This is a posting from ireaderreview.com on June 18th, 2013
It was so well written, I just had to reblog it:
Posted on June 18, 2013 by switch11
Jack Welch had 6 rules. One of them was – If you don’t have a Competitive Advantage, don’t compete.
This is true in pretty much every field and every business.
Indie Authors currently have lots of competitive advantages and
several important competitive disadvantages. Their success, and their
ability to ward off all the ‘indie authors are bad for writing’ attacks
and the subterfuge of the stores, depends on building up sustainable
competitive advantages and rendering Publishers’ competitive advantages
unsustainable.
Let’s explore how Indie Authors can create sustainable competitive
advantages that will allow them to become the superstar authors of the
future.
Cialdini’s Influence & Seeing Reality As It Is
A lot of this post will also factor in another of Jack Welch’s 6 Rules – See Reality As It Is, Not as it Was, or as You Want it To be.
This (Seeing Reality As It Is, in the Present) is very, very
critical. You have to understand that we’re in a different world. There
are a few realities to think about carefully -
- This isn’t the Publisher controlled world any more. Readers will buy your books if it’s good. The relentless drop in prices in ebook stores
is proof of this. Only Indie Authors and ex-Published Authors dropped
to $1 and $3 initially. Now everyone is being forced to. Readers bought
those books without the stamp of Publishers. They still are.
- Absolutely anyone can top the charts now. This sounds like heresy.
However, there are now so many different websites and apps and channels
to promote books that you just need enough marketing. It doesn’t matter
what the quality of the books is. Price the book at $1, get it listed in
enough places, and you’ll hit #1. It’s not just a possibility, it’s
guaranteed. If you don’t believe me, then see what Amazon Publishing is
doing with its titles. All the titles that people weren’t even buying
are now in the Top 100 (with a few exceptions). Note: Amazon Publishing
uses all the sites and channels I’m talking about. Strange as it seems,
Amazon pays other people to advertise their own books in their own
store. This shows how powerful the outside channels have become. The
first really hard to believe reality you have to admit, and internalize,
is that with sufficient marketing (which is attainable by ANYONE with
some money) you can get your book to #1 in the Store. It doesn’t matter
how good the book is. Quality and Product Market Fit only determines how
long the book will stay in the Top 100.
- Absolutely anyone is topping the charts now (notice the subtle
difference). If you don’t believe this, take a look at what happens with
the Kindle Daily Deal. Most of those books are not special. Yet they
almost always hit the Top 10 or Top 20. Take a look at all the $1 and $3
books in the Top 100. Read the reviews. These aren’t marvellously
written books. There aren’t once-in-a-lifetime books. A few are
undoubtedly very, very good. However, most are just normal to good
books.
- Amazon’s job isn’t to help you. In fact, even Amazon isn’t clear
what its job is. It’s torn between suppressing lower priced books to
make money, promoting its own titles, and keeping book prices low to
bring people into its ecosystem. This means that you absolutely MUST
assume that Amazon will use books as the loss leader. So the only way
you can make a living from books is planning around that. How do you make money if Amazon turns books into loss leaders? In a way, this is already happening. The average selling price of a Top 100 book is $6.287. That includes $13 and $10 books from Publishers - Which means that the average selling price for Indie titles is between $1 and $4. How will you survive in that world?
- Publishers are stuck. They need to make enough money to keep their
massive dinosaur engines running. At the same time prices for ebooks are
dropping and the market share of ebooks is rising. What does that mean?
It means they have to carve out more for themselves and less for
authors. There is no workaround around that reality – If Indie Authors
succeed, Publishers and Published Authors die. They aren’t writing long
meandering essays on ‘Quality of Books is Falling’ because they
care about the quality of books, or because it is (it is, actually).
What they really mean is – All these annoying Indie Authors are selling
good books for $1 when they should be selling for $10 like we are. It’s
unfair.
These are REALITIES. You’ll have to test them (see the facts and then
see what the facts show you, not what you want to believe) and then
accept them (if the facts show you that these are indeed Realities).
