1. Market Size. With an enormous 80% market share, Amazon dominates the book market. While there are a lot of different places that you can go to sell your books, it makes sense that you should, at the very least, offer your books for sale through the world’s largest bookstore. Indeed, for new authors, Amazon is a great place to start. That said, you should not ignore other outlets as, apart from anything else, it is never a good idea to put all of your eggs into one basket.
2. High Royalties. Traditional publishers offer royalties of 15%-20%, while Amazon pays 35%-75% on net revenues. Since your aim is to sell your books and make as much money as you can, it does not make a lot of sense to start your publishing career by limiting your earning potential.
3. Unlimited Shelf-life. Traditional bookstores will typically display your book for 30-60 days, unless it is flying off the shelf. By contrast, Amazon will stock your book for as long as you like. Bookstores have limited shelf space and, since these are real rather than virtual shelves, it costs money to put your book on display. Of course there is also a real-estate cost when it comes to displaying your book online, but the cost here is quite honestly insignificant in relation to the cashflow of Amazon’s business overall.
4. Simplicity. Publishing on Amazon is a simple process and, most importantly, you never have to worry about carrying inventory. Whether you are publishing an eBook or a print-on-demand book, Amazon provides you with a range of templates and tools which make the process easy. Of course they cannot do everything for you and you may well need some help with such things as formatting your book interior and designing your book cover, but these services are available online today an very affordable prices.
5. Free Promotion. Amazon offers a number of tools to help you to promote your books on their platform is you wish to do so, free of charge! In addition, Amazon Marketing Services allows you to advertise your books on Amazon at a very reasonable cost.
6. You Are Your Own Boss. Traditional publishing means meeting criteria laid down by others to decide whether or not your book should be published. With Amazon you can cut out these annoying middlemen. Anyone who has ever used the services of a publishing house will know only too well just how bureaucratic such organizations can be. Indeed, getting your book published often means having to jump through a bunch of hoops to meet the publishing house’s requirements. Of course Amazon does have a set of content guidelines which define what they will and will not allow you to publish, but these are reasonable, clearly laid out and easy to understand.
7. Growth Potential. The Kindle range of eBook readers are among the most widely purchased today, but they are not the only eBook readers available. In the past this has been a problem for some users, and people who did not own a Kindle device found themselves in difficulty. Advances in technology however mean that more and more platforms are coming online that are capable of viewing Kindle books, offering an exponential growth in your potential market.