#402: Publish with a Purpose: The Benefits of Publishing on Amazon

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

I received a question that I thought would be great to share on the podcast. So the question is, why sell on Amazon? And this is a great question because I know, especially with our audience being Kingdom writers and following after Christ, sometimes we're not huge fans of Amazon. And I get that. And. And she was just saying I'm not a fan of Amazon. And I wonder why people are always sending everyone there instead of selling books on their own websites or going through ingramspark to get their books into stores. She said she recently heard that a publisher had a bunch of books returned from Amazon and it was a major loss for the publishers. And so I wanted to answer this because I think that there's more of you that are wondering this question, like, why sell on Amazon? And first of all, I want to tell you, you definitely can sell your books wherever you choose to sell them. You could choose to sell your book exclusively on your website, and there are many ways to do that. However, there are two major benefits to selling on Amazon that I have found over the years. And the first is that with Amazon, you're able to connect and find, find new readers easier than just trying to do it on your own and send those readers to your website. Now, some of you may already have a big platform, you may already have a large audience, a large email list, social media, podcast followers. And if that's the case, then you might be able to generate enough of your own sales from your own audience or other ways that you're generating new leads. We talk about this in the five step marketing plan that define new readers. It usually boils down to paid ads, SEO, search engine optimization. So you might also be getting a ton of people to your blog and you can then just direct them to buy directly from you or collaborations. So guest blogging, guest podcast, interviews, it could be speaking on a summit. And there's so many ways to do collaborations. But the thing is, at the end of the day, in order to sell books, we need to connect with readers. One of the ways that Amazon really helps us to do that is first of all just through their organic search engine. So people are searching for things and they may come across your book, but through the keywords, categories, different things, there's all sorts of ways to get found on Amazon. But one of the things that we use that has helped us sell a lot of books over the last few years is Amazon ads. And with Amazon ads you're able to get directly in front of the people searching for the types of books that you've written. And so I can put an ad in front of someone that's looking for a women's bible study. They type in those words on Amazon. And my book Broken Crayons still color may come up. Now it doesn't mean it will always come up, but it depends on, you know, a lot of things. Amazon ads takes time and energy and you know, there is a process of learning it. But since 2016, I mean that's been one of our primary ways that we've sold books. But also they have different benefits. If you're in the KDP select program where you can run free days, you can do countdown deals for 99 cent ebooks and there's just a lot of different ways to get found and visibility options on Amazon. And Amazon is where majority of the readers still buy books. It just is. But the other thing that's a huge benefit. So number one is just being able to find readers, you know, find your target audience and to be able to connect with those readers on Amazon. The second reason is when you use a print on demand company like Amazon, it decreases the time and energy needed to ship out your books. So, so if you sell books on your own website, then you probably are going to need to either ship them out from the back office of like something like KDP or IngramSpark or something like that, or order books at, you know, to have in your home and then ship them out on your own. Now this is a whole other process, but it just takes time and energy to do that. It's, there's a manual process typically involved when you're selling something on your own website. I sold books on Etsy for a while. It was my art book brush Strokes workbook where I teach brush lettering and it was a print workbook. We no longer have those in stock, but I still sell the digital format on Etsy. But it was a lot of work and CJ was the one that would handle it. We called him our chipper shipper. But I will tell you like, you have to like be on it. And then you, you know, if you're traveling or, you know, there's just a lot of things to consider. You have to have the packing materials, those are additional costs. You have to pay for shipping, you know, And a lot of people do have prime, so they get free shipping with Amazon, you know, so there's just a lot of different considerations both for you and your audience. Now it is really simple to sell ebooks on your own website. However, again, a lot of people are using Kindle devices to read their ebooks. And so then it's more of a manual process for them to load that book onto their Kindle device. And you can still do it. Like we sell our Kingdom Writers book in digital format from our website. You can just check out the sales page, it's@trainingauthors.com book and we just use our regular payment processing system and they get access in our member area. So I just use the things that I already have for the other parts of our business. But in the member area, they can download different formats of the book and then we give instructions for how they can load it on their Kindle device. But again, it's a little bit of more of a manual process. So some of your readers that may, you know, turn them off, they just may want to have it in a Kindle format because then it goes directly to their Kindle device. It syncs up all of those sorts of things, but it just decreases the time and energy needed to manage all of that. Amazon manages all of that for us. And like they even take the sales tax. Like if you're selling the books on your own website, then that is that whole other component of how are you going to deal with sales tax. And you know, there's just so many things that Amazon just takes care of for us. And it is beautiful. It's a beautiful thing because it's all automated for us now. They also take care of returns. Like those are the other things. Like on Etsy, we had to deal with customer support. So like, you know, when you sell on your own website, you have to think about that. You have to take customer support, deal with refunds, you know, chargebacks, you know, all sorts of different customer support issues. And so it is the easiest option to do print on demand on Amazon to decrease the time and energy needed to handle all of that. And then you can put that time and energy into marketing, into reaching new readers, into writing new books. Right. So number one is just that Amazon is a great way to connect with new readers. Number two, it's a print on demand company. They handle all of the process of shipping out your books, customer service, sales tax, all the things. And then with IngramSpark, it is a great option and we do have several of our books on ingramspark. And once you publish through ingramspark, you are able to get in what's called the Ingram catalog. We have a training on ingramspark in the member area, so you can always check that out if you want more information. But when you get into the Ingram catalog, then that allows bookstores to be able to stock your book. That does not guarantee though that they will stock your book and it does not guarantee that your book is going to sell. So although we sell a lot of books on Amazon through Amazon ads, we're not selling very many books on ingramspark because we're just not driving traffic to it. Now I did just see in my email the other day that there is a new service out that is called Ingram ID and it's where you can set up ads. And it's through, I think it's through IngramSpark. Yeah, it's through IngramSpark. And they will connect you with millions of book buyers. You can create Facebook and Google Ads. So this is a good alternative to Amazon ads. I'm interested in maybe trying it out and seeing how it goes. But we've never, at this point, we have never really done much to really promote the things on Ingram Spark. And in ingramspark. You, you can publish it on Amazon, but you can also publish it on Barnes and Noble. You know, there's other sites. It's not like you're selling it from IngramSpark. You still have to have a bookseller that's selling it for you. But IngramSpark is just the platform like KDP. IngramSpark is a. Is like a print on demand company. And so they're just the vehicle to get your book out to other places. But.

