Publishers Weekly, 1/20/2010 7:09:00 AM
Amazon’s newest shot to keep e-book prices low and to develop more original content is a new royalty program that will give authors and publishers who use the company’s self-publishing Kindle Digital Text Platform a much higher rate than standard royalties. Under the program, which goes into affect June 30, authors or publisher who choose the new 70% royalty option will receive 70% of list price, net of delivery costs on all e-books sold. The new option will be in addition to the existing DTP standard royalty option.
Delivery costs will be based on file size and Amazon said that new program will enable authors and publishers to make more money on the sale of e-books. In Amazon’s example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70% option. To qualify for the new rate, however, e-books must meet a set of requirements that includes carrying a price between $2.99 and $9.99, a price that must be at least 20% below the lowest physical list price for the physical book. The title must also be made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights, although at launch the option will be available only for books sold in the U.S. In addition, books must be offered at or below price parity with all competition, including print book prices. Amazon said it will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70% royalty will be calculated off the sales price.
1 comment:
What none of the news commentators on this press release seem to have mentioned is that the new royalty will be calculated from the sales price. There's no indication in the press release of whether the sales price is the same as the list price. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but any time that a distributor fails to use the words "list price," I tend to assume that they're talking about the discounted price of the book, just as I tend to assume that any publisher who doesn't specify that royalties are based on the retail price (i.e. list price) is probably offering its authors net royalties.
We'll see whether I'm right, or whether I'm being paranoid.
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