Amazon Kindle discussion

A year ago, Kindle was thick with tons of free books. There were so many .99 cent books you could fill up your kindle for a couple of twenties.

So what happened?

I didn't realise they were getting scarce. Maybe those were supposed to be taster freebies/cheapies and now all THOSE authors want to earn? Or earn more, depending on whether their stuff was cheap or free.

As an indie author, I've learned about the backside of Amazon:

Amazon is now charging authors for each free download and will only allow a free listing for certain account and account types!

At least that is the knowledge I have at this time. I hope someone else has found a loophole.

I stand corrected, Amazon isn't charging for the download, yet... the rumor mill seems to be a bit a head of it's self.

Are you looking for certain genre's or something more specific than just free or low priced books? I just did a quick search through ereaderiq.com and it came up with over 77,000 results listed between $0 and $0.99 and that is excluding public domain books.

Brandon wrote: "Are you looking for certain genre's or something more specific than just free or low priced books? I just did a quick search through ereaderiq.com and it came up with over 77,000 results listed b..."

So that's where kindle users are getting their low priced and free books!

At the site does is search amazon. They also have daily newsletter on free books most days there are 3 or 4 new free books.

Aahh, I see... I did the search and came up with a ton of .99 books and 3 that were .01 or less. So the free have gone, but many authors are still listing theirs at .99.

I'm considering listing Prophecy of the Flame for .99 cents but Amazons rules are so... well slanted.

If I drop the price below 2.99 then the commission changes from 70% of sales to 30% of sales.

With 100% of the proceeds going to a 501(c)3) charity to help homeless families, should I take that commission rate change just to list it for .99?

How many of you look at the price first and title second?

With so many books to choose from, you may make more sales at the lower price point, which could translate to more income for the charity in the end. Why not try it for a month and see what happens? But you'll need to promote the price change and so on, to make sure people know it's out there.

Amazon doesn't actually let authors list books for free. In order to get them listed as free, authors have to list them elsewhere as free and then get others to "report a lower price" on the book's sales page. Because Amazon won't be undercut, they then drop the price. I only just remembered that.

Anne-Mhairi wrote: "With so many books to choose from, you may make more sales at the lower price point, which could translate to more income for the charity in the end. Why not try it for a month and see what happens..."

Thanks Anne for the helpful info. I think I will try that as soon as my facebook page is pumped up enough to help out.

I'm concentrating on getting people to "LIKE" the page so that the MPAA won't refuse a rating for the Movie Project: 100% of the proceeds from that will go to the charity as well.

Edit: sorry, my bad. Deleted, and my apologies.

JAC

Lynn wrote: "As an indie author, I've learned about the backside of Amazon:

Amazon is now charging authors for each free download and will only allow a free listing for certain account and account types!

At ..."

I'm also an Indie Author and I had heard that Amazon was no longer allowing us to set a price of FREE but I hadn't heard that they were CHARGING US if the book ended up as free.

There is, in fact, a loophole. On a book's page, there's a link to "Found this for a lower price" somewhere else? You click it and tell Amazon where it's been listed for free and they are compelled to price-match (set it for free) too.

Some Indie Authors are deliberately doing this--uploading their book elsewhere, someplace that allows a price of FREE and then getting all their FB friends to click the link to tell Amazon about it--and I'm afraid the ramifications of trying to cheat the system will be Amazon getting even LESS friendly to Indie Authors.

As it is, Amazon treats us like we're NOT providing them with a revenue stream but like THEY are doing US a favor. It's a very nasty situation, especially given Amazon CLAIMS they want to get into the book publishing business (not just selling, PUBLISHING)

I'm a Smashwords author (Smasher) and I love it. I can distribute Kindle books without the rudeness or hassles of Amazon. I also have my book uploaded via KDP but I never give anyone the URL and despite not telling people it exists have sold a few copies a month there. I sell on Smashwords. I get 80% royalties (instead of 70%) and I get total control over my book (instead of Amazon deciding what I can and cannot do with *MY* book)

Plus, best part, Smashwords has a community of 20,000 authors who are supportive of each other, for the most part. I love the fact the Kindle has helped to explode the eBook market, but Amazon's attitude is the #1 reason you can't find free or cheap books as easily anymore.

I think the 99c price point also is a problem (they only pay 35% royalties on a 99c book so you get what 31c? And they're talking about charging an author for the FREE WhisperNet delivery to the Kindle...are you frakkin kidding me? NOT worth it)

The OTHER Sarah

Oh and please don't forget to check in this other thread in this group which I'll update weekly :

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/641825-freebie-friday-webbiegrrl-s-blog (Freebie Fridays at my Webbiegrrl's Writings Blog)

I'll always have at least 3 books you can get for free at that weekly blog. Since starting it in June (about 12 weeks ago) I have only included my own book once and after doing it once, I feel I don't want to include my work but prefer to make the blog about helping others - (a) READERS LIKE YOU WHO WANT FREE READS and (b) Indies just starting out need to get some readership established.

I don't review the books but have been thinking lately I should. Then again, some of them, I'd be hard pressed to find something nice to say and I really don't want to ever say something bad about a person's first book. That's not how you support or encourage a person to keep writing. My blog is supposed to be a platform for them to have a voice (and for you guys to get access to things Amazon won't hand out "free" anymore)

Lynn wrote: "As an indie author, I've learned about the backside of Amazon:

Amazon is now charging authors for each free download and will only allow a free listing for certain account and account types!

