Posts Tagged ‘BookSurge’
Holdouts for Kindle and Print Book Discounts on Amazon: Mobipocket and Lightning Source
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on August 5th, 2009
We don’t know why Amazon has stopped discounting books published by independent authors and publishers, but it has. If you look in the Kindle Store or the greater Amazon bookstore, you’ll see that those nice red discount prices have disappeared from a great many titles. We can speculate on why, but it’s just that: speculation. The real reasons are only going to be discussed in Amazon board meetings.
The bottom line is that all of us – authors, publishers, and readers – are at the mercy of whatever Amazon decides to do pricing-wise. I’m not saying Amazon is “bad,” as I’m sure they’re trying to do whatever is best for their bottom line. But the bottom line for you and me is that customers are being asked to pay higher prices for books that have often been very inexpensive to start with, and authors and publishers are making less money (and it wasn’t a lot to start with, in most cases).
Right now, the only two avenues to getting discount prices for Kindle and print for self- or small-press publishers and authors that I see are publishing through Mobipocket for distribution to the Kindle Store, and Lightning Source, Inc. (LSI) for print. It looks like Amazon has discontinued its discounts across the board on titles published through its own direct services, including the Digital Text Platform for Kindle, CreateSpace, and BookSurge. Curiously, Mobipocket is owned by Amazon, but titles published through them to the Kindle Store are still being discounted – hopefully that will continue.
The downside is that for Mobipocket-based sales for Kindle, sales are registered through Amazon’s Vendor Central, which is pretty clunky and doesn’t give an ongoing tally of sales – monthly reports only. And LSI is more expensive ($212, I believe, including an ISBN) to set up; but it has wider distribution – including B&N – and the author/publisher has control of the retailer discount.
As a consumer, a lot of that may not mean anything to you, so let me show you the difference in a way your pocketbook will clearly understand. For the Kindle, there are two versions of my novel In Her Name (Omnibus Edition) now available in the Kindle store. The one published through Amazon’s DTP is currently priced at $8.99 – with no discount. The version distributed from Mobipocket is now priced at $7.19, which is 20% off. As a consumer, which are you going to want to buy? And if you had a choice between two different books that had similar appeal and the same list price, but one is discounted 20%, which are you going to get? All things being equal, the cheaper one, of course!
So, the beat goes on. Or beating, whichever you prefer. But these are some things I thought that you should be aware of, whether you’re a consumer or author/publisher.
Amazon’s Digital Text Platform: Where’s Customer Support?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on February 5th, 2009
Let me be up front about something: I like Amazon. I’ve been an Amazon customer for years, and have done my share to help boost their profits.
But Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (or DTP), which is the mechanism for independent and small press publishers to get their books into the Amazon Kindle Store, has become an example of everything that the rest of Amazon isn’t. The only thing that truly amazes me is that it hasn’t gotten a lot more in the way of bad press and a class action lawsuit.
I’ve been using DTP for nearly a year now, having first published my novel In Her Name there early last year (2008). It was – and still is – beta software, meaning that it is full-featured but isn’t entirely stable, and beta users are generally expected to put up with bugs and help the developers refine the software into a stable, fully operational release.
I have no problem with that part – I’m used to dealing with buggy software (I’ll refrain from any comments on Microsoft Windows!). But what I do have a problem with is the near-total lack of technical support from the DTP staff. There are only two ways of – supposedly – contacting the developers and admins: one is on the DTP forums, the other is by email to dtp-feedback@amazon.com. If the staff routinely visited the forums or actually answered their emails, there wouldn’t be an issue. But they don’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Print On Demand Options, Part 4: Lightning Source
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 28th, 2009
Beyond just getting your book on Amazon, it’s now time to look at the bigger picture.
Amazon is a giant, but they aren’t the only game in town, by far. The other on-line (and storefront) biggie is Barnes & Noble, plus the other thousands of other “smaller” chains and independent bookstores out there.
If you decided to go with a traditional POD like Outskirts Press, their upper-tier plans offer distribution to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, and Baker & Taylor. Those last two are key, because they’re the big-boy distributors to thousands of booksellers. I want access to those distribution channels, but I can’t get there through Lulu or CreateSpace (and as I noted previously, the price model with traditional PODs won’t work for a book as long as mine). BookSurge is also not an option, in my opinion, because they don’t have a relationship with Ingram. I wonder if that could be because Ingram owns Lightning Source, which is BookSurge’s main competition. Hmmm…
And that brings us to the focus of this post: Lightning Source. Now, for those who don’t know, Lightning Source is one of the world’s largest – if not the largest – print on demand company (with operations in the U.S. and U.K.) that is used by most POD publishers – but not Amazon’s CreateSpace – to actually print the books. But they don’t offer the “author friendly” services of the traditional PODs or Lulu: if you want to go to Lightning Source as an independent author/publisher, you can, but they put up lots of caveats and warnings that this is not a venture for the faint of heart! Read the rest of this entry »
Print On Demand Options, Part 3: CreateSpace
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 24th, 2009
At first glance, CreateSpace has a lot of similarities to Lulu: it’s pretty user friendly, the author uploads his/her own files, and so on. They don’t offer extra services like Lulu does, however: if you need those (file formatting, etc.) they direct you to Amazon’s BookSurge. Why? Because CreateSpace is an Amazon company, as well! In fact, they share the same printer facilities.
So, what does CreateSpace do for you? In short, if you go through them you can – theoretically – get your book onto Amazon at a lower price point than you probably could otherwise. Let’s take a look:
CreateSpace has two plans, basic (no up front fee) and Pro, which is currently $39. If you’re at all serious about marketing your book, for heaven’s sake pay the fee and go Pro! For one thing, if you’re being smart about your publishing efforts you’re doing it as a business entity so you can write the costs off on your taxes. For another, you don’t have to sell tons of copies to recoup that cost. But the difference it makes in the royalty you earn is huge. Read the rest of this entry »
Print On Demand Options, Part 1: Traditional PODs
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 20th, 2009
There are lots of paths to get your book printed, so you have to sort out what your goals are, then take a look at the tradeoffs in your particular situation. For me, my primary goals were to get In Her Name 1) onto Amazon, 2) into Barnes & Noble (preferably both on-line and in the brick and mortar stores), and 3) available for distribution to booksellers everywhere, which means distribution via Ingram and Baker & Taylor.
One of the available options for Print on Demand (POD) is what I’m going to call a “Pay-for-POD” company like Outskirts Press, which is my personal favorite in the features-for-price matrix. They offer a number of packages, ranging from $199 to $999, that have different services to help you get your book into print and distribution. So once you pay the package fee and get your book out there, you can start earning royalties.
For a short book, this might not be a bad option, assuming you wanted/needed the services that the packages offer. But for me, the economic model doesn’t work very well. Using the Outskirts Press calculator (and the other PODs are similar, or even more pricey), consider that for my book in trade paperback (6″x9″) format at 678 pages, the unit price for the $999 package with a discount of 20% and royalty of 20% comes to $23.95; for the $399 package it would be $26.95. My royalty would be $4.79 and $5.39, respectively.
“Well, hey, that’s not so bad!” you say. But consider this: with a retailer discount of only 20%, the only place that might consider picking up the book is Barnes & Noble and Amazon! No brick and mortar store is going to pick it up at such a short discount (they expect at least 40%). And even Barnes & Noble won’t be able to discount it much to their buyers; it would likely sell at full price, and most folks aren”t going to pay $23.95 for a novel, even one as good as In Her Name (Okay, okay! Shameless self-promotion! Big grin!). Read the rest of this entry »