You’ll have to replace all the negative beliefs and misconceptions with these Realities. Get rid of all the brainwashing -
- You need Publishers to approve you. This might be true if you are
looking for validation. If you actually want to sell books and be read
and make money, then you only need to publish your books.
Self-publishing achieves that.
- You need to sell paper books. You don’t. Again, if this is part of
your need for validation or your need to impress your friends and
family, then it’s fine. However, it doesn’t matter whether or not your
books are stocked in stores. If you succeed with ebooks, Publishers will
flock to you and this will happen automatically.
- You can’t make money from $1 books. Yes, you can. You just need to
sell more. The current ebook stores are optimized for a model of $1 to
$5 books that sell at high volumes. You don’t really have any other
choice if you’re an indie author. Soon, no one will have any other
choice – might as well switch and adapt now.
- You need Amazon to succeed. You don’t. There are indie authors who
are in the Top 100 in B&N and making enough to not care two hoots
about Amazon. If you sell well, then it hurts Amazon to not have you, so
they will come for you.
- You can’t make money being an indie author. There are lots of indie
authors making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. A few are making
hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. If you want to make more than
that – well, first you should figure out how many authors actually make
millions a month. It’s not a long list.
- You can’t gain recognition as an indie author. If you get a movie
deal or a Top 10 rank – that’s recognition. It doesn’t matter whether
you’re ‘published’ or not.
This part is the toughest. This is where a lot of indie authors fail.
The more you can drum out all the brainwashing and look at things with a
clean slate, the higher the chance you can pick the right approach for
you (and that might be Publishers). The key is – Publishers are one
option out of many. Same for signing up with Amazon.
Now, on to the real stuff.
Indie Authors’ Competitive Advantages
- Value for Money.
Indie Authors can price their books at $1 and $3. This does two things –
Kills Publisher Books at $7 and $9 and $13, Reduces the friction in a
user buying and trying your book. At $1 to $5, you’ll have 10 to 3 times
more readers willing to take a chance on your book. If you don’t
have the first book in a series (or one of you books) free, or at $1,
then you’re losing your biggest competitive advantage.
- Being able to sell at $1 to $3.
Not only is this making you more attractive, it is killing Publishers.
Literally killing them. If 20 indie authors at $1 and $2 are selling in
the Top 100, that means 20 books at $10 and $13 aren’t. Publishers are
losing millions every single day. The faster the transition happens, the
less time Publishers have to adapt. Indie Authors can not only gain a
big competitive advantage by pricing their books between $1 and $3, they
can also literally kill off Publishers.
- No Illusion that Marketing will magically happen.
A lot of published authors are under the misconception that they can
just write. Apart from the established superstars, everyone has to
market themselves. As an Indie Author you are free of any misconceptions
that the Marketing Fairy will magically make everyone aware your book
exists.
- A Deeper Connection with Readers. Who do you think readers relate to better - Big large soulless corporations or new authors making a name for themselves?
As an indie author, you’re the People’s Champion. Your readers will
fight for you. Give them a chance. You have to do your part and give of
yourself – be available, talk to your readers, get feedback, be a human
being and not a name on a cover. Get yourself out there.
- Speed to Market. Read this post on Indie Authors being much faster to market.
You can react quicker. You can improve your books quicker. You can send
out sequels quicker. You can react to and cater to Hot New Markets
quicker.
- Creative Control.
There are multiple perspectives on what might work and what might not.
The truth is that you don’t really know. No one does. If a Hot New
Market exists or is created, you can cater to it. However, there’s no
way you can guarantee your book creates a new market. If you just want
to write something in your heart, with self-publishing you have total
creative control. In my opinion, this leads to better work, provided
indie authors embrace quality enhancers like editing and proofreading.
- Constant Improvement of the Book itself.
As an Indie Author you can take the typos and errors and keep adding to
them. You can add free stories. You can add sequels. You can add
downloads like wallpapers and stories and illustrations. A Publisher
will move very slowly and a Publisher will only do this when a book is a
success. You, on the other hand, can keep improving the value
proposition and the quality of the book. If you don’t do this, you’re
throwing away a big competitive differentiator.
- Betting 100% on eBooks & Optimizing for eBooks.
