I believe that the majority of us in the book industry spent the last week being sad over the fact that POD books, writers and publishers were being excluded from amazon. Okay not excluded entirely , but were being forced to obey the new Make Money Online rules, to which you would either follow or otherwise suffer the consequences. Truthfully , this was forseen to take place for some time now. Looking at the situation as it is, and speaking with both individuals at work and in the industry, there’s something i quickly came to realize and this is probably the best thing to have happened in book advertising for a long while. Why is this so? being authors Tadalis SX we falsely assume that amazon has our best interest at heart- they’re selling our books and as a result have become too complacent in our own promotion efforts.

The truth is this, if you add up the numbers, most are really just selling only a few of books at amazon but many of us still buy into the dream that it’s a pot of gold for sales. This move by them goes to show that they’re not needed after all particularly if we use our intelligence and explore our other resources elsewhere. The truth to Amazon.com boils down to this, we found it convenient for them to give our books exposure and they did take care of sales, all this is true but there are other websites just waiting to fill their shoes for instance books-a-million and barnesandnoble two that i can think of, i’m pretty sure you’ll locate many more. By just concentrating your online advertising efforts to just Making Money with your own website, in a sense you may have seriously limited your own book’s exposure by not thinking outside the box, so to speak. Amazon’s decision has now forced the intelligent, creative, savvy author to explore other options , coming to the conclusion that there are other methods we can use to sell our books instead of amazon. So, how do you compete with this retailer’s overwhelming dominance? here are some techniques to get you going, but be warned though , i’m not going to tell you anything that’s new , but all the same, it’s useful to hear it again:

· Have a great web site that’s easy to navigate , Through what i call ‘the short sale process’, meaning making your customers go through less steps to access your product. If getting people to buy from your website is hard , try to offer special offers, signed copies or bundles to attract readers to purchase from your site and not go searching for similar books to yours elsewhere.

· Plug your message on social networks such as squidoo, nothingbinding, facebook, authornation, authorsden, and to the diminished, but still popular myspace. You can find many such places out there and tons more popping up all the time, sse as many them as possible to further increase the potential exposure for your book , not just stick with one.

· Get familiar with as many e- retailers and other strategies to sell books, be sure that your book gets good reviews on websites such as barnesandnoble and other similar e-commerce sites.

This is what i’ve said on several occassions instead of staring at the closed door, locate an open window and get the process going. Amazon may have shut the door however only via this limited access, can we finally acknowledge that there are plenty of other possibilities out there. This is the situation all e-retailers follow this model too, let’s face it everybody wants a larger share from the sale of books, profits from each one is minimal at best for these guys, the more that is made from creating these books themselves the better. So in effect amazon has forced us to become less dependent and more self-independent.

To conclude, the author, which relies on themselves for the grater share of their success, should win in the long run. Being dependent on someone else is never a good way to go, because when it’s not there anymore, the marketer is back to square 1 and you’re forced to start from the beginning. It’s difficult enough to promote your book around the globe , it’s tougher continuing to do new marketing campaigns, do not allow any online adversary to dictate your future success, learn from what has happened in the case of amazon and take control of your life today.