🙅♀️ Why I’m Not Putting My Book on Amazon
Welcome to off the grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello, and welcome to off the grid, a podcast about leaving social media that right now is about how to self publish a book without social media because I, your host, Amelia Hruby, am self publishing my next book next week. In fact, as you're listening to this, this will be the last episode to come out before the book is available to purchase. And it is our third episode this week in a mini series I'm doing specifically on publishing. So at the start of the week, I spoke to Bailey Lang, who is an amazing book coach, and she walked us through the path from idea to manuscript to book in hand and on the shelves.
Amelia Hruby:And then yesterday, I shared why I turned down a book deal for my upcoming book, Your Attention is Sacred except on Social Media, and why I chose the self publishing path. And then today, I'm gonna talk to you a little bit, just a bit, about Amazon. Because Amazon is a giant in the book business and even more of a giant, if that's a thing, in self publishing. So that's what we're gonna get into today. But before that, if you are listening when this episode comes out, please let me encourage you to get on the waitlist for the book because folks on the waitlist are going to be able to purchase on Monday, just two days from now, three days from now, however many days from now.
Amelia Hruby:And they will also get access to some very cool bonuses that are gonna go out with the first set of copies of the book. So these bonuses are very fun things. Like the first 100 people who buy the book are going to be invited to an exclusive Zoom call with me happening Friday, October 10, where I'm gonna do a little reading and do a little q and a and just have a little book celebration with the first 100 people who purchased the book. Those first 100 people will also get some exclusive postcards that have been designed by friends of the pod and interweb members, Carolyn Yu and Deborah Figueredo. They are gorgeous.
Amelia Hruby:They are connected to the themes of the book, and those are only going out with the first 150 copies. I also have some very, very limited special edition bookmarks that my very sweet, loving father created with this fun engraving machine thing that he bought in his retirement. So those are gonna go out with, like, the first 25 copies of the book, and you just really wanna be in on these early bonuses. I think that they will be gone by the time the book goes on sale to the public. So it is not too late to get on the waitlist and be one of the first 100 people who orders the book and get those bonuses.
Amelia Hruby:So you can head to the show notes to join the waitlist right now, or just go to your attentionissacred.com. That'll take you to the place to sign up, and you'll get an email from me bright and early Monday morning inviting you to buy. Okay. I am here today to talk about Amazon. But to do that, I need to tell you a little bit more about my self publishing process.
Amelia Hruby:So many moons ago, I self published a book called 50 Feminist Mantras, and that was created from an Instagram series that I had hosted called Feminist Mantra Monday. It happened every Monday on my Instagram account, I think from, like, late twenty sixteen through 2017, and then again for all of 2019. And I compiled the post from that series into a journal and self published that as a book with Amazon's self publishing service, Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP. At the time, that was honestly super easy. I put everything in a Word document, and I had a really wonderful friend who designed a cover for me.
Amelia Hruby:Thank you to Emily for doing that. And I just uploaded those files and Amazon turned it into a book, and then I was able to print it through their self publishing service and sell the copies on my Squarespace website. And then eventually to just publish it through Amazon, and people could buy it on Amazon and purchase that way. And so I had this experience of self publishing back then that was, like, super easy and totally made possible by Amazon. So I have experienced that version of self publishing.
Amelia Hruby:And since then, I have, to the best of my ability, quit using Amazon services. Now I did a whole episode about how to quit Google, Amazon, and Spotify earlier this year. So I will put that in the show notes if you're interested in the quitting Amazon of it all. But essentially, what that meant when I went to self publish this book is that I wasn't going to do it with KDP. I needed to find another service to self publish with.
Amelia Hruby:And then I had a big decision to make about whether I was going to distribute the book through Amazon at all. So let me talk through those two decisions. First, how did I self publish a book if I didn't use Amazon? Well, there are a lot of wonderful self publishing and print on demand services out there. So the first thing I explored was printing it locally, and I actually have a family member who's worked in printing where I live for a long time.
Amelia Hruby:And we looked at a couple places, couldn't quite find one that felt right, so I decided not to go that direction. The other issue with printing yourself and printing locally is that your book is not attached to any distribution network. So if you want that book in a store, you're gonna have to carry that book to the store and ask them to stock it. And I wasn't sure. I was up for all of that work.
Amelia Hruby:So I put aside the local printing option, and then I was looking at print on demand services. And I really considered two. The first was IngramSpark and the second was Lulu. I think that they're both great and have different pros and cons, but I chose to work with IngramSpark mostly for two reasons. The first was I had two friends, shout out to Nick and Cody, who had self published books with IngramSpark and had a great experience doing so.
