NotebookLM - Self-Publishing is a Rigged Casino
Transcript
[Speaker 1]
So, I spent the last a little over an hour, just cleaning. Um. Cleaning my bathroom? Including unclogging the sinks and cleaning the toilets and all that stuff. But, as I was doing that. I was listening to. A very, very interesting, deep dive. Um, AI. Google notebook LM. Deep dive about.
[Speaker 1]
Um. The state of independent publishing. And particularly focused on. Amazon. Because if? You have been a reader, or especially if you've been a writer. You've been coached for the last. Basically decade that, you know? When I published, you know, Amazon is the place you have to be. That's the first place where.
[Speaker 1]
People look for your book.
[Speaker 1]
And in many ways, it still is for the average reader. Amazon, whether it's through the Kindle. Itself or through. Um, Kindle, unlimited Amazon subscription program. Or just Amazon in general, you know, if you the first place you go to, you know if you want to buy a physical book or whatever?
[Speaker 1]
Amazon's probably number one on the list. If not, it's it's. It's the top three, you know, unless you know books and you? Go out of your way, and you happen to know an author selling direct. But most authors don't sell direct. Amazon is the place. And for a long time that has been the standard, but I had been suspecting for a long time that this is no longer true, and in fact, Amazon is probably.
[Speaker 1]
From the writer's perspective at least. Is probably the worst place that you want your book if? If. You actually are hoping to make any money or profit from the sale of the book. Now, if all of you care about is writing a book and seeing it on your shelf or writing a book and?
[Speaker 1]
You know, having it seen on Amazon. Then you can ignore this. But if you like me actually care about? Trying to make? A profit from your written work. You should probably follow suit with what I'm doing, and this is my recording, declaring that. I'm done with Amazon. As a as a writer.
[Speaker 1]
Um. I will no longer publish on their platform. And it's not just an ethical thing. Even though that's definitely at play that they squeeze, they know they. They basically have Market majority when it comes to selling books. I think the the stat that I saw? Pretty recently, maybe within the last six months.
[Speaker 1]
Is that Amazon probably has like 80 percent market share meaning, like? 80 percent of books sold are sold through Amazon. I and I believe that's probably still true today. And as I'm recording this in April of 2026? But. I won't get into the specifics of this whole deep dive.
[Speaker 1]
I might post a deep dive. It's an hour long, but it's pretty descriptive. And when I made it, I gave it, um. I gave it a couple of sources very few sources. Actually, I gave it a recent email that I got from Barnes and Noble press. Basically saying that.
[Speaker 1]
You need to set your book price at a minimum of $14.99. And you can no longer have over 100 titles. In your library on book on Barnes Noble press, and you can no longer publish public domain books, which if you don't know what a public domain book is. Any book that is out of copyright so?
[Speaker 1]
I forget the exact number of years. It is, but basically, copyrights expire on on pretty old books. If it's 90 plus years old, you could bet that it's public domain. So, a lot of the classics? Uh, from the 19th century and even now early 20th century, our public domain, meaning that those books are essentially free.
[Speaker 1]
The publisher and the author are no longer legally. Um, obligated to able to collect royalties on that book, they can still sell them, of course, and people can still buy them. But That's just the way copyright law works. And so what people do? A lot of people are doing, especially in this era of AI.
[Speaker 1]
Is they scrape public domain books from a place like project Gutenberg, which has a ton of these old books on there? And they just basically re-skin them. Get a AI generated to cover. You don't have to write a book because the book's already written. You slap it in a PDF?
[Speaker 1]
And you publish it on a place like Barnes Noble press. Or Amazon Amazon's, where a lot of them are getting published. But Bars and Noble press, obviously, a smaller press, and apparently they've been getting squeezed with. A lot of. Um, AI, slop. Getting uploaded in the form of public domain books?
[Speaker 1]
And so they're not going to have it anymore. And part of me doesn't blame them. But, of course, anytime these? Uh, book printers and Distributors. These aggregators do a policy like this. Who takes the hit? We do. You do as a writer because? Readers don't see Barnes and Noble press when they pick up a copy of my latest novel prompted hearts in grief algorithm.
[Speaker 1]
They see Keith Hayden on the cover. And they're thinking why the f*** am I paying 24.99 for a paperback? Well, it's because the only way to make a profit on. Said paperback is. Sell it for that much, because by the time it's printed and shipped. I'm barely making anything from the book, and if I charge 14.99, which is now the lowest I can charge for with Barnes Noble press.
[Speaker 1]
I definitely won't make a profit because it'll cost me seven dollars to print the damn thing. It'll cost me four dollars or something to. To ship it. And then. You know what type of profit am I going to make there? Four dollars for paperbacks that hardly even sell anymore.
[Speaker 1]
So? This hour-long AI deep dive was pretty extensive, and I think I will have to post it just for context because it I make a lot of these and. This one was, was funny because even the AI seemed mad about it, you know, as it was breaking down. Basically the way that Amazon's business is set up and how?
[Speaker 1]
Unless. A an established author writing books and Purdue and distributing books at scale. If you're like me, and you know? Maybe you have a handful of books? And you're not selling a lot of books. It's not worth it.
