Amazon's profits are small publishers' losses

[SlowRain]

Each time Linen Press sells a book through Amazon, it costs the company more than £2

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/book...blisher-losses

[carpetmojo]

'Nuff said.................

[mr ploppy]

Why doesn't she sell them on Amazon marketplace instead? If they have an ISBN there's no reason to have Amazon sell them direct at all. Or failing that, increase the RRP to a level that would at least cover all her costs. It's a bit unfair blaming Amazon for her bad business decisions.

[MrsJoseph]

Just checked her site...she doesn't have a lot to start with...and nothing that I typically read. Pretty high prices for unknown authors.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

Just checked her site...she doesn't have a lot to start with...and nothing that I typically read. Pretty high prices for unknown authors.

The samples are in pdf - and it looks as though her run is all on paper ..

[MrsJoseph]

She should do a case study of Ellora's Cave and several other small press publishers. I wonder if she did any market surveys prior to launch.

She's not going the most price effective route.

[Ken Irving]

I feel sympathy for her since what she would like to do doesn't exactly fit the demands of the marketplace. But she doesn't have to sell on Amazon, and if she wants to she needs to work out the details of how to reconcile their grossly large cut with her wish to price books at a certain level. Amazon is not making her lose money, she is.

[neilmarr]

You seen the Amazon sales commissions on Kindle books bought and downloaded outside the favoured territorites of the US, Canada, UK and Eire, SlowRain ... 70%! Same as Sony's across the board. Bloody criminal. Neil

[Worldwalker]

Wait ... she's selling the book to Amazon for what she'd sell it to a distributor for, and that's not enough. She's paying ridiculous prices for shipping (I've shipped boxes of book-sized items from the US to the UK for less per unit than she says she's paying for books within the UK) for some reason I can't comprehend. She's choosing to pay a great deal of money for production, but not selling the book for a high enough price to cover her production costs. And this is Amazon's fault?

She's selling something too cheaply to make a profit and, despite the price being her choice, this is someone else's fault?

Can I say "personal responsibility" in this forum? Seriously....

[Gwen Morse]

What I find interesting is that (according to the comments, I didn't do the math myself), she's paying a 20% royalty rate. Which means she expects to keep the other 80%.

I'm sure her writers would be thrilled to do a 60/40 split.

[abookreader]

Linen Press books cost £4 a copy to produce, for several reasons. Firstly, because the small print runs of 1,000 books that I commission aren't cost-effective. Secondly, because I want to produce books that are visually stunning and pay a brilliant designer to do that. And thirdly because I pay a better-than-average copy editor, because if you skimp at this stage, you end up with typos and a bad reputation. Linen Press produces classy books; anything less would be a compromise.

So from the tone of her post, she's hiring world class talent to produce print runs of 1,000 books. Yeah. That's going to work well.

My suggestion would be she find a way to "compromise" and get the cost of her "classy" books down to a level where she can make a profit.

[Hellmark]

You're never going to compete on price with small, high quality runs. You either compete on price with comparable products, or on quality so good that people buy from you regardless of no being cheaper.

[sassanik]

Sounds like she needs to visit the UK equivalent of SCORE.

Amy

[Seli]

Originally Posted by abookreader

So from the tone of her post, she's hiring world class talent to produce print runs of 1,000 books. Yeah. That's going to work well.

My suggestion would be she find a way to "compromise" and get the cost of her "classy" books down to a level where she can make a profit.

It seems to work perfectly fine, at times with even smaller printruns for outfits like PS Publishing (UK based). But that is 1) known authors 2) genre works 3) proper pricing 4) their own webshop (and some deal with subterranean press in the USA for cheaper distribution there)

[MrsJoseph]

The worse part, to me, is that the covers aren't even that interesting and the blurbs aren’t, either...she's paying too much for that muffler.