Keeping Your Head Above Water - Part 2

Once upon a time, Amazon worked hard to give their customers what the customers wanted. The Amazon algorithms were built so that if anyone typed in "vampire romance" in the Books category of the search box, they would get a list of the most popular vampire romance novels. Ones that were the best-selling and/or most read.

Now the first couple of books are "Sponsored", i.e. the publisher who paid the most for the ad to pop up.

"That's not a big deal," a few of you are saying. It is when "pay to play" results in a lot of good books not even being show to customers.

In another example, I also collect Wonder Woman paraphernalia. When I type in "Wonder Woman" for the entire store, what show up first? All the editions of Spider-man: Far From Home because it's the big ticket item Amazon is currently pushing.

Amazon day-to-day management has allegedly done a complete 180. Consumer pleasure is no longer their driving goal. Maximizing profit is. That agenda was allegedly pushed by a few executive. The internal war resulted in situations like my Wonder Woman example, despite both the techs in Amazon subsidiary A9 and Amazon's own legal team protesting the move.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on this matter on September 16th of the year. (I posted the link but it is behind a paywall. Here's Gizmodo's breakdown of WSJ article and its follow-up if you don't feel like paying the WSJ.)

Once the cat was out of the bag, someone changed the A9.com link to point directly at the Amazon store. This type of squirrely behavior isn't going to help with the current EU antitrust probe into Amazon's activities.

"But-but my books are in KU!" you protest. "The reader only pays $9.99 to read everything!"

That's not the full story either. Amazon has changed their Prime subscription so unlimited borrowing is available to Prime members instead of having to may that additional $9.99. That means income for the Kindle Unlimited pot is down.

Another part is the backlash by readers for some of the scams that have been going through KU. Some readers refuse to subscribe anymore because of some of the problems. Other readers are angry their favorite authors have been caught and banned by Amazon.

All of the above combined is part of the reason both money page reads are down. Too many writers rely on Kindle Unlimited for their income. These writers have no additional income streams, and that's going to hurt them, especially if the US DOJ comes after Amazon for anti-trust violations.

Which is entirely possible considering the current president's personal hatred of Jeff Bezos. But hey, if the Amazon execs are that stupid to draw the DOJ's attention, the fault is totally on them.

So, what should writers do? Start looking at other retailers. I'm not saying take everything wide if you're not comfortable. There are medium points between KH and wide.

For example, only my 888-555-HERO series is currently in KU. All other series are wide. Next year, I plan to pull HERO out of KU and go wide with it while I put a new series into KU. That's right--a new series, not one of the older ones. In the meantime, the paperbacks of HERO are available at lots of retailers including Barnes & Noble  and Powell's.

This is merely MY plan. Other writers need to figure out theirs because there's no plan that's right for everyone.

YMMV

Understanding Your Readers

I'm a little late posting today because I've been doing some catch-up reading. The Passive Guy posted excerpts from a Wall Street Journal article that triggered an insight:

Perhaps, for many readers, it does not make much difference whether a story is told in print on a page or images on a screen. The narrative itself is what matters. In fact, the Great American Read list confirms that there is a great hunger in our culture for grand, mythic narratives. The adoration of the Harry Potter books, like the nearly scriptural status of the Star Wars movies, involves more than just fandom. These are comprehensive universes, complete with their own laws and histories, heroes and villains, morals and meanings. They serve the purpose that was once served by epic poems like “The Iliad” or “The Odyssey,” or even by biblical stories: They dramatize the spiritual truths and longings that shape our world.

People will argue and wail and gnash their teeth (as some the comments on TPV show) of the main points of the article. But it was the highlighted one that made me understand why the Justice universe resonates with readers. Why more people comment on it. Why people want more stories.

All my other series are firmly rooted in contemporary society. The Justice universe takes our world as it was in the 6th century B.C.E. and twists it through an unimaginable conflict to become a nearly unrecognizable. But I try to make it firmly rooted in the (to me) natural progression of politics, economics, and technology if certain major factors are skewed a different way or if they never happened.

I'm not trying to compare my stories to Homer, J.R.R. Tolkien, or even George R.R. Martin. But I think readers do want a fictional world that's a little bigger in scope to escape to with all the craziness in the real world these days.

And there's not a damn thing wrong with that. I know I need a little quiet in another time and another place. I've been reading quite a bit of Gail Carriger and Jonathan Moeller the last couple of months. But now I know what some of my readers want and more importantly why they want it.