35% vs 70% Royalty on Amazon?

CoffeeBlack · Aug 18, 2012

So, what do people think of the 35% vs 70% Royalty on Amazon? I am not sure which rate to choose for my book. I will probably charge $3.99 or $4.99 for the ebook and more for the paperback.

Thanks in advance for any feedback and advice folks have.

thothguard51 · Aug 18, 2012

Bare in mind, Amazon e-book buyers, tend to look for low prices unless you already have a built in audience waiting for you books.

As an experiment, search Amazon for e-books and count the competition for the top 200. Break down the prices and you might get a feel for where things are.

70% royalty is great if you are selling thousands of books a month. Not so great if you only sell 50 a month. Yet, some writers claim that by lowering their price so they get the 35% royalty instead, helps them to sell more.

Lastly, I offer this. I don't care what price you set, if the editing is suspect, I won't buy. I have bought too many of the free and 99 cent specials and ended up deleting them from my library because of the lack of editing. And I am hearing more and more from readers they feel the same way. They bypass the 99 cent specials because the books just do not hold up to their standards.

Just something to think on...

CoffeeBlack · Aug 18, 2012

thothguard51 said:
Bare in mind, Amazon e-book buyers, tend to look for low prices unless you already have a built in audience waiting for you books.

As an experiment, search Amazon for e-books and count the competition for the top 200. Break down the prices and you might get a feel for where things are.

70% royalty is great if you are selling thousands of books a month. Not so great if you only sell 50 a month. Yet, some writers claim that by lowering their price so they get the 35% royalty instead, helps them to sell more.

Lastly, I offer this. I don't care what price you set, if the editing is suspect, I won't buy. I have bought too many of the free and 99 cent specials and ended up deleting them from my library because of the lack of editing. And I am hearing more and more from readers they feel the same way. They bypass the 99 cent specials because the books just do not hold up to their standards.

Just something to think on...

Thanks for your quick response. The editing is very, very solid. I had 7-8 editors working on the book. I just wasn't sure of the pitfalls of taking the higher royalty rate.

Wesley Kang · Aug 22, 2012

35% is for books under $2.99 and over $9.99. In your price range ($3.99-$4.99), the royalty rate would be 70%. There are no "pitfalls" for 70% at those offered prices .

merrihiatt · Aug 22, 2012

Wesley Kang said:
35% is for books under $2.99 and over $9.99. In your price range ($3.99-$4.99), the royalty rate would be 70%. There are no "pitfalls" for 70% at those offered prices .

The only pitfall I'm aware of is if your file size is large due to having a lot of photos/images. The 35% royalty rate does not have a $.05 to .10 cent transfer fee like the 70% royalty has. Also, if you are trying to get Amazon to price match a title, the royalty rate should be 35%.

J. Tanner · Aug 23, 2012

The other possible (but very rarely reported) pitfall is that if Amazon for some reason discounts your book steeply you get 70% of the discounted price where the 35% option is a percentage of the list price regardless of any Amazon discounting. So basically, if the put it at more than 50% off for some reason you'd be out some royalties. (Generally, if they do something along those lines it's because you've lucked into some incredible free marketing from Amazon and you should be thanking your lucky stars and getting a lot of sales in exchange for the discount, but there are a very small number of reports where authors were not so lucky, or not happy with the discounting.)

My opinion--if the 70% option is available at your desired price, take it without reservation.

AnneGlynn · Aug 23, 2012

thothguard51 said:
70% royalty is great if you are selling thousands of books a month. Not so great if you only sell 50 a month.

I wish I was selling 50 copies a month of any of my titles. But if I had a novella priced at $2.99 or higher, I'd definitely go for the 70% royalty.

Katie Elle · Aug 24, 2012

IMHO the only reason to choose the 35% royalty is if you're doing a loss leader at 99 cents to sell the rest of your catalog. If you want to price an ebook higher, you actually make less profit on a $15.99 ebook at 35% than you do on a $9.99 at 70%.

JoyceH · Nov 18, 2012

The 35% versus 70% just baffles me, frankly. I don't understand why the difference. I have two mysteries, the first priced at .99, and the second at 2.99. I sometimes think about dropping the second book to .99, because it doesn't sell as well as the first - but the lower sales still wind up with higher royalties. (Of course, I'm selling so few books on Amazon, it doesn't much matter. If it weren't for my Barnes and Noble sales, I'd think maybe the books just suck.)

jmascia · Dec 6, 2012

Joyce,

Have to agree. When I started the epublishing, my Amazon sales were awesome. But since the beginning of the summer, my sales have plummeted on Amazon, while they've nearly doubled on B&N.

That being said, I do mostly short stories as ebooks, because my novels are published through an actual publisher. I sell my stories for .99 cents and they sell really well. Unfortunately, I'm only making .35 cents per copy sold, which means I need to sell 3 books just to make $1. I still end up making a few hundred off of Amazon at the end of the month, but that's nothing compared to the couple thousand I'm getting from B&N.

However, whenever I've put any books up above .99 cents, I've seen the sales drop so low, I couldn't possibly hope to survive off them. So, I still with the 35% royalty.

Bookmama · Dec 6, 2012

AnneGlynn said:
I wish I was selling 50 copies a month of any of my titles.

I'm with you, Anne. 50 copies (paid, not on a free day) in a month would be a new high for my titles as well. Maybe next month

Trevor Z · Dec 6, 2012

I might be derailing the thread a bit here, but is there a reason some books sell much better at B&N? Is the market less swamped, or is there something in the site mechanics that promote the books more effectively? Something else entirely?

Just curious.

35% vs 70% Royalty on Amazon?

CoffeeBlack

thothguard51

A Gentleman of a refined age...

CoffeeBlack

Wesley Kang

the Light of Dawn

merrihiatt

Writing! Writing! Writing!

J. Tanner

AnneGlynn

If you don't try, you can't fail

Katie Elle

JoyceH

jmascia

Bookmama

Trevor Z

Learning About New Fish