Why I Sold Out To the Man (or Amazon) – and how you can still get a book free through FRIDAY!

I actually did the e-mail promotional blitz thing Monday night. I told EVERYONE I could reasonably justify telling that Tales of the Crimson Pact was available FREE on Amazon until Friday.

Which means that quite a few people who pay attention to such things figured out that I’d enrolled that title in the KDP Select program. Which meant there were quite a few people wondering what what the bleeding hell I was doing selling out to that company.

It’s a justified question. Less than a month ago I was talking about how Amazon is the Wal*Mart of booksellers, how we should have expected them to screw us over, and that the bullying will get worse for independent authors and small publishers like myself.

These things are still very, very true.

So why would I voluntarily put any book in KDP Select? Four simple reasons:

  1. I think the performance of one book in a series impacts the performance of the rest of the series. This is also why I’ve made digital author copies available to all authors who have contributed to this series of anthologies.  If they can read, review, and promote other volumes, it helps them.  (There is no earn-out period for any of my anthologies so far – royalties accrue from day one.)
  2. Keeping all the properties out of KDP Select isn’t fair to my authors.  Whether I like it or not, KDP Select has had results for some – but not all – authors.  It’s only fair to them that I try to earn the greatest amount of money for them as possible, and that means participating with KDP Select in some fashion.  Regardless of how I feel about Amazon (or any retailer), the authors deserve to have the book available where people will buy it.

    3.  I have an obligation via my mission statement.  As I mentioned yesterday:

Alliteration Ink is designed to be a test bed for new strategies and methods that allow authors, publishers, and others in the industry to adapt and thrive in these changing times.

To be able to fairly report on the service, I should probably, y’know, try it.  And yes, I will be reporting on it.

4.  I chose which book to offer very carefully.  Tales From the Crimson Pact is a digital sampler.  It’s four stories selected from The Crimson Pact: Volume One.  They show the breadth and width of the anthology, along with being some kick-ass stories in their own right.  That book was designed as a promotional venue from the beginning.  Hopefully, you’ll try the sampler and come back to the full three volumes of the anthology for more.  Heck, maybe you’ll even buy it from the website and make sure the authors get the most possible money.

So go check out Tales From the Crimson Pact on Amazon – it’s FREE through Friday.  (If you don’t have a Kindle, you can use your smartphone or their PC reader).  The full anthologies are available at many other stores – check the website for an up-to-date listing with links directly to your eBookstore of choice.  And remember, if you buy from the website, the authors get the most money and you get a bundle with the ePub, Kindle, and PDF versions of the books!