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Thanks Jane. Re: Amazon Advantage or another option?
I’m a self-published author about to release my 3rd book. My prior books on Amazon often say: “Out of Stock” even though they can get the book from Lightning Source quite easily. I guess they haven’t sold enough copies yet. I get that. However, this obviously scares buyers away.
Is Amazon Advantage the only way to solve this? Or, is there a point where Amazon holds some small number of your books in inventory so that the buy page doesn’t say: “out of stock”? Any advice here is helpful. thank you!
Hi Jeanne: By far the best option here is to set up an account with Amazon KDP. Any reason you’re avoiding that?
Thank you Jane, and not at all avoiding it:) My existing account is with Author Central… and I thought that was sufficient. I guess i need to set up an account with Amazon KDP! Does that typically fix the “out of stock issue”? Thanks,
That will indeed fix the issue – and it’s the easiest way to fix the issue. 🙂
I love an easy fix! Thanks so much:)
P.S. A small warning that using Amazon KDP will mean uploading your book files, inputting all the metadata, etc—just as you did with Ingram. There are some small differences between Ingram and Amazon as far as cover file requirements, spine width, etc. But doing this work is easier than any alternative available to you to get the book in stock.
Thank you Jane…
I’m afraid I misunderstood what you meant before, so thank you for clarifying. Over 10 years ago, with my other books, I had them printed at Lightning Source and Amazon ordered it from them. Plus, I sold books from my website.
Is this where Amazon Advantage becomes an option?
Sorry for the list of questions, but I’m concerned that I just leaped into printing with LSI for no good reason?
Thanks again,
1. It depends on what you’re printing. For your average B&W paperback, I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference and I work in the industry.
2. It is not true, but the risk is higher.
3. To avoid the risk of the book not being immediately available. Plus you earn a better profit by using Amazon KDP directly; you don’t have Ingram/LSI taking a cut of the action.
If you really really really really want to print your own books, you can use Amazon Advantage to deliver them for sale to Amazon. That is a lot of extra effort and decreased profits. There would need to be a really good reason for it.
Best practice is to use Amazon KDP + IngramSpark (or LSI since it sounds like you have access to that) to maximize profits and availability.
P.S. More detail here: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/how-authors-use-ingramspark-and-kdp-together/
OK, thank you for all that… and the link above. Your input is priceless:)