John August's sales figures for The Variant

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Sporadic

You are either trying to troll me or are completely batshit insane...which one is it?

Either way, I'm not going to continue this conversation with you.

Wow. That was uncalled for.


@everyone, rather than railing against Amazon let's put this in perspective. Amazon buys pbooks at that discount (or something close), as does Wal-mart, Borders, B&N, as well as any large distributor. It's the normal discount that publishers give to distributors. (The major chain stores get it becuase they do they own distributing.)

It was carried over from pbooks to ebooks. I know that Mobipocket and Fictionwise pay at about the same discount, and I would bet that the other distributors like Overdrive and Ingrm Digital do as well. It's _normal_.

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

You're just going to be ticked at Amazon no matter what, right?

Actually, I fully supported Amazon. That is, if we've been mistaken, thinking that Amazon was giving 35% instead of giving 65%.

If we've been mistaken, and indeed Amazon is doing good by the authors, then yes, I fully support them.

If, however, we were right in our first assumption, and Amazon is shafting the writers simply because it can, then no, I will still stand behind my pulpit.

I do hope, however, that were were/are wrong.

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Wow. That was uncalled for.

Nah, i AM batshit insane but im never one to go trolling just to go trolling. If I have a opinion, regardless of how batshit insane it is, I'll post it. If the other party and I dicker back and forth long enuff, I'll learn some things, they'll learn some things, but I'll STILL be batshit crazy!

@everyone, rather than railing against Amazon let's put this in perspective. Amazon buys pbooks at that discount (or something close), as does Wal-mart, Borders, B&N, as well as any large distributor. It's the normal discount that publishers give to distributors. (The major chain stores get it becuase they do they own distributing.)

It was carried over from pbooks to ebooks. I know that Mobipocket and Fictionwise pay at about the same discount, and I would bet that the other distributors like Overdrive and Ingrm Digital do as well. It's _normal_.

the publishers are making money hand over fist selling the ebooks in the 'normal' manner of pbooks. That field is changing, and authors are going to be making more money eventually as the publishing world catches up.

Until then, it seems as though many publishers KNOW, but are putting blinders on in order to ride the wave as long as possible.

(yeah, i know, blinders and surfing. doesnt match. sue me)

[Alisa]

I wonder if they set the percentage so high because the average price of the self published books is rather low. They do have some expenses in storage, support, bandwidth (both Whispernet and Internet). On a $0.99 book, they're making $0.65 for their trouble. That's not much. It does get pretty egregious at the higher price points, though. Maybe they should do a minimum flat fee, possibly adjusted for size, and a smaller percentage in addition if the book was above a break-even-plus-ok-profit price. I don't think the inexpensive self-published books are a place to try to maximize profit. They're a nice way to increase your catalog, build community, and give bargains to customers. If something starts selling well, they could always encourage the author to raise the price and they could promote it more. That's a win-win.

It's more than my natural sympathy for authors that prompts me to say this. Amazon seems to be interested in becoming a publisher. It can't compete with print yet. This could be a good play towards growth. It could start building a catalog by looking for authors bubbling to the top and promoting them not only with ebooks but with print. That's still the major force for now and Amazon has the facility to bring print and digital to the market now. Just my $0.02.

[Nate the great]

Amazon doesn't want to be a publisher. It wants to be Wal-mart (actually, Sear-Roebuck is a better example).

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Amazon doesn't want to be a publisher. It wants to be Wal-mart (actually, Sear-Roebuck is a better example).

I was referring to the Amazon Encore program.

Exceptional Books and Emerging Authors for More Readers to Enjoy
Even great books can be overlooked. And authors with great potential often struggle to connect with the larger audience they deserve to reach. We’re fortunate at Amazon.com to have customers who know a good book when they read one, so we've introduced AmazonEncore to help connect authors and their books with more readers.

AmazonEncore is a new program whereby Amazon will use information such as customer reviews on Amazon.com to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors with more potential than their sales may indicate. Amazon will then partner with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers.

[emellaich]

I don't know what Amazon pays, but there is a per-purchase fee on credit cards. Depending on the merchant and the goods and other factors it can be anywhere from 11 cents to sixty cents. This can cut the Amazon fee's in half.

