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Kiran H. J. Dellimore

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Everything posted by Kiran H. J. Dellimore

  1. 100% agree. I couldn't say it better!
  2. Just finished reading Hiroona: A Historical Romance in Poetic Form which deals with a very interesting period of Caribbean colonial history. I have written a review on my blog.
  3. Small update. Here is a link to a recent blogpost which you might like to check out. It is about my immersion experience in Garifuna culture, by making hudut(u) with machuca, in preparation for my upcoming historical fiction novel, The Ashes from Our Tears. Enjoy! http://www.kirandellimore.com/behind-the-scenes-the-ashes-from-our-tears-part1/
  4. This is called choice architecture which is commonly utilized in marketing by almost all companies from your local grocery store to airlines to AMZ. I do agree that they are blatantly promoting their platform over the physical book. The question is why are consumers falling for it especially since many of us prefer physical books? I suspect the answer has to do with the accessibility. We want things now like a burger at Mickey D's and are not keen to wait for a book to be shipped. Very interesting how quickly AMZ (or perhaps the author - since the author sets the price ) responded to lower the price. They (author+AMZ) may have tried to price gouge to take advantage of the current events surrounding George Floyd which would likely generate more demand for this genre of books. I wonder if this has been done this for other similar books?
  5. In this pandemic time I have been listening to a lot of Afrobeats...especially Davido. His music makes me want to dance. Plus he filmed the music video of one of his latest songs, Assurance, in Barbados (where I'm from). Check it out! Beautiful Barbados
  6. Thanks @Troy for sharing your wealth of knowledge. Much appreciated ! I have learned a lot in this brief exchange. You certainly have very visionary ideas. I hope that they can help to change book the publishing industry one day. Definitely agree. However, despite Amazon's behemoth size I don't think they can shut out independent Black book sellers completely. This will be scary and hard. Many authors will lose money by doing this. Perhaps it will take some of the biggest names in Black books today to lead the way. Like: Alice Walker, Yaa Gyasi (btw her book Homegoing was a great read!), Ta-Nehesi Coates, Michelle Alexander, Walter Moseley etc. Do you think they can be brought on board? I also saw your post about this thread on the AALBC Facebook fanpage. I guess any publicity is better than no publicity !
  7. I am about 1/3 of the way through Hiroona - An Historical Romance in Poetic Form, which is about the 2nd Carib War in St Vincent and the great paramount Black Carib (Garifuna) chief Chatoyer. Before that I finished Segu by Maryse Conde which was an enthralling historical fiction novel. I wrote a review about it here on my blog. Highly recommended reading!
  8. Hi @Troy perhaps it is useful to continue the discussion further for the benefit of all on AALBC. I agree that Amazon and it's dominance of the retail book market has drastically changed the economics of the book publishing business which has adversely impacted small printing presses/publishing houses as well as authors. What are your thoughts on what authors and small publishers can do to combat this? How can authors better support smaller publishers? To be devil's advocate is there perhaps also a way for authors and publishers alike to leverage Amazon's dominance for their benefit? What barriers must be overcome? Thanks for the lively and informative discussion.
  9. @Troy Thanks for following up so quickly and in such detail. I am very impressed and grateful to you for your detailed response. Your depth of knowledge and experience really shines through in your post. I still have a lot to learn about the book printing and selling business beyond Amazon. In regards the ISBN for Fresh Ereba, the Google search should have also pulled up the Amazon listing (See screenshot). Fresh Ereba is also published on LuluPress, however, it is pending distribution. So perhaps it will take another month or so for it to show up on Ingram Sparks. By the way I was honestly unaware of the do not return policy of Ingram. It is likely due to the fact that the book is printed on demand by LuluPress. To the best of my knowledge the book should not be kept in stock, so I am surprised to read that there are 500 in stock. That does seems inconsistent with the print-on-demand concept of Lulu. I see (now) from the numbers that you have shared that the book distribution channels are not highly effective or profitable. I think this highlights a key challenge (and drawback) for self-published authors. It is hard pretty darn near impossible (and unwise) for brick and mortar stores to stock a non-traditionally published book. This is why Amazon's platform is quite attractive. As you rightly mention Amazon definitely gets their slice of the pie. I don't dispute that. However, I do feel that some authors successfully leverage Amazon's platform and market size (~50% of the print book market) to make money. Thank you very much for listing Walking in Footsteps of Promise and for being willing to take a risk on Fresh Ereba. I sincerely appreciate the support. I will fill out the form shortly. Thanks @Troy!!
