Episode 202: 7 Lessons From Defunct Ebook Stores

In this week's episode, we take a look at seven ebook stores that failed, and what lessons indie authors can learn from them.

This coupon code will get you 25% off the audiobook of DRAGONSKULL: TALONS OF THE SORCERER (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store:

SPRINGTALONS

The coupon code is valid through June 4th, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 202 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 24th, 2024, and today we're looking at lessons from seven defunct ebook stores. We also have updates on my current writing projects and Question of the Week.

Before we get into that, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the audiobook of Dragon Skull: Talons of the Sorcerer (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SPRINGTALONS, spelled SPRINGTALONS and of course, as always, we'll have that and the links in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June the 4th, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing and audiobook projects.

As I mentioned last week Cloak of Titans is out and selling very briskly on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. The response has been very strong and so thank you all for that, and I'm glad so many of you are reading and enjoying the book. Now that Cloak of Titans is out, my next project is Shield of Darkness and I am pleased to report I am 18,000 words into it as of this recording. If all goes well, I'm hoping to have that out before the end of June, though that might slip to July depending on how much I need to do in real life in June.

After Shield of Darkness is out, my next project will be Half-Orc Paladin, the third Rivah book. I’m about 17,000 words into that, and I'm hoping that will come out in sometime in July, if all goes well. After that, I will be writing the third Shield War book and then Ghost in the Tombs. I will start on Cloak of Illusion, the sequel to Cloak of Titans, after Half-Orc Paladin is done and out.

In audiobook news, we are almost done with Tales of the Shield Knight, the Sevenfold Sword/Dragontiarna short story collection that will be narrated by Brad Wills. The collection will be available for sale on all the usual audiobook stores. I will be giving away individual audiobook short stories from time to time to my newsletter subscribers. So that is something to look forward to and if all goes well, we are planning to record Wizard Thief and Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling in audiobook in June. That's still somewhat tentative, but it should be happening.

00:02:24 Question of the Week

Let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics, and this week's question: should a book in a long running series start with a little summary of what's happened in previous books? Like, you know how a streaming TV series will often have a previously on section of the start of the show? It's usually a little thirty second montage of key scenes and whatnot from the previous episodes. I got to wondering about this because I was talking with someone who was reading Cloak of Titans, which is the 11th book in the Cloak Mage series and overall the 23rd Nadia book and the reader in question couldn’t remember when the character of Doctor Spencer had first appeared in the series and wished the book had included a little previously on summary in the style of a streaming show. So I put this up for Question of the Week and we had a wide range of opinions on this topic this week.

Our first response is from Mike, who says: as for my opinion, if it's the show that is in episodes of at least weekly schedule, I usually either just fast forward through that previously on segment or if it's supported by the service I'm watching the show on, I use the skip it feature. I can almost see the use of it if there are very long (as in a year or two) episodes between the previously on feature.

Justin says: info dumps may be necessary sometimes (for example, Star Wars), but should be avoided otherwise. Show, don't tell. I personally find prologues describing past events and characters off-putting. A compromise would be a glossary in the back a la Tolkien. That way the people who want more information or need reminders can indulge themselves without forcing people like me to go along.

I have to agree here with Justin about prologues. I don't really like them and stopped doing them, except in very rare cases. My least favorite kind of prologue is one that starts a very long book and references a character who doesn't show up again for like 250 pages.

Our next response is from Mike, who says: I think if the summary is brief and concise, it is absolutely worth it. I remember with the Lord of the Rings Tolkien did it, but they were not brief or concise, but I'm glad he did it. It also depends on how far apart each book in the series is as to how much information is needed.

Kirsty says: I think it depends on how quickly each new book is published. With your books, I don't need a reminder as you write them fairly quickly and not enough time passes for me to need one. However, some authors take longer. This is fine. I have no problem waiting, but when there's several years between books, for me a short reminder at the beginning would be useful.

Gary says: personally, I skip over rehash sections in series books.

Keith says: a previously on section at the beginning of the book, would be much preferred over the myriad flashbacks throughout the book explaining things that readers of the series should already know. Don't get me wrong, I'm hooked on almost all your book series, but I find myself skipping over repeated discussions and descriptions about events of previous books just to get to the good stuff.

