Amazon lowers its royalties ... naturally

They may have got their start selling books online, but that doesn’t mean Amazon have any love in their hard little algorithmically animated hearts for antediluvian scribblers. Kindlepreneur details the latest squeeze on defenceless authors…

If you sell paperback or hardcover books on Amazon KDP, this affects you. On June 10, Amazon lowered the royalty rate for certain print books. Specifically: Books priced at $9.98 or less (USD) now earn 50% royalties instead of 60%. (This applies to both paperback and hardcover formats — but not ebooks.)

So if your print books are priced under $9.99, you’re now earning less per sale. Not exactly great news... but it actually gets worse: Books that moved to the 50% royalty rate also have a higher minimum list price. If your current price falls below that new threshold, you could earn nothing at all per sale.

That’s not hyperbole either. Amazon spells it out: A “regular trim size paperback with 300 pages, black and white ink, sold on Amazon for $8.00” now earns zero royalties. That’s the bad news.

The good news? We’ve updated our KDP Royalty Calculator to reflect these changes, so you can check your pricing and avoid nasty surprises. If you haven’t run the numbers yet, now’s the time.

https://kindlepreneur.com/kdp-royalty-calculator/​

As always, we’ll keep you informed when Amazon changes the rules (and make sure you have the tools to respond).

When you’re pretty much the only game in town, there is not much restraining your behaviour… See First Mover theory — with Amazon as a case study.

Choosing Amazon Book Categories

Uploading your book to Kindle Direct Publishing / Amazon is the beginning of a process rather than the end. The next task is to optimise your metadata for visibility / search. Reedsy is offering a free course on the basics of Amazon advertising.

“In this article, we’ll reveal the importance of choosing the right categories and provide you some practical steps to perfectly place your book on Amazon’s bulging shelves. ”

— Reedsy

K-Lytics

If you are serious about optimising your online presence as an author, K-Lytics is worth checking out. Their site asks the following rhetorical question:

“Do you want to sell more books, face less competition, and achieve a higher return on your publishing investments?”

— K-Lytics

Their paid market reports burrow into the details of hundreds of genres and micro-genres. Seeing the maths underneath the book markets is a bit disconcerting, but in a world governed by algorithms and visibility, these insights are essential. The specificity of some of the genres and sub-genres is almost comic: Scottish Romance (what about Scottish Time Travelling Romance?); Cosy Mystery; Urban Fantasy, etc.

“You do not have to be afraid of numbers. We will help you to understand and use them to your advantage.”

— K-Lytics

Amazon KDP now printing in Australia

After years of printing in the US and shipping all the way to Oz, Amazon has finally opened a printery in Australia to service print on demand customers. This is very good news for independent authors, especially that subset who want to concentrate on Amazon. IngramSpark’s service has many pluses, but it interposes a layer between the author and Amazon, and costs a good deal more, particularly when authors wish to upload updated book files. With the new printing facility, Australian authors will finally be able to order author proofs and copies.

With the new printery, postage costs will be reduced and turnaround times improved. Here is the Amazon page addressing the topic.

Amazon/KDP Not Posting Discounted Print Copies to Australia....

An interesting thread about Amazon’s refusal to send discounted author copies to Australia. Naturally this policy is driving local authors into the arms of IngramSpark, Blurb or Lulu. As we have posted before, there is still a strong argument to be made for uploading to both services.