The Top 10 Reasons to be Thankful for Self-Publishing

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From Outskirts Press:

As Thanksgiving draws near, it’s time to take stock of everything there is to be thankful for. Family, friends, love, laughter … and being a published author (or the opportunity to be published soon). There’s never been a better time to be a writer.

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1. eBooks. Just having the ability to offer books in an easy-to-order format has opened up a massive sales channel for independent authors. As readers move from hardcopy to electronic books, the ability for anyone to get their book in front of these customers is priceless exposure — and offering an ebook is easy.

2.Social media. When knocking on doors, making phone calls, buying ads and getting media coverage aren’t on your busy holiday calendar, reaching out to large audiences is still achievable, thanks to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and more. Author pages can be set up quickly, so you can let others know about your book from the comfort of your home.
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6. Goodreads. Self-published authors can easily make use of many selling tools on the Goodreads platform to foster relationships with readers, promote their books and sell more copies.

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10. Amazon. Nowadays, the world’s largest retailer may be more concerned with making money than supporting authors (as revealed in this New York Times article), but there is still something to be said when a self-publishing author can be a #1 bestseller on the world’s largest bookselling website.

Link to the rest at Outskirts Press

PG will gently suggest that the idea that profitable business organizations exist that are focused on “supporting authors” is probably incorrect. Other than authors groups, most other business operations are focused on making money from authors and the books they write.

In some cases, the profit objective can be a win-win proposition – the “supporting authors” operation only makes money if the author makes money and only after the  author makes money” and the “supporting authors” operation is, in fact, more dependent upon authors than other entities for the making money part of the business (PG is thinking about literary agents who represent dozens of authors to a handful of  publishers and are far, far more concerned about keeping any given publisher happy than making certain an author is able to make a living at his/her writing pursuits.)

As far as Amazon is concerned, PG has a couple  of  suggestions:

1. Never believe any story The New York Times publishes about Amazon without lots of corroborating evidence from other sources, preferably not based in New York City.
2. No organization has done more good for more authors – ever – than Amazon and KDP. Amazon opened the gates so authors could reach readers with nothing but a bunch of electrons organized into an ebook. For the first time among all publishers and booksellers, Amazon was willing for the author to receive the majority of the price the reader paid for the author’s book – 70% to be exact.