Publishers have to sabotage ebooks to ensure their paper book sales
don’t die out. So, you get strange things like delayed releases and
crazy prices. You also get a total neglect of ebook marketing, ebook
polish and quality, and other factors like social marketing. You are
free. You can focus on all the things that are needed. Think of it as
Entity A running a hotel and on the side running a Bed & Breakfast.
However, it doesn’t really want to run the Bed & Breakfast and that
shows through in lots of ways. You, on the other hand, are in LOVE with
your Bed & Breakfast and take joy in making your Bed & Breakfast
excellent in every way.
- Incorporating Customer Feedback & Strengthening Customer Relationships. This is different from 4. A Deeper Connection to Readers.
There, you were showing your human side and using Likability and
Familiarity to create a bond. Here, you are showing you genuinely care
about their reading experience and strengthening it. It’s akin to
deepening a friendship by taking a road trip together.
Note: We’ll use a lot of principles of influence throughout. We don’t
mean it in a sleazy ‘magical and revolutionary’ sort of way. We really
mean it. Now you’re one to one with your readers so only integrity and
genuinely caring will work. If you don’t really care for readers then
work with Publishers so that you can hide that disadvantage.
We have to use influence because our competitors (Publishers,
Platforms) are, and because they have way too many unfair advantages.
Indie Authors’ Competitive Disadvantages
Eliminating some of these is important, especially the first.
- Lack of Quality Control, Lack of Curation. Would it be crazy to
suggest that the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and 5-days-free offers
were attempts to dilute the march of the best indie authors? Perhaps.
Perhaps truth is stranger than fiction. This (lack of quality control,
lack of curation) is the single biggest competitive disadvantage for
indie authors. There’s no curation and that suggests that all indie
author titles are garbage.
- Too Much Supply. This is a competitive disadvantage in the sense
that it makes it hard for indie authors to make money. However, the
workaround is to use Free and $1 for Marketing and then sell the rest of
your books at higher prices.
- No Awareness amongst Readers. This is the second biggest
disadvantage. How do you let readers know you exist? There are various
choices – Free as Marketing, Cheap as Marketing, buy advertising, build
your own channels. Unfortunately, all of these require hard work and
they require authors to venture into uncomfortable territory –
marketing, sales, pre-sales.
- No Marketing Channels that Authors own themselves. This has to be
fixed. If this isn’t fixed then there’s no point to what you are doing.
You want a strong, PERMANENT channel to your readers. Which you own
COMPLETELY – 100%. Not a Facebook or Twitter account. None of that
nonsense. Your OWN blog (with a custom domain you own 100%) and your own
email newsletter.
- No Money. This is a tough one. How do you market? polish? write? …
if you don’t have the money to buy services and time. I don’t have an
answer.
- Lack of Brand and Branding. I think indie authors should just skip
this and focus on building their marketing channels and building real
relationships with their readers and with their 1,000 true fans.
- Lack of Market Intelligence. This is a really hard one. The only way
to gain this is to sell books. You can try to buy it, but it’s
expensive and doesn’t work as well. It helps to create Author Master
Minds. However, how do you find 5 to 10 other indie authors who are
focused and willing to put aside all their brainwashing?
- Lack of Belief. Nothing works except you being ready to stop being a serf.
- Lack of Guile. This is really tough. Guile requires a few things
that aren’t easy to acquire – street smarts, experience, a variable
moral compass. This isn’t necessary but it helps.
- No Customer Relationships or Intent to Build Them. This is key. You
can do well without customer relationships. However, these (customer
relationships) are literally the foundation on which you build a
sustainable career. If you aren’t willing to do this perhaps you should
consider another line of work or sign up with a Publisher.
These are very big disadvantages. There’s no denying that. The good
thing is that the advantages are bigger, and that most of these
disadvantages can be neutralized or circumvented.
Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantages
There’s one key thing to understand -
- A competitive advantage will let you win. A single competitive
advantage could be enough to win the battle. An example is pricing –
Pricing your book at $1 is powerful enough that it, alone, can allow
indie authors to destroy Publishers in book sales.
