Friends, I have an exciting announcement to make: All five of my novels (Magic Most Deadly, Glamours & Gunshots, Death by Disguise, From the Shadows, and Pauline Gray Investigates) are now available to buy directly from StarDance Press! You may purchase the epub OR a signed paperback OR an unsigned paperback right from me, by clicking that new link at the top of my website that says “SHOP.”
This is not a step I had anticipated taking back at the start of this year, to be honest. I didn’t feel like I sold enough books to make it worthwhile to sell directly from my own website (I am not supposed to publicly admit that I don’t sell many of my books, but I’m tired of playing the game and would so much rather be honest than try to pretend to a level of success I haven’t actually achieved). However, Amazon’s model keeps turning ever more predatory, and with the rise of their “AI assist” for searching inside and summarizing books–which authors can’t opt out of–as well as them discontinuing support and download options for older Kindle models, I found myself facing another crossroads, similar to what I faced last year with the news that Meta had trained their AI model off a database of pirated books that included my own works.
I quit Facebook and Instagram then. It was a little harder (ok, a lot) to make the choice to pull my books from Amazon. I may not sell a lot of books, but by far the vast majority of sales that I make are through them. It felt as though pulling them, even if I set up a store to sell from my own website, would be the death knell of my self-publishing career.
These are the times that let you know exactly where your priorities are.
As I said above, I haven’t exactly had a spectacular career with selling my self-published books. Not because they aren’t good books, but because I have always struggled to find and connect with the right audience. Like with FB and Insta, Amazon kept alive the tantalizing hope that one day, somehow, I’d be able to connect all the right pieces and my books would suddenly take off. Sure, it hadn’t happened yet in the thirteen years since I first published the first edition of Magic Most Deadly, but there was always the chance …
At the end of July, I’ll be pulling all my books off Amazon. For now, ebooks will still be available through Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, etc, as well as directly through the new StarDance Press Shop. Paperbacks will still be available everywhere except Amazon as well–Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, or special ordering directly from your local bookstore. However, signed paperbacks are only available from my shop or from buying from me in person! I’m done playing Amazon’s game of hoping that someday the algorithm will work in my favor. If this is it for my career as a self-published author, I’m ok with that–because all new life comes on the heels of the old life dying, and maybe it’s time for my self-publishing career to die so that something new can be born. Maybe from now on the only place I’ll sell these books will be in-person events–which could also be fun. I like people, I like connecting with them, I like talking face-to-face with them about stories, I like putting my physical books into their actual hands. I’ll be doing three in-person events this summer and one this fall, and I can’t wait for them.
And who knows? Maybe the shop will take off. Eventually I’d love to include bookmarks and stickers, perhaps more! (like the bookmarks I created from these fabulous designs of Maia and Len by scarvenartist, which I *do* include with every Whitney & Davies in-person book purchase).
I am excited to see what’s going to happen next, whatever that might look like. And I am excited to have more control over what I am able to sell to people. Let me know in the comments what other things you might be interested in purchasing if I made them available, or what you’re most excited about with this new shop. I am so thankful for all of you who have been following me or walking alongside me all through this topsy-turvy adventure of bringing my stories to the larger world!
**Note: I have not included the Pauline Gray novellas, Magic & Mayhem, or While Shepherds Watch in the shop yet. They will be pulled off Amazon with the novels at the end of July, but I haven’t yet decided if I’ll offer them in my shop or leave them only available through other retailers. I will let you all know once I’ve figured it out!**
