In this solo presentation, Julie Broad (Julie the Book Broad), founder of Book Launchers, warns nonfiction authors that treating Amazon as a complete publishing strategy is a high‑risk mistake. She explains that Amazon is a powerful retailer but not a strategy, and reliance on it leaves authors vulnerable to account shutdowns, rising ad costs, and unpredictable organic reach. Drawing on her own experience of being dependent on a single organization for her business, she advocates building an "author empire" where the author’s message, website, and email list are the core power center. She outlines concrete steps: create a professional author website that can process transactions (using Shopify, BookFunnel, StoryOrigin, Gumroad), capture email addresses and nurture readers with a newsletter (using Kit), and use direct sales to offer bundles, pre‑order incentives, and special offers. She stresses multi‑channel distribution—listing print books with IngramSpark for bookstore access, pursuing bulk sales to organizations, and licensing internationally via DropCap. Julie also recommends tracking revenue sources (Amazon, direct, bulk, speaking, courses, membership) to future‑proof the business. Throughout, she promotes Book Launchers resources, a free author community (booklaunchers.com/school) and a premium coaching program, positioning them as support for authors who want to diversify beyond Amazon.
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Hey author, if Amazon disappeared tomorrow, would your author business survive? If the answer is no, then this video is for you. Hi, I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers and your host here at BookLaunchers.tv. Book Launchers is your first choice for all things related to writing, publishing, and promoting nonfiction books. Lots of authors treat Amazon like publishing on Amazon is a strategy. They put their book on Amazon and expect things to happen. Most people, though, are getting wise to the fact that putting a book on Amazon is not a strategy, but some authors still rely solely on Amazon for their sales. And that is a scary place to be. But let me back right up. Amazon is a retailer, a powerful one, and for many authors it will always be part of their distribution strategy. But Amazon alone is not a strategy, and authors who treat it like one are the most fragile heading into 2026 and beyond. I have never been a fan of relying on one thing to survive. When I moved from Canada to the US, I got to experience the stress and pain of what it's like to have your entire life in the hands of one organization. At one border crossing, we were told to prove my business was profitable, or we would only be given 7 days in the country before we had to go back to Canada. At another point, my lawyers filed the wrong paperwork and my visa expired. I couldn't run my own company. My team had to handle everything without communicating with me, and there was nothing I could do but wait while the process played out. I can sound relaxed about it now because I got through it, but the lesson that was reinforced by that whole experience was that to be dependent on any one organization for your livelihood is a high-risk situation. Many authors have found that out in recent years as Amazon has shut accounts down or froze book sales for sometimes completely random reasons. When the one place you can reach your readers gets shut down, you quickly realize that you need more than just a single channel for your business. In Self-Publish and Succeed, I say this very bluntly: Amazon isn't going to sell your book for you. And that becomes more and more true as Amazon makes more changes. Just recently, what's changed? Well, ads are more expensive, organic reach is less predictable, and there's a lot of books in every category. And Amazon is now rewarding the books that are selling from a variety of traffic sources, which means you need to have a multichannel marketing strategy to even be successful on Amazon. As a result, it does become more and more challenging to be found and consistently found on Amazon. So what should authors do? Well, let's build an empire around your book. And an empire in the traditional definition is a realm controlled by a monarch or another authority, divided by a dominant center, metropole, and subordinate peripheries. Empires typically have large areas and incorporate multiple groups, cultures, languages, or former independent polities. Now, if you think of this in the world of books, and author businesses, you can think of it as different channels or places to reach your readers. The core is you and your message and your book, and all around it are the things that help you reach your reader, have an impact, and make an income. Just like an empire, the core holds the ultimate power over the outer regions, not any one region in power. In other words, you, your message, and your platform hold power, not Amazon. For this to work though, you need a core message and a home base. You need an author website. Some authors treat their website like a digital business card, their bio, a book cover, a Buy on Amazon button. Your website should be infrastructure. It should process transactions, capture reader data, support your big picture goals, and this should all work whether Amazon loves you this month or not. Tools like Shopify, BookFunnel, StoryOrigin, or Gumroad are, yeah, maybe a little techie, but they give you control. Remember, control doesn't matter until you don't have it. My personal setup is to sell books direct from selfpublishandsucceed.com or juliebroad.com. Shopify is the shopping cart, and a company called Accutrack does the printing and shipping. Now you can sell your digital versions as well. Me personally, I give them away in exchange for an email address. For example, if you want Self-Promote and Succeed, you can go to selfpromoteandsucceed.com/audio and you can get the book for free. You can use services like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin to sell or give away your digital versions. Gumroad is another one that authors use. I don't use it, but I use Shopify, StoryOrigin, and BookFunnel. These setups aren't mandatory when you're starting out, but once your author business is running, I highly recommend you set up a way to sell direct to your reader. If you're still holding onto hope that you can write a great book and do nothing else, I have to burst