Unpublishing eBooks

[Post-Crisis D]

If you have an eBook available and later add a paperback, or upload both at the same time, and then, at a later date, unpublish the eBook, will the reviews from the eBook stay with the paperback?  Maybe saying the review was for the eBook edition or something?

It seems like I've seen reviews indicating which they were for, but now that I've checked, I'm not seeing any with an indication.

Currently, all my books are available as eBooks and only one available as both.  All the reviews are for the eBook versions.  I'm thinking about doing paperbacks for all of them and then possibly unpublishing some of the eBooks to try making those exclusive elsewhere for a while to see what happens.  But, if I will lose the reviews, I'll have to reconsider.

[TimothyEllis]

Why unpublish the ebooks?

How is there any any value in being exclusive anywhere?

As far as I know, once linked, the reviews stay with both. Only the series reviews are separate.

[Post-Crisis D]

How is there any any value in being exclusive anywhere?

I don't see a value in being exclusive with Amazon, but the only way to find out if there is value in being exclusive elsewhere is to try.

[TimothyEllis]

How is there any any value in being exclusive anywhere?

I don't see a value in being exclusive with Amazon, but the only way to find out if there is value in being exclusive elsewhere is to try.

That seems to me like shooting yourself in the foot.

And severely limiting the effectiveness of any promo or ad.

[Post-Crisis D]

That seems to me like shooting yourself in the foot.

And severely limiting the effectiveness of any promo or ad.

I don't do AMS.  I don't, and can't, do FB ads.  And Amazon promos are generally ineffective for me anyway.

I have nothing to lose by trying exclusivity elsewhere.

[LilyBLily]

Remind me where elsewhere ebooks are exclusive. All my wide ebooks are...well...wide.

I'm not sure why you'd want to unpublish your ebooks, but it might be prudent to create paperback editions just to keep your reviews. Amazon has a paperback cover creator, a fairly inferior thing it's true, but the price is right. You drop your ebook front cover onto it and let the cheap template do the rest. All you'd need for the interior is a pdf. Both could be created without cost to you. 

[Post-Crisis D]

I'm not sure why you'd want to unpublish your ebooks, but it might be prudent to create paperback editions just to keep your reviews.

Unpublishing them would be the only way to remove them to allow them to be exclusive elsewhere, isn't it?  I don't think there's any other option, is there?

Remind me where elsewhere ebooks are exclusive.

I'm not at liberty to say what this one is.  Exclusivity is not a requirement so I could just try it out on future books first.

[Cobbah]

If you unpublish your books anywhere (as far as I have experienced), unless you actually ask for them to be deleted, they remain unpublished but remain on the platform - complete with reviews. I'm afraid I have to disagree with the others, going exclusive to test reactions and see if you're better/worse off is a good thing to do. I periodically move a book or two into KU, but have not experienced any massive improvement so have gone wide again. You never know until you try. Good luck!

[TimothyEllis]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with the others, going exclusive to test reactions and see if you're better/worse off is a good thing to do.

Why?

I can't think of a single reason why that's a good idea.

[Bill Hiatt]

As long as you're not in KDP Select and thus locked into Amazon exclusivity, you can try any other venue you like without having to unpublish on Amazon. As others have said, under those circumstances, what's the point of removing your ebooks from Amazon?

Keep in mind that approximately 50% of all book sales in the US are on Amazon, and the percentage is much higher if we're just looking at ebooks (about 80%). Even if the other platform required exclusivity, what could it possibly offer you that would make such a thing worth it?

And if, as you said, the other platform doesn't require exclusivity, how does removing yourself from Amazon improve your trial enrollment at the other place? If you're thinking your fans will follow you to Brand X Online Bookstore, well, you have better fans than mine! Bestselling indies may go wide, but I can't think of a single example of one leaving Amazon. That would suggest they haven't found a way to make more profit by excluding Amazon.

Look at it this way. If you keep Amazon as is, you have Amazons sales, and you have other platform sales. If you exclude Amazon, you have only the sales from the other platform. The sales on the other platform won't increase if you drop Amazon. Even if, by some miracle, every single sale you would have had on Amazon miraculously migrates to the other platform, the best you've done is to break even. And in order to break even, you've taken a huge risk.

There are many valid criticisms of Amazon. But being on it won't somehow magically cause sales elsewhere to drop. That's just not how it works (unless you're in Select, and often KU makes up for it in that case).

Am I missing something?

And if by some change the folks on the new mystery platform are encouraging you to leave Amazon, run away--fast. It's almost certainly a scam of some kind.

