AmazonIndie science fiction author and business book writer Rick Chapman has unleashed a long diatribe against Amazon’s pricing model for Kindle Direct Publishing, which does make some valid points – although they’re buried among a screed against Amazon’s defenders (who he charmingly refers to as the Aggregated Amazon Ankle Grabbers, or AAAGs), and also somewhat obscured when he lets the invective get in the way of clear presentation of his argument. Which basically, stripped of all the name-calling and rhetoric, is this: Kindle Direct Publishing’s  pricing policy of taking 65 percent of authors’ and small publishers’ revenues when they price their ebooks under $2.99 or over $9.99 is distorting the market and is an attempt at price manipulation, when in fact there should be no such pricing structure at all.

In his piece,  “Escape from Stalag $7: Why Amazon’s Pricing Box Is Bad for Indies,” Chapman asks:

Why has Amazon placed indies in a $7 dollar pricing box? Why does it grab 65% of your revenue (not counting its transmission fees, which it charges on every transfer and which vary based on book size) if you price under $2.99 and the same if you charge over $9.99? This is an issue of critical importance to indies because it is not financially feasible to hand over that level of margin to a reseller for a download service.

As to why Amazon does this, Chapman complains that: “The most coherent answer I ever received from AAAG acolytes was ‘because they can’.” As it happens, others have advanced more sophisticated arguments for why Amazon fixed things this way – but that doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. In 2012, for instance, author and publishing authority Kristen Eckstein put it like this:

KDP users can choose if they want to make 70% “royalty” (aka: profit per eBook sale) or 35% royalty. The catch is, to make 70% users must price their eBooks competitively—between $2.99 and $9.99. The lowest price of $2.99 keeps the content from being devalued, while keeping it at a no-brainer investment for consumers. Anything lower than $2.99 and many consumers begin to wonder if the content inside is worth it.

Now does that hold water? Given the number of freebies, sales, and special discounts that you see online, I doubt that anyone would see a price point below $2.99 as a sign of poor quality nowadays. That doesn’t mean, however, that I see Hachette as any kind of white knight in this, and on current form, I’d feel more comfortable in the Amazon camp than the Big Five camp. But a lot of Chapman’s statements do seem to make sense, not least when he itemizes the various disadvantages to indies and self-publishers of the KDP pricing structure. His conclusion? “Amazon should lift all restrictions on book pricing and establish a uniform service fee for the use of its downloading infrastructure. Within this framework, the authors will quickly learn what works for them and their books. Amazon’s ‘assistance’ is not needed.”

I’d be interested to hear what everyone else thinks, not least because the pricing relationship between an independent author and Amazon is radically different from that between a major publisher and Amazon. You can’t call the book pricing issue a “restriction” when Amazon is effectively your publisher and your distributor. I’d also be hugely wary of Big Publishing’s enthusiasm for taking the market for as much as it can get. But that $2.99/$9.99 bracket doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense in terms of anything else but Amazon’s own business model.

 

 

13 COMMENTS

  1. I agree that the model that Amazon uses is coercive, but at the same time it makes sense. I have seen suggestions that indicates pricing below $3-$4 does not actually help sales, thus by setting a minimum price actually probably helps increase Amazon and the author’s revenue’s.

    As for pushing very hard to keep prices below $10, lets be honest, that has been Amazon’s goal for a long while and plays a major role in getting people to stay within the Kindle ecosystem.

    Ultimately, they get to do it because they are the largest game in town and publishing with them as opposed to a big publisher could still yield much more money for the author in the long run.

  2. Apple manage fine treating authors fairly and offering 70% across the board, regardless of list price and regardless of where the title is sold.

    Amazon of course only introduced 70% in th first place when they got wind of Apple’s plans to do so when iBooks launched. Before that it was 35% across the board.

    “As for pushing very hard to keep prices below $10, lets be honest, that has been Amazon’s goal for a long while and plays a major role in getting people to stay within the Kindle ecosystem.”

