When I read the new Lee Child, or Gregg Hurwitz, or any other author at the top of their game, I find it an intensely motivating experience. They're good. Really good. And experiencing the work of someone with true mastery of the genre makes me want to work harder, and improve my own work. Is there any hint of jealousy there? Sure. I'm only human. I'd also like Gregg's good looks and Lee's money, or with Gregg's chart-storming 2011 is it now the other way round?
It's with that general outlook on life in mind that I'd like to say to the other e-book retailers competing with Amazon, "For the love of Mike, stop whining about Amazon, and focus your energies on upping your game. And up it FAST because we need a diverse, competitive marketplace for books and e-books."
If I could give a single piece of advice to the likes of Barnes and Noble, Apple, Waterstones, and WH Smith, it would be this: focus, as Amazon have done, on the authors. With rankings, numerous charts and sub-charts, a brilliant self-publishing platform in the form of KDP, Author Central facilities which allow authors (of all varieties) to add and tweak content, Amazon are already light years ahead, but still catchable – just.
Ask yourselves some questions:
Who is more invested in the success of a book than the author? (The only entity that comes close is a publisher who has paid a large advance - but you want a majority of people pushing traffic to you.)
Who is therefore best placed and motivated to drive readers to a particular retailer?
Why is it that on author blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, when authors link, they link more often than not to Amazon? (I strongly suspect Amazon's charts were originally a huge part of this, especially among traditionally published authors, who crave sales info like fat kids crave cake.)
Forget augmented content for e-books, covers that shimmer when your cursor glides across them and the other assorted fripperies that people seem to get giddy over. The real battleground of the one-click is driving traffic to your portal.
With the so-called indie-revolution in publishing, Amazon created a vast army of brand ambassadors who were highly motivated; primarily people who had been rejected by regular publishing houses for various reasons. And Amazon not only welcomed them with open arms but they gave them lots and lots of toys to play with, such as the Author Central facility where they could tweak product information, their bio, and link outwards to social networking. Asking whether these authors have work of value to sell to readers is an almost wholly moot point given the Darwinian nature of the Amazon marketplace. And now of course their ranks are being swollen by authors with backlist e-books, and some like myself who have decided to play on both sides of the street.
I had the parallel experience over Christmas of watching a tragi-comic promotion for the e-book of Lockdown unfold at a British retailer, complete with placeholder image where the cover should have been, while at the same time I put in hour upon hour over at Amazon.com shepherding the newly released e-book versions of the first three Lock books onto the charts for the first time. Of course, you could say that the great irony is that Amazon, in effect, had hours of unpaid labour from me. Or, you could say that what Amazon offer authors is a level of partnership where interests are aligned, and both parties share a direct financial benefit. Either way, it's clear that the winners in all this will be the authors, publishers, and retailers who truly embrace change. Above all though, retailers should grasp that authors are on their side when it comes to wishing to preserve competition in the marketplace, and begin to act accordingly.
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