  10. Hi @Troy I read through the guidelines and noticed that there is a typo in rules 11 and 12 as the two sentences seem to be connected (see below). Perhaps this is a quick fix: 11. AALBC.com assumes no liability or responsibility for errors or omis 12. sions in this section or on this disclaimer page.
  11. You are asking all the right questions @Troy! There is another way to promote your book for free on Amazon other than giving it a way for free. Previously, I have used a countdown deal, in which the price of the e-book starts off low, say 99c, and is gradually increased in stages until it returns to the normal price. However, I did not see many sales with the latter approach, while after the free book giveaway I did see a boost in sales, especially of the paperback. For completeness, one can also pay for advertisements on Amazon to promote your book. Although I have not yet tried this out, since I am first exploring unpaid options. As I plan to publish more books in the future I am using Fresh Ereba (ISBN-13: 979-8642874554) as a learning book so that I can better understand how Amazon works. Your questions speak ultimately to the psychology of book buying. On one hand giving away a book for free encourages buyers to have a lower perceived value for books by creating a norm around cheap or free books, and may discourage them from paying for books in the future. On the flip side most buyers purchase books based on the buying behavior of others, i.e., based on a herd mentality. This makes sense since many books are written by people the buyers do not know, and are of uncertain quality. As a consequence of this most buyers rely on the Amazon Best Sellers rank and reviews by previous buyers to inform their book purchasing decision. Giving a book away for free increases the book's Amazon best sellers rank and the likelihood that your book will be reviewed, which should help in the long run to sell more books. By the way it is important to mention here that the free book give away is only temporary. It is allowed for a maximum of 5 not necessarily consecutive days out of the 90 day enrollment in the KDP Select program. There are also a couple of other effects at play on Amazon such as the "30-day cliff" (the first 30 days are the most important for a newly published book on Amazon) and the "also bought" purchasing behavior of customers (the other items purchased along with your book influences whether Amazon will recommend your book to other potential customers in the future) . There are also seasonal factors linked to holidays since more books are sold before long weekends and holiday periods. However, I suspect the main logic of the Amazon algorithm is driven by the herd mentality. By the way I have previously published my memoir Walking in Footsteps of Promise on Amazon (ISBN-13: 978-0244570392), when I had even less understanding of Amazon. That book has thus far not done nearly as well as Fresh Ereba, despite the fact that it took me 14 years to write it. So that experience spurred me to experiment and to learn as much as I can from blogs of more seasoned writers.
  12. Hi @Troy thanks for the great questions, which are relevant to other authors on AALBC! I am fairly new to Amazon KDP (I only joined back in October 2019) and there is currently no royalty for free ebooks (although you do get royalties if your book is borrowed from KU [Kindle Unlimited] and KOLL [Kindle Owners’ Lending Library]). Free give-aways do count towards your Amazon Best Sellers Rank and are therefore a helpful promotion tool. A requirement of the KDP Select Program is that the e-book must be exclusively available on Amazon Kindle for the 90 day period of enrolment in the program (which is renewable thereafter). So other platforms like Apple iBookstore, Kobo, and Nook are not possible as long as your are enrolled. However, the paperback version is not bound by this rule. So far the paperback version of my book has been more popular than the e-book, so this arrangement seems to be working out OK for me. Perhaps it is because Fresh Ereba is a children's book and kids are more captivated by something they can touch and feel.
  13. Hey all! Just getting the word out. I started a writing blog on my author website. This month I am focusing on a three part series on the writing process for first time authors. Please check it out and leave your comments.
  14. Sorry I forgot to mention it earlier. There is a Kindle free book promotion on Amazon that ends today (21st May) at midnight PDT. Feel free to check it out!
  15. I am finally starting to get the hang of this website. Here is the working link for my children's book (Fresh Ereba) on Amazon
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