Unless you've been living under a rock or don't shop online, you must know that Amazon is one of the biggest online books retailers. That claim has been bolstered by sales of Kindle eBooks. Amazon offers traditional publishers the means to promote their books to the wide-ranging community of readers, by allowing them the ability to set the price to $0.00. I've seen several popular authors do this and it's led to a boost in their ranking and sales of their backlists. I love it as an reader, because it's allowed me to download eBooks from some of my favorite authors and avoid paying the high prices their publishers normally charge, typically $9.99 and above. I've done the Kindle eBook upload myself and firmly believe there is no reason an eBook should cost that much. Yes, I have refused to buy eBooks that are that expensive and will continue to do so until cheaper becomes the standard.
Sadly, this great promotion opportunity doesn't apply to self-published authors like me. Did you know that self-pubbed authors have a minimum price of $0.99 set for their Kindle versions? I learned this yesterday and JA Konrath has also confirmed via his blog. If you know me, you must already be guessing at what I think of this policy from a company that allows self-publishers to get their work out there, but won't allow them to compete and promote along the same terms that the "big boys" do. You're probably waiting for some angry post about how unfair this is. Wait for it....
Ha-ha, fooled you! There are days I get up on my soapbox about the injustices of the publishing world. This isn't one of them. ‘Nuff said.
In other promotional news, I'm giving away FIVE FREE Kindle copies of On Falcon's Wings at LibraryThing, now through March 17. If you're interested, you need to be: a LibraryThing user and have a Kindle device OR any of the applications that allow you to read Kindle books.
1 comment:
i don't know if self-pubs will ever have it easy.
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