4 ms·

Last time I checked, Amazon was essentially forcing you to sell your 1000 page years of work e-book for $9.99 or less, taking "only" 35% of the price sale (used

by vfc1 7y ago

Last time I checked, Amazon was essentially forcing you to sell your 1000 page years of work e-book for $9.99 or less, taking "only" 35% of the price sale (used to be 30% a couple of years ago). If you want to sell it above $10, then their commission becomes 70%! Also, if your ebook is not exclusive to Amazon, then you don't get access to important marketing tools (KDP program) like free promotions, which are essential to build up social proof and get initial reviews. Without a prior audience and without those tools your ebook is dead on arrival. If this is not a horrific monopoly and flat ou author extortion, then I don't know what is. $9.99 is just too low, many books are worth more than that. Also, they will send emails to your readers suggesting ebooks from competing authors. I think the Amazon stranglehold on authors is preventing a lot of books from even being written, as the authors know that they won't be able to make a living ou of them. For technical and instructional books, self-publishing is a much better option, with organic marketing done via blogging. You can sell the ebook for say $49, get the whole price sale and the customer email.

rikroots 7y ago
> If you want to sell it above $10, then their commission becomes 70%! No, that's how much the author earns from each sale. I will say that Amazon's pricing model - divided as it is into geographical regions - is needlessly complicated. It's easy to misunderstand stuff and end up with a less-than-satisfactory overall price for the book.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I think he's right. See https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634560 https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634560 (This is for Kindle sales. Paperback is different.) But you're also correct that it's complicated across geos.
  - rikroots 7y ago
    You're right that he's right. 70% royalties - paid to the author - are (generally) reserved for ebooks priced under $10.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      Whether or not it's a reasonable practice, it's not really shocking. Amazon tried to hold the line on $9.99 Kindle prices for a long time. So it's not really surprising that they'd use a big stick to try to hold that same line where they have some direct leverage.
ghaff 7y ago
>Last time I checked, Amazon was essentially forcing you to sell your 1000 page years of work e-book for $9.99 or less This still appears to be true. Though TBH, similar pricing dynamics exist with traditional publishers. That's one reason that you have two and three part books rather than 1500 page behemoths. I get where you're coming from. On the other hand, pre-Amazon your only real option was to convince some publisher to take on your book. Which wasn't easy for a first-time author. J.K. Rowling was "only" rejected 12 times. Tons of other well-known authors have plenty of stories about how long it took to find a publisher.
davidgerard 7y ago
The real problem is that you can sell your ebook anywhere - but Kindle is where people who pay money for ebooks are. Most of your sales are going to be on Kindle. This is a problem for the reasons that relying on a single customer is a problem. In 2019, anyone can publish! ... on Amazon.
- ghaff 7y ago
  That's not 100% true for some specialties like O'Reilly Safari. But, yeah, for the most part.
redler 7y ago
And yet, the US government decided that it was not Amazon but Apple, with an immaterial market share in the eBooks market, that deserved a $400M fine for price-fixing anti-trust violations.
- manojlds 7y ago
  The argument here is Amazon being bad for authors and the above with Apple was about consumers.
  - bjelkeman-again 7y ago
    But in the long run, isn’t being bad for authors going to be bad for consumers?
    - manojlds 7y ago
      Can't say that for sure. I am myself a published author with a traditional publisher and I didn't make anything beyond the advance aand the revenue share was only 10% for me. If $9.99 makes more people buy it and the share is better, I am all up for it.
Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
I wrote an academic book several years ago with a traditional publisher. I was supposed to get a royalty of 10% but I probably never understood the legal mumbo-jumbo (it's not something I make significant income out of, so I didn't bother to inform myself much), because the book ended up selling for around $100 (!) while I was getting around one dollar per unit. In the electronic version, I think the price was a bit less ridiculous (around $50) and I was still getting $1 or less per unit. Other academics I know have similar experiences. So getting 30% of the sales price comparably looks like a good deal to me...
- dmix 7y ago
  I’ve taken two writing courses and both professors were best selling authors and claimed not to make a penny besides the advance, even though they made the list. Writing a book, for the vast majority of authors, is a money losing enterprise that comes back in various other ways. Such as speaking and consulting gigs as a domain expert. A lot of the books I’ve seen self published on amazon wouldn’t get a juicy book deal anyway. Most of it is garbage and quantity over quality.
tracer4201 7y ago
How is this a monopoly? Serious question - do you know what a monopoly is? Another question - how does Amazons practice compare to the other publishers? Is it better, same, or worse for authors?
- dang 7y ago
  "How is X a Y?" is a trollish trope to begin with, but "Serious question - do you know what a monopoly is?" crosses into personal swipe and that breaks the site guidelines. Would you please not post in this style to HN? We're trying for a bit better than internet default. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
falcor84 7y ago
> $9.99 is just too low, many books are worth more than that. Worth is a very amorphous concept, but I personally am not willing to pay more than that for any ebook. Some books have definitely in hindsight provided me more value, but I haven't finished (and probably never will) reading most of the ebooks I purchased, since they just ended up not interesting me enough. My time is very limited and being able to read a bit of many books is very valuable to me. From this perspective, I for one am very thankful to Amazon for reducing the price of ebooks.

