Wide vs. Exclusive: A Tale of Two Marketing Systems

Updated by David Gaughran 25 February 2021. Resources • 80 Comments.

Lots of people right now are asking themselves whether they should leave Kindle Unlimited. I’m generally agnostic on it, and I think writers should do what is best for them and their books, but there’s no doubt this is the big question of the moment. That’s partly down to falling pay rates, Amazon’s inability to deal with scammers and cheaters, or the increasing concern about having all your eggs in one basket when something like this (or this, or this) regularly happens. But I think authors are asking themselves the wrong question. The real issue, I suggest, should surround how you are going to find readers on these retailers (or on Amazon, if you have decided to swim in the Read More…

Amazon’s Hall of Spinning Knives

Updated by David Gaughran 27 March 2021. Amazon • 235 Comments.

Rank stripping strikes again, and this time it’s someone I know: Phoenix Sullivan. And Amazon’s handling of the situation has been terrible. This post is from 20 October 2017. It has not been updated except to clean up broken links but the comments remain open. Phoenix is well-known in the indie community; I’ve known her myself for ten years and consider her a close friend. Aside from being exceptionally generous with her time and knowledge, tirelessly sharing her insights on marketing and algorithms, Phoenix is also well known as a vocal campaigner against scammers and cheaters – particularly on the current big issues of book stuffing and clickfarming. And now she is being targeted. When Rank Stripping Strikes Phoenix made Read More…

You Can Win Without Cheating FFS

Updated by David Gaughran 2 March 2021. Amazon • 45 Comments.

Most self-publishers will agree: it’s getting tougher out there. If you are in KU, then you’re pretty much dependent on one income stream and if Amazon sales dip or you run afoul of the Hall of Spinning Knives for whatever reason then you are totally boned. And it’s getting so competitive in KU that it seems to take more titles and quicker releases, along with multi-pronged marketing campaigns – which can be complex and/or expensive – to get any real traction or stickiness. If you”re not in KU, hitting the charts on Amazon is increasingly difficult and holding on to position is near-impossible – especially when your book is being leapfrogged every hour by thousands of borrow-boosted KU salmon running Read More…

Michael Hyatt Has Something To Sell You

Updated by David Gaughran 7 March 2021. Bewares • 55 Comments.

Michael Hyatt has successfully reinvented himself as an author and speaker – one of those quasi-experts on marketing who slowly morph into a life-coach type guru. It’s a well-trodden path and these guys all tend to present themselves in similar ways.

Here’s Michael Hyatt reclining among soft furnishings. Here’s Michael Hyatt enjoying a tender moment with his dog. Here’s Michael Hyatt projecting success with a shiteating grin for the ages. It’s almost easy to forget what he did. Almost.

In 2009 when Michael Hyatt was CEO of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, he was instrumental in the creation of WestBow Press – one of the first white-label vanity presses operated by Author Solutions on behalf of an established publisher. Read More…

9 Ways to Improve Amazon Ads For Authors

Updated by David Gaughran 29 January 2021. Amazon, Resources • 71 Comments.

More product searches start on Amazon than anywhere else, even Google. It’s the world’s biggest bookstore and by far the largest ebook retailer. But Amazon Ads is still very much a work-in-progress, particularly the slightly pared-back version authors get to advertise books. Self-publishers tend to focus on making books visible on Amazon. Aside from being a market leader, and having famed frictionless purchasing, there is another key reason why such a focus often gets the best return. Unlike other popular sites, anyone visiting Amazon is generally there for one reason: to buy stuff. You aren’t interrupting them while they share dank memes with friends, or search how fast a raven can fly during winter. AMS is often referred to as “new” Read More…

Kindle Unlimited Authors & The Visibility Gambit

Updated by David Gaughran 4 April 2021. Amazon • 37 Comments.

Kindle Unlimited has had plenty of bad press over the last few years – some of it from me – but some authors are making bank. Regardless of how some authors feel about Kindle Unlimited, it is popular with readers, meaning there can be huge opportunity for the savvy self-publisher. Especially if you make full use of the tools Amazon gives you, and understand that it’s all about visibility. Enrolling in KU comes at a well-documented cost: exclusivity. But it’s the potential benefits I want to focus on today because some of that might be getting lost in the (well justified) complaints about scammers, transparency, and falling pay rates. Even though those rates have dropped by around 20% this year alone, Read More…

Amazon Only Cares About KDP Select Exclusivity

Updated by David Gaughran 23 March 2021. Bewares • 94 Comments.

Amazon infamously takes a very light touch approach to policing the Kindle Store, except when it comes to KDP Select exclusivity, even when the author is not at fault, as I found out to my cost.

On Monday, I found out that some bug hit a German e-book site causing the reactivation of long-dead listings, including one of mine, causing myself and several other authors to inadvertently breach the KDP Select exclusivity rule.

Amazon pounced into action and cancelled my Countdown deal which was scheduled for this week, screwing up a carefully planned promotion. And despite pledging to resolve the matter and restore the promo, Amazon has not done so. Read More…

Scammers Break The Kindle Store

Updated by David Gaughran 13 April 2021. Amazon, Bewares • 331 Comments.

On Friday, a book jumped to the #1 spot on Amazon, out of nowhere; it quickly became obvious that the author had used a clickfarm to gatecrash the charts. The Kindle Store is officially broken.

This is not the first time this has happened and Amazon’s continued inaction is increasingly baffling. Last Sunday, a clickfarmed title also hit #1 in the Kindle Store. And Amazon took no action.

