Update 9/19–the book is back up for sale on the Amazon US store. My apologies for any inconvenience.
There are a lot of shenanigans with Amazon.
Readers returning fully read books days or even weeks later that they won’t crack down on? Yep. Bullshit download fees based on the file size? Yep. Different royalty rates based on different countries of purchase that I can’t do anything about because they’re trying to force Kindle exclusivity? Yep. Selling pirated versions? Yes to that too.
I keep books there for reader convenience, even though realistically outside of new release months my sales are next to nothing. But additional shenanigans include a little clause that says they can sell a book at whatever price they want, I’ll get paid on that new price rather than the retail one I set, and there’s nothing I can do about it. (Well…the rep I’ve been dealing with tells me two contradictory stories about what I’ll get paid, but there are larger issues at play.)
This causes no end of headaches with price-matching when there’s a sale elsewhere–sometimes I have to fight for a week or more for them to restore the price. But sometimes it’s not a price match–sometimes they just…decide they’re going to discount a book.
Like Yampellec’s Idol in ebook.
It’s set at $5.99 USD. And that’s about as high as I think my very tiny market can bear; that is a huge book that was a lot of work. I think six bucks is pretty fair for the considerable amount of labour I put into it.
Amazon disagrees.
BTW the last time Amazon offered a bunch of my paperbacks drastically discounted like that, I didn’t get paid a dime–it didn’t even show up on my dashboard when people I knew bought them–so…yay for sales???
There is absolutely nothing I can do to get it fixed. Nothing. Begging and pleading and demanding don’t help.
If I only sell a couple of books a month, it shouldn’t matter, right? And it’s only a couple of bucks at the end of the day?
Well, other stores do price matching as well. Many years ago, when River was first out, B&N and Fictionwise got in some kind of price matching war and dropped the book down to like <$2 for MONTHS. Neither would restore the price because they said the book was on sale at the other place. It was a nightmare and I literally made pennies on all the sales.
It happens, it’s annoying as fuck, and I rely on this monthly to pay bills. Every dollar adds up and I don’t have patience for this bullshit.
The hope is that by unpublishing the book on Kindle and paperback (US only) for a few days, I’ll be able to republish with the regular price. I’m told that has worked in the past for others.
I have seen at least one reader making their way through the series on Kindle book by book the past week, and they’re due for this one soon. I am deeply sorry for any inconvenience, but this is the only recourse I have available to me. The few Kindle sales I do get are 90% US readers, so my sincerest apologies if you can’t find the book. I hope no one will decide to punish me for Amazon’s actions by stealing it elsewhere. It’s available at Payhip (save 30% this month with the coupon code BDAY30) in all formats, easily added to your Kindle, and with more of that money going to me directly. It is also still available at Kobo, iTunes, Nook, and everywhere else if you have apps for those stores.
If you want to wait for Kindle, please try again in a few days and hopefully it’ll be fixed.
Again, I’m sorry! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Writer of urban fantasy, thrillers/mysteries, and horror.
I’m sorry they put you through this garbage. On the bright side (small and belated as it is), this finally pushed me to switch my ebook buying to Kobo, and preordering Charon’s Gold was my inaugural purchase today.
Thank you for preordering! Kobo has been fantastic to me as a writer, at least thus far–always glad to see them doing more business.
From what I have figured out, the reason the Zon was= selling a copy of the paperback for $2 less than the printing cost and 1/3 of the retail price is because it was “used”. Now…I have questions about how so few copies that sold on Amazon US in print could have these supposed returns (two now that I know of), but there was an LPN RR sticker on the back and the copy was a little beat-up (I ordered it and sent it to my friend to check for me).
So if I’ve got this right, they were selling a “used” copy but listing it as NEW, dropping the price by 1/3, and then using that to justify dropping the ebook price. It’s WILD. I know of at least two print sales I was not paid for from six weeks ago so I have to go yell at them on Monday.