Why Indie Books Flounder

Indie books flounder for a lot of reasons, the main one, of course, being the law of supply and demand. There's way, way too much supply. Between 7,000 and 10,000 self-published books are published daily. Worse, 30%-50% of them are an author's first book. I say "worse" because first novels are generally bad. If in doubt, just read mine--or try to. If you can get past the first chapter, you have real stick-to-itiveness!  Good intentions on the author's part doesn't equate to a positive reading experience. And once burned, many readers will revert to buying traditionally published books, not that they're necessarily any better, but on the plus side, you'll pay more for them. 🙄

That leads me to a common bias. I've seen so many readers on social media asking for book recommendations, and inevitably the replies will all involve books published by the Big Five. If indie authors like me suggests our own books, it's crickets. Mind you, I never suggest my own book, because self-promotion feels icky. (Is this why my sales are so bad?)

I don't know how most people search for books on Amazon, but I suspect they filter by bestseller lists. Everybody wants to be in the cool club, and it's more fun, I suppose, to read the same book all your friends are reading. In fact, how many buyers are even doing generic searches, rather than typing in a title they've heard about? 

Traditionally published books account for 70%-75% of total dollar revenue. That leaves very little for us indies to divvy up. The good news, if there is any good news, is that in the ebook market, indies perform better, with 40% - 47% of all ebook sales. 

And according to Google:

"Market research indicates that consumer bias against independent authors is fading. Surveys show that 51% of modern readers explicitly express a desire to support indie authors, compared to just 17% who actively prefer traditionally published books."

Here I go being cynical again, but really? Expressing a desire to support indie authors is often just virtue signaling. Google claims that one can type "self-published books" in the Amazon search bar, but know what that gets you? Books on how to self-publish. If you try narrowing it by genre, Amazon will show you a ton of traditionally published novels. If there was truly a big demand for indie books, Amazon would tailor its results accordingly. I think those 51% who specifically want indie books are looking for romance novels. 

Running From Herself is currently ranked:  

#1,342,550 in Kindle Store

On the plus side:

#2,261 in Contemporary American Fiction

#5,744 in Women's Psychological Fiction

 

What that tells me is nobody's self-publishing women's fiction. And that the few readers who actually want indie books in my genre must have been dazzled by my fancy cover. You'd think, based on my #2,261 ranking, I'd be pulling in some dough. Au contraire. 

 

The last time I sold a unit--one unit--was February 28. Maybe I should be self-promoting on X after all.

The only rationale I can come up with for this ranking is Kindle Unlimited reads, which also haven't been great. I only recently learned that the initial "borrowing" of a book is all that counts as a sale, not the number of pages read.

Fun fact from Reddit: If your book is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, to find out the number of times your book was "borrowed", do this*:

1. Go to Bookshelf

2. Click on the ... next to your book and choose "Manage KDP Select".

3. At the bottom of that page you will see Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC) v3.0 and a number. This represents the number of pages KDP thinks your book contains.

4. Then on Bookshelf again, click Reports and choose KENP and expand your report span to "lifetime". The number of pages indicated divided by the page count from #3 supposedly gives you the number of accumulative books that have been read.

*A caveat from me: This can't possibly be accurate. What if readers start the book, but only read a page or a couple of chapters? One can't assume that everyone who borrowed the book read it all the way through. I've seen a daily read of 3 pages, then nothing. That person obviously never picked up the book again.

But if this calculation is a comfort, by all means, go with it. According to the second step above, my novel contains 643 pages, which makes the number of borrows 50. Nevertheless, if someone borrows my book and does only read 3 pages, it still counts as a sale for ranking purposes.

All this still points to the fact that indie authors face a steep uphill battle. I've come to terms with my numbers, but just think if all those social media indie book lovers actually meant what they claim.