I usually root for the underdog and I believe that competition is good for the buyer. Even so, I have to admit I got sucked into Amazon. It’s isn’t their fault. They do what businesses do, try and be the best. None of the eBook competition put the effort in. When I ask clients about who sells the most books for them, it is Amazon.
The Vexing Conundrum of Amazon
At some point or other, any indie author must wonder how they really feel about Amazon.
I freely confess I’ve been all over the board with my attitude towards this extraordinary organization.
Some few of us will remember that Amazon began as a bookstore, and just a bookstore: music, video, and software followed soon after. Twenty-four years after its founding, Amazon’s dominance of the book space is such that no indie author stands a chance of attaining any significant visibility, let alone success, without them.
Those of us who’ve “gone wide” with some of our titles, i.e., have chosen to make them available through several other online retailers, have probably noticed that somewhere between 70 percent and close to 100 percent of our sales come from Amazon. In fact, according to the 2017 authorearnings.com report, Amazon accounted for a whopping 83 percent of US ebook sales. With just 9 percent of market share, Apple iBooks is a very distant second place finisher.