Okay. Hi. I have started reading this book and I got to tell you, this is truly a game changer. It is astonishing what this woman went through. That is, in a sense, so similar to what I went through after I decided not to be exclusive with Amazon, except she decided to be exclusive with Amazon and discovered that it wasn’t the great, wonderful benefit that it seemed to be.
Yeah, I mean, I won’t go into the myriad ways that Amazon has made a promise or offered a service only to change the terms or get rid of it entirely. Leaving you there with your pants around your ankles or your [ahem!] in your hand, so to speak. Okay, so where was I? Yeah. if your books are sold based on Amazon or other retailers or even Etsy, you do not have an ecommerce business. This is a great point she makes. It’s about adopting a business mindset. Wait a minute, sorry, I can barely turn these pages. Hand problems. A different approach from the selling on retailers mindset. “In the world of ecommerce, you are the captain of your ship. You control the branding, the pricing, your relationship with customers. You call the shots, make the rules.”
Her underlying point here throughout all of this—I have so many underlines—is that when you sell through Amazon, Kobo, Apple, or any other retailer, you are not gaining a customer. You’re gaining a reader, but you don’t know who that customer is. You don’t know anything about your customer base. All of it is speculation or whatever data your publisher or distributor happens to have. It’s their customer, not your customer. Do you get what I’m saying? As a result, since everybody seems to buy so much from Amazon, when somebody buys your book from Amazon, Amazon now has your customer information, the information you should have if you’re selling directly and can actually reach out to these individuals who buy certain books and say, “Hey, I have other books, you know. I have a whole series.” Things like that, that’s now in Amazon’s hands, or the other retailer. It’s not in your hands and I’m not sure that you can really understate the value of that kind of personal contact.
It’s important. That’s why people used to do book signing so that they could meet people who read their books and stay in touch with them through newsletters. Back in the old days, you could send out a newsletter in the mail even. Well anyway, I don’t know what authors did in the old days, to be honest, other than do book signings. And so my point is that there are a lot of tools that we can be using as authors online to connect better with our customers, who are also our readers. And this book will give you a plethora of options. It’s mind-blowing, to be honest. It really, I spent yesterday, Sunday, I did a lot of reading in this book and I got to tell you, I was blown away by what I read in there. Thought my head was going to explode.
Almost as hard as my head almost exploded the first time I went to a line producing workshop for indie film producers. It seems like my mind is getting blown on a regular basis these days, one way or the other. So if you don’t mind having your mind blown and having a new mindset about how to sell books, this is the one to get. Authors Selling Direct by Morgana Best, and she’s obviously British, which I approve of highly. I’m being silly. I just love the way they spell words and I love their Britishisms. All right, that’s it. That’s all for me. Take care. Talk to you later.
Wait, I do know something about what authors did other than book signings back in the old days, because I did it. Back when I had an actual publisher—a small press that ended up going out of business nine months later—during that brief time when I had a publisher, I did some radio interviews. Yeah, I did. I would call in and do a radio interview. I did this at several radio stations. They were a good way to train for this sort of thing, that kind of interrogation or interaction, whatever you want to call it. And so, yeah, I was familiar with that. That was a way of getting the word out. Radio interviews, and I paid a lot of money to get those radio interviews set up, lemme tell you. A lot of money I didn’t make back. All righty, that’s all. Be seeing you!
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