    As ebooks are similarly priced (at the higher level) on all retailers that argument does not stand up. Anyway no-one who has bought a Kindle is going to sign up with another retailer when the books can’t be read on the Kindle device. The reason Amazon wants all ebooks below $10 is because that way it will destroy demand for hardcover titles. Hardcover titles that cost Amazon money to store and deliver, especially when offering free shipping to 20 million plus Prime members. By contrast ebooks have no storage or delivery costs. but it doesn’t stop Amazon charging the same rate to sell them.

  3. Those who’ve not read Rick Chapman’s article might want to do so. It’s not a “diatribe” to anyone who’s not an Amazon fanboy. There’s a lot of good sense there. Here it is again.

    http://www.rule-set.com/ricks-blog/escape-from-stalag-7-why-amazons-pricing-box-is-bad-for-indies

    You might want to place his blog on your follow list. I am.

    —–

    As he notes, Amazon’s ebook goal is quite obvious and has been for a long time. When you sell an ebook through them, at all price levels they want to take 65% for a mere credit card transaction and file download that costs them mere pennies. Then they want to give you only 35%. Can most authors and publishers make any sort of decent living on that? No, particularly since Amazon intends to do all it can to drive down that price from which your 35% comes.

    To get a rough estimate what that would mean, for a $9.99 ebook, Amazon will make $7 less costs that are probably around a dime. And it’ll pay you but $3.50 for all your months of labor. It’s making roughly a 7000% profit, while you can’t afford the rent.

    That set of numbers also gives you a hint why Amazon wants to drive down prices and thinks low prices are great. Assume you obey your lord and master Jeff Bezos and lower your ebook’s price to $4.99. Amazon now gets $3.50 and makes an almost as nice 3500% profit. Even more important, that price cutting means it is making life difficult for competitors who’re paying 65% (B&N) or 70% (Apple). Amazon gets a competitive advantage and still makes a robber baron profit. You not only can’t pay your rent. You give up on living in an apartment and sleep in your car.

    There’s little doubt about Amazon’s agenda. That 35% is what they paid before Apple entered the market. Apple threw them for a loop by paying the same flat 70% to all authors as it has long paid to musicians and software developers. Of course, a difference still remains. Apple pays 70% at all prices. Amazon only pays that for ebooks priced from $2.99 to $9.99 and from that it takes an inflated download fee that makes its real royalties in the 60-65% range.

    The short of it is that if Amazon gets what it wants, authors and publishers will get only 35% of the retail price unless that give up a lot. Typically that means they agree to not publish their ebook elsewhere. And if you agree to those restrictions, you’ll get about 50%. That’s what Amazon is paying authors in its crowdsourced scheme, which has draconian limitations on what an author can do.

    ——

    Keep in mind one more thing about Amazon. The company will never, never, never treat a group decently until it is forced to do so. Even the consumers it claims to be championing are being cleverly ripped off by Amazon’s deceptive search engine, which steers them to higher priced items and conceals cheaper ones. I saw that last spring where every Amazon search result said I’d have to pay $120 for a particular make and model Bluetooth headset. Employing a few tricks I’ve learned, I discover that the headset’s maker was selling it on Amazon for $40 less. That’s Amazon searches.

    Authors and small publishers simply are not going to get treated well by Amazon until they inflict quite a bit of pain on the company’s bottom line. That’s the only message it understands. That’s the only language it speaks.

    I’ve already suggested one approach some authors can take—releasing first elsewhere. If you’re fortunate enough to have a fan base of eager readers. Release your latest everywhere but Amazon. Then wait and watch. Only when sales drop significantly, release the Kindle version for those who only only Amazon devices.

    Keep in mind that taking that approach, you’ll always come out ahead. Even inside Amazon’s $7 pricing box, Apple, B&N and other still pay better, given Amazon’s download charge. You’ll maximize your return without costing your readers a penny more. Then when when you release that Amazon version, you’ll pick up the rest, although perhaps earning a bit less per sale.

