From Smart Money comes news that Amazon has announced a new royalty option offering greater incentive to authors and publishers to keep e-books pricing low.
The new plan allows authors and publishers who meet certain criteria to receive 70% of the book’s list price as royalty, net of delivery costs, which average about 6 cents per book. For an $8.99 book that meets the new plan’s criteria, the author would receive $6.25 with the new option as opposed to $3.15 with the standard option, the company said.
For authors to choose the new plan, the book must have a list price between $2.99 and $9.99; the list price must be at least 20% below the lowest physical list price for the book; the book must be made available for sale in all geographies in which the author or publisher has rights; the title will be included in a set of Kindle features, such as text-to-speech; and books must be “offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices.”
With the impending paradigm shifting, jaw-dropping, game changing iPad/slate/tablet/thingy to be announced from Apple next week, and the growing interest in e-book readers, I thought this was an interesting piece of news.
You’re right, Alan, it IS interesting news.
But, with so many hanging their hopes for a new civilization on Apple’s iSlate, I just hope it meets a good portion of expectations.
–JMc
I hope this means we’ll see more comic creators bring their properties to ebooks — art-based or prose.
Amazon *is* trying to get this information out ahead of Apple’s announcement next week. But is the decision being made based on rumor or fact?
I’m a big, longtime Apple fan, but I think all of the iSlate/iPad speculation has gotten out-of-hand. In case you haven’t heard, it will now have all of the medical functions of a Star Trek tricorder, making all of the current bantering about health care a moot point. Oh, yeah, there’s also the “push here for world peace” button, too.