Warning -- Take Your Books Off Kobo Now!

[dworth]

There's something about this on the Smashwords site updates page:

http://www.smashwords.com/about/beta

Kobo are blaming a bug, apparently.

[David Derrico]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

If the vendors are paying the author the same amount and only changing what they're selling a book for, it's a different matter than if they're changing the price of the book and cutting the author's percentage as well. I'm a little unclear on which one we're actually talking about in this case.

The problem is that, if you opt in to Amazon's 70% royalty option, they base your royalties on the discounted price if they discount your title to price-match someone elsewhere. So, yes, you lose royalties.

And, as for possibly making it up in volume, presumably each author has experimented at different prices and chosen the one that works best for them. (For example, my titles seem to sell almost exactly the same at 99 cents as $2.99.) This now takes that decision out of our hands and picks something that is probably sub-optimal.

Originally Posted by MartinC

The interesting thing about this thread is that Kobo appear to have taken a policy decision to drop prices for self-published authors, presumably on the basis of sales figures for this type of product. Those of us who habitually price above $2 should be pricking up our ears.

It's not a "policy decision," it's just a bug on the part of Kobo. They're not allowed to intentionally change prices based on their agreement with Smashwords since last November.

[kennyc]

Hmmmm, brave new world....

[altworld]

Mark posted a site update on Smashwords about the Kobo price problem, it was a bug in the software that caused this to happen to some titles. According to Mark this is now being fixed. Being that he has always been upfront, honest and straightforward with his dealings I believe him.

Frankly I don't see it as a sky is falling problem, in the long term this temporary price drop may benefit the Authors it is happening too. Certainly to me its not a cause to post pull your books from Kobo on Smashwords all over the net, this is the same post that is over on the Kindleboards and no doubt in other places.

Selling your books is a business and business will fail if you keep making knee jerk decisions. Find out the problem, see how it will benefit or hurt your model and plan a solution.
Arigato,
Nick Davis