On the downside, as a seller I feel like amazon takes my little widow's mite to itself. My publisher is offering my book at a 55% discount, which means they are paid $7.20 for each $16.00 book. Printing, shipping, and miscellaneous costs leave very little to go into the coffers. By contrast, amazon takes $8.80 per book. Yes, they ship, but is this fair? Furthermore there is no one to talk with at amazon about this. The publisher choices are to lower the discount to get more per sale (a problem for other reasons), or suck it up until and unless I the author get better sales. I actually had a good wave of sales and was building momentum until amazon raised the price. Now, I don't know. It is discouraging, believe me. No one reads this blog anyway, so I guess I can complain a bit. Sigh.
The summary below is from frugaldad.com.
Source: Frugaldad.com
Hi Amy.
ReplyDeleteHere's one happy reader who reads and enjoys your blog posts as they arrive in my inbox. They are always interesting, especially when you talk about aspects of story structure and also anything to do with characters.
It's scary to see how big Amazon is now. Pity they don't give you a bigger slice of the pie seeing as you have done all the hard work of writing and editing your books.
Keep up the good work.
:-) Thanks Ruth! My apologies to all of you, my small but faithful group of readers. I DO know you're there -- which is why I try to put out a quality and helpful blog. You'll notice that, as frustrating as amazon is, my book is still available there for sale there, because it truly is an amazing platform. Keep on keeping on, right? Back to writing!
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