Publishing and The (Un)predictability of Reader Tastes
I don’t know if familiarity breeds content, but it definitely breeds myopia, and nothing crystallized this for me better than Amazon’s recent announcement that they would begin paying Kindle Select authors who participate in Amazon’s subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, by the number of pages read, rather than by the number of “books” loaned. “Books” gets the air quotes here because of the way the previous system has given rise to authors publishing what are essentially chapter-long texts so they can loan more volumes, and therefore possibly make more money. And “read” gets special emphasis because, as Peter Wayner explains in this Atlantic article,
Amazon’s letter to writers who publish through its Kindle Select program explained that the formula was changing because of a concern “that paying the same for all books regardless of length may not provide a strong enough alignment between the interests of authors and readers.” Amazon is being clever: While the authors of big, long, and important books felt that they were shortchanged by a pay-by-the-borrow formula, they probably didn’t expect that Amazon would take their proposal a step further. Instead of paying the most ambitious, long-winded authors for each page written, Amazon will pay them for each page read.
Another element that needs highlighting is the fact that the new formula applies only to self-published books:
While many larger publishers’ offerings are included in these programs, the details of those deals have not been made public. Their authors may or may not be paid by the page. Amazon’s announcement only says that the new formula applies to Kindle Select books that are self-published and distributed through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program.
While both traditionally published and self-published authors have called out Amazon for exercising a disproportionately strong arm in the literary marketplace, the retailer has also become a laboratory, of sorts, both for authors trying to maximize their chances of visibility and sales, and for those trying to understand how and why certain books sell better than others. In other words, as much as Amazon may be affecting book sales (and lending), the retailer is also a valuable resource for authors and others who seek to better understand the commercial book market.
And now that Amazon has changed the rules for self-published authors with books enrolled in KU, there are myriad predictions about how this will affect the books that are both written and rewarded within the system. Which, of course, gives rise to new strategies by authors who want to “game” the system, aka maximize their KU income.
Among the advocates for this new system is Hugh Howey, who argues that the old system was not “fair,” because a reader had get through more pages in a longer work than a shorter one to make it count as “read” under the old system.
As a reader, I find this whole discussion frustratingly overwrought, in part because all this talk of strategizing financial success for self-published authors strikes me as uncomfortably similar to the ways in which traditional publishers have strategized success, especially in the way both appear to be chasing trends.
Which brings me to my initial point about myopia. Why myopia? Because one of the things that I think we take too much for granted in a lot of these discussions is that we’re not really talking about all types of books and publishing – we’re primarily and specifically talking about commercial fiction. In her 2014 Indie Earnings report, Brenda Hiatt notes that
Genre seems to be as big a factor in earnings as total number of titles. Not being a statistician, I haven’t done a true statistical analysis, but I can report that those earning upwards of $250,000 in 2014 fell predominantly into three genres:
Contemporary Romance, Paranormal Romance, and Romantic Suspense/Mystery (in that order). Earnings-wise, Historical Romance appears to be next in line, followed by such genres as Erotic Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy and Young Adult (order is less certain here as fewer authors of these genres responded).
I don’t know whether those precise categories still hold solid, but the larger point is that the focus is on those genres that translate and are selling well in digital, and those tend to be works of genre fiction. And while we may all know that’s what we’re talking about, and that therefore we don’t need to clarify and qualify, there also seems to be a tendency to inadvertently characterize the universe of commercial fiction as The Universe of Books and Publishing. So when we talk about books prices and production quality and measures of commercial success, comparing a work of genre fiction to, say, a coffee-table art book, or a work of political analysis or historical biography is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Even classic and literary fiction, which may not be genres, per se, have historically, been distinguished from genre fiction, fairly or unfairly.
Why is this important? For a number of reasons, starting with the way commercial fiction has been driven by an expectation of commercial, aka financial, success. Traditional publishers, for example, have historically used the profits from bigger books to finance “smaller” books, aka books of perceived limited appeal like literary fiction, poetry, and the like. Both traditional and self-publishing openly link the success of a book to its profitability more than, say, the quality of reviews it garners or its masterful craftsmanship. In fact, reader satisfaction is often measured in terms of sales numbers, which in turn helps shape and fuel future trends, justified as “giving readers what they want,” despite the fact that the vast majority of readers don’t even know if they’ll like a book when they buy it. If you’ve ever been left out of a current trend, you know how completely unreasonable this persistent correlation between sales numbers and reader satisfaction can be.
