Amazon announced in January that it would introduce a new 70 percent royalty option to allow authors to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell using the Amazon Digital Text Platform.
Well, it’s the middle of the year, and it has finally launched, notes TechCrunch.
An $8.99 book would make an author $3.15 using the standard (35%) option, but $6.25 with the new 70 percent option. The original royalty remains 35%, but the cost of delivery is free.
The delivery costs are based on file size ($0.15/MB). Amazon claims today’s median DTP file size to be 368KB, which means delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. For blogs and other daily periodicals with lots of photos and graphics, delivery costs could add up, making the standard 35% royalty a better choice.
Each book sold from the Kindle Store for Kindle, Kindle DX, or one of the Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, PC, Mac and Android phones, authors and publishers now have the option to receive 70 percent of the list price (less delivery costs).
To qualify for the 70 percent royalty option, books must satisfy the following set of requirements:
- The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99.
- The list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest list price for the physical book.
- The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights.
- The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
- Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices.
In addition to the 70 percent royalty option, Amazon also announced improvements in DTP such as a more intuitive “Bookshelf” feature and a simplified two-step process for publishing.
The 70% royalty changes everything.
But who will ever be able to find your book in a sea of 1,000,000 titles? Without a publisher’s promotional help, won’t your book get lost?
The answer is an author’s social media app. It’s a free download and connects to:
- “Fan Wall” for multimedia chat
- “Author Appearances” for event listings
- “Fan Photos” and videos uploaded by fans
- Twitter Feed to stay up-to-date on the author’s Tweets
- Your WordPress Blog or Facebook page.
- Your e-Book (first chapter free)
Your free social media app promotes your book. Small Society has released WordPress for iPad. That’s everything you need.
Do the math – 5,000 times $7 is $35K.
The NY Magazine asks, is it The End for the book business as we know it?
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