    That’s Amazon in a nutshell and why I stress to authors and publishers that “Amazon is not your friend.”

    I’ll close with a telling quote from that Chapman article:

    “This final point is broader in scope and encompasses the interests of the industry as a whole. Amazon’s current indie price box is part of an attempt to price rig an industry. It is not healthy for a $75B company to attempt to do this. The free market will establish appropriate pricing guidelines for different types and levels of authors quickly. Amazon’s attempt to control this process is not in anyone’s best interest, even ultimately their own.”

  4. Unfortunately as an early Amazon publisher devotee and adopter I have watched the structure and practice of Amazon’s “Indie” publishing practices and pricing modes evolve into the bigger more monopolistic vein of shaping the market to their benefit after their approach of the friend to the beginning indie writer of some 4 years ago. Now their only defense seems to be that they portrary themselves as less bad than Apple and the big publishers.

  5. +++ As for pushing very hard to keep prices below $10, lets be honest, that has been Amazon’s goal for a long while and plays a major role in getting people to stay within the Kindle ecosystem. +++

    Bill, if this was ever true, it no longer is:

    2. Amazon’s stated motive for the pricing box is a falsehood. If Amazon was worried about the price of E-books being too high, the market has solved that problem. I cannot keep track of the number of mysteries, fantasies, Sci-Fi, horror, historical fiction, bodice rippers, and soft porn books featuring pliable heroines being consensually tortured by handsome sadists selling for under five bucks, never mind ten, on Amazon. And if people want to pay more to read the works of better known authors, can someone identify the gun being pointed at their heads?

    The real reason Amazon has placed indies in the box is to keep the pressure up on the publishers. Amazon failed to gain control of the book pricing model in its last go round with the publishers, but it’s not giving up. They’ll be back at it, sooner rather than later. Indies are thus pawns in a game we are not playing. I don’t like being a pawn and neither should you.

    http://www.rule-set.com/ricks-blog/escape-from-stalag-7-why-amazons-pricing-box-is-bad-for-indies

    rick

  6. Michael, appreciate the kind words, but let me correct you on one point:

    +++ take 65% for a mere credit card transaction and file download that costs them mere pennies. +++

    Indies pay file transfer costs, and they can be quite substantial, especially if your book is illustration heavy. I haven’t covered that point yet, but plan to in the future. There are several posts that have dealt with the issue.

    I’m going to do a follow up post and will link to this and your comments. Your math was illuminative.

  7. +++ although they’re buried among a screed against Amazon’s defenders (who he charmingly refers to as the Aggregated Amazon Ankle Grabbers, or AAAGs), and also somewhat obscured when he lets the invective get in the way of clear presentation of his argument. +++

    That’s not a diatribe. That’s reporting. Where the comments weren’t blocked, you can read what I said and what the response was. I am being completely factual.

    This is relevant because AAAG sites purport to be sources of information and assistance for self publishers, not Amazon flackery hubs. People have actually taken seriously claims by Howey, Konrath, Gaughran and others that Amazon pays ROYALTIES. I document one such sad example on my blog and there are many, many, many others.

    Amazon pays no indie anything. It takes a download fee off your bottom line. It is an operating expense. nothing more. It is being dishonest when it presents you with a “royalty” statement via KDP reporting. When I have a book printed, I don’t hand a printer a check and then thank him for my “royalties.”

    IOW, people are being told untrue things and they are being misled. That needs to be pointed out.

    I am amazed so few people in indie publishing have objected to AAAG and others spreading this blatant misstatement. It was way overdue that someone do it.

    rick

  8. Mr. Chapman,

    The few times I read one of your posts I always end up shaking my head. Mostly because while you have a message, it is so poorly constructed and delivered with a sense of “Why can’t you all see I’m right you idiots!” invective any salient points you make are lost. The other reason is because sometimes your reasoning and examples leave something to be desired.