Readers feed into the monetizing of success, too, with our attention to the relationship between price and value. With genre fiction offering so many choices, and with those choices also competing with other types of entertainment, cost is a factor. I will often pay more for a book I will use for scholarly research or for, say, a beautifully produced cookbook, than I will for a digital work of commercial fiction. Why? Because I buy works of commercial fiction at rates of at least five to ten times what I buy other types of books (I buy A LOT of commercial fiction).
Then there is the problem of uniqueness and novelty. When you look for a new cookbook, for example, do you want the same recipes over and over? Do you want to read the same biographical history, the same political or economic analysis? Yet there seems to be a perception that readers want the same genre fiction tropes, characters, titles, and covers over and over, especially in Romance. And with each new breakout book comes hundreds of imitators and derivations and variations on the same themes and tropes and characters, etc. And it’s not just in traditional publishing.
In a recent blog post on “Gatekeepers for Indie Publishing,” Hugh Howey argues that the promotional author service BookBub would make a good model for a self-publishing gatekeeper, because
. . . its users trust them. The works are vetted, and however imperfect this system, it results in a high level of trust and satisfaction. From what I understand, BookBub looks for a minimum number of Amazon reviews, a minimum average ranking, and solid cover art/blurb/etc. For readers, a BookBub promotion serves as a stamp of approval.
Now think about this for a minute: self-published authors should welcome a “gatekeeping” system based on Amazon reviews and sales rank. From a system that many self-published authors are actively attempting to “game.” There are many legitimate ways in which authors attempt to boost sales, from promotional pricing to offering review copies in exchange for honest reviews. And then there are some not so legitimate strategies like buying positive reviews. Then there are strageies that are not overtly unethical, but which are definitely exploitive, like using large font and wide margins to make a print book longer or not clearly indicating that a short work is a novella or short story. But legitimate or not, using the commercial popularity of an author’s work to recommend other books to readers is basically the same thing as traditional publishing’s reliance on sales numbers to determine whether an author will get another contract or what types of books should be acquired.
In fact, Howey even echoes the language of traditional publishing in claiming, “[t]he goal of a promo list like BookBub is to serve the readers.” First of all, promo is an author concept, not a reader concept, and it primarily serves authors. But more generally, Howey’s confidence mirrors traditional publishing’s insistence that readers drive the publishing market. I think the real question here is whether there’s a difference between an editor and a “promo list,” and whether readers would rather trust an editor or a service that uses reader feedback to monetize author participation — like Goodreads now does (I hope my own answer is clear from the way I phrased the distinction).
So as the self-publishing of commercial fiction continues to grow, I have to wonder why self-publishing believes that it can predict reader tastes and preferences any better than traditional publishing, especially when the little research that has been done suggests that it’s hybrid authors (aka those who also have experience with traditional publishing) who are earning more through self-publishing, and that the majority of self-published authors are still not earning a living wage. I worry that some of the cheerleading around all the money there is to be made just adds unrealistic pressure that’s pushing authors even more sharply to chase rather than make trends, and to function in ways that the movement consistently criticizes traditional publishing for – playing it safe and putting more energy into promo than craft, for example.
Ideally, the commercial interests of authors can blend nicely with the reading tastes and preferences of readers, especially when both are well-satisfied. But as long as success in commercial fiction is measured in terms of sales and income – in both traditional and self-publishing – there is a greater likelihood of risk aversion, and of following rather than leading. Because I doubt there will ever be a way to accurately predict what will or won’t sell, but the (relatively) few outlying blockbusters will likely continue to help dictate market trends. And as more authors enter the market, and competition becomes even fiercer, prices may continue to skew downward, pushing many authors right out of the market. And how many of those authors will be risk-takers, or those intentionally writing books likely to have more limited appeal? It’s true that self-publishing is currently doing something different from traditional publishing in the sense that the bar to market entry is extremely low. But from a reader’s perspective, it can feel like self-publishing is focused more on crafting a better game, rather than a better book. And that is not about serving the readers – that’s about serving the publishers. In other words, business as usual.
