Time to Reflect

ByRonel Janse van Vuuren

It’s the first Wednesday of the month and time for another posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

I’m now at #38 on the list. I wonder who left…?

Learn more here.

Last month I wrote about my need to pivot in my writing business. You can read that post here to catch up.

In my rebuilding era

My publishing journey has had its ups and downs.

I’m not going to go into the good stuff right now (I’ve written it down and I’m looking at how to leverage that, how to lean more into that). I’m going to look at the bigger stuff that changed the course of my writing in (possibly) bad ways. I’ll also only focus on this specific brand (Ronel Janse van Vuuren) as I don’t share my pennames for various reasons.

When I started publishing in 2018, I could do live events and sell print books directly to readers. I made good in-person sales and thought to build my business on that. I was still learning different options to do that when Covid hit and I could no longer safely go outside. This cut a big part of my income.

In early 2024, Amazon decided that my Afrikaans books were a bad reader experience… No comment. That came out over a year after they’ve terminated my account. I’m not interested in reconciliation. It wasn’t the biggest part of my income, though losing around 15% of sales did hurt.

Google Play Books aren’t interested in publishing indie books from South Africans. Their graph shows that they’re pro-South Africa – until it comes time to pay us. I’ve been in communication with them, but they won’t accept Payoneer or PayPal or South African bank accounts. Seriously…?

Now the Draft2Digital issue… They’ve cut down on distributors where my books actually sold (see Google Play above) and added channels that don’t do anything for me. The only things I’ll miss are Overdrive and Hoopla (library services) as they were the majority of my sales.

So, the reason I used an aggregator like D2D to publish my books was because so many stores don’t allow South Africans to publish their books directly with them.

I’ve delisted all of my books with D2D. I’ve kept my account as someone might want to use it for the royalty-split aspect… We’ll see if I change my mind about not deleting the account completely.

Now I need to reflect on how I want to distribute my books, how I want to reach my readers, and how to add value to the world.

I’ve started by adding more direct stores. It sounds insane, but here’s why I did it and how it works.

My Payhip Store.

With Payhip, people can pay using the PayPal portal, meaning they can use their own PayPal account or their credit/debit card to buy books. Prices are in USD.

My Buy Me a Coffee Store.

With Buy Me a Coffee, people can pay using credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal to buy books. Prices are in USD, though I’ve activated the regional/localised pricing option for people to pay in their own currency (if available).

My South African Store.

My direct store on Ronel the Mythmaker powered by Woocommerce is specifically for South Africans and they can pay using EFT with Payfast in our local currency, the Rand.

On all three stores, you get the same great quality in the following formats:

  • You get the PDF, ePUB and Mobi files when you buy an eBook.
  • You get the audiobook as one MP3 file.

I’ll be adding POD for print when I’ve decided which service providers I trust after careful vetting.

I have three stores to cater for people to pay in whichever way they are comfortable paying. Digital orders are immediately delivered through the service. I don’t use BookFunnel as so many other indies do (they insist on credit cards, though I’ve explained that I’m South African and that PayPal is the safer and more affordable way for me to make international payments).

My audiobooks are still widely available through Spotify, Google Audio, Kobo Audio and other services. (Links on My Audiobooks page.)

And that’s all I know right now. I need time to reflect and figure out where to go from here. Pivoting is great it theory, but one has to have a proper plan and execute it. Right now, it feels like I’m running around with a box of Band-Aids… Which is why reflection will be good. It might take the rest of the year to figure this out, or I might learn and implement faster. We’ll see.

I am working on strengthening my brand in small ways (the quote in my post having a faery in it, the new banner, my Instagram has a new bio, I’m calling my world “the Faerie Mythos” as you can see on the website banner, the site has a new favicon, I’ve made small tweaks to the podcast cover image which I’ve updated everywhere, and I have a new author photo I’m busy updating everywhere) and I’ll figure out how to do this even better as I figure other things out.

