Paperback time! (…the sequel)

The great Amazon has since a few years problems delivering print-on-demand paperback books within Europe. Sure I can order a paperback to my summerplace in Spain with no problems and delivered within days. But getting one out to Sweden, where I live, is not possible for the great Amazon. Mid 2022, they still blame it on Covid…

So I struck deals with two publishers, Amazon.com for the North American market and BreaveNewBooks.nl for the European markets. The content of BraveNewBooks is forwarded to other large bookshops such as bol.com.

Check out all of my books here.

What about the prices?

If you visit both sites, you’ll probably wonder about the difference in pricing. So was I, but the simple explanation is taxes. Where we in Europe are accustomed to paying our fair share and anything being taxed, this is lesser the case in the US. I do not know about Canada but the US goes by the ‘Me for myself’ rule, whereas the Europeans stick to the ‘All together now’ rule. I’ve written about this phenomenon in the past, just search this site and you’ll find the article.

Just to make myself clear, I am all for the European rule and would not want to trade for the US ideology. I do not believe in folks needing to work several jobs just in order to get by, day by day, just surviving. Nor do I believe in not being able to afford the Insulin they need for their Diabetes because the less than $1 shot is sold for $100 a pop in the US. Compare the prices for US versus any other country, and remember that each company in all of these countries still makes a profit, only in the US a larger profit is always better than a profit. The cases mentioned here, and there are infinitely more, point at a failure in the system. A failure that could easily be addressed by Congress if only the lawmakers there would behave and work together instead of working against each other.

Dang, now this turned all political again, sorry about that, won’t promise it will not happen again though. Anyways, now you know where my books are, in Ebook or Paperback format, and where you can order them.

Yeah, but what about my prices?

I set the prices of my Ebooks and Paperbacks to the simple rule that I am not giving them away for free. But I do still have my daytime job so I do not have to live off them either. Within any site for publishing a book, you will eventually end up setting a price. The site is kind enough to not only let me see the price, but it also calculates and shows what will be my share. Rest assured that most of the money goes to the webshop, not to me. The author gets just enough to make him or her stay and not run for another publisher.

So, I set a price, and check what the revenue (or royalty) per sold item will be, then I adjust the price until the revenue seems reasonable to me. That’s gonna be the price I’ll aim for in the webshop.

That said, the next thing I do is to see if the price still seems reasonable within the webshop. If it does, then I’m done and I’ll click the Ok button to confirm. But if my price seems rather high compared to similar books in the webshop, then I’ll adjust my price ever so slightly but still without giving them away for free (remember the US insulin proces?). In the end, I still want you to read my books, not just have them out there on display.

Next books:

As I mentioned before, my next book, The Deep is about to be released and my work on a short story is nearly done, so keep your eyes peeled for that too. The short story recently changed its title from ‘The Shot’  to ‘The Big Day – A deadline thriller‘. Keep your eyes peeled!

Paul
2022-07

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