That is an interesting dilemma for a writer. It's kind of like a chess fork. A chess fork is a movement situation in chess where you find yourself in a situation where no matter what happens, you're going to lose a piece next turn. You just have to choose which one you're going to lose. And there's something similar with writers for that in how much you reference background events. If you reference background events, people don't like that will get annoyed, but if you don't reference the background events, the people who want to read up on them and be reminded of what happened will get annoyed. So basically, as with so many things in writing, you just get to do what you want and accept that some people will be annoyed.

Our next response is from Jesse, who says: I've seen this somewhat frequently in a lot of the fantasy novels I've read. It does really help when said author releases 1-3 books a year in a given series. To your credit, I typically haven't had time to lose all details by the time your next book hits for any given series (minus the Silent Order gap), so well done.

Our next response is from MacKenzie, who says: oh boy, having just finished Wheel of Time (ran through the whole thing back-to-back and I have thoughts), to me as a reader, if you need to remind me about characters, then something is wrong. Either the character is insufficiently memorable, there are too many characters to efficiently track, or they are appearing too infrequently. In reading through Jordan’s behemoth, I can pick out instances that fall into all of the above columns. If it wasn’t the fact that I'm a completionist, I would probably have abandoned the project in the final quarter. There is a sweet spot in balancing plot complexity and cast size is undeniably challenging for an author, but that's what separates the ones that keep buying from the ones I let go.

Our next response is from Kevin, who says: I would find a brief summary useful, especially when there has been a long period between books. However, this would only really come into play for those of us reading a long series as it is being written. Alternatively, a dramatis personae might be of use to refresh one's mind.

Matthew says: with the speed you bring out books (kudos, by the way), people will flow from one to another. If there's gap or natural stopping point in the narrative, I would do no more than two page summary.

Michael says: just enough to set the stage with the basis for this story. Hints to previous adventure can be included at appropriate points where they support the actions in the story (and maybe invite readers to check out those books).

Cheryl says: yes, books should have a brief summary of the previous book, especially if it’s been a year or so since the last book.

Juana says: I like a roundup of events.

Susan says: I would love a brief summary of the previous book. I read so much that I need refreshing if it's been a while. If I'm reading the whole series at one time, the summary could be skipped.

A different Michael says: I don't think so. I would hope people really a long running series would be familiar with the ongoing storyline.

So usually when I talk about Question of the Week, I always say there is no right answer, and that appears to definitely be the case here, where there is a wide range of opinions on this. For myself, I suppose it depends on how well written and concise the “previously” summary at the start of the book would be, and if the author can find a way to frame it in a humorous or entertaining manner, that is probably the way to go about it.

00:08:08 Main Topic: Seven Lessons from Defunct/Diminished Ebook Stores

Now on to our main topic this week, seven lessons from defunct or heavily diminished ebook store’s platforms and what to learn from them. The point of this came about when I was thinking about how I've been self-publishing for 13 years now and how I have in fact outlasted some of the stores where I used to sell my ebooks, which is kind of a milestone for longevity, I suppose. Now the point of this episode isn't too gloat about how I outlasted various ebook stores that went out of business. I don't want to do that, but it is to show the lessons that can be learned for indie authors and perhaps businesses in general, from ebook stores that have gone out of business for whatever reason.

It may surprise some people learn this, but Amazon was not the first to market for ebooks. They had both predecessors and competitors that no longer exist or exist as a shadow of their former selves. In these failures, there are some valuable lessons about selling ebooks. You can see this in other areas of technology as well, where Apple did not invent the MP3 player category with the iPod or they did not invent the smartphone category with the iPhone. There were numerous devices in both spaces beforehand. It's just the iPod and the iPhone were such a compellingly packaged products that they came to eventually dominate their niches for a time. So the best lesson learned from all this is that direct sales and DRM-free ebooks provide both you and the reader a measure of stability that even many large companies cannot.

The first defunct ebook we'll talk about is Sony's ebook store. People may not remember this now, but Sony did have an ebook store and they had an ebook reader device that came out several years before the Kindle. I did know some people who absolutely swore by their Sony ebook reader. Their ereader device was innovative and made people interested in ebooks. Amazon later rolled out the Kindle, which was a much more user-friendly device. Buying ebooks through Sony was a clunky process compared to the one click shopping on the Kindle Store. The Sony store closed in 2014 and its purchased content for users transitioned over to Kobo.

