Changes in Publishing

SO, some of you may be noticing two of my books are no longer posted anywhere other than Amazon. AND, my other two books will be disappearing during the next two weeks on everything but Amazon. So... why?

Here's the truth. I am an independent publisher and author. I do not have the ability to spread word of my writing around in magazines, newspapers, tv. All I have is word of mouth and the few places I can put it out there online for others to discover me. Then why would I want to remove my books from multiple listings and put them all down to one? The numbers support this decision.

These are not the final tallies for the whole of 2012 mind you. I moved about 1600 books from January to October 2012. Of those, less than 100 came from sources outside of Amazon.com and it's wonderful little Kindle. About 80 were from Smashwords during a free promotion, and the rest were from a handful of sales between iTunes and Barnes & Nobel. And as for revenue, the sources outside of Amazon brought in less than $.20 per book sold as the majority of sales were only because it's easy to give things away for free... usually.

But even then, why take the books off of these other networks? Isn't every book moved and every cent made progress? It is, but at what sacrifice? The truth of the matter is, being exclusive on Amazon brings many different perks. They support the independent author much more than these other networks (don't misunderstand me. Some of these other networks cater exclusively to indie's, but the internet presence is much less).

So while I hate to pull back out of these other networks, it just makes more sense in my strives to grow my brand to do so. I hope it will be a short term decision to be exclusive to Amazon as I do plan to test the waters again elsewhere. For the time being, nobody else can help me get my books out there as well as Amazon is currently. Thank you, Amazon, for making it possible for me to strive for my dreams by sharing my stories with the world. And thank you, all of my readers, of every country that has read one of my books on any network they have been read on. I cannot say that enough.

Here I am, looking forward to 2013 with great hope. 2 new books should be coming, along with 2 audio books (the first should be available in just a month or 2). Stick around, and we will build worlds together.

Happy Reading
R.A. Wilson