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2020 has been a weird-arse year on the publishing front, and the weirdest part has been the launch of the @BrainJarPress store in August so I could do direct sales of print and ebooks. /1
Direct sales has been a massive game changer on the publishing front, and it only really happened because a) I was starting to publish a bunch of other people and wanted to do right by them, and... /2
... b)one of my newsletter subscribers asked why I didn't have a Patreon to support (thanks, @kate_eltham), then folks chucked a bunch of cash into a paypal tipjar when I explained my logic behind avoiding the Patreon platform. /3
Setting up a direct sales channel had been one of those things I was putting off, because it had upfront costs and high risk of failure. Those donations made it financially feasible to take the risk in the midst of a pandemic, when our household had lost all forms of income. /4
And, my god, that risk paid off. The direct sales of our first book with @AngelaSlatter were eye-opening. The direct sales of @tanaudel's poetry collection were, frankly, a sign that I needed to go and rethink how I was handling money with @BrainJarPress. /5
Both those books sold really well in other venues too, but when you're keeping the distributor's cut of an ebook or print book, the small number of people who buy direct earn you way more than the folks who buy on the 'Zon or Kobo or their local bookstore. /6
I wrapped my head around that fast, courtesy of some hasty research and two books that shifted my mindset and got me thinking about what happened next. What took longer to sink in was how much more I enjoyed direct sales *philosophically* as a publisher. /7
Back when I first self-published, during the RPG ebook boom, the primary sales site for RPG PDFs was extraordinarily generous when it came to giving publishers access to their customers. /8
It was relatively easy to start a series and send up launch announcements that went out to everyone who had bought book 1, or set up coupon codes that were tailored to customers who had purchased other products in your line /9
Most ebook sales sites aren't willing to do that these days. Amazon guards its data jealously and gives you very little in terms of promotional options that aren't paid or connected to exclusivity. Kobo is more generous with options, but funnels folks into store-wide promos /10
This is not a knock on either store—they make up a huge part of Brian Jar's monthly sales—but they're places where I'm a small fish in a very large pond, and toolkits for publishers reflect that. I am promoting to *their* customers. /11
And getting access to that customer base means making concessions: you can't promote as directly as you'd like, or reward *your* customers with discounts; you accept that they're selling books with an eye towards getting people onto *their* reading platforms. /12
And philosophically, as a writer, publisher, and general person engaging in the world, those concessions have always been fraught for me. I *want* to celebrate readers of Brain Jar books and celebrate them, and find ways to thank them for ongoing support. /13
But I'm also frustrated by the walled-garden approach to tech and digital products, and the idea that you're locked into a particular tool. That your books bout for kindle will never follow you to another ereader if you switch. /14
The thing that makes me happiest about selling ebooks direct at http://BrainJarPress.com is not the extra profit margin (although that's damn nice), but the idea that readers have more control over the ebook they just bought. /15
Basically, direct sales added back my favourite aspects of being a publisher, suited my own ideology about technology, and made it feasible to amp up our release schedule in 2021. /16
That, in turn, gave me numbers I could take to the unemployment office and get transferred into their small business development program. I finish my training course in January, then get about eight or nine months of income support while working on Brain Jar full time. /17
Which seems insane to me, every time I look at the numbers and benchmarks for 2021, because the numbers are so out of whack for what I've come to expect from the first few years of publishing fiction. /18
If you asked me how I expected to finish 2021, even without the global pandemic, this is *so far away* from anything I could have imagined, and yet *so much better*. /19
And it doesn't even touch on some of the fringe benefits, like "direct sales means we don't have to bend our processes quite so obviously towards commercial titles with mass-appeal." /20
All of which is a really long way of saying, maybe consider buying direct from your favorite writers and small presses if they give you the option. While it's got obvious benefits to them financially, there's also perks to you as a reader that aren't immediately obvious. /21
And, you know, obviously go shop at @BrainJarPress and keep an eye on what we've got coming in 2021. Find our details here: http://www.brainjarpress.com /22