We did have a few months a few years ago where we like literally had thousands of dollars of books book royalties come in from ingramspark. I have no idea who bought the book. I have no idea why there were so many sales. But it was my broken cran still color book and somehow some way someone ordered a bunch of copies. So I mean, totally worth it for that book to be on IngramSpark and on KDP. And again, we have a lesson that talks about all of but we're just not getting enough regular, consistent sales on there on a regular basis. So the other thing is just because your book gets in a bookstore doesn't mean it's going to stay in a bookstore. So what happens is when a bookstore usually stocks a book, they want to know that it's going to sell. And if it starts selling and people are buying it, and then they'll restock it and they'll keep it in, you know, in their store. But the thing is, sometimes bookstores will buy books from Ingram Spark, you know, from the Ingram catalog, and they'll put them in their books in their bookstore, and the books won't sell well. And even if they do sell a little bit, you know that they have a certain criteria, you know, every store is probably a little bit different and they can return them. They're ingramspark. When you set up your account, there's a thing about returns and you know how you're going to take that or if you're going to, you know, how you're going to do that and how you're going to deal with returns because it's just part of the industry. So if books are not selling, they will return those books to the publisher, IngramSpark, you know, even if you're in IngramSpark. So it's just part of the industry. That's just something that happens. And typically it'll happen with books that aren't selling well. And so at the bottom line is to first of all write a book that really is going to impact your target audience in a way that they're going to want to share it, word of mouth, that it's just going to spread, that it's. That it will sell well. But then there is that whole component of marketing. And Amazon just provides so many opportunities to get in front of your target audience. And so it's not an easy button, like if you publish through Amazon, that you're automatically going to sell books. Of course not. You know, there's, there's so many books on Amazon and you still have to do the marketing. It still has to be a great cover, a great book, great description, you know, all of the things that we talk about in our trainings. But I hope that this has helped. So, number one, Amazon really helps you to connect and find readers. Number two, using a print on demand company, whether it's Amazon or IngramSpark, it just decreases the time and energy needed to deal with all the things like shipping out your books and dealing with returns and, you know, just sales tax and all of the things. And then number three, using IngramSpark does not guarantee that, first of all, you'll get your books in bookstores, or even if you do that, the bookstores will continue to stock them. Your book has to sell. And that's just the way it is in this industry. Like they, it's kind of like, show me the money. Right. But I still, at the end of the day, you know, we here at Christian Book Academy help you partner with God to reach more readers with your message. And that's the exciting part is, yes, these things are, you know, the reality. But God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above what we even think or imagine. That's Ephesians 3:20. And so ask him, pray and ask him for a favor, ask him for marketing ideas, ask him for connections, those strategic partnerships organizations that may buy your book in bulk or, you know, there's so many different things that God can do. And so I don't want this to discourage you. I want this to actually encourage you that there are many options for selling your book. Selling your book on your website can actually be a really great option. You just need to also think through all the logistics of what it's going to take to do that. Ebook is a lot easier and it can be automated many times than print books. But, you know, it may be a great option for you in addition to publishing print on demand with either Amazon or, or IngramSpark or maybe both. But there's very specific things you have to know in order to do that and we cover that in our self publish phase of the Kingdom Writers path. So I'm so excited that, you know, this question was asked and so I can share this with you and I hope that it was helpful if it was. Let us know and I will talk to you soon. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.