Excellent insight and analysis as always, Janet. I too find it alarming that so many authors seem to be producing books to a formula rather than exploring the freedom that self-publishing gives them. We should be putting our readers first in terms of striving to write a great book, ensuring it’s free of typos and blatant errors, marketing it ethically and behaving professionally in our interactions with reviewers. Writing books to fit the market or, worse, to game the payout systems, is definitely not putting the reader first.
The KU change makes sense to me. I’ll be giving it my first try soon, but only for 90 days because not all of my readers get their ebooks on Amazon. It annoys me even to have to be exclusive for 90 days, but I’d be a fool to miss out on the promotional possibilities Select offers and I’m going to have a paperback version available as well. I’m glad that during that period I no longer have to compete with a slew of short “books” written to take advantage of the 10 percent rule. But in the long run, I’m simply not interested in spending all my time trying to figure out how to milk Amazon’s payout systems or make its algorithms work for me. I want to write the books I want to write, and that’s why I chose to self-publish. I’ll probably never be one of self-publishing’s big earners, but I can live with that.
+++ To find out if your Kindle book has page numbers, remember that this feature is available only on Kindle 3 and later. It is also only available if the publisher of the book went to the time and expense of adding real page numbers into the Kindle book file. +++
I think that before everyone starts arguing about yet another incomprehensible and self serving announcement from Amazon and the trumpeting of Amazon flacks like Hugh Howey, everyone should ask AMZ to precisely define what it is they are talking about. It’s tiring to read long analyses of incomplete and innacurate bushwah from AMZ and not see the basic assumptions being provided challenged. This started with everyone calling Amazon’s downloading fees “royalties” when all they are a very high operating charges that come straight off your bottom line.
Amazons is price rigging the ebook market. It is therefore impossible to analyze ANYTHING in terms of market acceptance and promotion effectiveness. Amazon distorts and destroys rational attempts to understand buying dynamics because their actions are designed to prevent this. It is Amazon’s interest to do this, but no one else’s. It would be very simple to create a pricing model and selling environment that is rational, fairly easy to track, and capable of being studied and analyzed. Publishers and authors would benefit, as well as readers, who are ALWAYS able to decide for themselves what they want to buy and pay.
This and similar articles remind me of the old news reports that tried to predict the inner workings of the Soviet Union by analyzing who stood next to whom on top of Lenin’s Tomb during Soviet era military parades.
Another issue is that even when those books are being written, they are hard to find when there are so many books being sold.
@Jane Steen: I think some folks will always try to leverage a system to maximize their benefits, and in some cases that will coincide with reader interests, and in some cases it won’t. From the outside looking it, it feels like there is still a sense that self-published authors are primarily authors, and not authors who are also functioning as publishers. Which may be where some of these differences in production values come in. I think it takes a specific type of person to handle both functions well, since they often require related but different skills. The author who focuses on telling a good story/writing a good book, and the publisher who focuses on producing and distributing a professional product. When done well, it’s no small feat, IMO.
Which may be why I also think that some of the authors who are themselves becoming publishing powerhouses are starting to appear less and less distinguishable from traditional corporate publishing, And that could be very interesting, especially if you see the self-pub community split from within, depending on how power is distributed and used within the community of self-pubbed authors.
@Rick Chapman: I don’t know what you’re responding to, but it’s certainly not my post, which is neither a) a news piece, nor b) the slightest bit interested in predicting anything. In fact, the whole post stands in opposition to what I find to be overwrought attempts to predict, and to engineer success based on those predictions. If what will sell could be easily predicted, traditional publishing would never struggle for anything and every self-published author would be selling like crazy.
@Janine: Yup. The market over-crowded, covers and titles often seem indistinguishable from each other, author pseuds overlap and cause confusion among readers. Under the best circumstances, reader discovery is often a consequence of serendipity, and when the market is so large and unfiltered, the democratizing qualities that created all those new opportunities can also kill those advantages (in the same way that democracy can destroy itself through its own political machinery).
Wonderful article, Janet. It certainly speaks to me – and the fact that even though I’ve bought more books than ever lately, I still have a hard time finding a “good read.”
You say: “I have to wonder why self-publishing believes that it can predict reader tastes and preferences any better than traditional publishing.”
I recently wrote (http://www.andreakhost.com/2015/06/on-writing-akh-edition.html) about the major benefit I see in self-publishing: that I can write whatever I want.
