Distribution

Direct Sales and Removing Drag

/ Distribution, Solar Sail Series, Solar Sail Theory / 5 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

Selling direct isn’t just about keeping a larger share of the sale. From a Solar Sail Theory perspective, direct sales does something even more valuable: it extends your sail and reduces drag at the same time. Every product page, bundle, subscription, and reader resource becomes another opportunity for discovery, while direct relationships with readers create momentum that can continue for years. At the same time, selling direct reduces your dependence on retailer algorithms, visibility changes, and platform policies. Sometimes the best business decisions solve more than one problem at once—and direct sales is one of them.

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The Solar Sail Theory of Indie Publishing

/ Definitions, Distribution, INDIE PUBLISHING, Marketing, Stoicism & Perspective / 14 minutes of reading

Daily sales are sinking. Organic reach has collapsed. AI-generated sludge is flooding storefronts while retailers tighten their grip on discoverability. Indie authors are being told to do more of everything — more books, more ads, more social media, more platforms — while the systems underneath us become increasingly unstable and hostile.

The Solar Sail Theory of Indie Publishing offers a different approach.

Instead of chasing endless “rocket launch” marketing spikes, authors can build long-term momentum by expanding their discoverable surface area across the internet and in real life, then channeling that attention into owned reader relationships through websites, email lists, and direct sales.

A solar sail doesn’t move through explosive force. It moves by capturing thousands of tiny forces over time.

So can an indie author career.

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The Slow Squeeze: Why It Might Be Time to Reconsider Barnes & Noble

/ Distribution, INDIE PUBLISHING / 5 minutes of reading

Barnes & Noble didn’t send a warning shot—they sent a deadline. Raise your paperback prices to $14.99 by May 14th, or your books are gone. For indie authors working in short fiction or maintaining deep backlists, that’s not a tweak. It’s a hard stop. And it’s only the latest move in a pattern that’s quietly reshaping who—and what—belongs on the platform. The question isn’t whether these changes are fair. It’s whether your publishing strategy can survive them.

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Write Stuff Story Bundle Release.

/ Attitude, Creativity, Disaster Planning, Discipline & Motivation, Distribution, Finance, Money Management & Frugality, Futurism, Good Company & Good Examples, Habits, Indie Health, Longevity & Wellness, INDIE PUBLISHING, Inspiration, Marketing, Networking, Planning, PRODUCTIVE INDIE BOOKS, PRODUCTIVITY & ORGANIZATION, Publishing & Production, Stoicism & Perspective, Technology, Tools & AI, The Productive Indie Fiction Writer, Work Processes / 7 minutes of reading

Excerpt: Fourteen exclusive books and one workshop, all packed with up-to-date advice for indie writers navigating 2026—from writing faster and smarter to marketing, Kickstarter, newsletters, and surviving the modern publishing landscape. Available for a limited time, the Write Stuff StoryBundle also supports World Central Kitchen, so you can help your writing career and do some good at the same time.

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Kindle Select Trends

/ Distribution, INDIE PUBLISHING / 1 minute of reading

Kindle Select Trends I don’t usually debate the pros and cons of authors selling their books via Kindle Select (erroneously but commonly referred to as “KU” — as Kindle Unlimited is what the reader side of the program is called). To get into any discussion about KU versus Wide would be, I feel, a waste

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You Can’t Afford to Ignore Crowdfunding

/ Distribution, INDIE PUBLISHING, Publishing & Production / 4 minutes of reading

Last year, Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson ran a Kickstarter project that raised $42 million USD. $42 million is a very nice payday, but it’s an outlier, not a common outcome of publishing Kickstarter projects. However, Brandon Sanderson’s success drew attention to crowd funding in a way that made most of the indie publishing industry sit

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Who Gets to Distribute Your Books?

/ Distribution, INDIE PUBLISHING / 7 minutes of reading

A somewhat new indie author said to me recently, “I know either Draft2Digital or Smashwords can distribute my books.  Is there any other big distributors I should consider instead?” I’ve never tackled on this blog the various distribution options indie authors have.  At first glance it doesn’t have anything to do with productivity.  In fact,

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