#Libriomancer book 3 in book knotes full#

If a retailer pulled a stunt like this with one of my commercially published books, DAW/Penguin would stomp them. I asked them again to show me where their Pricing Page or Terms of Service allow Amazon to arbitrarily cut your book’s offer price and reduce your royalties based on that change. Of course, this wasn’t actually the case, as there was no lower third-party price. This may occur, for example, if we sell your book at a lower price to match a third party’s price for a digital or physical edition of the book… In this case, if you have chosen the 70% option for your book, your 70% royalty will be calculated based on our price for the book (less delivery costs and taxes). The price at which we sell your book may not be the same as your list price. When I followed up with the DTP team, they responded thusly: Looking at my reports for last week, my royalties were slashed by 2/3 for every copy sold, because Amazon paid me 70% of the $.99 sale price, not my list price.Īccording to the KDP Pricing Page, royalties should be based on the list price ($2.99) unless the price adjustment was due to a price-matching situation (dropping the price to match a competitor’s price) … but my royalties report still shows a 67% cut.

#Libriomancer book 3 in book knotes full#

Amazon is selling Libriomancer for pre-order at almost half-off, but I’ll get paid my full amount for every copy sold.

With my DAW books, if a bookstore offers a sale, I still get my royalties based on the cover price. So what’s the big deal? Don’t retailers put things on sale all the time? Well, sure … which leads me to my second lesson.Īmazon can calculate royalties based on the sale price, not your list price. …sole and complete discretion to set the retail price at which your Digital Books are sold through the Program. But they also pointed to section 5.3.2 of the current Amazon/KDP Terms and Conditions, which gives them: I’ll give Amazon credit – the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) team responded to me fairly quickly, and restored the price to $2.99 by Valentine’s Day. I also heard from another author that several of their books had also been cut to $.99 without warning or explanation, making me suspect this was either a database glitch or an arbitrary price cut. I saw no external reason for Amazon to drop the price. Everywhere else, the book was on sale for its list price of $2.99. So when I saw that Amazon had dropped the price again, my first step was to check other listings. Only Kobo was slow to raise their price, and since Amazon’s Terms of Service allow them to match any competing price, Goblin Tales stayed at $.99 with its reduced royalty rate for several more weeks, earning me about 1/6 of what I normally made for each sale (35% royalties based on the $.99 price-matched price). I put Goblin Tales on sale over the holidays, then returned it to $2.99 in early January. This wasn’t the first time I’d had trouble controlling the price of my own e-book.

I don’t know why, and I don’t know when exactly this change was made. On Saturday (2/11), I noticed that Amazon had marked Goblin Tales down to $.99. As for how they treat authors, let me share what I’ve experienced over the past week and a half.Īmazon can and will adjust your price as they see fit. Amazon, like pretty much any other business, is in this to make money. While there are certainly advantages to Amazon’s program, anyone who thinks Amazon is in this to help authors is a fool. Over the course of several years, Amazon has become (in my opinion) the major player in self-publishing and e-books.Ī certain champion of self-publishing recently decried all of the “whiny bitches” complaining about Amazon, and argued how Amazon treats authors so much better than commercial publishers. A lot of authors who might not have otherwise self-published started putting both backlist and new titles up for sale. I priced it at $2.99, which seemed fair, and means I receive Amazon’s 70% royalty rate, earning roughly $2/copy sold.įrom a strategic standpoint, Amazon’s decision to offer 70% royalties to self-published authors was brilliant. The most popular has been Goblin Tales, a collection of five goblin-related short stories. Guest Post: Who Controls Your Amazon E-book Price?Īs most of you know, I’ve self-published a few e-books. SFWA Middle Grade and Young Adult Writers.Operating Policies and Procedures (OPPM).