Amazon's India Store Now Offers 70% Royalty Option

I found this in my inbox last night. From Amazon:

We are happy to announce that the popular 70% royalty option is now available for sales to customers in India for titles enrolled in KDP Select. This royalty option is available for books sold from the new India Kindle Store, Kindle devices, and Kindle apps.

New features for authors and publishers in India include the ability to set prices specific for India, receive royalty payments in INR, and now earn up to 70% royalties when enrolled in KDP Select. For additional details, check out our Terms and Conditions:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=APILE934L348N

Also, take a look at the 70% List Price Requirements:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0

If you would like to review or change your royalty preferences for each title sold in India, just visit the KDP Bookshelf here:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/dashboard

Looks like the ebook market in India is just getting started:

If you happened to wander down the aisles of the Delhi Book Fair that concluded recently, you would think that India is soon going to be swamped by a tsunami of ebooks, heralding a digital revolution in e-reading like never before. Almost every other store had something about soon-to-come ebook offerings.

The reality is that the Indian publishing industry in its offline form is still flourishing, churning out 100,000 titles a year and growing at 12 to 15 per cent a year. Many of the biggies in the book selling business seem impervious to all the noise about the business of reading digitally. Leading online book chain, Flipkart, had earlier said it was studying the space, but refused to comment on ebooks for this story. Snapdeal, the online marketplace, says that it is treading cautiously. Snapdeal co-founder and chief executive officer, Kunal Bahl, says that he too is analysing opportunities, but first wants “to ensure that there are enough devices for people to access ebooks.”

Looks like a great market for indie authors! The rest of this article can be read here: Is an ebook revolution around the corner? Thanks to the Passive Voice Blog for the link.

Other articles you might like:
- How To Format A Word Document For Amazon's KDP Publishing Program
- Lyla Sinclair's 8 Secrets Of Successful Romance Writing
- Indie Books: What Price Is Right?

Photo credit: Unknown

Publishing With Amazon: The Hidden Cost Of Delivery

Andrew Hyde's book, This Book Is About Travel, is selling well at 9.99 per download, but after delivery costs are factored in Hyde found, to his amazement, that Amazon pays the worst of all the platforms.

Kindle: $5.10
iBooks: $7.00
.PDF: $9.25
Nook: $6.50

He writes:

Wait, Amazon pays out the worst?  What? This can’t be right! They are the best right? Everyone loves them.  I love them.  I dig a bit deeper and find this little gem:

Avg. Delivery Cost ($) 2.58. 

So for every $9.99 book I sell I, the author, pay 30% to Amazon for the right to sell on Amazon AND $2.58 for them to deliver the DIGITAL GOOD to your device.  It is free for the reader, but the author, not amazon, pays for delivery.

The file itself is under their suggested 50MB cap Amazon says to keep it under at 18.1MB. The book contains upwards of 50 pictures and the one file for Kindle needs to be able to be read on their smallest displays in black and white and their full color large screen Mac app).  I’m confused.  Amazon stores a ton of the Internet on S3/EC2, they should have the storage and delivery down.  If I stored that file on S3/EC2 it would cost me $.01 PER FIVE DOWNLOADS. Hat tip to Robby for that one. Use Amazon to run your website: .01 to download a file.  Use amazon to sell your book: $2.58 per download + 30% of whatever you sell.
- Amazon’s markup of digital delivery to indie authors is ~129,000%

Read more here: Amazon’s markup of digital delivery to indie authors is ~129,000%

The delivery cost of your book is something to keep in mind. In general, if your book is only text the cost for delivery won't exceed a few cents. Also, keep in mind that only those offering their book for between $2.99 and $9.99 have to play delivery costs.

Writing Life: Kobo's New Platform For Self Publishers

Kobo's Writing Life program, still in beta, is going head-to-head with Amazon's KDP and Barnes & Noble's PubIt programs in the battle for the self-publishing market.

What is Kobo's competitive advantage? Granting that Writing Life could open up new foreign markets to the North American writer, why should we take the time to publish on yet another platform?

Here's why: because Kobo allows self publishers to set the price of their books to free anytime they like and for as long as they like.

Contrast this with Amazon's KDP Select program which only allows writers to set their book to free for a maximum of five days every three months. With the recent changes to Amazon's ranking algorithm keeping ones book free for a longer period of time has become even more desirable.

Kobo's announcement of their Writing Life program comes at a good time. Their ebook downloads are up 400% from last year and ereader sales are up 280%.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. It would be great if Amazon responds by offering more free days for books enrolled in their KDP Select program.

For more on this story click here: Kobo launches e-book self-publishing platform, “Writing Life”

Further Reading:
- An Indie Writer Shares His Experience With KDP Select
- More on Amazon Select: Is exclusivity worth it?
- Changes in Amazon's Algorithm: An Update