Amber’s Comments (group member since Apr 12, 2014)

Amber’s comments from the Taming Amazon group.

One of my books is being discounted against my will. I'm trying to find a way to make them stop doing it. Amazon’s rules allow them to lower the e-book royalty when they are price-matching another store (which is not the case) or matching their own price for the physical copy--which IS what they are doing. Paperback AND e-book at $4.23

I normally would get $3.42 for the $4.99 e-book, but they’re paying $2.90. At this unexciting 76-cent discount, the e-book is selling at the same rate it would at its normal price, which means I’m earning less for the same number of sales, i.e. $52.00 less per hundred sales.

Perhaps they think this is a good strategy for them, because I sell a fair number of e-books on their site, but not many paperbacks. It’s not a good strategy for me. If I want to sell the e-book at a lower price, I’ll drop it to 99 cents for a week and promote it all over the place. $4.23 is not an incentivizing sort of price for an e-book.

But it’s a huge bargain for a paperback.

What would happen if hundreds of people ordered the $4.23 paperback? So far, Amazon is paying the full royalty on the paperback, $3.77 for the $4.23 book. The printing cost is $5.22. By their own choice, Amazon loses $4.76 for each paperback sale. If 100 people buy it at $4.23, Amazon will lose $476.00. Will they notice? If a thousand people buy it, they’ll lose a lot more. Will they put the price back to $14.99? If they do, their rules will require them to pay me the full royalty on the e-book.

I have no idea if promoting the $4.23 paperback to make Amazon lose money on it will work. I've promoted it on social media and to my mailing list. Is there a better way to get them to stop doing this discount? I'm getting underpaid on every Kindle sale.

Brian wrote: "I just started with D2D. So far, I'm pretty impressed. Also, rumor is, they might be adding IngramSpark to their distributors.

And, if anyone could help, I'm trying to get my first perma-free boo..."

I put prices on all my permafree books and saw my sales overall go up. Not just of the ones that used to be free, but everything. I don't think free works anymore. Being a free "best-seller" looked good and got my freebies some reviews, but it did not earn any sales in the past year related to the free books, as indicated by the "also-boughts." I think the practice of having free books used to work, two years ago, but no longer does.

Does D2D work the same as Smashwords? Yes and no. They both distribute to all the major non-Amazon retailers, but have different constellations of minor ones. They both have good reputations. Smashwords has a store and you can create coupons for it. D2D doesn't. D2D has an easier formatting process without as complex a style guide. D2D works with a service called Books2Read which a manages a new release mailing list and creates universal book links for all retail outlets in a single link. I haven't used Smashwords, since I'm really happy with Draft2Digital. I love their customer service--can't say enough good things about the people that work there. Both take a small cut of your royalty for the services provided.

There's no need for indie authors to buy ISBNs unless you do something like creating your own imprint. I think (not sure) you may need them then. Otherwise, all the various outlets assign an ISBN. One for Kobo, one for Apple, one for B&N, one for your paperback, etc. and it's free.

If I ask Amazon to match the price "in all markets," they generally do. Kobo is based in Canada and sells internationally. Sometimes after I ask for a price match, I'll find that it hasn't been done anywhere but the US even though I provided B&N, Kobo and Apple links, but if I remember to use the "in all markets" terminology, I get better results.

They randomly change things, though, and put prices on perma-free books in Canada or Australia, and I only know because an Aussie friend tells me. I forget to check.

And I've actually had trouble taking a book OFF permafree after three years, too. It's still free in the UK, though they've made it 99 cents everywhere else, and it's 99 cents on the non-Amazon sites. (I've found that free books seem to have stopped working as a marketing tool for me, and that bargain books work better. )

B&N has partnered with Samsung and Nook is now a Samsung product, but the Nook e-books still exist. In the U.S. the new Nooks by Samsung are in the B&N stores, and my Nook purchases as a customer and Nook sales as an author are unaffected. Maybe in the UK the changes are greater?

I suspect Amazon changes the rules as they go.

Thanks for this list, Jim. And others who added to it.

I didn't have any hassles with this process. I set a price as free on Draft2Digital (haven't used Smashwords) and it was up on B&N and Apple and Kobo fast. One day. Then I told Amazon that people were asking why it wasn't free there, sent them the links to the other stores, and they price-matched it in 24 hours.