    As an example, with regards to royalties and this statement: “Amazon pays no indie anything. It takes a download fee off your bottom line. It is an operating expense.”

    First,

    Operating costs: The expenses which are related to the operation of a business, or to the operation of a device, component, piece of equipment etc.

    You write a book. Pay to have a cover made, pay to have it edited, pay to have it proofread, pay to have the word doc converted and formatted into something easily read on an electronic device. The costs incurred with those processes are the operating costs of that book/file. You can add any money spent on advertising to that particular books operating cost.

    Royalty: Compensation for the use of property, usually copyrighted works, patented inventions, or natural resources, expressed as a percentage of receipts from using the property or as a payment for each unit produced.

    So, you upload that ebook to Amazon, and price it. Someone buys a copy, Amazon takes a fee for their part in hosting and the download (part of their Operating Costs), and then sends you an agreed upon percentage primarily based on the sales price of your book minus that download fee.

    Now, maybe I’m missing something, but under what GAAP does “Receiving Money” = “Operating Expense”? The Transaction fee is an expense, and can be deducted in any sequence, but Amazon is sending you money for a sale. That is a royalty. Is it possible the fee for downloading that file may be more than they royalty? Sure. But why do you believe that transaction doesn’t constitute a royalty?

    Bottom Line: The line in a financial statement that shows net income or loss.

    Your example of handing a printer a check is a very good example of you trying to make a point and whiffing. Yes, you don’t hand your printer a check and thank him for you royalties, you thank him for the books. But Amazon is not your printer per se. With ebooks it’s a file repository, and every time a file is downloaded from one of their servers it they take some money. Then they send you some money if the sales price was greater than free. And unless your ebook is a 10 book omnibus on Italian Renaissance Artists with huge illustrations every other page, the fee Amazon will take is usually pretty minimal.

    You made some excellent points with regards to omnibus pricing, and how they are dealing with emerging technologies such as 3-D and interactives, but getting to those was a slog.

    Publishing through Amazon means agreeing to participate within the system they set up. There are ways to game that system to your advantage, and more than a few successful authors are more than happy to share what works and how. Choosing to participate in that system, then complaining about what you can’t do, and denigrating those who have had some success with the tone and tenor of your many of your posts is as an odd way to try and change peoples minds.

  9. +++ The few times I read one of your posts I always end up shaking my head. +++

    Why? Do you suffer from a neurological disease? Or ideological? Did you read the prologue to Hugh Howy’s petition on behalf of Amazon? Did his blatant misstatements make your head shake?

    +++Royalty: Compensation for the use of property…”

    I’m sorry, but everything you have written about royalties is sheer blather. I am traditionally published as well as self-published and I know whereof I speak. I’m not going to educate you on book publishing royalties; you can do that on your own.

    Suffice it to say that if I wish to pull down Rule-Set: A Novel of a Quantum Future from Amazon’s servers, I can do so with no interference from AMZ. This is because I have not entered into a royalty agreeement with them. OTOH, If I take a copy of “In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters” and attempt to sell it on my own directly, I will soon hear from my publisher’s lawyer over at Apress because I HAVE entered into a royalty agreement with them.

    The IRS also would find your argument funny. US courts will giggle at it.

    +++ Then they send you some money if the sales price was greater than free. And unless your ebook is a 10 book omnibus on Italian Renaissance Artists with huge illustrations every other page, the fee Amazon will take is usually pretty minimal. +++

    I’m sorry, more blather. Amazon’s transmission fees can be VERY significant, depending on the size of the book. I have not written about this but others have. I suggest you do some research. I’m going to and will do more, but don’t want to write about this at this point.

    +++ You made some excellent points with regards to omnibus pricing, and how they are dealing with emerging technologies such as 3-D and interactives, but getting to those was a slog. +++

    I made 10 excellent points. All accurate.

    No it wasn’t. I think the slog was caused by your having to tramp through so many of your misperceptions about reality. Like Amazon pays you royalties.