What lessons can we learn from this? First is to make it as easy as humanly possible for consumers to buy and receive their ebooks and that being first to market is not a guarantee of success, and you need to match the innovations of your competitors.

The next defunct ebook store is Diesel, which was an independent bookstore that launched in 2004 and closed in 2014, and their stated reason for closing was not being able to keep up with larger competitors such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, and others entering the market. And again, we can see kind of the same lessons from Sony there, where being first to market doesn't mean you're going stay king of the market and that it is also important to change your business as business conditions dictate.

Our third default ebook store we're going to talk about is Oyster, which some of you may remember. It was shut down in 2016 shortly after being acquired by Google, which has a regrettable tendency to run some of these acquisitions into the ground. Oyster’s business model was to be a Netflix for ebooks. They were praised for this business model and they had a very nice and easy to use website.

The lessons to learn were: one, you need to have a great interface to have a great customer experience, and two, it showed the demand for temporary access to ebooks, foreshadowing the future success of the library app Libby. Subscription services are still in the ebook space today, with the two biggest ones being Amazon's Kindle Unlimited and Kobo’s Kobo Plus, which is interesting because I wonder how they'll continue because we'd see how subscriptions are suffering quite badly in the media streaming space for TV and movies, where these services keep getting more and more expensive and generally worse to use with more limited content and a lot more ads. So it'll be interesting to see if ebook streaming services can continue because unlike movies or TV shows, ebooks are much cheaper to produce and stream.

Our fourth one is the physical bookstores Borders. Not maybe people know this nowadays, but borders did have its own ebook store for a while, which opened in 2010, but then they switched it over to Kobo branding in 2011. Unfortunately, Borders later went out of business, though Kobo survived that. Granted, Kobo took a few knocks for that, especially in the US, because when Borders went out of business, a lot of people in the US thought Kobo went out of business too, which was not the case. Kobo is still alive and well today and does seem to be very dominant in Canada compared to Kindle.

The main lesson learned here is that working with a partner provides some flexibility and saves on costs of maintaining your own platform. And since the platform was already run on Kobo on the back end, the switch was not particularly rough on customers. The lesson for Kobo was that they didn't want to be too dependent on a partner, which is why Kobo in general has tended to work with a lot of different companies over the years.

The next ebook store that closed that we should mention is Microsoft. Microsoft did have an ebook store for a while. You could buy epubs through the Microsoft Store and read them in your Microsoft Edge browser. However, it closed in 2019. When the platform closed, purchased books were no longer available. This was darkly satisfying to many people because they could remember Microsoft's attempt to run a music store in the ‘90s and the early 2000s with their Plays for Sure DRM. Eventually Microsoft abandoned its music service and the customers lost access to all their purchased music tracks, which was a considerable scandal at the time, and some people are still quite bitter about this for obvious reasons.

The lesson to learn is that ebooks and other digital content aren’t truly owned if you can download, save, and store copies of the files. I sell DRM-free copies on my Payhip store to give readers the ability to do just that. Perhaps another lesson is that it's good not to 100% trust Microsoft, as many unfortunate laid off game developers have learned in the past couple of weeks.

The final ebook store is an interesting case because it's part of Amazon. It was the Kindle store in China. For a while, Amazon did have a Kindle store that it tried to run in China, which closed in 2023. It failed for many reasons. One of the main ones was by the time Kindle devices came to China in 2013, there was already too much competition in market, and Amazon couldn't get a foothold. Local culture in China seems to frown upon paying for ebooks and paying for ebooks is not a norm there because piracy is the standard. Another thing was that it is very difficult for a variety of reasons for foreign authors to sell in China, since they have to meet the approval of local government censors and not many books written by foreign authors would pass these standards of the Chinese government.

So the lesson learned here is that success doesn't transfer across borders, especially if you're not looking carefully at local market trends and especially given that relations between the US and the Chinese Government are not necessarily at a high point at the moment, and the two countries seem to be moving more and more economically away from each other, so that is also something to bear in mind if you want to sell ebooks in China.

So those were seven ebook stores that have failed in the 13 years that I've been doing self-publishing. And so hopefully there are lessons that self-publishers can learn from each of those situations.

So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.