At ..."

I don't know where you got your information from about this but it's totally untrue.

My book was FREE, I had over 50,000 downloads for it, if Amazon had charged me I'd be pretty poor now. ;-)

Ah, glad someone's finally been able to refute that. Not having been in that situation I wasn't sure if it was true or not, although I suspected it wasn't. Glad to have it confirmed either way :D

Lynn wrote: As an indie author [...]
Amazon is now charging authors for each free download and will only allow a free listing for certain account and account" and

Then Mel replied: I don't know where you got your information from about this but it's totally untrue.

My book was FREE, I had over 50,000 downloads for it, if Amazon had charged me I'd be pretty poor now. ;-)

Oh, thank gawwwwd. I was shocked. This was the first time I'd heard of charges from Amazon to Indies for FREE books. THANK YOU Mel for replying to this!!


I know several Indie Authors who've used the loophole I described to beat the system of roadblocks Amazon now has in place to keep us from giving our books away if we feel like it. I'm not sure why they object to our sending users to their site. Even if ten download our free books and nothing else, another fifty probably download our free books AND something else (for money). Turning away potential revenue streams seems plain stupid. Then again, Amazon *IS* the #1 retailer in the world and I'm not so I'm probably wrong and they're right. I still think it's stupid (LOL)

Mel wrote: "Lynn wrote: "As an indie author, I've learned about the backside of Amazon:

Amazon is now charging authors for each free download and will only allow a free listing for certain account and account..."

I'm relieved to hear the rumor of charging for Whisper-net Downloads is untrue. I knew if I posted in the forum, I'd get the real scoop!

My pleasure guys.

Good luck with your books. ;-)

There's a LOT of free books that you can download for your Kindle on smashwords.com. When I exhaust the freebie page on Amazon, that's the place I go to fill up my Kindle.

Nathalia wrote: "There's a LOT of free books that you can download for your Kindle on smashwords.com. When I exhaust the freebie page on Amazon, that's the place I go to fill up my Kindle."

Nathalia, you can always get 3 (or sometimes more, like this week, 6) free reads off my Freebie Friday feature. Usually they are Smashwords books that are either priced as free or have a one-day-only coupon code on my blog post making it free for a day.

http://webbiegrrl.blogspot.com/2011/09/freebie-friday-2-sep-happy-laborday-usa.html

Some of those 6 do expire (go back to paid) after today so be sure to get 'em while you can! I run a new feature every Friday so if you subscribe to the blog, you'll get a note once the Freebie Friday feature is up. I like the Networked Blogs subsciption better than Google because the Networked Blogs one makes it show up on your Facebook newsfeed like the blog is a "friend" of yours.

Oh yeah, I never remember to say this: my blog's available for subscription on KindleBlogs too but Amazon insists on charging 99c a month for it.

http://www.amazon.com/Webbiegrrls-Wri...

Still that's only 25c a week for 4 Freebie Fridays and I post 4 times a week so it's really only 6c a post....but it's still not free. I dislike the principle of it. I'd be happy to have subscribers if it were free.

Speaking of Mel, I have news about a totally different "Mel the writer gal" :) Sorry Mel (of IBC)

Turns out Melanie Nilles's Starfire Angels is FREE on Amazon and Mel's (personally) running a promo on it offering to give away a FREE KINDLE OR NOOK to some lucky reader.

As noted in my Webbiegrrl blog Freebie Friday feature, she launched the Starfire Angels series a few years ago with this book and it's been a big hit ever since. She's had tens of thousands of sales (better than a lot of traditionally published books do!!) She wants to reach 150,000 sales by Christmas of this year. She's pretty close already.

Mel's offering to give away a FREE KINDLE OR NOOK to some lucky reader if her "sales" at the Amazon Kindle Store reach the 150k mark by December 25, 2011. Since Amazon counts it as a "sale" even though the price is $0.00 send all your friends to buy a copy. Amazon just counts unique users/customers who log in and put things through their shopping cart.

Mel's web site (http://www.melanienilles.com/) has details of how to enter to win the FREE KINDLE OR NOOK.

She also said she'll do the giveaway if she gets to #1 in the rankings but she has the book listed as World Literature / Mythology and it's totally a Science Fiction book so I'm a little surprised she's already up to #20 in the "wrong" category. It's just THAT good a book ! :)

Share this around and enter to win. Plus enjoy the great book while it's FREE. The price won't stay free forever *grin* but as far as I know, Mel's not changing the price anytime soon. She wants to get the book out into readers' hands. Once you start, though, fair warning, there are a LOT of books in this series and none of the rest of them are free *hee hee*

My publisher, Midnight Ink, has been running some summer ebook specials, where they'll give away the first book in a long series (at least 4 books), with the hopes that readers will be hooked and buy the rest of the books in the series. The latest is the first book in Deborah Sharp's humorous Mace Bauer mystery series: Mama Does Time

Here's the Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Mama-Does-Bauer...

Enjoy! I've met Deborah, and I can tell you that she's as funny in person as her books are.

This trend does seem to be dwindling, but I think it's because ebooks are becoming more popular, so authors want to make more off of them. Not that I blame them. I set my ebook at $2.99 because I'm proud of it and wanted to show that I was proud of it (99 cents seems to say "please buy me, I'm desperate"), but at the same time, I didn't want to make it expensive for my readers, either. I think this is a good price, because then the author is putting some integrity into their book, but I don't think I would go above that.

I concur.