[Post-Crisis D]

In the past five years, I've sold ten eBooks on Amazon.  If I try exclusivity elsewhere for, say, six months, the worst case scenario is that I lose one book sale on Amazon.  Maybe revenue from the other platform will make up for it.  Hopefully, it will more than make up for it.  If not, what have I lost?  Possibly one sale?

From what I can see, there's really no risk in giving it a try.

[Maggie Ann]

In the past five years, I've sold ten eBooks on Amazon.  If I try exclusivity elsewhere for, say, six months, the worst case scenario is that I lose one book sale on Amazon.  Maybe revenue from the other platform will make up for it.  Hopefully, it will more than make up for it.  If not, what have I lost?  Possibly one sale?

From what I can see, there's really no risk in giving it a try.

Why are you exclusive with Amazon in the first place if you've only sold ten books in the last five years? I don't sell a lot on Amazon, but I'm wide and the little that I sell on each venue including Amazon adds up.

I see your plan as jumping out of the frying pan into the volcano.

[Bill Hiatt]

Your position is more understandable if you aren't selling on Amazon. At least, that does reduce the risk factor.

But since the other platform doesn't require exclusivity, what are you gaining by not selling on Amazon? Put another way, what is the other platform offering you to be exclusive? If the answer is nothing, then I'm seeing why you've connected leaving Amazon with going to the other platform. Superficially, they seem to be two entirely different issues.

Given Amazon's market dominance, wouldn't it make more sense to investigate more ways to improve your performance there? "Go where the sales are," is still a sound principle.

I confess that I'm baffled by your situation. Your posts here suggests you have far more of a clue about what you're doing than I did when I started out, but I apparently got more sales just by bumbling around than you have, probably with a far better strategy than I had at the time.

[Post-Crisis D]

Why are you exclusive with Amazon in the first place if you've only sold ten books in the last five years?

Basically, the same reason people argue against moving elsewhere.  If Amazon has 80% marketshare, and I sold ten books, then I've missed out on two and a half sales by not being wide.  That's hardly worth the effort of doing all that entails to go wide.

But since the other platform doesn't require exclusivity, what are you gaining by not selling on Amazon? Put another way, what is the other platform offering you to be exclusive?

It would vary from potentially 35% less than I would get now to almost three times as much as what I would get now.

I confess that I'm baffled by your situation. Your posts here suggests you have far more of a clue about what you're doing than I did when I started out, but I apparently got more sales just by bumbling around than you have, probably with a far better strategy than I had at the time.

Checking my sales chart, it seems everything went downhill after I started (and then stopped) doing AMS ads.  I tried them for a couple months, but spent more on ads than what the resulting sales (if they even came as a result of the ads) generated.  So, I stopped using them.  It almost makes you wonder if Amazon has algorithms that punish authors for not using AMS.  Because sales after mid-2017 (when I started and stopped using AMS) took a steep nosedive compared with prior years.  One might blame increased competition because there are more and more books but, if that were the case, my sales should show a steady decline over time rather than a rather sharp decrease after mid-2017.

[Bill Hiatt]

It's possible Amazon punishes authors for stopping the use of AMS, but there are a lot of other possibilities. Amazon has seemingly diminished organic discoverability in general.

I have tried stopping or reducing AMS ads. Particularly when I stop, sales go down, though not off the cliff as you're describing. It's a more gradual decline, as one might expect because the ads, though not always cost effective, do move books. So ceasing them would cause a drop. If that were coupled with other changes Amazon made at the time, it's possible that might have caused the drastic drop you saw. Since Amazon never announces what it's doing, it's hard to know what, if anything, changed at that time.

On the question of what the other platform is offering you, I'm not sure what your answer means. I take it the other platform has some kind of sliding scale for royalties, but based on what? But I guess it couldn't be royalties, because three times what you get now would come out to more than 100%.

[Post-Crisis D]

On the question of what the other platform is offering you, I'm not sure what your answer means. I take it the other platform has some kind of sliding scale for royalties, but based on what? But I guess it couldn't be royalties, because three times what you get now would come out to more than 100%.

If, right now, based on my current eBook prices, someone were to buy a copy of each of my fiction eBooks on Amazon, I would get about $13.  On the other platform I would get about $9 because the reader would basically get a bundle price.  Otherwise, if they don't get all the books, I end up making more royalties per book than I would with Amazon.

Sure, you can do a box set on Amazon, but then the reader ends up with one big eBook that has all the books.  With the bundle, they still get separate books but at a bundle price.

As far as I know, you cannot do that kind of bundle pricing on Amazon.

[Bill Hiatt]

You definitely can't get a bundle price on Amazon. That's something I would have liked to have.

It's not clear to me, though, whether customers would prefer separate ebooks over one big one. Perhaps you will find out.