Comments on: Amazon increases royalties on low cost ebooks to 70%

By: Rob Preece, Publisher

Rob Preece, Publisher — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:47:03 +0000

I wonder if this option will be available to those publishers (like BooksForABuck.com) who currently submit to the Kindle store through Mobipocket. It would be inconvenient to have to use the DTP platform when Mobipocket works pretty well. On the other hand, both my authors and I would prefer 70% to 50% and my books certainly fall into the $2.99-$9.99 range with paper prices at least 20% higher.

So, I’m excited. Thanks for posting this.

Rob Preece
Publisher

By: Paula B.

Paula B. — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:22:34 +0000

Are you talking about publishers who use the Amazon Advantage program?

By: Frode Aleksandersen

Frode Aleksandersen — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:57:30 +0000

This is only for those who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform – regular publishers/distributors who sell ebooks can set their own wholesale prices just like normal (and also get much better rates).

http://dtp.amazon.com/

By: Paula B.

Paula B. — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:16:27 +0000

Before you get too excited, consider that this only applies to books that also come in physical form. Mine don’t. I’m not happy about this. I’m sure there are many others like me.

Unless I’m reading the release wrong, of course, in which case I’m thrilled!

By: pond

pond — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:05:31 +0000

I like the notion of a nominal fee on the reader for downloads. Something similar to the document conversion fees Amazon charges. It would encourage wifi and web downloads over wireless. I’m guessing that Amazon is at least considering wifi in future Kindles, along with the next-gen features such as color e-paper, Pixel Qi screens, and so on, in addition to Kindle for PC, Kindle for Mac, Kindle app on iPhone and Android and Windows Mobile 7, etc.

One concern I saw noted in the forum at MobileRead was the wish that this would not discourage publishers from including lots of graphics and illustrations. It also highly encourages the use of native Kindle formats over selling PDFs (to Kindle DX et al).

It seems clear that Amazon is really in this market and will do whatever it takes to remain a big competitor. And we can only hope that Apple, or Scribd, or B&N, or somebody else sticks in with them, and continues to provide competition.

By: Paul Durrant

Paul Durrant — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:02:06 +0000

This is excellent news. It’s a shame it’s not available immediately, I’m guessing they’ve had to announce it sooner than they originally intended.

I think Amazon need to re-think their wireless delivery pricing. At the moment, customers get unlimited wireless downloads in their own country.

In the US, Amazon has absorbed this cost, which they could easily do on 65% margin. Outside the US, Amazon is currently charging a one-off $2 fee added to the price of every ebook.

Moving to 30/70 (net delivery charges), Amazon are effectively asking publishers to pay for the delivery charges in the US. I can’t imagine what they’re going to do when/if they roll 70% out to books sold outside the US.

I can only imagine that Amazon thought that wireless data charges would fall a lot faster than they have done so far. If they don’t start to fall soon, I think Amazon will have to move to a charging structure where the customer gets charged explicitly for each wireless download, instead of absorbing it or adding it silently to the ebook price.