One of the main obstacles to being an independent author/publisher is there are so many things that can eat up your time but many are not worth the bother. Amazon Ads come to mind. I feel better not cluttering up the blog with them and I imagine you do, too.
There is one company we have given some time to that did not pay off for the amount of graft (I use it in the British sense, meaning work, not the American one meaning corruption) and that was Smashwords. Not that many buyers used that service. Smashwords has bowed out and Draft2Digital has taken their place. Jack Mackenzie and I have spent some time thinking about dropping all these versions of our early books. We haven’t added any since Swords of Fire 1. (They distribute books through Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo. Everand, Smashwords, Tolino. Overdrive, cloudLibrary, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Garders and Fable. Also Hoopla (more about that below.)
Now we might keep them and add all of our titles if readers expressed a desire for that other portal. I know not everyone is crazy for the Zon. Amazon does contribute the lion’s share of sales to RAGE m a c h i n e Books. That is a simple fact. Now that they offer paperbacks we don’t even have a different paperback seller like we once did. (It’s a lot of work to prepare books for multiple platforms, so sales need to happen or else why bother?) So I guess I’m asking: would you buy RmB Books if they were offered somewhere other than Amazon? Feel free to send a reply via our contact email above.
And thank you to all the readers who buy our books, whether from Amazon or Draft2Digital (or my favorite, in person, like T. Neil Thomas will be doing at Books & Co. in Prince George, BC in April! We’ll keep you up-to-date on that.)
Just a side note for those who are finding it hard to buy books right now. There is another option with Hoopla. (Here in Canada and in the USA anyway) if you have a library card, you can sign into Hoopla and borrow books. Even RAGE m a c h i n e Books. So consider that option. We appreciate all of our readers.
T. Neil Thomas
G. W. Thomas
Jack Mackenzie
I’ve just been releasing my books via Amazon. For a time I was releasing books on Barnes and Noble and through Smashwords but the sales were so negligible that it wasn’t worth the effort.
Similar but I am wondering Draft2Digital will do better.