Am I the A(mazon)-Hole?

In Which We Discuss If It's Okay to Direct Readers Toward the Big A 🤔

When you’re stuck on a fictional boat in the middle of a metaphorical ocean, your choices for shopping are limited. It’s just the Ventorship gift shop, which is positively loaded with books and anything your writerly heart could desire. But when we’re actually discussing the real world, there are so many options for places to buy books, yet we all know the one that seems to dominate:

Amazon.

And we all have feelings about that. Feelings that one Ventorship author-passenger would like to discuss. They write:

Authors are constantly told to support, link to, engage with, focus on, etc indie book stores and not Amazon. But if most sales are happening on Amazon, how does this make sense? There is also the shaming, etc of authors if they promote Amazon for buying trad books that I’ve seen. Like, if you link to Amazon as a buy link for your website, then you get in some trouble. And I know authors who go out of their way to send indie book stores swag and ARCs and all kinds of engagement and they get back…crickets. But I get that indies have limited space and need to sell books people want to read in order to stay afloat.  

So how do you square this?

I’m going to start this off with the help of Bethenny Frankel, because I think she gave us the best advice for this particular vent:

The short answer to your question is: Just list Amazon and indies and Barnes & Noble and Bookshop and whatever other retailer you’d like when giving out a buy link and let the reader decide. Use a nifty program like Linktree that gives you one link that leads to all the other buy links so you’re not taking away from your limited word count in social media posts with website addresses, and you’re good to go.

I do want to mention that my experience matches up with yours. Yes, despite my partnering up with indie bookstores for all my novels thus far, I believe the bulk of my readers are still grabbing my books from Amazon. This isn’t my fault, it’s not the indies’ fault, it’s just how readers have ended up buying my books. BUT, this doesn’t make teaming up with indies any less valuable or rewarding for a number of reasons.

For starters, booksellers at indie bookshops truly are book lovers, and when you find a person or people who connect with your books, they hand sell those puppies like nobody’s business. I cannot tell you the times it’s made my heart sing to see a shelf talker for my books from a bookseller who gets exactly what I was trying to do with my story, characters, and themes. Knowing that person went out of their way to share their love for my book is a feeling I can’t duplicate, and it’s also one I know will never be replicated by Amazon seeing as how there are no people there recommending any books at all. Amazon’s got algorithms, but those mostly just suggest what’s already a viral sensation or books that have massive marketing spends from publishers for the select few novels they’ve chosen as lead titles. For those of us who don’t fit those categories, hand selling from rockstar booksellers can help a book gain steam, or at least have a longer tail in terms of sales.

You bring up a great point that indie bookstores have physical and time limitations that mean they can’t actually support every book that graces their shelves or every author who sends them swag. This is a fact, and expecting booksellers to be able to pull off super-human feats of time and mental capacity is unfair to them and places too much expectation on their shoulders. This is where I encourage people to focus locally. I have had bookstores in cities outside of where I live not respond to me and I totally attribute that to factors outside their control and capacity, or even if they’re just not interested, that’s totally fine too! But I’ve never had a local bookstore or indie in a city I have a strong connection with turn me down on offers to partner up.

Here is what I think is key in establishing a relationship with an indie so you don’t get those crickets. Don’t just send swag (they may be bogged down with swag and have limited space), don’t just send an ARC (again, space limitations and they are getting so, so many of these from publishers that they literally can’t keep up), but come to them with an idea to partner up. Ask to do signed and personalized orders through them, see if you can do an author reading/signing, bring them business. Swag won’t keep their doors open, sales will. When you approach indies with the understanding that they’re working just as hard to stay in business as you’re working to keep getting published—and when you suggest ideas that keep both of those goals in mind—it creates strong, lasting bookstore bonds.

Lastly, let’s go over the shaming you’re talking about when including Amazon links. I’ve never seen this from booksellers (indie or otherwise), because they get the hustle and know that authors are trying to stay alive in an industry that releases hundreds of thousands of books a year. Of course, bookstores are going to make regular pitches as to why readers should buy through them instead of Amazon, and that should be expected, and we should boost them up when we can. But this isn’t shaming an author for including an Amazon link when mentioning all the avenues a reader can take to buy a book.

I have, however, seen that shaming from people online. Despite what they might profess, it doesn’t make you a sellout to include Amazon links, it doesn’t make your books worse if there was no financial suffering on your end, it doesn’t make you a traitor to your industry, etc. etc. etc. It may be easier said than done, but simply ignore those people. They aren’t keeping in mind that there are a plethora of reasons why readers go to Amazon, like a lack of local bookstores in their communities, financial hardships where literally every last penny counts, etc. etc. etc. once again. Just like readers at large aren’t cancelling publishers for including Amazon buy links, they aren’t going to cancel an author for including them either. Just do like Bethenny said and MENTION IT ALL so it’s clear you’re not only supporting the Big A in your book buying options, and then how readers choose to purchase books is none of our business. And when you’re doing events or finding ways to interact with readers, include indies as much as you can because ultimately, booksellers and bookstores are the backbone of the book community that give us a space to interact with, find, and celebrate books in a way Amazon just can’t.

Speaking of, here are a few indies I’ve had the absolute pleasure of working with in the past that I adore and can’t shout about enough: Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane, WA; Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, TX; BookPeople in Austin, TX; Brain Lair Books in South Bend, IN; Brazos Bookstore in Houston, TX; and Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown, TX ❤️

-JJ

What about you, fellow authors? Any tips on buy links, any thoughts on Amazon vs. indies, any independent bookstores you want to shoutout? Mention it all in the comments below, or if you want to remain anonymous, you can email me your thoughts at heyjasonjune@gmail.com.

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If you’d like to vent about anything author/writing related, write to me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: VENTORSHIP. I’ll give you my take in a post, and we’ll crowdsource author opinions in the comments. You’ll remain anonymous, and any haters will be thrown overboard. Ultimately, I think you’re going to be buoyed up by author love and support as we realize we really are all in the same boat 🛳️