Did your spacing come through in your formatting? I've found that if you make the white space between scenes too small it vanishes in e-pub but not the PDF file I use for paperbacks. I don't know if that could cut your pages down that much, though.

Tell Amazon that it's free as a promotion for your paid-for books and that if they want the sales of those not-free books to go to them and not their competitors, perhaps they would like to match the price. They sometimes take their proclaimed three to five business days. Try the above suggestion if they take longer. (I got mine price-matched as free in 24 hours with that little nudge.)

A British friend tells me that Amazon UK has updated and corrected my price.

HELP! I need my UK price lowered to match my US price during a promotion. A complaint from someone else may work better than a request from me. They were slow and came across as intentionally uncooperative about dropping a sale price to $1.99 U.S. They took forty eight hours to do it and even longer to acknowledge they'd done it and kept saying "we retain discretion over our pricing." The sale started today, runs through the 30th. I thought international prices were adjusted automatically.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IA8TB3G

Interesting. But then, I haven't yet tried to get my paperbacks into bookstores. Planning on that next summer, with a store (in my alternate place of residence) that takes local authors books on consignment. They only do it by appointment, in person, so I won't know until June whether this will matter to them.

Joey wrote: "Frankly, my greatest worries about branching out is the ISBN expense (none so far on Amazon) and the reformatting hassles.."

No worries, Joey. There need be no expense, and no hassle. Kobo assigns its own ISBNs the same way Create Space does for paperbacks. In fact, every e-book retailer will assign your book a number and you won't have to buy any unless you have your own imprint. (Don't ask me to explain that--an indie author who has his own imprint told me he had to buy new ISBNs when he corrected some minor matters in his book, and he said his imprint was why he had to buy them, so I'm just passing that on.)

I have found zero formatting hassles using Draft2Digital and been told by a reader who actually pays attention to what he calls "cracking open an e-book to look at the formatting" that mine is unusually clean compared to most. I give D2D the credit since I don't do it myself. I use them even for my mobi formatting which I then upload to Kindle.

I've noticed that my file sizes are smaller than those of other authors whose books I've received as review copies, and I think it has to do with the way D2D effectively compresses the cover art to still look good but not take up as much file space on people's e-readers.

For those who publish beyond Amazon, make sure you update those other editions with the Goodreads librarians. Give them the ID # or ISBN for the other retailers.

I've never been in KDP Select because, as I said before, I'm a Nook owner and like to treat readers the way I want to be treated. So far I have no regrets on that decision. I've continued to have several months lately where my non-Amazon sales were as good or better than Amazon sales.

I finally went with Scribd. I get the same royalty for a Scribd read as I do for a Kobo or B&N sale. I haven't had many Scribd reads, but I don't lose money on them.

I think Amazon would be somewhat less of a monopoly if indie authors would branch out to other retailers.

Great article. Using authors as loss leaders ... 75% drop in income... Thanks for sharing it.

Here's a great article by an author who has been in KDP Select and also outside it. It's always bothered me when authors go for it because I don't want to go through the hassle of stripping DRM and converting files and then uploading the e-pub to my Nook--if I could even figure out how to use Calibre.(Failed and decided I just don't buy Kindle books. There's no shortage of other things to read.)

Last month my royalties from the non-Amazon retailers combined exceeded my Amazon royalties. This isn't always the case, but it can happen.

Maybe the way to tame Amazon is not to be their exclusive property. The exclusivity may be better for them than for you, according to this article:

http://noorosha.com/why-exclusivity-i...

Just letting you know that this process worked well for me. The free short story prequel to my Mae Martin psychic mystery series worked as a marketing device. The Outlaw Women has done quite well without much promotion and only one review on Amazon and only three on Goodreads. I broke into the top 100 in three categories. I’d recommend the strategy to others.

#18 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Women's Fiction
#37 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories > Women's Fiction
#73 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Short Stories

Most important: sales of the paid books have begun to pick up.

Amber Foxx
No murder, just mystery
http://amberfoxxmysteries.wordpress.com

Draft2Digital recently added Inktera as another sales outlet. (They also have ScribD but I'm not sure I trust ScribD yet.) So with one upload I'm on B&N, Apple, Kobo, Create Space (had to add the paperback cover) and Inktera.