Many authors are working to assess what Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select’s exclusivity requirements mean in light of the new per-page payouts. Two new rounds of commentary from Smashwords CEO Mark Coker give us a glimpse of Amazon’s growing strength among the independent-publishing platforms.
In the first, Coker writes of how a change in his own partnerships “hands the market for indie ebooks in India to Amazon.” In brief, Smashwords used Flipkart (since 2013) as its Indian-market distribution partner. But Flipkart’s computers couldn’t remove Smashwords ebooks from its catalog fast enough to meet Amazon’s demands when authors opted for KDP Select exclusivity. And so Coker felt he had to terminate his Flipkart partnership.
Coker, understandably, seems to see Amazonian exclusivity as a short-term gambit that will cause a long-term loss of retail diversity as other retail platforms (his among them) are weakened by the migration of authors to the newly re-popularized Amazon KDP Select. He’s in a tight spot and graciously quotes (rather than blaming) an author explaining it this way: “I hate the exclusivity of KDP Select, yet I’m in it because I have a mortgage to pay. Books in KDP Select sell better than non-exclusive books.”
A second round of commentary to consider from Coker is at Joanna Penn’s site this week. There, maybe with the Indian exit still in mind, he says that KDP Select creates a caste system that favors Select authors with promotional advantages. “Authors who don’t go exclusive to Amazon,” he says, “will be punished by Amazon.”
Bottom line: Coker’s perspective, while necessarily biased, is important to factor in to observations of the current, difficult indie ebook market. (See indie Roz Morris on how the topic of dwindling sales dominates many forum exchanges.) The loss of Flipkart could be indicative of the ramped-up allure of Amazon KDP Select with per-page payouts. Nevertheless, we must factor in Penn’s observation of a standard pattern in self-publishing marketing: (1) authors see a new direction, (2) authors all rush into that new direction, (3) that new direction is overwhelmed and is no longer useful. Could this happen with per-page-powered KDP Select? Only time can tell. Amazon’s ability to keep swelling the pool from which authors are paid might mitigate that trend, but the Kindle Unlimited readership pool will need to keep growing, as well.
Coker’s most penetrating comment, on the more global level, needs to be taken onboard, too: “The market for e-books has pretty much gone flat. And so we have a problem here…. There’s a glut of high-quality, low-cost books, more books than readers will ever possibly be able to read.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
