by Jay Hartman
Q: I’ve got my titles enrolled in Kindle Select, but I don’t seem to get much in the way of interest from other countries. How do I grow my international reader market? -M.R., Houston, Texas
A: To be honest, you have a few things working against you here, but all are a result of one key factor: you put all your eggs in one basket and went with Amazon as your sole retailer.
The first issue is looking at the ebook market globally, Kindle is not the primary ebook format. You might be surprised to know PDF continues as one of the most popular formats due to its flexibility to be read on virtually any computer or mobile device. Very few retailers remain, however, that support PDF. EPUB comes next, as the majority of ebook reading devices on the market today support EPUB, as do other electronic devices. Outside the United States, Kindle typically ranks a distant third to PDF and EPUB.
The second issue is outside of North America, and especially the United States, Amazon isn’t the dominant player in the ebook market. Most countries, particularly when you get into titles in foreign languages, have a key reseller readers flock to. In Canada, it’s Kobo. Google Books is particularly strong in India and the UK. Apple does quite well in most of Europe. What do all three of those have in common? All do EPUB format.
The last issue is the biggest one, in that you’ve taken the option of choice away from your reader. You’re telling them they can buy your title from only one retailer out of the hundreds in the world, and they can buy it only in the format you say they can get it. If someone is all in on EPUB for their Kobo Reader, why should they install a special app to read your title? It’s inconvenient and goes against the way they read and purchase ebooks.
Ebooks were created with the concept you could take tons of them with you anywhere you went and read them however you’d like. In the early days, when retailers such as Fictionwise were big, publishers made their titles available in all available formats to capture as many readers as possible. Somewhere along the way, the belief came about that Amazon is the end-all/be-all and it simply isn’t the case when you look at the global market.
What can you do to capture more international readers?
It’s a really easy solution. Take your titles out of Kindle Select, create EPUB and PDF versions, and sell them anywhere and everywhere. For example, our author, Joan Wolf, previously had her entire backlist only at Amazon. When we acquired her catalog, we took her global in multiple. Her sales now far exceed anything she made through Kindle Select. We’re talking double-digit multiples.
So, meet your readers on their home turf. Let them read your titles however they want, from wherever they’d like. Remember…think globally!
Looking to get The Publisher Perspective? Send your questions to jhartman@untreedreads.com with TPP in your subject line. If your question is used, we’ll send you a free ebook from Untreed Reads.
Jay A. Hartman, editor-in-chief at Untreed Reads Publishing, founded Untreed Reads to promote ebooks with an emphasis on independent authors and publishers. He’s written about the ebook industry for fifteen years and previously served as content editor for KnowBetter.com, one of the internet’s oldest sites reporting on ebooks and epublishing.
