F
I will say that Amazon and Google Play Store make up the bulk of my royalties.
Visually, Google has the nicer interface (no ads!), but their search function is not very good. You basically need to know what you want to buy. And their delivery is not good unless you buy for a phone.
For aware readers, Smashwords and Payhip are the best bets. They give you a file, DRM-free, and you can decide what you want to do with it.
If readers only knew.
Of course, that would be better. But it would also be a lot more complicated, and right now, I wish for progress in the right direction.
Thing is, Bookshop started out with booksellers in mind, not with authors. It shows.
Same! I mean, how hard can it be to open up a cooperation with D2D?
Well, he's using the usual suspects, same as I:
Draft2Digital (including Smashwords)
Google Play Store
DriveThroughFiction
PayHip (as our own stores)
Friend of mine suggested something he called "Amazon Last".
Meaning he will publish his books everywhere else first, and then, maybe two months later, on Amazon.
Because we need to teach and encourage readers to buy elsewhere. To side-load their Kindles, rather than take the very comfortable route.
I am so mad... and I'm channeling that anger into putting even more of my books into my own store (means reformatting them).
I'm seeing authors taking their books off Amazon because of this.
I might, as well. I'm really, really, really not okay with this crap.
It will be a pain to set up print through other services, though, and it will wreck what little visibility I have. But I killed my business already, so what's leaving my biggest vendor?
Fortunately, I've been wide for years, I have sales through Google etc, I have my own PayHip store, so it won't be all gone.
RE: https://med-mastodon.com/@bicmay/115704213058699379
Why are you still on Facebook?
*takes a deep breath*
I am bilingual German/English. Born German, writing mostly in English. I sometimes translate my own stuff.
I have seen AI translations. Even human-edited AI translations.
They are - forgive my frankness - utter crap. An AI cannot capture the nuance, the connotations and the expressions of the target language.
It can only take the source language's words and turn them into target language words.
Working as editor with such a translation is a horror trip.