I can write non-commercial stories. I can write in a rambling diary format, or in the measured tones of elegy. I can write a book stewed deep in gamer culture. I can write a sequel to my least-successful novel, knowing that it’s a ‘quiet’ story that isn’t interested in things many experts consider necessary, and that it’s unlikely to sell any better than the first.
I’m not trying to predict reader tastes: I’m writing what I want to write, and self-publishing allows me to reach readers. And every single one of my stories has found someone who loves it. [Just not necessarily the same someone.]
There are certainly writers who are trying to write to the market, who chop and change in pursuit of algorithms, and prioritise . But that’s some writers, just like Hugh Howey is one writer, not self-publishing’s one true voice.
I’m far from the only self-publisher simply writing the stories I want to write, and putting them out there. Because that’s what self-publishing is: not one true way, not an endless marketing scramble, or a death-match for attention. An option, an opportunity, a chance to get your work out there, however you choose to approach that.
The sad part is that the more time I spend on promos, trying to get readers to take a chance on a new (to them) author, the less time I have to write. And since it’s so hard to get noticed, I have to work long hours at multiple jobs, just to pay the bills. Which leaves even less time to write. But I love to write, and I do have some fans who have enjoyed my stories. I write what I want to read, which hasn’t yet seemed to catch the zeitgeist of the public. But a girl can dream, right?
It’s so difficult to find original concepts and ideas in books these days, especially urban fantasy which seems to contain the same recycled vampires and werewolves with no originality to them.
It’s become so formulaic as to be dull, which should never happen in books about people who can use magic or change shape etc.
The possibilities for well-rounded stories are endless, but unfortunately, authors right what sells, with a little thought to substance characterisation and plot.
It’s not so easy to take “self-published authors” and put them neatly into a monolithic entity. Even selfpubs of “commercial” fiction still fall into a humongously wide range going from hybrid authors, and writers who’ve been doing this for decades, all the way to people crossing off the bucket-list item, or fictionalizing that one memoir of their great-grandma’s epic fight with her sister. Not all of these people can, should, or desire to treat their publishing efforts like a business…and that’s okay.
There are other authors who treat writing as a business, and are maximizing their profits by writing strategically. This is no different from any other business or profession–some do it for love, others do it for money. But you don’t know why an author is writing what they’re writing, and there are just as many authors writing vampires for the love of it as there are for the money. You never really know which is which, and it really doesn’t matter–authorial intent doesn’t make a story better or worse, for the most part. Anyone who wants to reach readers via commercial transaction has got to learn how to maximize their reach via commerce–you have to learn how to play the Amazon game, in other words (if you’re writing for free or otherwise monetizing sponsorship, rather than the writing itself–like, f’r’ex, a blog, then you learn how to play the blog SEO game and build communities for persistent comments, pingbacks, and retweets of your permalinks.
There’s a long and storied tradition of publicly declaring authors are in it solely for the “art,” along with everybody else in publishing, who’s there to “nurture the artist.” It happens the way things usually happen – people who do it for money will do it for easy money, then go do something else when the money isn’t so easy anymore. People who do it for love will do it for as long as the rest of their lifestyle can support their hobby artistic endeavor. People who find a way to navigate between the two, for whatever reason, will be the ones who stick around. And every single one of them will be playing a game, because that’s what you do. Whether it’s acting, or selling real estate, or writing stories, people will seek process–they will seek to remove the random factor from as much of it as possible. It’s human nature to seek patterns. And it’s the nature of commerce to sell what people want to buy.
I suggest doing more research. Some of the cited ‘facts’ are wrong. Hint: KU and KDP are different things.
Charles Dickens wrote in chapter-long instalments mainly for the money and is considered one of the heavyweight literary authors of the 19th century. Shakespeare didn’t write plays to be the most important English author of all times, he did it because his plays and sonnets sold.
Writers and other artists have to eat and pay the rent. I’ve been repeatedly astonished to read reviews of fellow readers who state that writers shouldn’t aspire to support themselves with their artistic output.
@Drano: KU is a subset of KDP, something that is accurately described in the article. As to the rest of your point, there is nothing in the article that does not support an author getting paid for their work.
