Ever wished paperbacks were as cheap as e-books? Amazon has discounted brand new copies of Shaman’s Blues to $4.23. If you were thinking of buying the e-book from them, please buy the paperback instead. Take a free trial of Prime and get free shipping. Snag a few copies as gifts. Tell friends about the sale. I have no idea how long this #discount will last. Amazon must be losing money on it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544708130
Are you confused? If you know me, you know I publish my books widely, read e-books on a Nook, and don’t promote Amazon. So why am I urging you to buy the paperback (and not the Kindle edition) from them, especially when their price is the same for both the e-book and the paperback?
Because …
Amazon’s rules allow them to lower the e-book royalty when they are price-matching another store (which is not the case) or matching their own price for the physical copy.
I normally would get $3.42 in royalties for the e-book, but they’re paying $2.90. At this unexciting 76-cent discount, the e-book is selling at the same rate it would at its normal $4.99 price, which means I’m earning less for the same number of sales, i.e. $52.00 less per hundred sales.
Perhaps they think this is a good strategy for them, because I sell a fair number of e-books on their site, but not many paperbacks. It’s not a good strategy for me. If I want to sell the e-book at a lower price, I’ll drop it to 99 cents for a week and promote it all over the place. $4.23 is not an incentivizing sort of price for an e-book.
But it’s a huge bargain for a paperback!
What would happen if hundreds of people ordered the $4.23 paperback? So far, Amazon is paying the full royalty on the paperback, $3.77 for the $4.23 book. The printing cost is $5.22. By their own choice, Amazon loses $4.76 for each paperback sale. If 100 people buy it at $4.23, Amazon will lose $476.00. Will they notice? If a thousand people buy it, they’ll lose a lot more. Will they put the price back to $14.99? If they do, their rules will require them to pay me the full royalty on the e-book.
If I get no results on their pricing, you’ll still get an inexpensive paperback copy of an award-winning mystery, and that’s a win. I hope you enjoy it.
Shaman’s Blues
The second Mae Martin psychic mystery
On the eve of her move to New Mexico, psychic and healer Mae Martin gets a double-edged going-away gift: beautiful music by a man who’s gone missing, and a request to find him. In her new home town, she quickly runs afoul of a questionable psychic who runs a health food restaurant. When Mae confronts her, the woman disappears—either to Santa Fe, or into another dimension. Now Mae has two missing persons on her hands. Finding them may prove easier than learning the truth about either or getting one of them, once found, to go away again.
The Mae Martin Series
No murder, just mystery. Every life hides a secret, and love is the deepest mystery of all.
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