Tricksy Amazon: The Real Amazon Royalty

 Amazon advertises a high royalty rate--up to 60%--on its print books. But have you ever looked at the price you put in and then looked at the calculated price you will be getting and scratched your head? 

Even a person who has basic math skills can figure out they are not getting the promised percentage. The trick is that Amazon deducts printing costs AFTER figuring out your royalties. So, if you sell a book for $8.99 and they give you a 50% royalty rate but the book costs $3.28 to print, the deduction comes out of your "royalties."

$8.99 x 50% = $4.495  - $3.28  = $1.215 

Now, Amazon is kind in that they will actually give you $1.22 because of rounding. That, as you might realize is nowhere near the $4.495 on the list price. 

Normally, the printing cost would be taken out first since the rest is the profit:

$8.99  -  $3.28  = $5.71 x 50%  = $2.855

However, Amazon can do whatever it wants because it is offering authors a way to get their books printed and distributed without the approval of a publishing house. It also isn't technically charging you anything to do it like vanity presses would. 

Still, it is important for you to know just how much you are making when you set prices. In the above case, it would be 13.6% of the set price or 21.4% of the net price after printing costs. This can make it difficult for two reasons. First, when you are deciding on book prices, you need to be competitive while making a profit. In some cases, the way of calculating the profit for you is difficult to calculate. The percent you earn is not stable and changes based on the price of your book. 

It is also devious. You are not getting a true 50% royalty. A "royalty" is a percent of the sale or a per sale flat rate given to an author for the use of their material. Here, Amazon sells your material, but it does not pay you a 50% rate based on the list price or on the net income from the sale. In actuality, Amazon charges you 50% of your book's list price as a sort of undisclosed "listing fee." It then charges you printing costs out of what is left. You are technically paying them to be your vanity press on a per book basis. 

The second problem with this is that you are not going to find many traditional book publishers who will negotiate a 50% royalty rate. If you are approached by a traditional publisher who is offering 25% royalties, you might balk because Amazon is "giving you 40-60%." In actuality, you would be making more money with the traditional publisher. (Don't get scammed--the only reason a traditional publisher would contact you about your already self-published book is if your book goes viral. If you aren't already making a good chunk of change and someone approaches you, read the fine print--they probably just want you to pay them money for something.) There are some people, however, who might be trying to go the traditional route and who get an offer for their book. If they have considered self-publishing on Amazon, they could think it makes them more money when it does not. 

Obviously, I use Amazon to publish my books, and I have recently started using IngramSpark. In my opinion, Amazon has the better deal, but I haven't used IngramSpark enough to make a final decision. A lot more goes into what a print-on-demand company has to offer than just printed books. For example, do your books get more sales because their marketing plans work better? Amazon is meh about free advertising in my opinion. You have to get a boatload of reviews before you will even start ranking in their lists. However, despite the huge chunk of change Amazon charges and the little you get in return for it, I like the freedom of printing my own stuff. 

Why AI Sucks and People Who Argue Are Trying to Sell Something

 About fifteen years ago, there were videos all over YouTube, websites, and advertisements promoting that you could get rich quick by hiring a freelancer to write your book(s) and then publishing them on Amazon or other platforms. Like any get-rich-quick scheme, these were bologna. Good freelancers cost money that most people couldn't afford to invest. If they did, they would soon discover that they then needed to come up with the money and time to market the book. This can cost four to five times as much as getting the book published. 

Now, all those get-rich-quick schemes have rebooted with AI in the place of freelancers--after all, you can use AI for free all over the web. In addition to the plagiarism problems that also happen with freelancers, you now have serious issues with the quality of AI writing. It's garbage. 

I came across an ad today talking about how it is the person's problem and not the AI's fault if the AI gives you garbage. This is another big fat lie. Obviously, the ad said, you aren't giving the AI enough information to do a good job. I could die laughing at this one as I am struggling to get my favorite free AI to generate the book cover I have envisioned for The Inconvenient Sister. 

