A funny thing happened last December with the paperback version of my book Memoirs of a Starving Artist. I sold around 8 copies all at the same time to friends and family who planned to give them for Christmas presents. Amazon must have thought that meant the book was selling pretty well. Normally they don't stock copies of POD books like this in their warehouse, they just print them when someone orders one. In this case, they actually went ahead and printed 20 copies to keep in stock so that they'd have them on hand to ship right away. Then a funny thing happened. Nobody else bought any. They'd already paid me the royalty up front though on all 20 copies, which was around $4 apiece on each $12.99 book.
So, fast forward to the present. They still have all of these copies sitting in their warehouse collecting dust, and apparently they don't know what to do with them. They just discounted them on Amazon.com down to $5.87, which means that after printing costs and the royalties they paid me, this is definitely a losing proposition for them. If anyone wants to pick up a cheap copy, though, now's the time!
So, fast forward to the present. They still have all of these copies sitting in their warehouse collecting dust, and apparently they don't know what to do with them. They just discounted them on Amazon.com down to $5.87, which means that after printing costs and the royalties they paid me, this is definitely a losing proposition for them. If anyone wants to pick up a cheap copy, though, now's the time!
No comments:
Post a Comment