Drano, are you seriously comparing those five ( yes, five), ten, sixteen pages m/m shorts which flooded flooded KU with Dickens? I am not on KU and this is one of the main reasons why I will probably never join, but these things are taking more and more space on Amazon bestseller lists because of course Amazon tailors it to the books which are on KU and I call them books loosely. If the writers want to write amazing shorts and that’s all they want to write, more power to them. I like shorts and of course writers have to get paid for what they write, but this is abuse of the system IMO. Before you ask me how I know if I am not on KU these things have to be free on whatever dates of the month and I made sure I tried some of them before forming of opinion. I repeated – they are awful. Most are not even self contained shorts, some marked a chapters some not. And again before you ask yes there are some good books on KU from what I can see, but we are talking about changing the being paid per page policy, right? If this decreases the amount of these half shorts, half chapters, half I am not sure what, I will be a very happy camper and may even join one day. JMO of course.
“Before forming an opinion”.
Here I went in my kindle archive and found some of the gems I forced myself to finish :
http://www.amazon.com/Buck-Billy-Tales-Weredeer-Eagleday-ebook/dp/B00WZQLYMK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435588930&sr=8-1&keywords=Buck+and+billy ( fair warning you are not going to forget this cover any time soon)
http://www.amazon.com/Gay-Iguana-Paranormal-Erotica-ebook/dp/B00N5D0C1Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435589025&sr=8-1&keywords=Gay+for+the+iguana
http://www.amazon.com/Cuckolded-Horny-Humiliation-Paranormal-Romance-ebook/dp/B00UUHRRYU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435589171&sr=8-1&keywords=Cuckolded+by+the+hung+and+horny+demon
@Sirius: @Robin/Janet:
The point is that you start your article off with a substantial preamble on Amazon’s latest jiggery pokery, then segue over a discussion of reader tastes. My point is that Amazon’s continued price rigging of the book market and its creation of an endless series of black boxes that hide information on the operation of the market make the rest of your article almost pointless. You are not receiving good information from the market Amazon is manipulating and therefore an attempt to comment on what readers want or respond to are pointless. There ARE many things you could learn. What price points work for what classes books or bundles, over what time, what promos are effective with different types of readers, etc. But Amazon’s manipulative black boxes hides all these and much more.
For example, for an indie to try to sell a coffee table book on AMZ is almost impossible because of their bizarre pricing box. Therefore, I find this observation off the point:
” I have to wonder why self-publishing believes that it can predict reader tastes and preferences any better than traditional publishing,”
Since no collective such as “self publishing” actually exists, I guess I can’t argue the point; can’t disprove a negative. But individual authors certainly DO exist and I believe a great many authors do know about their reader’s tastes and preference and would know a great deal more except for AMZ lead weight on their necks.
Again, I just fine these types of discussion, which are taking place in an information vacuum, just not that helpful.
rick
Rick I have not addressed anything in your comment why are you addressing your response to me as well? I am a reviewer at DA yes, but if have not contributed to this article. I am glad that Amazon instituted this change for sure because as far as I am concerned paying per page contributed hugely to the increasing amount of stories as I linked to and I do not think this is a good thing. I am on Scribd and you won’t find nearly as many of those shorts there.
Gah what’s wrong with me today? ” But I have not contributed to this article”.
@Sirius:
You should not be glad of any such thing, IMHO. I don’t think having having Jeff Bezo’s standing behind you looking with bulgy eyes over your shoulder at what you’re reading is healthy. AMZ is attempting to game the market at the expense of authors and authors naturally game back.
This can all be avoided by Amazon opening up their black boxes and getting out of the market rigging game. Only then will speculation about what readers actually want and whether we can predict market desires and trends make any sense at all.
Here’s how a subscription service should work. Someone subscribes to my book, I get paid. The same thing every time for the same book. No garbage about “20%” and “number of pages read” and similar trash. It’s the business of the subscriber to decide how much to read and pay.
rick
@Rick Chapman: Yes! And while we’re waiting for Amazon to cease to be a very effectively managed capitalistic corporation and to turn into a non-profit benevolent foundation, let’s get to work on creating calorie-free chocolate and stilettos I can jog in!
@hapax:
I’ll let you decide to bend over in whatever fashion you choose. In the meantime, articles about what readers want and what authors know are useless wastes of time because the largest online bookseller operates in a completely opaque fashion and distorts the market to the great detriment of authors. While continually spreading nonsense such as it pays you “royalties.”
rick
@Rick Chapman: I’m very impressed. Sexually-based insults *always* convince me of the logic of someone’s argument.