Amelia Hruby:And then also because as I was looking into the independent bookstores, I might want to stock my book. A lot of them mentioned that they ordered directly from Ingram, which is the book distribution company that owns Ingram Spark, the self publishing print on demand imprint I was looking at. So I really wanted the benefits of that distribution network that was so clearly available if I used IngramSpark. And so that's how I made the decision. I decided I was self publishing this book with IngramSpark, which I will link to all of these things I'm mentioning in the show notes.
Amelia Hruby:You can find them at offthegrid.fun/shownotes or LinkedIn your podcast player. Like, don't worry about the links. They are there for you. Once I had decided to self publish with IngramSpark, then I had perhaps a bigger decision to make. That was like a very logistical decision that was going to impact my self publishing process.
Amelia Hruby:But now I had this big question of, am I going to put my book on Amazon? And this is a hard question. Like, honestly, even the most, like, radical anti capitalist authors I know, many, if not most of them, have their books on Amazon. It is the way of doing business in the book world, and it's truly expected by readers. Right?
Amelia Hruby:Like, if a book is not on Amazon, people think it doesn't exist. And so I really saw it as making this choice around, like, how widely available did I want my book to be and how open was I to this experience I anticipate having of someone hearing about my book, searching for it on Amazon, and then not finding it there. And what I decided is that I really believe that the success of off the grid and the resonance of my work, like a core aspect of that is the deep integrity that I bring to it. And I am on the record here on the pod saying that I don't use Amazon services to the best of my ability. And what does that to the best of my ability really mean for me?
Amelia Hruby:Well, it means I still use websites that use Amazon Web Services. It means I still occasionally watch a movie on my parents' Amazon Prime account. But I think what I decided is that it meant that I do everything in my power not to give my money to Amazon. And that meant I could not give Amazon a cut of my self published book. Like, the whole purpose of the ideas in this book is to resist the attention grabbing, convenience touting nature of companies like Amazon.
Amelia Hruby:So how could I give them a cut of my book? Like, I don't want them making money off these ideas. Once I really thought through what this book is about and how counter that is to all of Amazon's values and practices, I felt like I could not distribute the book there. Now anyone in the traditional book space would say this is a horrible idea. They would say that without Amazon, people will not find my book, and they will not order my book.
Amelia Hruby:Essentially, like, if I'm not there on Amazon, I am losing out on a massive audience opportunity. I am limiting the sales that I might get. And in some senses, that's true. Right? Like, nobody searching quit social media on Amazon is gonna find my book, even though my book is a wonderful one to read if that's something that you're interested in.
Amelia Hruby:Also, there is an entire ecosystem of Amazon ads and SEO and all these other ways to get in front of all of the readers that they have trained to search Amazon first for a book. And if I'm not on Amazon, I can't use their ads. I can't sell there. I can't, you know, use those tools that have been touted as the path to success for self publishing especially. And because of who I am and what this book is about, I'm also not using meta ads or Google ads or social media to promote the book.
Amelia Hruby:I'm not doing any of the things in the successful author playbook. I feel like I am holding my breath as I say that. So let me take a deep breath and invite you to do so with me. It is scary and stressful to step away from the playbook, to opt out of the paved path to success in any area of life. That's why it's scary and stressful to start a business.
Amelia Hruby:That's why it's scary and stressful to quit using social media. That's why it's scary and stressful to not put my book on Amazon. But here's what I know about those scary and stressful feelings. So often in my life, they come up when I'm about to make a deeply aligned decision. And I believe that they are just the vestiges of societal norms that still live in my mind and my body.
Amelia Hruby:And so I can acknowledge them. I can thank them even, and I can release them. If I think about the episode I shared with Tracy, I can even name that part and give it another job to do. Right? Like I can say, okay, little baby Jeff Bezos in my brain.
Amelia Hruby:You can go hang out on Amazon and you can find comp titles for my book and make me a cute little list of them so I can start like pitching authors to collaborate with, etcetera, etcetera. But you are not running the show on this book launch. You are not deciding how we are bringing the book to the people. You are not guiding me back to this superhighway that you have totally destroyed the earth for as you've built it. And when I reframe it that way, when I use the parts work tools, when I take the deep breaths and allow my nervous system to calm down, then I feel so fucking excited about how we're launching this book.
Amelia Hruby:And by we, I mean me and you and everyone on the wait list and everyone paying attention right now to your attention is sacred. Because when I am not spending my precious energy and attention looking at Amazon and trying to optimize my listing and buy the ads and do well there, then instead, I get to focus on all of the amazing ways that I can actually connect with off the grid listeners that I can be with my community and invite you to buy the book and to share the book and to spread the word. And part of why this book launch has been such a big deal to me and why I'm really trying to put my all into it is because I want to chart this course for all of us or for those of us who want to self publish without relying on these extractive big tech companies. I want more people to feel empowered to self publish a book without putting it on Amazon and still make money from their book and build a beautiful community of readers. When I made this decision to not put my book on Amazon, I wasn't just like signing over my dream for success and being like, well, guess my book's gonna flop now.