Over the last six weeks, one particularly brazen author has put four separate titles in the Top 10, and Amazon did nothing whatsoever. There are many such examples. Read More…

Amazon Has A Fake Book Problem

Updated by David Gaughran 30 March 2021. Amazon, Bewares • 115 Comments.

Fake books powered by clickfarms are gatecrashing the Amazons charts and, despite being aware of the issue for over a year, Amazon has taken little action.

At the time of writing, if you look at the Kindle Store Best Seller charts now, and click over to Free Books, you will see that the Top 20 currently has five suspicious-looking titles which you can see in the image above.

None of them have reviews. All were published in the last week. They have no Also Boughts – meaning they have had very few sales historically. Each of these titles are around 2,500 pages long, seem to have duplicated content, and are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited.

What is going on here? Read More…

Vanity Publishing Is At The Heart Of Our Industry

Updated by David Gaughran 27 March 2021. Bewares, Publishing • 61 Comments.

Scammers used to operate at the edges of the publishing business, but have wormed their way into its heart. And the entire industry is in denial. This post is from 9 August 2016. It has not been updated except to clean up broken links but the comments remain open. An unintentionally revealing aspect of the tiresome Amazon-Hachette dispute was a series of statements from an organization purporting to advocate for authors’ rights. One of the heinous crimes Amazon was said to have committed was treating books like toasters. With such a claim, Authors United was attempting to tap into a current of feeling about the commoditization of literature – as if Amazon was the first company to put a price Read More…

Scammers Attack the Amazon Charts

Updated by David Gaughran 22 May 2021. Amazon, Bewares • 71 Comments.

Once again, scammers have swarmed the Amazon Best Seller list. It was only last month that Amazon was caught up in a crisis at least partly of its own making when bungled attempts to deal with a growing Kindle Unlimited scammer problem resulted in the sanctioning of innocent authors. This post is from 15 April 2016. It has not been updated except to clean up broken links but the comments remain open. Amazon has since apologized, and has also pledged to beef up its response to the KU scamming mess – but questions very much remain about whether Amazon is taking the problem seriously enough. A quick check shows that some of the main scammers are still operating, under the Read More…

Amazon Takes Aim At Scammers But Hits Authors

Updated by David Gaughran 27 March 2021. Amazon, Bewares • 308 Comments.

Amazon is an extremely innovative company – and can be quite responsive to self-publisher’s concerns – but sometimes it gets things very wrong too. Today is one of those times.

I’ve received several reports from writers threatened with having books removed from sale, and heard even more worrying stories from others who had their titles actually removed from the Kindle Store without notice.

What were these authors guilty of? What crime did they commit for Amazon to adopt such heavy handed treatment? Something completely innocuous: the Table of Contents was at the rear of their books instead of at the front. Yep, that’s it. Read More…

The One Where An Author Steals Text From My Book To Sell Pirated Software

Updated by David Gaughran 4 April 2021. Bewares • 97 Comments.

In today’s episode we are going to out a two-bit huckster who tried to put one over on yours truly, take a quick detour through the verdant fields of copyright law (and the slightly plainer meadows of moral rights), and then end with an example of how to handle a scammer. Sound fun? Strap yourself in!

A helpful reader – who will remain nameless for reasons that will become obvious – emailed me yesterday morning. I was just about to start work but the subject line caught my attention: Did You Give Permission For This? Uh oh.

I started reading the message he had forwarded. It had originated from a domain called IndieWriterSupport.com (you can cut-and-paste that address or Google it, but I’m not linking directly and giving them an SEO boost). And it appeared to be a straight cog from my book Let’s Get Visible. What was going on here? I kept reading. Read More…

CD Reiss: Nobody Was Going To Get Me To Quit

Updated by David Gaughran 1 March 2021. Writing • 20 Comments.

Before December, 2013, I made a living as a sweater technician. I know how sweaters are made, how to fix them, and how to make flat panels fit around a three dimensional person. I made decent money, didn”t hate my job that much, and did my very best to be the best technical designer I could be.

But every morning I got up at 5am, sat in a coffee shop and wrote until I had to go to work (this routine changed over the course of 20 years, but that was what I did between 2004 when my son was born and 2013 when I quit). I wrote screenplays and books. Most will never be published or produced because they suck or they”re irrelevant now. I couldn”t get an agent. I couldn”t get a meeting. I couldn”t get a publisher to send a rejection in an SASE. I couldn”t get anyone to read even a few chapters.

But still, I plowed on. I tried to quit, but I’m stubborn like that. Read More…

penguin random house Author Solutions vanity (1)

FYI: Penguin Random House Is Still In The Vanity Press Business

Updated by David Gaughran 6 April 2021. Bewares • 39 Comments.

Penguin Random House announced the sale of Author Solutions on Tuesday, leading to headlines stating it has exited the self-publishing business and various commentators congratulating it for cleaning house. Unfortunately, neither of those things are true.

Four Penguin Random House-owned vanity presses will remain in operation – Partridge India, Partridge Singapore, Partridge Africa, and MeGustaEscribir – and will be run as Partner Imprints. You can read more about how Partner Imprints work here, but the short version is that Author Solutions will operate these four vanity presses on behalf of Penguin Random House, and PRH’s job will be to provide leads (aka newbie writers), lend its name and brand to the effort, and then sit back and collect its commissions.

This is precisely how Author Solutions operates Archway Publishing on behalf of Simon & Schuster, Westbow for HarperCollins, and Balboa Press for Hay House, among others. In short, Penguin Random House is still in the vanity business, it’s just flying under the radar – along with many more famous names in the industry. Read More…

David Gaughran

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