[Speaker 1]
Print books through them. The quality isn't as good. I noticed this with my last novel, too. I had my paperback version of my latest novel. Published through Amazon and printed in Amazon, and I noticed out of, and, and this was telling because I had. This novel was interesting because I had it printed in several different places.
[Speaker 1]
I probably had it printed.
[Speaker 1]
At least three different places I had it printed 48 hour books, Barnes Noble press. And Amazon. And Amazon's copy was by far the worst of all of the prints. The the cover was washed out, the colors were faded and muted, the text was wasn't clean. It was, and then just it.
[Speaker 1]
The feel of it felt, you know, I've done several paperback books over the years, and the feel of it just felt cheap. Especially compared to my first novel, which I did through Amazon as well, and it just there's been. That was back in 2021. And the quality has noticeably declined over the past half decade with their print books because they're printing at scale.
[Speaker 1]
They're printing thousands I don't know millions of books a day across their places, and depending on where you're getting it printed. It. Could your book could be one of thousands and so it's a machine? Um. And so that that's crappy. The other. The other reason that I just thought is the only reason that was keeping me on Amazon.
[Speaker 1]
Keeping me, you know? Like, my last novel, like I said, that it is currently as of this recording on Amazon? It probably won't be for much longer, but? It's the distribution. Yeah, previously. Distribution. Amazon has just distribution. King is distribution King, so? If your book is listed on Amazon, then it has a chance, you know, in theory.
[Speaker 1]
To show up. In a search. From Millions potentially get in front of millions of potential readers. That is the theory of being on Amazon. But. The reality is that you know, you know, I said this early about Midway last year about a year ago that Amazon feels like a sinking ship.
[Speaker 1]
Why? Because it's being overrun by? Buy a bunch of AI slop. People are publishing. I feel like every time I search for books on Amazon, which is not very often these days because I don't. I tend to buy physical books, and I have a Kindle, but I don't use it a lot, but When I do, I get served up.
[Speaker 1]
So many AI books and I, and I can tell when it's an AI book, and I've even had several times where I've been recommended a particular book by Google or by Chad GPT or something like that, and I go on and just in a few minutes. I can tell this is an AI generated book.
[Speaker 1]
And so the chances every time more AI generated books are. Are published on Amazon. The chances of me as an indie author being discovered go down because I'm not, you know? I can't write a book a week. Um. And so. Obviously, you know, like, my books have a low ranking on Amazon because people aren't really searching for them.
[Speaker 1]
But the chances of being surfaced in the search go down because more of these crappy AI books are surfacing. And then, of course, you know, it's not all crappy eye books you have, like, legitimate. Best sellers. And you know from from established authors that are out there too. So bottom line is the the dream of Discovery.
[Speaker 1]
That was the last thing keeping me on Amazon. Um, that is even. Going away. And then the last was just the the kind of, you know. The common. When you. When people hear you write a book, you've written a book. It's like, is it on Amazon? And. In the past, you know, you wanted to be able to say that, because, like I said at the beginning of this note?
[Speaker 1]
That's typically the first place that they were going to look for the book is, is it on Amazon? But. I do, maybe even maybe that will still happen. But my goal is. To have my book available on my website where the first place they go, I'll be like isn't on Amazon.
[Speaker 1]
No, it's not on Amazon, but I have it on my website, and you can order it through there. And I've experimented with some like automated print on demand. Fulfillment. And I'm still working that out, but I think. At the end of the day, what I've decided on doing is, I'm probably just going to ship from my house ship from home.
[Speaker 1]
Um. Because that allows me to fulfill, you know, I'm not printing at scale. Because that was, that's the Amazon dream right is to be able to print it at scale. That's the print on demand dream, I should say, is to be able to print at scale. But when I'm honest with myself, I'm not printing at scale, you know, like, somebody buys one of my books either when I sell it in person if I'm carrying it on me?
[Speaker 1]
And that's really the main times where people buy my books in print is if it's right in front of them. The number of people buying it.
[Speaker 1]
Online is rare. And maybe that will change in the future. But from where I'm at right now? It's perfectly fine for me to ship out a book. A week or something like that, even it wouldn't even be a book a bit week at this point. But bottom line is.
[Speaker 1]
I don't plan on having my book my books on Amazon. From at this point in the future, unless something changes which. The way these companies are going with AI. It's like, all bets are off everybody's, you know, if they can adopt it, they've adopted it and? That's fine, but.
[Speaker 1]
It feels like as companies are adopting it. There's. It's like costs have only risen. And then, of course, I'm not even going to talk about jobs, but I'm just. This is for the publishing industry. It's like. The cost of printing a book The? The potential to make profit from?
[Speaker 1]
My work has gone down. By selling through. All in all, almost all of these aggregators are like this. I've seen emails from draft to digital. I've seen emails from, uh. Publish drive from, of course, Amazon. Uh, ingramspark. It's like they're all raising prices, and so it's already. Not cheap to print a professional.
[Speaker 1]
Quality book. And then you at least before you had a chance of making some type of profit with a with a small sale. Now, I know that's not the case, so. Yeah, that's. That's the end of this note. It's basically.
[Speaker 1]
I'm not. Going to be on there anymore and? I'm. More and more on my own website. That's where you're going to find my stuff.
