Why I have a shop

I am, what within the writing community, we call an Indie writer and am self-publishing. The reason I am an Indie writer, like so many fellow authors, is that it's almost impossible to get a publisher interested in my work, not necessarily because it's not good enough, but simply because there are so many authors and relatively few publishers.

The traditional outlet for Indie authors is to publish on Amazon, but at a cost which makes it unattractive for all but the most well known authors. The reason for this is that Amazon rank (promote to customers) your book according to sales volume, BUT, without Amazon giving a favorable ranking it's virtually impossible for customers to find your book and for you to achieve the necessary sales volume. It's a chicken and egg problem.

Currently, most of my books are ranked at three millionth plus down the rankings for crime thrillers - which is so low, that unless a customer searches for my book or name specifically, they will NEVER FIND IT.

The solution to this, say Amazon, is to use Amazon advertising, which is extremely complex with ever-changing (Amazon initiated) rules, not to mention it being expensive. By the time Amazon have taken their share (up to 70%) of your sales price, there is very little left to spend on marketing, and unless you spend significantly, you will NEVER climb the ranking system.

In my years attempting to achieve sales on Amazon, I've yet to come across a rule-change which favors authors. They always favor Amazon. The most recent was when they decided to start charging distribution costs for Ebooks!!

It's with this background that I decided to open my own shop and sell direct to readers.

There are still many challenges to working this way, but they are challenges which I'm choosing to take on and at least I've some sense of control over what happens to my books.

If you would like to help, please tell your friends and family about the site. I can only succeed with help from people like yourself.

Thank you

Hugh