nick usborne's blog

Do I want you to buy my book from Amazon.com or from Booklocker.com? (Surprise ending.)

My new book, New Path to Riches, is available from Amazon.com and from the company that published it, Booklocker.com. As an author, a question I have to address is whether to drive prospective buyers to the former or to the latter.

Interesting question.

Here are some thoughts. These are from the author’s point of view. Buyers have a whole different set of priorities.

In favour of Amazon.com:

If everyone buys from Amazon, then the book rises in the ranking, gets more exposure to a larger audience and my sales can increase. In short, if you can get a little traction on Amazon, both your exposure and your sales go up.

Against Amazon.com:

They discount the price of the book. (Good for you, as a buyer. Not so good for me.) Income from Amazon comes through to me months after the sale. Bad for cashflow. Also, they take a hefty slice of the pie. So I get less money per sale, and have to wait months to get my hands on it.

In favour of Booklocker.com:

I get a bigger slice of the pie, and I’m paid monthly. They also provide an e-book version. Good for some buyers, and good for me too, as my slice of e-book revenues is the biggest of all.

Against Bookocker.com:

I don’t get the kind of exposure that is possible through Amazon.

Based on these factors alone, I win with Amazon only if the book gets some wind behind its sales. Financially, Amazon only works for an author if it generates a lot of extra sales. If the book doesn’t take off and sales are moderate, then I win with sales through Booklocker.com, because I get a bigger slice of the sales and get paid faster.

So which do I choose?

After mulling this over for a while, I came to the obvious conclusion. I don’t choose. I don’t express a preference. I don’t tell people where to buy. I leave it up to the buyer to decide. In short, as an author, it’s not my place to tell people where to buy. If the Web has taught us anything, it is this: the buyer decides.

One more thing.

Putting aside the financial rewards of writing a book, which can be meagre unless things really take off, there are some personal reasons why I favour Booklocker.

I know them. Nice people. It’s a very small company. They do a great job. They are responsive to their authors.

And...Amazon is trying to do them harm. In fact, Amazon is trying to harm every small publishing company that uses any Print On Demand service not owned by them. More specifically, they have threatened to remove the Buy button from any Print On Demand titles on Amazon that are not printed through their own POD service, BookSurge.

That’s not good. I hate it when big companies bully small ones.

Now for the good part. Teeny, tiny Booklocker is suing Amazon. Amazon tried to get the case thrown out, but without success.

That is good. I love it when the little guy stands up to the big bully.

Finally then, never mind that “the buyer decides” stuff, buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker...

Read Chapter One of my new book, New Path to Riches.

I have been busy again, and have just published a new book, New Path to Riches.

New Path to Riches is on the same topic as my full course, How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites.

So why did I write a book, when I already have the course?

The reason for writing the book is simple...

Buying the course and spending the time to write a website is a big commitment.

For each person who has already purchased the course, I think there are probably hundreds of others who are intrigued by the idea of writing a money-making website, but not yet ready to fully commit.

The book is designed to be a stepping stone between feeling intrigued...and making that bigger commitment.

Reading New Path to Riches is just a small step. But it does paint the full picture. It tells the complete story, and shows how various elements in the business world have converged to open the way for people to write quality websites which can make good money.

What are these converging elements?

1. Traditional sources of information are struggling. Newspapers are shutting down. Magazines are closing their doors or getting really skinny. Why? Because advertisers are taking their money online. There is just less information to be found in print these days.

2. Big media and big websites don’t do a very good job at providing information on very narrow topics. Big websites are there for you when you search with the word “coffee”. Websites created by enthusiasts are there for you when you search with the phrase “organic coffee pods”.

3. More and more we are faced not towards big media, but towards each other. We spend less time on big company sites, and more time interacting with each other, via blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on.

4. We prefer to learn from the “expert next door”. Trust in big media is declining, interest in learning online from other people like ourselves is increasing.

You can probably think of other trends which are also pointing in the same direction.

The point is, there has never been a better time to create your own website on a topic that interests you. There are a mass of tools available to help you build the site, attract visitors and make some money.

Reading New Path to Riches is the first step.

Get it for yourself. Or for your son, your aunt, your neighbour, your mother, a colleague, a friend, or a group online.

You can get the first chapter of New Path to Riches free here...

The rise of the expert next door.

In a few days I have a new book coming out. The topic is the same as that of my program, How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites. But I am using the book format to look less at the “how to” of this topic, and more at the “how come?”

How come more and more people, without any credentials as writers, editors or publishers, are attracting huge audiences to their made-at-home websites?

It is happening. Thousands of people are writing wonderful websites, packed full with information on topics about which they are interested.

How is this possible? How can an amateur gardener write a website about gardening and not just survive, but prosper in the face of competitors like Garden.com?

 I think it is because we like to learn from the expert next door.

The expert next door is someone like us. He or she understands what we want to learn. He or she actually gets her hands dirty in her own garden. He or she is more likely to listen to us and be responsive to our information needs. He or she writes in our language, without looking down on us.

In my last post I talked about how people online are no longer facing towards big media, but are now spending more time facing each other, and paying attention to each other.

Increasingly, we feel more comfortable learning from the expert next door.

They don’t sit in editorial meetings. They don’t come under pressure from a large marketing department to focus on topics that might lead to more sales. The best experts next door are trustworthy, empathetic and hit the nail precisely on the head when it comes to giving us the information we want.

Experts next door are like that friendly old neighbor who grows fantastic vegetables in his garden. We can just lean over the fence and ask him how we can grow better vegetables in our own garden.