    +++ Publishing through Amazon means agreeing to participate within the system they set up. +++

    Sheesh, that’s not even interesting. So what? Does that mean I can’t point out that the system provides a raw deal for indies in many respects? That Amazon is acting hypocritically when it attacks the agency model for PUBLISHERS but IMPOSES a version of it on INDIES? That PR and public awareness can’t change business practices?

    If you wish to roll over on your belly and happily chew the bone that’s been thrown at you, don’t let me stop you!

    I’m more interested in discussing why Stalag $7 is bad for indies. A point I note you hardly addressed. Perhaps your shaking head prevented you from typing some more germane responses?

    rick

  10. +++ Royalty: Compensation +++

    Oh, I forgot. I wrote a nine part series on how book publishing channels work and in the first or second part, discussed the topic of book royalties. It provides naifs and newbies all the information they need to grasp the basic concepts. I suggest you read it. If you anticipate being published in the future, I suggest you also read carefully the contract provisions you should avoid and seek in your contract negotiations. A British publisher, Conrad Murray, a small press specialist, thought they were quite good.

    rick

  11. Rick, for a supposedly successful businessman and author, your awfully juvenile in your posts. That’s what causes me to shake my head.

    IE: “Why? Do you suffer from a neurological disease?”

    Well, I usually don’t gladly suffer people who come across as jerks, but I’m making a sincere effort in your case. And your response is a great example of why you aren’t winning any converts to your cause. I disagree with you, therefore I must be wrong?
    Good luck with that line of reasoning.

    “Suffice it to say that if I wish to pull down Rule-Set: A Novel of a Quantum Future from Amazon’s servers, I can do so with no interference from AMZ. This is because I have not entered into a royalty agreeement with them. OTOH, If I take a copy of “In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters” and attempt to sell it on my own directly, I will soon hear from my publisher’s lawyer over at Apress because I HAVE entered into a royalty agreement with them.”

    If your contract is similar to the one on their website, your Royalties are discussed in section 7, yes? In return for certain rights you’ve voluntarily chosen to given up by signing with them (right you did not give up when choosing to publish through KDP), they produce and sell your book, and when a copy sells, you get a percentage of that sale. A Royalty. If you want to call what you signed a Royalty agreement, that’s your prerogative. But in looking around, I don’t see authors signing “Royalty Agreements”, I see them signing “Publishing Contracts.” Could be they are one in the same. Could be they are all wrong. Could just be semantics.

    “The IRS also would find your argument funny. US courts will giggle at it.”

    Blacks Law Dictionary, which is used by the IRS when defining legal terms, defines royalty as:

    “Royalty also sometimes means a payment which is made to an author or composer by an assignee or licensee in respect of each copy of his work which is sold, or to an inventor in respect of each article sold under the patent.”

    The IRS uses that same definition when clarifying the context of the and applicability of the Royalty exclusion, specifically with regards to IRC Reg. 512 and other additional addenda. I am not a lawyer, but the building next to me is chock full of them, and they all work for the Federal Reserve, or Treasury, or IRS. I share a lunch table with them a few times a week. If you would like to point out how, from a legal standpoint, Blacks definition is different than:

    “Compensation for the use of property, usually copyrighted works, patented inventions, or natural resources, expressed as a percentage of receipts from using the property or as a payment for each unit produced.”

    They are all ears. Especially the patent lawyer, but he’s also an aspiring author so I suspect his interest is twofold.

    “+++ Then they send you some money if the sales price was greater than free. And unless your ebook is a 10 book omnibus on Italian Renaissance Artists with huge illustrations every other page, the fee Amazon will take is usually pretty minimal. +++

    I’m sorry, more blather. Amazon’s transmission fees can be VERY significant, depending on the size of the book. I have not written about this but others have. I suggest you do some research. I’m going to and will do more, but don’t want to write about this at this point.”

    You basically just reiterated what I said. You do realize that, yes?

