Mike Fook Books – Ebooks | Fiction Thrillers | WTF

There has been talk on some tech sites and forums about some variables showing up in code behind the scenes of Amazon’s online Kindle application.

“Prime eBooks” started showing up recently.

What is it?

Sounds like an ebook subscription service Amazon is going to make available to readers that like to buy lots of books. Maybe they could buy or rent 50 ebooks for $99, or something absurd like that.

How would that affect authors?

That’s my big question. If Amazon decides to take a hit – and eats the cost – great. I’m all for it, I guess. It would make a great gift for the holidays.

Would it be a low-cost subscription service where buyers bought books – or were just able to read them on loan until they were done – given a week or something, and then they must be virtually “returned”?

If a buyer pays $99 to subscribe and chooses a Mike Fook book to read, reads it in a week and returns it – then what?

If he wanted to read it again later, as part of the subscription plan again, and with a time limitation – could he? Or, would he need to buy it the next time?

My fear is that Amazon is going to offer these subscription services and then pay authors less for books taken through the program – rented or bought outright. My own idea is that those that buy a lot of my books – are giving me a nice chunk of money because there is no special on Amazon for buying multiple books. On ThailandeBooks.com I offer a buy two, get 1 and a buy 3, get 2 deal but I’m still doing OK for profit there.

Anyone have a good idea how Amazon might play this?

New Amazon Kindle Fire Color Multitouch Tablet – eReader:

New Amazon Kindle Touch eReader:

New Amazon Kindle eReader:

Books for Sale at Amazon – 13

Titles of books selling at Amazon consistently? 5 of them.

Most of my books have been lowered to $2.99 at Amazon and on my other ebook sites (my own). One book I left at $4.99, another is stuck at $9.99 despite my asking repeatedly for DTP support to help me by setting the price at what I entered for it – $2.99. It is selling well in spite of the higher price, but my goal is to sell more books, not less at higher prices.

Sales at Amazon so far in 10 days – 34 books

Sales at our other ebook sites in 10 days – 22 books

Sales are not killing it – as you can plainly see. I’m just a newbie writer as far as ebooks go, so I’m going through a learning curve about what niche to write in. The books I have now are focused on very small niches with limited buyers. However, I’m owning those niches, or, will be shortly based on the numbers of books I’m selling and the rank that keeps getting better.

My next book is – “Kicking Life’s Ass!”

Sadly, I had virtually no sales with “Kicking Smoking’s Ass!” and “Kicking Fat’s Ass!” so I’m not all that excited about Kicking Life’s Ass! as a title. Are those getting filtered out by everyone that doesn’t approve seeing all books with adult words in the title  or content? Do you know?

I’ll have to check. That would explain it. So would my lame covers. I’ll have to experiment and see what I can do with those books. I’m guessing that the competition is just too great in those niches. I’d probably be better off to make them free for a while and get some “sales”.

The latest figure I saw for books at Amazon Kindle is – 700,000 ebooks. That is nothing in the big picture, and if you want to get in while the getting is good – write a book quick and publish it at dtp.amazon.com. It’s free, and the worst that could happen is that someone buys your book by accident, right?

Plus you’ll learn a lot about what works as far as covers, description, price, topic, etc.

Quit reading about writing, and write! Get your first book in the Kindle store and let me know!

Cheers,

MF

You have to opt-in, but still – it’s a meaningful change to a system that I was convinced, sucked through and through.

As near as I can figure they are now charging authors, publishers for the distribution digitally of their books. My books are all well compressed using MS Word’s image compression function so most of my books are in the 1-3MB range. This costs only about 40 cents to send to buyers that want to view the ebooks on their Kindle ebook readers.

When you opt-in into the program you have to go through the waiting process AGAIN to have your book clear. Even if you make no other edits to your books.

Maybe I’m missing something, but, when it asks if you want to make 35% commission or 70% – and it shows you a calculator below the price you chose for your book – and you can see exactly the difference… is that a no-brainer?

There is a chance I’m missing something here… please, someone enlighten me if you “get it” and I don’t.

Cheers…

Here are some problems with selling your digital ebooks on Amazon (dtp.amazon.com):

1. You don’t know who bought your book. You won’t have the slightest idea, they don’t pass that information on to you.

2. You don’t know who sold your books. Amazon works with some partners that, when they sell a book – take a cut off the proceeds too. So, with a $10 ebook you might make $3.xx or $5.xx if Amazon sells it themselves. You’ll never know for sure who sold it though – they don’t pass that information to you.

3. Very high return rate. In the last week I’ve sold 9 ebooks through the DTP Amazon program. 2 books were returned. That’s significantly higher than any other channel I sell my ebooks at. I might get one return out of 70 books, not 1 out of 4.5.

March 2010 – 1/6 refunded.
February 2010 – 1/4 refunded.
January 2010 – 1/4 refunded.

Those are some horrible stats.

What’s wrong? You’ll never know because you get squat for information. Did the customer not know how to read a PDF? Did they order the wrong format and didn’t know how to read it? Or, did they buy it, rename it and are reselling it through other channels?

It seems, upon first glance that selling your book on Amazon is really cool – and you’ll make much more money… it’s also taking the ball out of your court and giving someone control of a lot more than selling. They keep the leads… What are you building with a process like that? Not an email list. Not a customer list at all…

What to do?