Wrong Book Prices

Set your book price between $2.99 and $9.99 to receive the maximum royalty at Amazon. Having set a lower book price, under $2.99 you will only receive half of 70%, lousy 35%. Same unfavorable royalty conditions for Amazon books over $9.99.

Let’s say you set the price of your book at $9.99.  Submitting it directly to Amazon will give you almost $7 for each work sold, compared to: 60% of the List Price from major e-book retailers or 85% “Net” on a distributors website (which means the 70% you would theoretically receive from Amazon, minus the “aggregators / distributors cost” (which can be anything…) and then 85% from what’s left…maybe $4 in the best case, instead of $7 at Amazon.

Dollars

When you go through a certain “publisher” / aggregator, who’s name starts with S, and who promises your work to be uploaded to Apple’s iPad, B&N, Sony, Kobo and gives you a “free” ISBN number and free e-book conversion, you will lose out way more than only on your royalties:

  •  they, as the owner of the ISBN, are regarded as the publisher, not you
  •  conversions are at the best mediocre (you get what you pay for, well, nothing)
  • uploading to booksellers and distributors takes weeks or even months
  • copy editing / proof reading is non-existent, just to name a few of the drawbacks.

If you only sell a hundred books, you would have offset easily conversion and ISBN costs and would be your own publisher and upload your work to all the bookstores and distributors you want. Uploading is easy; you are guided step by step on all these websites. And you are the one who sets the (same!) price at all book stores.

Social tagging: > > > > > > >