that bubble. Not because I wanna be mean, but because I want you to succeed. I want you to have the impact you were hoping for when you wrote that book. So you need a great author website, one that showcases your authority, appeals to your reader, helps you get found and recommended by the LLMs. Once you have that, you have to have a way to collect email addresses and send newsletters. We use and recommend Kit. You can check out our affiliate link at booklaunchers.com/kit. I'll put all the links for all the things I'm mentioning down below. You can get started for free with Kit, and when you need to grow and expand, Kit is there for you. Email is not just marketing, it's insurance. Amazon gives you sales reports, email gives you access. And access lets you launch with people ready to buy and review your book. It lets you sell direct so you can make special offers. When I launched Self-Publish and Succeed, Second Edition, over there, we held a summit. Buy the book direct from us and we'll give you a ticket to our summit. You can also offer pre-order incentives and actually build momentum on your terms. Your newsletter can do so many things, including reader bonuses, companion resources, Exclusive follow-ups, behind-the-scenes stories, content that deepens the transformation your book promises, and most importantly, build a connection and a relationship with your reader. Be sure to give your reader a good reason to subscribe to you and then build value with every message you send. You can see what we do, booklaunchers.com/7steps, link there, if you wanna just check out a simple landing page and opt-in. Amazon sells a format, you sell an outcome for the reader. A connection, maybe even a community. Speaking of community, we have a free one for authors. You can join it at booklaunchers.com/school, S-K-O-O-L. And if you want one-on-one calls, group coaching, training, and prizes, we have an upgraded premium community on the same platform for only $100 a month. But back to empire building. What Amazon cannot compete with? Well, Amazon can't bundle up your thinking and package your experience and personalize the offers that you make. It also does not follow up with your reader. That's where direct sales and your own email newsletter win. This is where your author website, where people can go get your newsletter, find your socials, and even send you a message, are far, far superior to Amazon. It makes it more of a conversation. So when I say packages or bundles, what do I mean? You can use your creativity, but book plus workbook, book plus private training, signed copies, bulk discounts for teams, interactive or audio-first experiences. Also, Amazon isn't the only retailer out there selling books. So let's talk about bookstores for a minute. Bookstores are not a volume play. It feels so good getting your book on the shelves of a bookstore, but even if you do get your book into a bookstore and they carry a couple books, you're still likely to be spying out. It's unlikely you'll see more than a few sales from a bookstore. Even online at Barnes Noble or other retailers, You're not going to sell hundreds and hundreds of books unless you're marketing them really, really hard and you're selling a whole lot of books overall. But it doesn't mean don't get your book into the stores. It is a credibility and definitely a leverage play. And that is why we never just use KDP for print book sales. We use IngramSpark. Doesn't guarantee placement, but it gives you access to bookstores. And if someone is requesting your book and their local bookstore can order it, that's what IngramSpark allows. You've gained access to a new reader and a new store. When your book can be found where your reader is looking, that's a big positive. But more than bookstores though, think about bulk sale opportunities. 500 bulk copies can outperform 5,000 Amazon sales. Why? Well, because organizations don't buy books for entertainment. They're usually buying them for training or onboarding. Leadership development, culture, client gifts, employee gifts. Bulk sales can come in many, many ways. You can start by just putting a single page in the back of your book, letting people know they can contact you for bulk deals. A note on your website that you have bonuses for bulk purchases. If your book appeals to a certain group like Lorena Martinez, she has a book that is for teachers and school districts buy it in bulk each year. Some of our clients have sold books in bulk to organizations that give them in gifts. To their clients or their employees or use them as part of a training program. If you're a speaker, you can often sell a bulk order of books with a speaking engagement. One thing to keep in mind is the answer is always no if you don't ask. So start asking and watch some doors open up. Now, let's talk about future-proofing your business. If Amazon represents more than 50, 60, 70% of your revenue, You're exposed. You're not doomed, you're just exposed. That's okay, but you may want to look at taking some of the steps we've just talked about to set you up for a different split in the future. Future-proof authors track Amazon sales, sales to libraries and other retailers, direct sales, bulk, books sold through speaking, licensing, courses, membership. By the way, speaking of licensing, do you want to see if there's some international interest in your book? You can go ahead and pay a small fee to to list it on the DropCap marketplace. We have had a lot of our authors get international publishing deals through DropCap. Our affiliate link, if you want to go into the marketplace there, is booklaunchers.com/dropcap. This allows you to get paid for the same content in other countries, in other languages. The publisher translates it for you and you still retain rights everywhere else while you get paid when they sell books. So go ahead, get to work. Your author website, wide listings that go beyond Amazon, sell direct to your reader, get your book published in other countries, find some bulk buyers for your book. These are all important things to sell beyond Amazon. And if you want help building an author business that doesn't collapse every time a platform shifts, come on over and join our free community on school, booklaunchers.com/school. And if this video made you a little uncomfortable, well, that's okay. Discomfort is usually the first sign you're about to build something that matters.