by vfc1 7y ago

rikroots 7y ago

> If you want to sell it above $10, then their commission becomes 70%! No, that's how much the author earns from each sale. I will say that Amazon's pricing model - divided as it is into geographical regions - is needlessly complicated. It's easy to misunderstand stuff and end up with a less-than-satisfactory overall price for the book.

ghaff 7y ago
I think he's right. See https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634560 https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634560 (This is for Kindle sales. Paperback is different.) But you're also correct that it's complicated across geos.
- rikroots 7y ago
  You're right that he's right. 70% royalties - paid to the author - are (generally) reserved for ebooks priced under $10.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Whether or not it's a reasonable practice, it's not really shocking. Amazon tried to hold the line on $9.99 Kindle prices for a long time. So it's not really surprising that they'd use a big stick to try to hold that same line where they have some direct leverage.

ghaff 7y ago

>Last time I checked, Amazon was essentially forcing you to sell your 1000 page years of work e-book for $9.99 or less This still appears to be true. Though TBH, similar pricing dynamics exist with traditional publishers. That's one reason that you have two and three part books rather than 1500 page behemoths. I get where you're coming from. On the other hand, pre-Amazon your only real option was to convince some publisher to take on your book. Which wasn't easy for a first-time author. J.K. Rowling was "only" rejected 12 times. Tons of other well-known authors have plenty of stories about how long it took to find a publisher.

davidgerard 7y ago

The real problem is that you can sell your ebook anywhere - but Kindle is where people who pay money for ebooks are. Most of your sales are going to be on Kindle. This is a problem for the reasons that relying on a single customer is a problem. In 2019, anyone can publish! ... on Amazon.

ghaff 7y ago
That's not 100% true for some specialties like O'Reilly Safari. But, yeah, for the most part.

redler 7y ago

And yet, the US government decided that it was not Amazon but Apple, with an immaterial market share in the eBooks market, that deserved a $400M fine for price-fixing anti-trust violations.

manojlds 7y ago
The argument here is Amazon being bad for authors and the above with Apple was about consumers.
- bjelkeman-again 7y ago
  But in the long run, isn’t being bad for authors going to be bad for consumers?
  - manojlds 7y ago
    Can't say that for sure. I am myself a published author with a traditional publisher and I didn't make anything beyond the advance aand the revenue share was only 10% for me. If $9.99 makes more people buy it and the share is better, I am all up for it.

Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago

I wrote an academic book several years ago with a traditional publisher. I was supposed to get a royalty of 10% but I probably never understood the legal mumbo-jumbo (it's not something I make significant income out of, so I didn't bother to inform myself much), because the book ended up selling for around $100 (!) while I was getting around one dollar per unit. In the electronic version, I think the price was a bit less ridiculous (around $50) and I was still getting $1 or less per unit. Other academics I know have similar experiences. So getting 30% of the sales price comparably looks like a good deal to me...

dmix 7y ago
I’ve taken two writing courses and both professors were best selling authors and claimed not to make a penny besides the advance, even though they made the list. Writing a book, for the vast majority of authors, is a money losing enterprise that comes back in various other ways. Such as speaking and consulting gigs as a domain expert. A lot of the books I’ve seen self published on amazon wouldn’t get a juicy book deal anyway. Most of it is garbage and quantity over quality.

tracer4201 7y ago

How is this a monopoly? Serious question - do you know what a monopoly is? Another question - how does Amazons practice compare to the other publishers? Is it better, same, or worse for authors?

dang 7y ago
"How is X a Y?" is a trollish trope to begin with, but "Serious question - do you know what a monopoly is?" crosses into personal swipe and that breaks the site guidelines. Would you please not post in this style to HN? We're trying for a bit better than internet default. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

falcor84 7y ago

> $9.99 is just too low, many books are worth more than that. Worth is a very amorphous concept, but I personally am not willing to pay more than that for any ebook. Some books have definitely in hindsight provided me more value, but I haven't finished (and probably never will) reading most of the ebooks I purchased, since they just ended up not interesting me enough. My time is very limited and being able to read a bit of many books is very valuable to me. From this perspective, I for one am very thankful to Amazon for reducing the price of ebooks.