Book Sales
If you live outside the US or UK, I'm sure it's frustrating to see an author advertising a 99 cent sale with the caveat “US and UK only.” Believe me, as an author, I find this frustrating as well. The reason is based in Amazon's strange royalties scheme.
To start with, Amazon offers two royalty options: 35% and 70%. Why would anyone choose to earn half as much on their book? Because the 70% royalty only applies to books priced between $2.99 and $9.99. So if you price your book higher or lower, you only earn 35%. In addition, certain countries are only on the 35% plan. And books in the 70% option are charged a delivery fee. So if your book is big (think pictures) it will cost more. The fees are subtracted before the royalty is calculated, so sometimes you'll make more in the 35% option with no delivery fee. If you want to really get into the weeds on all of this, Amazon's pages explain it in detail.
Now, if your book is in Kindle Unlimited, you can use Kindle Countdown Deals once per quarter. This allows authors to reduce the price on a book below that $2.99 threshold (in the US or UK) for up to 7 days while still earning 70%. On a 99 cent book with a 14 cent delivery fee (pretty standard for a box set) this means earning 59.5 cents per copy vs 34 cents.
It might seem odd that we're quibbling over 25.5 cents, but if you sell a hundred books, that's $25.
If I set a KCD on my book in the US and UK, then lower my price in other countries below the threshold, Amazon pays 35% ON ALL SALES. Even the KCD sales. This is why most authors only run their sales in the US and UK.
If I'm on the ball, I can set a sale price for readers outside the US and UK, but it has to be done manually (and reset to normal manually) and it's not as good a deal. I'm sorry it's not 99 cents, but it's still better than full price. Here's the sale plan:
US: 99c
UK: 99p
Europe: 2.69 Euro
Canada: 2.99 CAD
Australia: 3.99 AUD
Like I said, still a pretty decent savings.
So why not sell books directly to you? (Like I do at launch time.) Because Kindle Unlimited requires exclusivity. And since a lot of my readers get their books in KU, I'm not ready to pull the plug on that.
If you have an idea how I can make sales more equitable, let me know!