First, you may ask why I am struggling with AI that isn't putting out what I want when there are plenty of other platforms. My biggest reason is because I have worked with other AI, and I also know its limitations. I think we are about as good as we are going to ever get with it. I also don't want to spend time looking for something that may or may not exist. Deep AI does a variety of things for free without requiring me to sign in. I need the image generator and right now, I haven't found too many free image generators. Feel free to leave a comment if you have one you like. 

So, let's address the problem that the ad mentioned--not specific instructions. 

Here is what I put in the prompt: "1750s dressed 28-year-old man with long, black, braid and green eyes and white cravat next to a 20-year old corseted woman with brown hair in bun and blue eyes standing in street." To me, this is pretty specific. I have gone into even more detail with the imagery and found that at a certain point the AI breaks down and doesn't give me anything better. I think with this prompt, which has been expanded as I see issues in the picture, it has too much information for the AI to process. I will probably have to ditch the ages. 

Now, AI could get this wrong in a variety of ways that I have not specified. For example, it could (and does) give me tons of non-period clothing even though I specified 1750s because I did not detail each piece of clothing they are wearing. However, it also totally screws up the things I have been clear about. I get men with 10 braids and women with braids. I get men with no braid and a man bun. I even get two cross-dressing women. Most irritating is that I get men with dark brown eyes and women with auburn hair instead of brown hair. Those two things I have been very specific about, so I cannot understand how anyone could support AI that screws that up. I have gone through about 100 images right now, so I will cut out some of the details and see if I can get it to go better for me. Since these things should be easy enough to find, especially 1750s clothing and hazel eyes, it is extremely irritating that the AI can't figure it out. 

Applying to Freelance at Reedsy

 Most of you know that although I am a devoted Guru fan, I haven't been getting much work there since I returned to freelancing. In fact, much work in the writing area hasn't been posted to bid on. I assume this is because all those "get-rich-quick" YouTube schemes that used to focus on hiring a freelancer to write/edit a book for you to post on Amazon have now turned into letting ChatGPT write your story for you. Good luck with that... 

So, I reevaluated Upwork because that and Guru have traditionally been the best freelance websites, in my opinion. This is primarily because of the SafePay/Escrow features. 

I did recently see a promotion (or rather an anti-promotion) for Reedsy. It was by a vanity press trying to sell its own "cheap" editing services. I investigated and discovered that according to Reedsy itself, its freelancers make a whole lot more than what I usually make, and they primarily attract overflow work from traditional publishers. This looked appealing. 

The catch is that they are picky in whom they "hire" or rather allow to work on their website. You fill out a profile, with a minimum of three links to books on Amazon and your website, and then they look and see if you are good enough to work for them. They do not, however, during this application process specify what you need to get hired--er, rather to work on their website. This is buried in a separate link.

First, you have to have worked in traditional publishing as an editor. For me, this was no problem because I have. The problem is that they want you to link to the books where you have worked as an editor--but these books can only be on Amazon because they will not let you upload a book from smaller, niche publishing company websites or from university publishing companies (where the theses and dissertations I have edited are published).

Presumably, you have to actually be credited as the editor (and I am not sure if I have ever been because I contractually do not allow my clients to use my name on their work without written permission--I also work under a lot of non-disclosure agreements). So, in short, I could not upload any of my "real" work. They do not tell you why you are denied, but I am certain this was one reason.

Second, although the profile you fill out asks for 3-5 book links, the hidden page on what they are looking for says you must have at least 5. Since they will not allow you to upload any more than 5, I question how you can have "at least 5." Perhaps they should have one of their editors look at their requirements and update them.  

I am glad there are "freelancing" websites that actually screen their employees. However, I have used many good editors on Guru who have probably not ever worked for a traditional publishing company. I also don't think a link on Amazon is the best way to determine if a publishing company is a valid publishing company. I cannot tell you how many publishing companies that have been formed in the past 5 years and post all their books on Amazon because they technically are self-publishing other people's books, are not legitimate publishing companies. 

The problem is that they cater to traditional publishing companies (the only ones who can probably afford to pay the prices). It makes perfect sense that they would want to use people who already have worked there. My question is, why are these people now freelancing if they were good editors at their respective publishing companies?

I do wish I had known these requirements before I went through the process of applying. It was a complete waste of time and had I known the requirements beforehand I wouldn't have bothered.