What do you think of buying books directly from the author? Do you have a direct store? How do you handle international clients and their payment needs?

fairy image credit https://pixabay.com/illustrations/ai-generated-fairy-wings-magic-8121013/

No-one writes about the fae like Ronel Janse van Vuuren.

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30 Comments

  1. That sucks that Amazon deleted your account and everyone else doesn’t want to deal with you there in South Africa. I wonder why the big issue with that country? You aren’t the first one to mention it.

    1. Oh, you know, we have a convict as an ex-president, loads of bad press surrounding xenophobia and racism (last year the US thought we had a white genocide instead of just regular crime…), and money regularly just disappears. I totally get it. It’s not fair, but that’s life.

  3. The market is weird right now. If you can figure it out, let me know. (Haha.) I’m cheering you on, though. You will find the right channels, I know it!

  5. I’ve tried a bunch of Amazon’s outlet–other than their main one. I went from about $100,000 a year with them to $0. And I wasn’t the first. They are difficult unless you fit a mold. Right now, it’s meh. I’m trying a broader reach (with an AI-generated newsletter heavily edited by me), but so far that’s done nothing.

    Looking forward to continuing to follow your journey.

  6. Amazon is pretty much evil, and I am frequently tempted to leave (I already don’t shop there, but I sell there, and they produce my paperbacks–their system for that is much better than D2D, which of course is also trying to be evil these days). Most of my income this year will clearly come from direct sales.

  7. That’s awful Amazon booted you out. Like others, my profits have decreased on Amazon, but at least it’s a huge marketplace. I’m not impressed by D2D at all. Recently I discovered my Barnes & Noble link was broken. I contacted them, and they said they’re working on it. I’m probably going to delist as well. I hope your books land in a good place, Ronel.

  8. That’s horrible that they’re preventing you from selling your books on platforms that reach so many people! Oppression is disgusting. Book sellers ought to know better, be better. (Though, really, expecting the Amazon guy to be a decent human is a stretch.)
    Since PayPal is a secondary company, does the parent company, Ebay, have a book store? I mean, I know they have auctions. But do they have like a shop thing? I know I’ve bought books that were impossible to find on ebay, but the seller was a rare bookshop in New York. Just wondering.

  11. Ronel, I am so sorry to hear of these issues for you. And you are so savvy with technology and how to market and sell your books. However, I have great confidence in YOU. You will overcome these short setbacks. You can do this. More power to you, my dear!

  13. That’s just wrong. Part of me wonders if distributors are trying to weed Indies out.
    Good on you for pivoting! Let us know how that works out, okay?

  14. I can’t say I’ve ever given real thought to buying from an author vs. a bookseller. I mean, there was a time (not long ago) when books were printed only on paper or such material, and thus most authors required some distribution and publication network. Printing and binding at a local copy place didn’t produce decent quality.
    But now? The world has shifted! The options are different. And buying direct from authors will probably be the next big phase in publishing. (If an author can go to all the trouble of becoming well-known on social media, what is a publishing house going to offer? The Rise of the Influencer is probably coming to books soon.) You may well be on the cutting edge of marketing right now.

    J (he/him 👨🏽 or 🧑🏽 they/them) @JLenniDorner ~ Speculative Fiction & Reference Author and Co-host of the April Blogging #AtoZChallenge international blog hop

  15. One would think Elon Musk could spare some of his trillion dollars to support his birth nation. Sorry he’s a useless turd. Sucks Amazon is being a douche.

    I just saw a Facebook post about Bookshop dot org fighting to compete against Amazon in book sales. I sent it to my cousin, but honestly, I only glanced at the article. But maybe it’d help you? They’re supposed to be big on helping indie authors. I have zero details beyond that, super sorry. Like, if I didn’t see it yesterday, my stroke-brain might already have forgotten. But wow, I DID read that yesterday, and today this post of yours… *Twilight Zone do-do-do-do music*

    1. Elon Musk did want to give us free internet with Starlink, but the government wanted a third of his business empire for him to do business in our country. Allegedly. Bookshop dot org had partnered with Draft2Digital… I’ll have to see if they’ll take independent partners.

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