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Friday, May 25, 2012

Things I Thought I'd Never Do

I've gone to the dark side.

I was hoping it wouldn't happen. I was looking for a way around this problem. Like the twelve-ton fluffy pink elephant in the room it wouldn't go away. AMAZON - The Ultimate Evil.

Despite my public break-up with Amazon after accusations of abuse were bandied about, Amazon is still selling. Really? I guess Kindle is hard crack to quit. Especially with Barnes and Noble dragging their feet getting EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE up for sale. You can buy EVFIL in France, but not on Nook. Words fail me.

This created an awkward situation where my three published works (don't get excited - it's two short stories and a novella) weren't all in the same area. Worse, I have no bait on Amazon for the people who love free and cheap stories. No 99 cent anything. No free e-books luring customers into my devious trap.

I was in a situation where I was cutting my nose off to spite my face. Instead of offering Kindle readers the easy option and making my books readily available to read I was making them hunt my work down. That's a lousy marketing tactic. Customers don't want to jump through hoops to get a book. They want to read a book, and click a link, and read your next book.

So I spent a few days learning how to format for Kindle. I set up the Kindle editions of REAL LIES and SEVENTY so that they each had a blurb about EVFIL at the end. With any luck (and some nagging) REAL LIES will soon be free on Kindle. They are now on Amazon.

You know what? As guilty as I feel selling my work with the evil giant, EVFIL's sales rank had an uptick yesterday. People bought REAL LIES and SEVENTY, and then turned around and paid $2.99 for EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE. As a new author hoping to sell a second book, all of those sales matter. I need to prove to my publisher that I'm worth investing in, that they want to buy my next book and publish it.

If you want the books on Kindle you can get them now!
EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE
SEVENTY
REAL LIES ... and if you'd like to tell Amazon that REAL LIES is *free* on Nook that URL is HERE

As always, clicking the tags and agreeing is always nice. I love reviews, especially if you've picked the free copies up from the newsletter. If you aren't signed up for the newsletter yet the link is on the right side bar. - <3 Liana

5 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. At this point the REAL LIES blurb has a link to where users can download the Nook reading app for free and links to B&N, Kobo, and Diesel where RL is free.

      This teaches us two things...

      1) Amazon runs zero quality control and doesn't care what you post. This is scary on multiple levels.

      2)That Amazon really does not want to give away a book for free because they lose their 65% royalty.

      Off of each short story sold for 99cents, I get 35 cents. I have to sell four just to equal what I get from one sale of EVFIL. Meanwhile, Amazon makes 65 cents off every sale.

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  2. Hi Liana, I'M Back, Just got home from my writer's conference about 7 this morning. All I can say is that it was worth every penny of the money. It was $715 which included room, meals and conference. Really nice rooms. No TV,it is a Christian Writers Conference. I got an extra schedule I will send you so you can see how it is set up. Just send me a mailing address @ sclaus2u @hotmail.com I really had my doubts if it would be worth it, but it totally was. I thought the writer got 70% on Amazon?

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    Replies
    1. I'm so glad you had fun at the writer's conference!

      The 70% royalty rate for Amazon is between $1.99 and $4.99 I believe. If you're above or below that Amazon gives 30%. The math makes sense, a $1.99 book earns Amazon almost the same amount of money as the 99cent books do.

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  3. Are you really being snarky in the product description of your story because Amazon hasn't price-matched your ebook after a week? :P

    Expect that to take months, if it happens at all. They seem to be faster with books that have a lot of reviews and sales, so I'm not sure what to tell ya for something new. You probably already know, but Barnes & Noble doesn't allow you to list a book for free either, unless you go through the Smashwords backdoor, so it's not just Amazon being a pain about that.

    I do expect that someone will be along to ask you to remove those links (or they will simply un-publish the book for you). The publishing process seems to be automated (Conspiracy was listed under some non-fiction political category until I wrote, asking Amazon to change that), but I've heard of people being un-published and even having their KDP accounts deleted, so they must check things out eventually. Probably when you're doing well and it'll hurt to have everything disappear, heh.

    Also, $2.99-$9.99 is the 70% royalty window.

    Good luck!

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