    “+++ You made some excellent points with regards to omnibus pricing, and how they are dealing with emerging technologies such as 3-D and interactives, but getting to those was a slog. +++

    I made 10 excellent points. All accurate.”

    Looking around, opinions vary. Like I said, I agree with some of your points. The others, not so much.

    “+++ Publishing through Amazon means agreeing to participate within the system they set up. +++

    Sheesh, that’s not even interesting. So what? Does that mean I can’t point out that the system provides a raw deal for indies in many respects? That Amazon is acting hypocritically when it attacks the agency model for PUBLISHERS but IMPOSES a version of it on INDIES? That PR and public awareness can’t change business practices?”

    Amazon wasn’t opposed to Agency. They were opposed to how it was enacted. As recently as the Hachette negotiations they said they were happy with a 30% cut Agency contracts provided. The things they objected to back then were the inability to discount the way they wanted to, and they fact that all the big publishers colluded to enact agency at the same time. If the Big Six had done back then what they were forced to do this year, negotiate individually, all of them probably would have gotten similar agency deals to the ones they just signed. It’s going to be a couple of weeks before we see what that all means, but I would bet what the publishers agreed to was something indies agree to when they sell through KDP. Sell within this price band, get “X”, sell within this price band, get “Y”, sell within this price band, get “Z”. And Amazon gets to discount. If you read the last couple of statements put out by Simon and Shuster and Macmillan, they both say they get to price how they want, with incentives from Amazon to price lower. If thats Agency, its incentivized Agency. If I publish through KDP, my incentive is to keep my books below $9.99 because history shows they’ll sell more, and I’Il get a bigger cut. But not all indies are getting a raw deal through Amazon. Quite a few have said otherwise, more than once. People not named Howey, or Konrath even.

    “I’m more interested in discussing why Stalag $7 is bad for indies. A point I note you hardly addressed. Perhaps your shaking head prevented you from typing some more germane responses?”

    Well,if the examples you use to try and make your point were more germane to the majority of self publishing authors and genres, I suspect more people would agree with you. Your first example for instance. Thousand of authors? If that number is true, what genre are they publishing in? Are they trying to self publish books that are data hogs (Like a 10 book omnibus could be?). Or are they trying to publish a book they readily admit is specialized with a limited audience? If their print earnings are going to be limited because of their niche/potential audience, their ebook earnings should be greater because….why?

    I think a lot of authors would agree with you on the omnibus issue, really, that should be one of your first points, not buried in the middle. The coupon thing, well, I’d rather see an author just discount their price, which is pretty easy to do online, but that’s just me.

    On your website, you’ve said publishing your limited audience book for less than $50 and making %35 on each sale would be ruinous. Why? Whats the math, because $12.00 a sale on Amazon, while not as good as $35.00 on ibooks, is still pretty good, better than say, Apress royalty rates. That’s assuming a $50.00 price at 35%, minus the transmission fees based on a 36MB book, at 15 cents a MB. Different authors have different break points, maybe whats ruinous to you would be pretty good to another writer trying to self publish a technical journal?

  12. +++ ll, I usually don’t gladly suffer people who come across as jerks, but I’m making a sincere effort in your case. +++

    Hmmm. That was my thought in your case.

    I’m sorry, but book royalty law is a very settled topic and it’s not interesting to discuss it with people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Amazon pays no royalties, nor, when it matters, does it make that claim. I cover the topic of book royalties in the blog. I’ve worked in publishing, am a published author, and have two lawyers in the family who I’ve consulted with when I needed to clarify certain points on my own behalf when dealing with the topic.

    +++ I am not a lawyer, but the building next to me is chock full of them, +++

    That’s nice. I have a fellow who comes regularly to my SaaS conference series, Michael Whitener. His specialty is IP. Works in DC. Software is, of course, another industry that deals with issues of IP, royalties, licensing, regularly etc. I actually talked to him about Amazon’s royalty claims, and he finds them rib tickling and, of course, silly. A marketing ploy. Oh, why do I talk to him? About advanced issues of unsettled law in high-tech and E-publishing.