Furthermore, I suspect that Amazon has significant marketing fees. Go to the current best seller list and you will find a book listed as a hard cover for $27.95 and sold as a hard cover for $16.77 (with free shipping on orders over $25) and sold as a Kindle edition for $9.99.

I imagine that Amazon is making a loss on best-selling hardcovers, especially when they have to throw in free shipping. They may be losing as much or more on the Kindle editions of best-sellers.

These losses would be marketing expenses that are used to attract buyers to their store. Now, they have to make up the losses on sales of non-NYT bestsellers. This means that these small books must make up enough profit to cover the deals on the best sellers, and since there are a lot of best-sellers sold, this gives them a lot to make up.

Why should a small book seller pay for discounts on big books? Well, the reason the small book seller wants to sell on Amazon is because Amazon has customers. The reason they have customers is because of their cheap prices. So, the little guys have to pay for the access that they want.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by bmfrosty

He only gets 35% of the kindle sale? I had no idea it was that bad.

He could have published it in MobileRead, He'd have got 100%

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by bmfrosty

He only gets 35% of the kindle sale? I had no idea it was that bad.

That's presumably because you've never looked. The information is clearly stated on their author sign-up page. Mobipocket pay the same, by the way (and before anyone moans about Amazon "conspiracies", they did so before they were bought by Amazon).

Getting a book on Amazon or Mobipocket (who have dozens of resellers) gives you exposure to a hugely greater audience than self-publishing does. I certainly consider the percentage to be entirely reasonable.

Note also, by the way, that the 35% is of LIST price. If a retailer has a "sale" as, for example, stores like BooksOnBoard and Fictionwise often do, it doesn't affect the amount that the author getss; the discount comes from the retailer's portion of the price.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

What percentage would they get going through a publisher? More or less?

You're not comparing the same thing at all.

Publishers pay for editing, formatting, (printing, storage), distribution.

Authors see a royalty of around 10% recommended retail price. Quite a lot of the total expected royalties is paid in advance ("the advance").

This isn't great, but it's a pretty good deal, compared to, say, the music industry.

Amazon are doing very little for their 65% of RRP. Compare with Apple, who take about 30% of the sale price of music tracks.

Amazon's 65% for ebooks is totally unjustified.

My paper books sell through Amazon, and they take just 20% of the RRP. And for that they have to order, store, pack and ship the physical book.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Jellby

He could have published it in MobileRead, He'd have got 100%

Or through Smashwords and got 80%. But Amazon do have the market share, which explains how they get away with such an outrageous cut.

[HansTWN]

As others have said before in this thread, it is a free world. Amazon is supposed to make money for its shareholders, that "greedy corporate entity" includes a lot of little people who own their stock, a lot of employees who need to be paid. Besides greed is human nature and is what pushes us forward, greed within reason! If an author thinks he can do better he should go to one of the other mentioned sites. He knows ahead of time what kind of deal he will be getting. Amazon does have a lot of costs, and I think it is a very good platform for an author to get his books out to a wide audience. You pay for virtual shelf space, for the number of potential buyers, etc. Amazon is not a non-profit business.

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

You're not comparing the same thing at all.

I guess the main point to me, is that Amazon is an avenue to sell this author's book. Since he is self-published, he is free to spread his product through as many channels as he can or is able to.

It seems, so far, that Amazon has been profitable. He's been exposed to more buyers than even his own website. We've already seen the success of Boyd Morrison, so maybe Amazon is a good launching pad and is worth the price to get to bigger and more profitable things.

[doreenjoy]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Authors see a royalty of around 10% recommended retail price. Quite a lot of the total expected royalties is paid in advance ("the advance").

I'm not sure where this figure is from.

For P-books, author advances average out at 6%. This is regardless of whether or not an advance is paid to the author; advances do not typically impact the royalty rate.

For E-books, some publishers pay as much as 35% in royalties. Others, e.g. large publishers like Harlequin, pay as little as 6% for the royalties. That's right, they offer the same royalty rate for e-books as for p-books.

I think there is some confusion about Amazon's role in this example. From what I can see, Amazon is a DISTRIBUTOR in this instance, not a publisher. Distributors typically charge 40%, so IMO Amazon is not out of line for the service they are offering.

You can't blame Amazon or any other retailer for wanting to make money.