Amelia Hruby:Not at all. I was instead making a different commitment to the success of my book. And I was leaning in to trusting you listening to this, to trusting the people who have told me they are excited about the book to continue to lean in and to carry it forward, to help me carry it forward. So thank you for being here, for listening, for doing that. And also, when I ask that of you, it's because I want to offer it in return.
Amelia Hruby:Right? Like, I wanna chart this course not so I'm like out ahead of the curve being successful, but so more of us can go down this path. I want you to tell me yourself publishing a book without Amazon so I can send it to my mailing list so I can spread the word so I can buy a copy. The other piece I wanna add here is that by opting out of Amazon, I have opted out of best seller lists entirely because self published books can get best seller labels on Amazon, but they don't show up on, like, traditional New York Times or USA Today bestseller lists. So self published authors who refer to their books as bestsellers, they're referring to some Amazon category that they have popped to the top of.
Amelia Hruby:And if I'm not on Amazon, that's just not going to be me. So in order to make this decision, I also had to decide to stop caring about things like that. I had to opt out of that metric for success, and I had to choose other metrics for success. So I have set a goal for this book launch. I want to sell 500 copies of the book within the first two months of it being out in the world.
Amelia Hruby:It feels vulnerable to say that here in public, but I'm gonna say it. And I actually have also created a sales tracker to track that publicly. So if you want to track sales with me every day and see how close we're getting to that goal, that will be shared with folks on the waitlist. So you gotta get on the waitlist, then you'll get the link to the sales tracker. But that is what I've decided being a bestseller means to me.
Amelia Hruby:It means setting this very specific goal and sharing it with my community and trying to get there. And that feels so much more fulfilling to me because it's not about like comparing my book to the other books out there and if it's selling better than them because that's what a bestseller list is. Right? Like, it's not like you sell so many copies and then you're a bestseller. It's like you're selling better than the other people right now.
Amelia Hruby:So I don't wanna be in that competitive mindset. Instead, I want to know what I really want and then try to reach that goal with all of you and share that process. And that's why I created the sales tracker. And the reason I've picked 500 books is because I did some math. Well, some math, some vibes.
Amelia Hruby:But essentially, I ran the numbers on what I've spent on the book so far, what I'd like to pay myself for having written this book and put all this energy into it, and then what I think it might cost to travel next year and go on a book tour and spread the word about the book. And when I sort of compiled all those numbers, I came up with something around $15,000. And with the bundles I've created and different ways I'll be selling the book, I think that selling 500 copies should net me about that much money. Like, I should take home about that much money from selling 500 copies. So that's what I decided success meant for me, not being on a bestseller list.
Amelia Hruby:I chose my own metrics for success that are meaningful to me and hopefully to all of you. Right? Because part of this metric for success is a, you get the book, which according to early readers is amazing. But b, like, might come to a city near you, and we might be able to have, like, an even deeper and richer in person interaction next year if we can meet this goal. So all of that is why I decided not to put my book on Amazon and the things that I have given up and gained in making that decision.
Amelia Hruby:If you've gotten to the end of this episode, of course, I wanna ask you to get on the waitlist for the book and buy yourself a copy. Please. That's what's gonna make all of this possible. I also want to offer to you a resource. If you're feeling inspired, if you're like, wow.
Amelia Hruby:This is a big decision, and maybe I want to reevaluate my relationship to Amazon, I want to encourage you to get this book called How to Resist Amazon and Why? The Fight for Local Economies, Data Privacy, Fair Labor, Independent Bookstores, and a People Powered Future by Danny Kane. This book is amazing, and it was also published by an amazing small press called Microcosm. And I picked it up at an amazing independent bookstore called Matter, and it really walks through so many reasons to step back or away from Amazon and to resist their monopolization of the book world and of so much of ecommerce. So if you are interested in that, go read Danny's book.
Amelia Hruby:It is so good. And if you wanna be a part of off the grid succeeding without Amazon, if you wanna join our resistance, please get a copy of my book, which if you're on the wait list, you can buy on Monday. Alright, friends. I think that is enough for our third episode of the week. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Amelia Hruby:Thank you so much for being a friend and a fan of the show and of my work and hopefully of my book. I can't wait to return next week when copies will be shipping out into the world. I'm so excited. And until then, I will see you off the grid on the interweb and not on Amazon. Thanks for listening to off grid.
Amelia Hruby:Don't forget to grab your free leaving social media toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a softer sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Caitlin Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by Natalia Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Ruby. And until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the interweb.
Melissa Kaitlyn Carter:Let's go off the grid. Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay. I know that you really wanna put your phone away.
Melissa Kaitlyn Carter:Yeah. Let's go off the grid.
Creators and Guests