    I don’t find your blather on royalties interesting. If others do, their choice.

    If you wish to believe that Amazon is paying you “royalties,” please don’t let me stop you. You have the right to believe that in the same way that you can choose to believe the Earth is flat. Not my concern.

    +++ Amazon wasn’t opposed to Agency. +++

    And this, of course, is MORE blather. After the collusion case, the publishers, one by one, were told they had to negotiate with Amazon sans collusion. Amazon attempted to over turn agency. In supplier/channel battles, the two sides are always fighting about this topic. It is nothing new. I’ve seen it dozens of times in high-tech.

    The publishers attempted to maintain agency. I discuss why in the blog series. Amazon attempted to overturn it. I discuss why in the blog series. Amazon picked Hachette to play contract hardball with. Hachette refused to back down and abandon agency. The PR war over the battle started to become messy from Amazon’s standpoint. To avoid the appearance of capitulation, Amazon went to S&S, signed a deal that maintained agency while handing over more margin and MDF to Amazon.

    Just another channel battle. Seen it before, will see it again. I wrote about this as it was happening and predicted what would happen. I told my readers that the battle was over and the deal that S&S had struck would be the template for the industry. And so it was. Note the dates of my posts on the issue and the dates of announced settlements.

    The only reason you would even make such a silly claim about agency is that you have zero experience working with, researching, and writing about channels. I have done all three.

    +++ but I would bet what the publishers agreed to was something indies agree to when they sell through KDP +++

    If you believe that, I have a real estate property that crosses a river in NYC you might be interested in buying. The publishers have access to marketing programs you never see. They pay no transmission fees. They can price with far more flexibility than you. Promote. Etc.

    The list goes on and on. Only a naif would write what you do.

    +++ Well,if the examples you use to try and make your point were more germane to the majority of self publishing authors and genres, I suspect more people would agree with you. +++

    Well, about 6K people have READ the article and several hundred more do everyday, so they are certainly interested in the topic. As to agreeing, I’m running a survey to find out what they think. We’ll see what the results are. They will be interesting.

    +++ Thousand of authors? +++

    Yes, thousands.

    +++ If that number is true, what genre are they publishing in +++

    Thousands of topics and titles. This is the 21st century. Digital publishing enables people to delve into incredible numbers of niche and limited markets.

    Why would you even ASK such a question? Don’t you have a computer?

    +++ If their print earnings are going to be limited because of their niche/potential audience, their ebook earnings should be greater because….why? +++

    That question is so silly I’m not going to answer it. If you can’t figure it out, I’m not going to educate you. Put on your thinking cap. The answer WILL come to you!

    +++On your website, you’ve said publishing your limited audience book for less than $50 and making %35 on each sale would be ruinous. Why? +++

    I answered that on the website. If people want to know the answer, they can read the article and mine and others comments. Though it’s not THAT hard to figure out.

    Answer here: http://www.rule-set.com/ricks-blog/escape-from-stalag-7-why-amazons-pricing-box-is-bad-for-indies

    +++ maybe whats ruinous to you would be pretty good to another writer trying to self publish a technical journal? +++

    Ask that person. Let us all out of Stalag $7 and we’ll find out what works for us. We don’t need you, or Hugh Howey and the rest of AAAG, or Jeff Bezos to tell us how to market and promote our books. We can figure that out on our own. Amazon gets its cut. It should get out of the price rigging business and stop using us indies as pawns in its fights with publishers.

    +++ Are they trying to self publish books that are data hogs (Like a 10 book omnibus could be?). Or are they trying to publish a book they readily admit is specialized with a limited audience? +++

    Who cares? Not my business. Let us all out of Stalag $7 and we’ll find out what works for us. Amazon gets its cut.

    rick

    • @Todd and Rick, while an interesting debate, it doesn’t look like either of you are going to change each other’s minds. Unless there is another burning point one of you simply must make, can you end this? Thank you.

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