On Barnes & Noble’s Failure to Hang On to Indie Authors

David Gaughran has a great post on this today. Here’s the quick summary: people continue to attack Amazon for its monopolistic, predatory, anti-competitive practices when it comes to ebooks, particularly when it comes to the Amazon’s KDP Select program, which allows authors certain perks in exchange for offering their content exclusively to Amazon.

The thing is, the reason this program has been so effective is because it works. For self-publishers, it’s far from impossible to establish a presence at Amazon and sell some serious books. At B&N? The sledding is much, much tougher. As Gaughran points out, at B&N, the playing field continues to be tilted significantly in favor of the big publishing houses. For everyone else–indie and small-press books–sales are almost entirely driven by direct traffic to their books’ pages. In other words, B&N isn’t doing anything to help them be seen.

My experience there has been and continues to be just that. Last year, my books were never going great at Amazon, but there were always 15-20 sales at the end of every month. With B&N, most months the totals were zero.

So last month, I signed up for Select with all my novels. After all, I had nothing to lose. (Actually, I had a little to lose by pulling those books from Smashwords, but we’re talking about hamburger money. Not Fatburger money, either. A lucky month might get me a cheeseburger at In-N-Out.) In the last four weeks, I’ve done very, very well.

I’ll get into that in greater detail pretty soon. And Select isn’t a magic bullet, either. It doesn’t work for everyone. But it’s yet another example of the way Amazon is making it possible for more and more authors to make a living. Right now, B&N simply isn’t doing that. And that’s why so many authors have no problem in giving them up without a look back.