If this article is such a “useless waste of time”, why are you spending so much energy hijacking the discussion to bash Amazon (of which I am no fan, btw)? If you are aware of a publishing service that actually is financially self-sustaining with your preferred model, why not point authors to it? If there isn’t one, and it’s such a great idea, why don’t you start one up?
@Rick Chapman: I am sorry but you are confusing me. What does Big brother watching what I read (and I know Amazon does that and no, I am not happy about it) has to do with my unhappiness about shorty shorts which soon may be a majority of KU if not already? Your suggestion how subscription service should work sound good to me – as long as it does not give authors the incentive to sell those “books” of five and ten and fifteen pages I am good.
And let me repeat, I am not on KU. I have read some of those shorts when Amazon had them for free to make sure I am not missing anything and I decided I am not. I have Scribd, I do not know what kind of arrangement they have with the authors which are there, but I am extremely happy about that selection.
@hapax: LOL.
@hapax:
And I’m impressed by your use of apophasis to evade the factual points I’ve made.
+++ If this article is such a “useless waste of time”, why are you spending so much energy hijacking the discussion to bash Amazon (of which I am no fan, btw)? +++
What are you talking about? I’ve made the very relevant point that attempting to argue that authors can’t analyze and predict what their readers and the market want because Amazon is price rigging the market and creating completely opaque “processes” is not “bashing” anything. It is the truth.
And I don’t believe you’re not an Amazon flack. You guys/gals can always be spotted when you bustle in and start spouting off about how Amazon is so “efficient.” Amazon has been in business for over 20 years and has yet to be consistently profitable. The jury is very much out on them as a business. More to the point, Amazon’s financial health is off the point. It’s the WRITER’S health I’m concerned about.
+++ If you are aware of a publishing service that actually is financially self-sustaining with your preferred model, +++
Well, you might look at the Apple model. At least they don’t confiscate 65 POINTS when you sell a book to Australia. I bet a 70%/30% split in the author’s favor worldwide would help pay some bills.
+++ If there isn’t one, and it’s such a great idea, why don’t you start one up? +++
More Amazon flacking. The author of this article started talking about “coffee table” books. I don’t how this type of book should be marketed by independents through AMZ because they rape authors by grabbing 65 POINTS if you price above $9.99. And you don’t have to be a genius to understand why that’s a problem.
Again, this takes us back to my main point. The author of this article starts her piece by writing about AMZ’s subscription model, a rigged and opaque bit of hocus pocus and uses this as a rationale to tell us that author’s can’t predict the market.
Well, yes, they can’t. When a fat, aggressive, predatory reseller is blocking access to the market and distorting inputs back to authors, that can happen.
rick
@Sirius:
+++ What does Big brother watching what I read (and I know Amazon does that and no, I am not happy about it) has to do with my unhappiness about shorty shorts which soon may be a majority of KU if not already? +++
I’ll be happy to explain. It’s not that difficult to understand. AMZ rigged the market by putting in a truly stupid model to “pay” authors when subscribers read 10% of their book. And by the way, if you’re not comfortable with Bezos shoving his bulgy-eyed face over your shoulder, don’t you think you should be condemning his tracking the number of PAGES you read? Do have any idea of how this can be misused? No? Well, think about it.
Amazon rigged the market and the market rigged back. I can assure you the market is rigging back on this even more stupid pages read model.
+++ Your suggestion how subscription service should work sound good to me – as long as it does not give authors the incentive to sell those “books” of five and ten and fifteen pages I am good. +++
I trust the good sense of readers to look at a book with 20 pages for $2.99 and one with 400 for $2.99 and make a rational decision. And if there’s a market for short format porn, who am I to tell anyone what to buy? Or Amazon? I someone want to subscribe to “Hung and Horny” and pay $X dollars, let them.
Never mind that it’s trivial to transfer the downloaded book OFF Kindle onto another platform Amazon can’t track meaning you will be paid nothing. This entire system is stupid, dysfunctional, and an open invitation to shortchange writers.
Amazon is price rigging the market for its own benefit and cutting authors and the market off from important information. And that’s why I found this article off the point.
rick