Tina Boscha

I suppose I should be careful here, as my book is listed on Amazon.com and I have, in my opinion, a very beautiful paperback version that is as professional looking as it could be without going through a Big 6 press, thanks to Create Space (an affiliate of Amazon).  But as I am in a quandary regarding how to get my books (digital and print) into independent bookstores, I’m just feeling a little pissy.

Here’s why:

By going through Amazon (as well as Barnes & Noble and Smashwords for my ebook), I’m putting off a lot of indie booksellers due to Amazon’s predatory practices. From what I understand, this has a lot to do with pricing and discounting, for books in all their various forms. I get it, and am certainly guilty of buying through Amazon (for a lot of things) rather than going local.

(It is funny as in funny-weird, though, that many of us can mourn the loss of Borders - a national chain - when at first when stores such as Borders and Barnes and Noble came on the scene, we decried them. Anyway.)

Yet, my book can be ordered through Create Space’s expanded distribution channel. Indie booksellers absolutely can stock my book. I would actually make very little money this way, since this yields the lowest royalty and my paperback is relatively cheap at 12.99. However, Create Space does not allow returns, which puts the indie bookseller off even more. If I were an indie bookstore, I would be leery of stocking a self-published book for that reason, even if the author is local.  I’m not naive; a lot of self-published books leave something to be desired and returns are likely. (But not mine, of course. :-)

So I’m left with maybe one option to get my paperback into indie stores, and that is to offer my book on a consignment basis. I pay for it upfront and the store takes a commission on any sale. That puts the initial financial burden on me, and limits the number of stores I can approach. Yet I’m willing to do that for a few local stores, as I want the distribution and the visibility in addition to hopefully making money together with the bookseller.

For my ebooks, I can also sell via Google Editions, allowing my book to be sold via IndieBound and their component indie stores. Great! It may not get my paperback out there, but I widen my distribution and support the indie. Wait a minute. This is what Google Books tells me about pricing:

“You can provide the list price for your Google eBooks. Except in cases where Google is acting as your agent or where Google is required to sell at a price set by the publisher, Google and authorized resellers have the discretion to set prices as they see fit. We will share the revenue from any sales with you according to the list price that you provide.”

Apparently, when researching what other self-pubbed authors have experienced, I can tell Google not to discount my book. Except they still do. Beyond that, the process itself of uploading and setting up the account is tedious and not user-friendly, and the responsiveness of their support is notoriously bad. (This is hearsay, but it seems pretty universal on message boards and blogs.) So if I price my book at 2.99 on Amazon and elsewhere, Google can undercut it, which will then lead Amazon et al to reduce the price. And I have no control. Which is a huge benefit of being an indie myself, being able to set the price where I want and to adjust and experiment.

Beyond this, it’s frustrating to me that Google is seen as the good guy here. It’s a huge-ass company. It’s not some tiny outlet helping out struggling booksellers. And you know what? I am a tiny outlet. I am a single person selling my own book that I busted my butt for. I love/loved every second of busting my butt for it, too. I know I have to do this to get my work out there, and I believe in my work. (Hey, I’ve got some pretty great reviews to back me up. Did I mention my ebook is only 2.99?!) I don’t feel ashamed or sorry for myself (anymore, anyway) that I am self-published. Nor do I feel like the Big 6 are all jerks. And I don’t feel like Amazon is completely evil, nor is Google. Amazon has made my lifelong goal easily achievable, for one thing. At the end of the day, there are some good reasons for what every company and every author is doing. What does suck, though, is that I feel shut out of a market that I’d like to support and a relationship that feels like a natural fit. Independent book store plus independent author should equal a lot of indie smugness, lol.

Konrath wrote about this topic a few times, and one idea he and Blake Crouch proposed was for the American Booksellers Association to develop their own ebook platform. As they wrote, “indies selling indies.” I would love, love, love that, provided we could mutually agree on a price. I could choose the widest distribution possible; after all, you can buy a Big 6 book via Amazon as well as at your local independent bookstore. I would love to give my buyers - and myself - that option as well.