You may have noticed some pretty major changes in Amazon’s Kindle Store over the last several weeks in terms of pricing. Specifically, the removal of discounts from many of the books – particularly those published by independent authors and publishers – while some books from major publishers have been receiving larger than normal discounts (including discounts to $0.00!).

For independent authors and publishers, this is a huge deal, because Amazon shoppers have become accustomed to seeing a discount on the titles they buy, and are much less likely to buy those that don’t have a discount. In some cases, Amazon has even raised the prices for books over what the publisher recommends for the title (in some cases, by a lot).

Now, I don’t begrudge Amazon making a profit, and the terms and conditions of publishing through their services allows them to price titles at whatever they like.

But for some folks this has had a huge negative impact on sales. In my case, for example, sales have slowed down since the discounts were removed from my books, and other authors have seen far more drastic changes in their sales. And I wanted to run a discount for the rest of this month, reducing the prices on In Her Name (Omnibus Edition) and In Her Name: Empire by quite a bit, but Amazon isn’t passing that on to the customers – at least not yet. The net result so far is that customers are still being asked to pay the previous full price for the books, but I’ll get less for any sales because I’m only going to make 35% of the reduced MSRP.

My point here is simply to help you, as a reader, understand that the authors and publishers aren’t trying to gouge you with some of the prices you may be seeing, but in many cases want to offer you a discounted price: we’re totally at the mercy of Amazon’s pricing policies. So please keep that in mind when looking at a book you think you might enjoy, and feel free to add your voice to those of us who have been complaining about this by contacting Amazon’s customer service department.

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