So, I’m doing a last minute thing because I’m scratching my head. It’s involves the pricing for my paperback books on Amazon.
I was hoping to keep them around $10-$12, but some are proving to be bigger than I expected even with formatting. I should have seen that coming. I was going to head for $15, which worked at first. Then, I ran into a problem.
Amazon has this 40% thing where you can have your books at non-Amazon stores. I clicked on that for the books I’ve formatted so far, but I realized it forces the price to jump up to about $17-$18. That’s with me only getting a couple cents in royalties from that 40% option. People may know where my question is going.
Should I bother doing this extra option? It’s forcing me to jack up the price and I don’t think anyone is going to be ordering my stuff on anything other than Amazon. So, what’s the point?
Legends of Windemere 
So what’s the point indeed
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Yeah. I took it off on Prodigy and got to keep it at $15. Probably do the same to the others tomorrow. $15 still seems pricey, but it’s better than charging $17 and only getting 0.03 cents in royalties.
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$15 to $17 is a reasonable price for trade paper these days.
For myself, I don’t want Amazon selling through anything but Amazon. Their platform is so dominant, they don’t need their fingers in the rest of my sales.
I have representation in other formats (Kobo/Nook and etc) through Books2Read and that brings me a few sales each year.
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Good points. Unfortunately, I hit a major snag. Starting at Book 4 of ‘Legends of Windemere’, Amazon starts hating my covers. It’s when they got changed from having the black border to being a full picture with the title and my name on top. Looked really good. Amazon’s system seems to think the text is obscured (Timoran’s head covers a bit of the ‘DS’ of Legends) and that the words are illegible (a little white on white, but not noticeable on a book cover). Been fighting all afternoon to see if I can change it up. Rather nervous because I emailed Amazon about the issue and resubmitted Book 4. I also submitted Book 5 prior to that. Now, the review is taking a really long time while it was within an hour yesterday and this morning.
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My first one had color photos in it, which made it awesome looking, but for such a small book, it put the price at about $18. Which is a lot.
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Ouch. How well did it sell?
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Not great.
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I’d leave it with Amazon, I think. You don’t want your sales hit. It’s another ploy by Amazon, methinks, to become a monopoly. Never a good thing, but we have little choice but to use them if we want to sell any books.
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Probably. Though aren’t they basically a monopoly already?
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This is the main reason I’ve never offered anything but ebooks. I’d love to have audio or even graphic novels, but they cost too damned much to get into. I haven’t bought a paperback in over a decade and assume there are a lot of folks just like me. Let’s say they do okay and I sell a dozen. The +/- $20 in royalties still doesn’t make it worth the effort.
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Wish I could do graphic novels of my series. Don’t even want to know the cost. Main reason I’m doing this is because the ebooks don’t sell and a few people have asked for paperback.
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