E-book Pricing, Digital Sales & Amazon Breakout Novels

I’ve been digging around other people’s sites and taking in all the various opinions on the Macmillan / Amazon rumble. Amazon has – over the years – made a habit of applying predatory marketing techniques to most aspects of their business.  I have to applaud Apple and Macmillan for breaking that stranglehold somewhat, but on the other hand I have to say – WTF?

The big-boy publishers apparently have a different sort of Kindle arrangement than those of us in the independent world.  If Stephen King writes a book, Amazon pays a percentage (I’ve heard up to half) of the cover price of the print edition for the rights to publish a Kindle edition – then they price it no higher than $9.99.  This probably means a loss on Amazon’s part, but there’s method to their madness.  If they have the lowest price, people are going to buy from them.  If people buy from the Kindle store, they will be using Kindles – in many cases – and if they buy from Amazon long enough, they will drive the competition into hiding, or worse.  Sharks, in other words.

The problem with this entire mess is that neither the publisher nor Amazon needs to charge $14.99 or even $9.99 for an e-book.  The book is already designed, formatted, and saved.  The artist is paid, the author gets royalties based on sales…there is literally no financial lift left other than marketing to move e-books off of virtual shelves.

They can putter and shuffle all they want – the greed is deep green and ugly.  I can see the desire on the part of publishers to protect their sales on print editions by not undercutting the price too far…but that’s the only viable reason I can see for inflated e-book prices.  The profit margin is HUGE on a $14.99 e-book.

I’m not buying into it.  As long as I have some say in it, I’m keeping my books priced lower.  Original novels in e-book format I’ll price higher because they are new…and it’s the only format they are available in.  Older books, reprints, stories?  I’m going to be dropping my prices I think, and mine are already pretty low.

Authors Lee Goldberg and J. A. Konrath have put up some seriously eye-opening results on their blogs – showing off their Kindle store profits for the month of January.  It’s hard to argue with success.

On a different note, my novel “On the Third Day,” which you can buy in the Kindle store, or directly from the Macabre Ink Digital Site, or even over at The Horror Mall, has been entered into Amazon’s Breakout Novel Contest.  It is eligible since I self-published it.  I don’t know what kind of expectations to have – I don’t know the level of competition – but I am hoping to at least make a decent showing in the contest.

I’d love to hear opinions of the book if you purchase the electronic edition…

And wish me luck!

-DNW