Brilliant insight Danny - thanks for sharing. You havent mentioned volumes - but I hope its a lot as A) its a good book and B) I hope you have got the rewards for your efforts
It seems unfair that an author receives so much less for an electronic version. readers already receive a huge discount. Why is the author's margin so low for electronics books? Who decides that?
How big is your e-book file size? I assume it contains one image per fact which makes the size of the file quite large. A 250 pages book with only text should be much smaller in size (i.e: low delivery cost), isn't?
If you decided to discount your paperback book/Kindle book, would any costs reduce (absolute amount)? I sometimes found some Kindle Books discounted to 0.99 or 1.99, I guess that they get subsidies from Amazon or their partners or suffer losses to attract new customers if their margin is only 20-30% as yours.
Thanks for sharing! I have always wondered about those numbers too! Net proceeds get a "bit" squeezed when adding the cost of advertising. Unless you reached enough branding/scale from word of mouth and are enjoying the network effects of organic exponential growth :)
For Kindle, do you know what the distinction between Delivery Cost and Distribution Fees are? They seem like the same thing in the case of a digital file being read on a Kindle device/app.
Definitely complexity for how KDP explains this to authors! You're not the only one who was confused at first take. Here's a help page that I don't recommend you read, but shows just how much an author is forced to comprehend in order to price their book: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500
Very interesting on the pricing breakdown - thank you! Curious on how the percentage changes if you're listed on Kindle Unlimited - from what I've heard, it comes from download volume?
How did you set the price for each edition? Was it based on similar titles, or were those price points suggested to you? If you adjusted the Kindle version's price upwards such that your margin was the same, how much would that disincentivize readers from buying it?
For print, I picked a price point that allowed me to have sufficient dollars of net proceeds per unit. This was my judgment, not based on comparable books.
For Kindle, there are two pricing options—where Amazon takes 30% or 65% of the sale. The max price for the 30% option is $9.99, so that drove my decision of $9.95 (I thought it sounded better).
This page https://www.authorimprints.com/amazon-kdp-royalty-pricing/ suggests that you would not pay any delivery fees if you priced slightly above $9.99. I don't know how accurate that is, but as delivery fees are currently 46%, it may be worth the 35% increase? Ignoring any potential loss of sales due to the price change.
Brilliant insight Danny - thanks for sharing. You havent mentioned volumes - but I hope its a lot as A) its a good book and B) I hope you have got the rewards for your efforts
It seems unfair that an author receives so much less for an electronic version. readers already receive a huge discount. Why is the author's margin so low for electronics books? Who decides that?
How big is your e-book file size? I assume it contains one image per fact which makes the size of the file quite large. A 250 pages book with only text should be much smaller in size (i.e: low delivery cost), isn't?
The e-book is 156 MB which is definitely large! The only text version would be 1/100th the size, I bet.
This is quite large indeed! I hope the delivery cost of a 1 mb e-book is much closer to $0
If you decided to discount your paperback book/Kindle book, would any costs reduce (absolute amount)? I sometimes found some Kindle Books discounted to 0.99 or 1.99, I guess that they get subsidies from Amazon or their partners or suffer losses to attract new customers if their margin is only 20-30% as yours.
Yes, costs would reduce but the margin would go down faster. The distribution fee is a percentage of the book's price.
Thanks for sharing! I have always wondered about those numbers too! Net proceeds get a "bit" squeezed when adding the cost of advertising. Unless you reached enough branding/scale from word of mouth and are enjoying the network effects of organic exponential growth :)
In my case, I did not use Amazon Advertising to promote the book. Helpful to have an email list and LinkedIn following with 50k+ folks :)
For Kindle, do you know what the distinction between Delivery Cost and Distribution Fees are? They seem like the same thing in the case of a digital file being read on a Kindle device/app.
Definitely complexity for how KDP explains this to authors! You're not the only one who was confused at first take. Here's a help page that I don't recommend you read, but shows just how much an author is forced to comprehend in order to price their book: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500
Very interesting on the pricing breakdown - thank you! Curious on how the percentage changes if you're listed on Kindle Unlimited - from what I've heard, it comes from download volume?
From KDP: "You'll receive a share of the KDP Select Global Fund as individual customers read pages of your eBook for the first time." https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201541130
Thanks!
How did you set the price for each edition? Was it based on similar titles, or were those price points suggested to you? If you adjusted the Kindle version's price upwards such that your margin was the same, how much would that disincentivize readers from buying it?
For print, I picked a price point that allowed me to have sufficient dollars of net proceeds per unit. This was my judgment, not based on comparable books.
For Kindle, there are two pricing options—where Amazon takes 30% or 65% of the sale. The max price for the 30% option is $9.99, so that drove my decision of $9.95 (I thought it sounded better).
This page https://www.authorimprints.com/amazon-kdp-royalty-pricing/ suggests that you would not pay any delivery fees if you priced slightly above $9.99. I don't know how accurate that is, but as delivery fees are currently 46%, it may be worth the 35% increase? Ignoring any potential loss of sales due to the price change.
Came here to ask this, very interesting. Always wondered how Kindle prices varied so much from print.
How do these margin %s compare to what you would receive at Barnes & Noble (both paper and ebook) and a local bookstore? Thanks!
I'm not sure! I didn't go through the process of listing the book at B&N or local bookstores.
That would be a helpful comparison for the future - thanks!