KINDLE PRICING: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

In May, I wrote about Amazon's 70% royalty rate.

   To keep the 70% rate for my shortest and lowest-priced books, I was forced to increase the basic price from £2 to £2 and change.

   May feels like a million years ago. The pound strapped on concrete books and jumped off a cliff after that.

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The problem comes from setting the £ price to the $ price, inside the Amazon bookshelf.

   Set the $ cost there, and the prices in all other territories are calculated automatically. In a few cases, showing the price before and after Vampire Added Tax.

   I may be spelling that wrong.

   Once the price is set, is that it? On the bookshelf, yes. Over time, markets drift, and Amazon takes account of this. Looking at my cheapest books online, I see two listings...

   Inside the bookshelf, I spy the $ cost that grants me a 70% royalty rate. The price is fixed in chalk unless I take a damp cloth to it.

   Outside the bookshelf, on Amazon, the $ cost fluctuates. Once it drops below the $2.99 threshold, a book no longer operates at the 70% level. Fiddly.

   The solution is to take that punch to the jaw...or pass the cost onto the customers. I delay price increases as long as I can, of course.

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Pricing, pricing, pricing.

   A short work used to cost half the price of a long work. The short works kept hovering around the low borderline figure. In May, I had to muck around with the polarity, alter the coffee quotient, and belay mutiny.

   The easy solution is to take the cheaper works and boost the cost well above the irksome borderline, so that I don't keep seeing books slipping in and out of the changing royalty threshold.

   Upshot. I increased the cost of my books in May. And now I've done that again in October.

   Short works cost £3 after VAT, for those who pay VAT. Longer books cost £6...back to the exact doubled price of a short work, finally, and no fiddly spare change to worry over on this side of the Atlantic.

   I increased my omnibus collection from £5 to £7.50. If you buy all five stories separately, you are spending £15 - and the omnibus should always come in at half the total cost of the stories.

   No fiddly spare change to worry over, though, as transactions are electronic. ;)

   That leaves an unpublished project that's going out at a fiver. On top of that, there's the gerbil porn. I always charge maximum for the gerbil porn. It shot up £1. I was aghast.