MSI Press Blog

  There’s a strange disconnect in publishing right now. Industry headlines keep celebrating “growth” — more bookstores opening, online sales climbing, the market expanding. And all of that is technically true. But here’s the part no one says out loud: Those gains are not evenly distributed. They’re driven by big-name authors, celebrity memoirs, BookTok darlings, and the handful of titles that already had momentum. For the  new  author — the debut novelist, the hybrid author with a modest platform, the memoirist writing from lived experience — those rosy numbers don’t translate into visibility. In fact, they often mask the opposite reality. Because while bookstore sales are up,  the number of books published each year has exploded . More titles, more noise, more competition for the same shelf space and the same algorithmic scraps. Which brings us to the real conversation: Direct sales aren’t a trend. They’re a survival strategy. Why Every Author Should Be Building Dir...

  Every few months, an author will tell me—often with great confidence—that “marketers say a free Kindle promotion sells more books than a Kindle Countdown Deal.” It’s a claim that sounds bold, counterintuitive, and exciting. It’s also a claim that refuses to die, even though Amazon’s ecosystem has changed dramatically. So, let’s talk about it plainly. The short answer: Free promotions generate more downloads . Countdown Deals generate more sales . Downloads and sales are not the same thing, and Amazon does not treat them as the same thing. Where the myth came from: There was a moment in Amazon’s early KDP Select era (2011–2014) when free days could catapult a book into the Top 100 Free list, and that visibility sometimes spilled over into paid sales afterward. Marketers who built their playbooks during that period still speak as if nothing has changed. But the platform has changed. The algorithms have changed. Reader behavior has changed. And the relationship between fre...

  There’s a strange disconnect in publishing right now. Industry headlines keep celebrating “growth” — more bookstores opening, online sales climbing, the market expanding. And all of that is technically true. But here’s the part no one says out loud: Those gains are not evenly distributed. They’re driven by big-name authors, celebrity memoirs, BookTok darlings, and the handful of titles that already had momentum. For the new author — the debut novelist, the hybrid author with a modest platform, the memoirist writing from lived experience — those rosy numbers don’t translate into visibility. In fact, they often mask the opposite reality. Because while bookstore sales are up, the number of books published each year has exploded . More titles, more noise, more competition for the same shelf space and the same algorithmic scraps. Which brings us to the real conversation: Direct sales aren’t a trend. They’re a survival strategy. Why Every Author Should Be Building Direct Sal...