- To keep winning, you need sustainable competitive advantages. With a
sustainable competitive advantage, you can win the war. Example: A
relationship you build with your readers. Publishers and Authors build
brands but most of them don’t really put effort into building
relationships. Authors are happy to let Publishers handle all
communication. Publishers are happy to let booksellers handle all
interaction. Any indie author who actively engages with her/his readers
will create a sustainable competitive advantage. If all other things are
equal, we choose the product from the person/company we like and are
familiar with.
Cialdini’s points on Liking and Familiarity are key. There’s the
brand recognition aspect and there’s the personal human aspect. The
Human aspect wins every single time.
What Sustainable Competitive Advantages can Indie Authors build?
- $1 to $3 books. If
Indie Authors stick with prices that most Publishers can’t survive on,
and which most other indie authors won’t go with, for strange reasons
like ‘believing my unproven work is worth $10′, they can create one
sustainable competitive advantage.
- Their own channels to readers.
Email lists. Blogs. Social Network connections. While every published
author depends on Publishers. While most indie authors do nothing or
depend on advertising. You can build your own channels that you control
yourself. If you’ve sold 250,000 books and release a new one – Guess
which readers are the most likely to buy your new book. Well, you better
create channels to them and for them. Even releasing an app which has
one book free and then updates readers about your other books isn’t
extreme. Why? Because when you release new books, you can send a
message to the App and to your readers. You can reach all of them
quickly and for free.
- A Human Connection and Relationship.
If a reader likes your book and then gets to interact with you – That
greatly increases the chances that reader will buy one or more of your
other books. You now have the opportunity to do virtual book signings
and tours and meet lots and lots of your readers. It would be laziness
and stupidity not to. The 1,000 true fans are the most important – If you can’t meet the rest, at least build connections with these 1,000 true fans.
- Speed & Optimized Processes.
Build up processes and tools and procedures so that you can do things
faster and better than anyone else. If you can whittle down things so
that a book takes you 6 months to release, and most Publishers and
Authors take 2 years, then you can release 4 books in the time they
release 1. They simply can’t compete.
- A Large Portfolio.
The single biggest sustainable advantage you have is a large portfolio
of books. Why? Each book feeds each other. You can create a Book
Network. The minute you hit 5-6 books (and not books in a single series)
you’ll see serious network effects. If a reader likes your book, and
you have only 1 book, then you’re finished. If, on the other hand, you
have 21 books, then you might see 1 or 2 or even 20 more purchases from
that reader.
- Marketing Skills and Channels.
This is similar to 2. All the channels you build while doing marketing
are channels to readers. They are also channels to market your new
books. This is why it’s important to build channels you control
completely or are run by honest people. Facebook changed the rules so
that now you can reach only a fraction of your followers, unless you pay
for a ‘sponsored post’. Lesson: Build up your blog and email lists.
Build your own little Pottermore or your own free apps.
- Book Quality. You
are nimble and focused on delivering the absolute best reading
experience. That means you can take your book from 80/100 to 95/100 in
quality and polish. Most Publishers simply can’t afford to get beyond
90/100. Most indie authors never get beyond 75/100. Get all/most your
books to 95/100 in polish – You’ll have an advantage that no one else
can match.
- Optimizing for eBooks and Constantly Improving.
If you start running in ebooks – learn strategies, polish, learn
marketing, learn how ebooks work. Well, you’ll gain a strong advantage.
Now, if you keep running and keep improving, everyone else can never
catch up. Plus you’ll need comparatively less time and effort to keep
improving, while the ones trailing you have to put in 3-4 times more
work and effort.
There are other sustainable competitive advantages indie authors can
build up. The sustainable part is most important – It has to be
something you control and which no one else can take away. It has to be
something that can’t be duplicated easily. There will also be
sustainable competitive advantages that are UNIQUE to who YOU are.
Figure those out.
The key thing to remember is that very, very few people have
competitive advantages in ebooks and even fewer have sustainable ones.
If you start now and focus, you can get way ahead of the field. It might
seem ludicrous to suggest that you could build stronger marketing
channels than even Amazon and B&N and Publishers. However, this is
exactly what some smart authors and companies are doing – and a few of
them will succeed (some have already succeeded).
