember going to writer’s meets and being put over by how people treat editors. Speaking was a baby editor–a fresh-out-of-college-2 0-something, the only type person who can afford to live on an auxiliary editor’s salary. She was smart and intelligent, but not knowledge. Her opinions on literature were still forming, guided by her senior editors and worlds of the marketplace. I squirmed at how people treated her, as if she were a princess who, with her occult publishing sprig, could change their lives forever. If only she would notice them and their work. They fawned over her. Smart, rational, innovative beings demeaning themselves before the Goddess of Publication.

As Emily Dickinson says,

“Publication- is the Auction

Of the Mind of Man –

Poverty- be justifying

For so foul-smelling a thing.”

Indie-publishing is hard. It’s a lot of learning, trying, miscarrying, and trying again. But it’s honest and creative work. I no longer have to beg a baby writer to notice me. And I’m not going to beg Amazon’s algorithms to notice me, either.

Of course, I will ever need Amazon on some height. They are, after all, the biggest bookstore in the US. My bibles will always be rostered there.

But this is a year to relieve my dependence on Amazon. I’m building an online store–details to come–and will entrusted with responsibilities for my own pushing. When I extend ads, it’ll be to MY platform, to MY bibles. Not to Amazon’s platform. I’m an Indie!

Why? Because I respect my work too much NOT to do this. Respect for my own invention is why I started indie publishing, and it’s the foundation of decisions I’ll make this year about insuring my own auctions platform.

The post Indie Means Indie seemed first on Fiction Notes.

Read more: darcypattison.com