A Change to Publishing's Competitive Landscape

One thing to note about publishing - especially self-publishing - is this simple fact: Change is constant. There's always something new on the horizon. For instance, not long ago Amazon made it possible to publish hardcover versions of our books. They also introduced Kindle Vella, so that authors could release titles in an episodic format. Now there's something else that's new.

In the past, I've mentioned several times how marketing now goes hand-in-hand with publishing. Simply put, it's almost mandatory that you advertise these days. Amazon, of course, has been a big beneficiary of this trend with its Amazon ads. However, indie publishers (like yours truly) historically had an advantage in that advertising books on Amazon was limited to those who were self-published. Traditionally published authors (i.e., those who had signed with a publisher) weren't allowed to use Amazon ads. 

That is no longer the case.

About two weeks ago, Amazon apparently opened up the advertising platform to traditionally published authors.  Since then, there's been much debate on whether or not trad authors, as they're called, will actually take advantage of this. For one thing, part of the benefit of being with a publisher is that the publisher is supposed to take care of marketing and promotion.  In practice, however, I've heard many trad authors say that their publishers pushed the onus of marketing onto the writers.

In addition, there's a question of whether trad authors are willing to do take on the additional cost of advertising. After all, the bulk of any earnings will go to the publisher. That being the case, are trad authors really going to be eager to use their hard-earned dollars to add to their publisher's coffers?

Needless to say, there was a lot of debate on this issue in the author world and what the effect would be. For me personally, here's how it played out: starting the very day that Amazon opened up advertising to trad authors, my Amazon ad impressions dropped precipitously. In other words, a lot fewer people saw my ads, which implies that there was much more competition. I can't say for sure that said competition came from trad authors (it could have been other indie authors simply increasing their ad spend), but there was definitely an effect that seemed to spring from this move by Amazon. Long story short, there's obviously been a change to the competitive landscape, and it's a toss-up as to whether things will go back to normal any time soon.

Anyway, this was just a little more of a peek behind the curtain in terms of what comprises an author's day-to-day. Needless to say, I long for the days when all I had to worry about in terms of my writing career was just the writing.  Sadly, as with many other things, those days are gone. But it's worth noting that, in this instance, Amazon's actions were not completely unexpected; everyone knew (or should have suspected) that they would open the ad platform up to trad authors at some point. Basically, there's always going to be change, and it's best to try to stay nimble and be ready to pivot when it happens.