How Amazon squeezes authors

[Soldim]

Originally Posted by terminalveracity

So Amazon takes 50% off each sale...so what? Not to disparage the author, but this is a book that wouldn't have even been written without Amazon.

I strongly doubt that statement. eReaders existed before the Kindle, alternative to Amazon (both it's eReader and its distribution platform) both do exist and some predated it. Whereas Amazon is an important player, it is for sure not an essential player.

Only in the few years has it been possible for a relatively obscure book such as this to reach any significant audience. Love it or hate it, Amazon is a big part of this, so why shouldn't they get half the price?

Your argument seems somewhat sketchy... even if Amazon would be essential in the process, I don't see why they should get 50%. The simple fact is that their claims that author keeps 70% of the proceeds is not the whole story.

[Rizla]

The danger with amazon is that it is a de facto monopoly. It's all very well to say that authors are not getting cheated because they can go somewhere else, but if there is realistically nowhere else, they can't go there.

Abusive practices cannot be justified by saying it's business. It's immoral. I respect amazon and anyone's right to make a back, but there has to be a moral consideration in the process.

I'm not saying amazon is necessarily abusive. I don't know enough about the details. But it is a concern in general. Government needs to regulate this type of thing because we cannot expect or trust companies to regulate themselves in a moral fashion.

Unfortunately the corporations appear to have bought the governments, at least in the USA and the UK.

[Muckraker]

I've blogged about this practice as well because it seems counterproductive to me. Not so long ago Amazon released the Kindle Fire--a multimedia device capable of showing off high-resolution, color ebooks. The "delivery cost" dissuades writers and publishers from providing content with high-resolution color images though. That fee actually encourages KDP publishers to decrease the quality of non-text content--which is exactly what I do. A few of my books contain roughly 150 b/w illustrations. After optimizing the graphics I wind up with a 10MB EPUB, which is exactly what Nook owners receive. Kindle owners, on the other hand, receive a 3.5MB MOBI because I refuse to pay a $1.50 file-size fee on a $2.99 book.

This policy forces me to supply Kindle readers with content of a slightly lower quality than Nook readers. It probably isn't much of an issue when we are comparing a B/W Kindle to a B/W Nook but now we are comparing high-rez color devices and the differences in quality will be much more apparent.

The absurdity of this policy becomes very apparent when we are talking about color graphic novels. The higher the quality and quantity of material published the more the publisher will feel the "file-size fee" pain. They have the option of getting dinged with a fee that knocks their royalty down from 70% to 40% (or lower) or opting for the 35% royalty where the delivery fee is magically waived.

And the text-only folks won't understand because they look at their fees, see a nickel or a dime, and tell the graphic-novel folks to just suck it up and accept it as a cost of doing business. However, the text-only folks are not the ones supplying content that shows off the features and power of Amazon's highest-end ebook reader--the Kindle Fire. They are supplying content that displays on the Kindle Fire in pretty much the same way it displays on a five-year-old hand-me-down Kindle. And I would think Amazon prefers we buy new Fires over hand-me-downs.

So no it's not fair. It's absolutely counter-intuitive to pitch a device as being able to display high-end multimedia content and then impose fees only on people publishing high-end multimedia content. If there really is a "delivery cost" to Amazon, which I doubt there is, then they should kick everyone's royalty down to a flat 65% and call it a day.

The "file-size fee" is archaic and reminds me of the days when I used to pay by the minute for 2400-baud internet access.

EDIT: Oh, and it is a bit underhanded to claim a royalty rate of %70--5% higher than Barnes and Noble--and then take fees which may very well drive the actual royalty below 65%.

[Scott Nicholson]

I do both text and graphic books (children's picture books). I am aware of the fee and it is indeed a tech consideration for the quality of the files, balancing quality with the cost of being too good. I suspect over time Amazon will realize this--I really don't think it is some nefarious dealings so much as Amazon simply isn't paying attention to all the details as everything rapidly changes. Once independent graphic novels and illustrated books start magically selling better at Apple and BN, you can bet they will address it.

Personally, it is hard to feel "squeezed" when Amazon is pretty much printing free money for me.

[supermighty]

Originally Posted by Muckraker

...I refuse to pay a $1.50 file-size fee on a $2.99 book.

The Conspiricy Duck in me wonders if the price is so high to encourage publishers/authors to raise their prices.

[J. Strnad]

Originally Posted by Soldim

He definitely does better with iBooks, Nook or gumroad (of which I had never heard before) than with Amazon.

From my post on the other thread about this article:


The percentages only add up to 97%, so there are rounding errors involved, but the bottom line is:

Nook: $19.50 income
iBooks: $23.10
PDF: $333.00
Amazon: $1116.90

Delivery costs, schmelivery costs. Obviously Amazon's shopping experience is delivering a lot more service than anybody else's, and they're putting more than 3x the $$ in his pocket as the next closest competitor (his own website). Amazon vs the other retailers...it isn't even close.


I agree that the Amazon delivery costs are too high, but I'm going to disagree with you that he does better on the other sites.