The very things that were strengths for the Publishers and Platforms
are turning into liabilities. You get to start afresh without having to
guard any existing assets. It’s a huge advantage. Perhaps the biggest if
leveraged right.
Destroying the sustainability of Competitive Advantages Publishers and Published Authors have
This is a touchy subject. The serfs (indie authors and us readers)
aren’t supposed to question the God-given right of Publishers and
Published Authors. Perhaps the Platforms, once they have more power,
will feel they have special status too.
However, we aren’t in medieval Europe. It’s time to fight fire with fire.
What are Publishers striking at – The Quality Perception of Indie Books.
Strike back. Publishers spend 90% of their effort on paper books. They
then make low-quality ebook versions and sell them for outrageous
prices.
Tell readers the truth – Your ebook versions get 100% of your time
and effort. They aren’t treated like third-class citizens. They aren’t
delayed. They aren’t overpriced. They aren’t sacrificed at the altar of
paper book sales.
What are Platforms doing – giving subtle marketing and awareness
advantages to their own titles and to high-priced books. They don’t even
have the courage to be open about their attempts. The Platforms use
small meaningless influence tactics that Cialdini would probably laugh
at. Even Sheep (literal sheep, with wool and stuff) wouldn’t fall for
that weak stuff. Note: That’s why it isn’t working. That’s why low
priced books are still taking over.
Beat them on price and quality. There are already 21 books at $1 in
the Top 100. All you have to do is deliver quality. The $1 price does
the rest.
$1 and $0 are so Powerful they should be Illegal
$1 is magical – It’s marketing. It reduces friction. It increases
sales. It gets readers willing to buy all your books, instead of just a
few.
Notice how indie authors who gambled on $1 and $3 saw lots and lots of their books hit the top of the charts.
John Locke and Amanda Hocking had, at times, 3 of the Top 10 titles in the Kindle Store. Including #1. Why would that happen? Because the books were ALL cheap. Very little friction. That’s the power of $1.
$1 can destroy every single handicap and algorithm tweak the Platforms throw at it.
Free? Free is even more powerful.
Guess what Publishers and Platforms can’t afford – $0 and $1. Even
Amazon got scared of $0 and ran away from free kindle book promotions.
It’s hiding the Top 100 Free Books list now.
As an Indie Author, you aren’t scared. You can use $0 as powerful
marketing. Then you can use $1 to get readers more invested. Then $3 to
make a decent amount of money.
All of the Competitive Advantages Publishers and Platforms have are Unsustainable
That’s just the truth. Every single advantage they have is based on a
world that has already gone. A world where there were gates and there
were all-powerful gatekeepers.
There is no Gate, Neo.
Now Publishers and Platforms are using weak freshman year psychology
and illusions and fancy words to pretend they still have power.
Just strip away the illusions.
There’s not a single competitive advantage Publishers have that is sustainable.
The only two sustainable advantages Platforms have are ‘Curation’ and
‘Convenience’. All it takes is one intelligent algorithm – whether
crowd-sourced or silicon-sourced. That’s all. Those two advantages will
be gone. Note: The stores aren’t very good at curation. They aren’t even
really trying.
If you can’t wait for algorithms or crowds, then just build your own
channels and speak to readers directly. They would like that.
The bottom line is – We’re in a completely different world. All the
competitive advantages Publishers and Platforms have are unsustainable.
All the real sustainable competitive advantages are ones that Indie
Authors can build better than Publishers or Platforms – because they
have no baggage and no existing paper book markets to protect. Indie
Authors have nothing to lose and everything to gain. They have no old
mindsets they have been trained in, unless they are exceptionally
attached to past patterns (which makes no sense – you weren’t even
getting published, why believe in that ancient world). The entire world
of books and publishing is changing and the wolves have been let loose. I
don’t see any way that Publishers and Platforms can fight them all off.
Now it’s just a question of which wave of wolves tears out the throats
of Publishers. How many waves after that before the Platforms are
reduced to enablers instead of gatekeepers.
