The Indie Author’s Guide to Thriving Without Amazon

03/13/24 • 47 min

In this episode, Matt & Lauren explain why indie authors need to stop relying on Amazon as their primary sales channel. Listen now to hear why we feel so strongly about it, what alternatives we suggest, and how to get your readers on the same page.
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💡 Read These Blog Posts

💡 Watch our webinar Is Selling On Amazon Enough?Sound Bites From This Episode

🎙️ [9:06] “We talked in the last episode about the thousand true fans theory and this idea of connecting directly with your fans and building these true fans that are gonna buy anything from you. You can't do that if you're exclusively selling to people on Amazon. If your fan base exists on Amazon, you have no way to foster those relationships and connect with those creators and those readers.”

🎙️ [25:18] “How do you convince people that have never heard of you before that are potential new readers and buyers to buy directly from you? ... The easy solution there is to make sure that your website with your bookstore on it is the primary link that you're using at every available opportunity.”

🎙️ [41:24] “All of this is part and parcel of the fact that when you're selling direct, when you're owning kind of that relationship between you and your fans and readers, you are in fact in control of the entire customer journey.”

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💡 Read These Blog Posts

💡 Watch our webinar Is Selling On Amazon Enough?Sound Bites From This Episode

Previous Episode

Can You Really Support Your Business With Just 1,000 True Fans?

In this episode Lauren and Matt discuss Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans theory, what it means to be a true fan (or super fan), and a few unique ways small business owners and content creators have turned casual buyers into true fans.
Dive Deeper

💡 Read the Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans essay

💡 Read The 1,000 True Fan Theory: Sustainable Income for Creators on the Lulu blog

💡 Watch Joe Pulizzi’s webinar on Creating a Multi-Million-Dollar Business From Your Book

💡 Get inspired by Audrey Hughey’s author plannersSound Bites From This Episode

🎙️ [16:39] “It's actually one of the things I love about social media...you can find that there's always at least somebody else in the world that shares your thoughts or shares your opinion or shares your interests or anything like that...no matter how niche your content is or how niche your book is or whatever, you will find fans for it. You will find people that will be a dedicated audience.”

🎙️ [26:16] “If we were giving those numbers back at the beginning and you were hearing like $100 of profit per year from every individual fan, I'm only publishing one book a year. Like, how am I supposed to make $100 off of a single book? This is how you do that, is by creating these supplemental products that go along with those books.”

🎙️ [33:13] “This idea that you might struggle for content or run out of things to do or ways to monetize. I don't think that's going to happen. I think once you get started doing this and understanding the model and figuring out what your fans want, what they will buy from you. You're not gonna have any shortage of products.”

Next Episode

An Inside Look at London Book Fair 2024

Matt & Lauren recap their time at London Book Fair 2024, one of the biggest publishing conferences in the world. Get the lowdown on hot topics from the conference, an insider's look at the event, and a special peek into what it’s like to travel with Team Lulu.
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💡 Learn how (and why) Lulu is a Certified B Corp

💡 Watch this video on 5 Things to Know Before You Publish

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Sound Bites From This Episode

🎙️ [15:08] “But I think this year because that's being accelerated in our industry in terms of the heightened awareness around indie creators and just what's happening here with direct sales and AI and all these other things, it did feel like, you know, we were all speaking the same language for once in terms of what the hot topics were.”

🎙️ [17:21] “I think it was that where it was last year we were doing the work of explaining to people what selling direct was. And this year, somewhere between last year and this year, that kind of sunk in. And now it was more along the lines of how can we help you do that?”

🎙️ [28:10] “There's always a moment where it clicks for people that they don't have to choose one or the other. And that to me is one of the light bulb moments that I love... whether it's talking about selling direct versus having your content in global distribution, you can do both of those things... The same is true for choosing between self-publishing and traditional publishing. You don't have to choose between self-publishing and traditional publishing.”

Publish & Prosper - The Indie Author’s Guide to Thriving Without Amazon

Transcript

Matt: Welcome back to Publish & Prosper. Thanks for joining us again. Hopefully again, or if it's your first time, thanks for checking us out. Today I think everybody's going to be very interested in the topic we are going to be discussing. I know we certainly are. And that is how to convince your readers to buy directly from you. The subtext or title here would be: the indie author's guide to thriving without Amazon. Yes, it can be done. And we're going to talk about how