Another Amazon atrocity…
Most readers who visit this website and especially this writer’s blog know that I’ve been boycotting Amazon KDP (“Kindle Direct Publishing”) services for a while. No recent books have been published by KDP or even appeared for sale on Amazon. In general, Amazon is not an author’s friend—far from being one; in my case, its abuses and atrocities have led to my complete boycott. (My latest books have been released by Draft2Digital and not distributed to Amazon as a retailer.) The atrocities have been committed by the big bot Bezos and his inept little bot buddies working like an evil Santa Claus and his evil elven helpers.
Here’s the latest atrocity, and it can affect most authors: I once used KDP (originally called Create Space), the Amazon POD service, for my trade paperback versions. I don’t have many. (I no longer publish them, because they kill forests. Don’t like that as a reader? Tough!) POD or “Print On Demand” means that Amazon prints them as orders come in. Now Amazon’s evil bots have decided to charge more for the printing. They offer two options to authors, neither one good.
First option: We authors can increase the prices of our print versions to cover the extra printing costs. Second option: We can cover those extra printing costs by receiving fewer royalties.
The first option is a non-starter: I won’t raise my prices! I chose the lowest price possible originally allowed by Create Space (later KDP) to make my print versions’ prices more attractive for readers than anything offered by traditional publishers, including the Big Five’s overpriced trade paperbacks. This motivation was especially strong for A. B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries, The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games, designed for young-adult audiences (adults who are young-at-heart seem to enjoy these books as well). The print version of each novel is priced at $8.99. This is low enough that a young-adult reader can even purchase the book by themself. Raising that price diminishes that option.
So, my only possible option is the second, and I’m willing to take that hit for my readers. I will get fewer royalties and have the satisfaction that my readers and I have stuck our thumbs in Bezos’s greedy eye, but I’ll certainly tell everyone I can that this egregious action taken by Amazon is more proof that this publisher-retailer is far from being an author’s friend and never the friend of the consumer. Pox on Bezos’s house!
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Sci-fi mysteries for young adults. The three novels, The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games, all take place in my usual sci-fi universe, the same one created in the Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, Rogue Planet, and Dr. Carlos stories. Whether in ebook or print format, they’re set at different times in the future, and they’re ideal additions to your young adult’s summer reading list and school-year book reports. Give your tweens and teens some exciting sci-fi reading that will stretch their imaginations.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
