“Portraits of Pretence” is gradually creeping out there… I have now received my personal order of fifty copies, and have sent out three for review. I have also, just now, delivered twelve to my local bookshop, as I thought it would be nice to give them a head-start before I publish on Amazon.
On their advice – the bookshop’s – I have increased the cover price of this book to £8.99. The other three remain at £7.99, but I had noticed that the price of other paperbacks has risen, and £8.99 is now very much the norm – with some fatties and large format paperbacks going for as much as £12.99. As part of the self-publishing plan is to look as normal as possible, I thought I should keep up with the pricing trend.
For those of you interested in the financial side of things, this extra pound makes quite a difference to me. If Amazon sells one of my paperbacks with a cover price of £7.99 (regardless of how much Amazon actually charges – the discounting is their business), I eventually receive a royalty of 61p – i.e. 7.6%. But if I stipulate a cover price of £8.99, my royalty jumps to £1.21, or 13.4%. Heavens, why haven’t I done this sooner? I’m not sure about going back and increasing the cover price of the first three, as when they were published – or certainly the first one at least – the standard cover price was £7.99. I wonder what publishing houses do about this.
Susan Grossey 