To Catch A Kindle Thief. Or Not.

My Mom likes her Kindle 2, but finds Amazon frustrating. Amazon advertised the Kindle books as being $10. Most of the books my Mom is interested in are $15. Apparently Amazon now charges more for new releases than older books.

So yeah, I could see why people might think Amazon is taking advantage of stolen Kindles to sell more. They have become decidedly less customer friendly over the years and more focused on profits. It's a shame because I have been buying from them practically since day 1 of their existence and I used to rave about what a great company they were.

you oughta see what pittance the self published authors get from amazon. Try 15%. Let's just say kindle ebook is $10. Bezos has no warehouse cost, not even book prep, no paper cost, no shipping costs, no editors, no proofreaders. Author writes book and does all jobs previously done by others including formatting and making manuscript upload ready for Amazon.

Amazon uploads and takes an unprecendented 85% of the profit of kindle books, and without expenses other than server and initial automation and auto responder. Unlike reg publisher, Amazon does NO advertising, no merchandising, no publicity, no tour. No sales, no shlepping to bookstores. Nada.

So, author might get 15%, that is 1.50 per book weighed against taking months and years to write it, set it up, pay to have it edited, pay to have cover designed, pay to have it formatted, pay to have it indexed, pay to have it flap copy written, pay to have it proofread. And is unpaid throughout for there are no advances. None. Zero to live on while completeting the book. There is also no legal dept at Amazon that will defend author should anything assail, and no ads taken out in relevant markets.

It is, Stockboy, for the authors, a way of starving them to death. Most author/ novelists (at mainstream publisher print-on-paper) get about a 10K advance on a first book, and often the book barely earns the advance back. But not for lack of trying with full sales, publicity, marketing, editorial depts, etc.

Amazon is known for being one to two quarters LATE in paying their Kindle ebook self-published people. It is shameful. Utterly shameful, for most of the authors are young and have no agent or guide other than one another.

Google Independent Authors Guild, then join up and search threads for kindle payments and you will see just what Amazon is up to on the dark side. I could go on... but just this... if the author has a mainstream publisher and an agent... that would be 15% of $10 going to the publisher (pub get's 1.50 per kindle download), who then gives 30% of the 1.50 to the author (which is .45 cents) , but not before agent takes 15% of the .45 cents. Author for one book sold on Kindle, and remember MOST kindle books are NOT stephen king or obama or gingrich... author in that case winds up with about 38 cents per down load. Publisher winds up with 1.50 per download, and agent winds up with passive income of about 7 cents per download of a Kindle book.

Can you see, the author gets a pittance, about 70% less than with print on paper publishing. Esp if self-published which seems the trend. This is amazon's kindle back alley. And it's ugly. If all books will eventually be ebooks, no one can even hope to earn beer money by devoting their years to writing books.

Essentially Amazon offers 75% less to an author who does twice as much work as before.

Unless they just throw it together, which no self-respecting person called to the field would do. But, some do, a lot of what is offered on Kindle is deadly unprof and boring. Tellyour dear mom, I'm with her, and somewhat worse off, the books I would have like to have read on kindle are often from u presses and cost even on kindle 20 and 30 dollars each.

It's some form of madness, especially for those who love to read, and especially for those who are called to write books and carve huge parts out of their lives to do just that. There's a good reason that many authors write in their acknowledgments that they profusly thank their family for allowing them to miss family gatherings, anniversaries, putting up with their mad scribbler for years on end. Writing is hard, isolating work. If you do it right. We often only exist but by the grace of others.

Just my two cents worth.



thanks stockboy.

I would hope it's less nefarious than that. It may be simply that they don't feel the extra 15 seconds to brick the device, or however long to locate, is cost effective unless forced to do so by the police. In theory I could see that, that is time, ie money, that they receive no direct benefit from. I would think the PR and goodwill would more than compensate but sometime it takes a brick to the head to get corporate types to look beyond the balance sheets.

Some of us prefer real books, still, and of course airplane trips are perfect for the week's Economist as well as the day's Wall Street Journal and even the Demmie flagship New York Times.

Makes me glad I never purchased a Kindle.

I too used to love Amazon and I do still order form them but after reading this I'm having second thoughts. Seems like most of the products I buy from them now are from 3rd parties and I can just order from them direct and use Amazon to search.

DLS, can you even make one statement that isn't a political stab?

"Some of us prefer real books, still, and of course airplane trips are perfect for the week's Economist as well as the day's Wall Street Journal " I'm in 100% agreement with you on that except I read for enjoyment on airplane trips.

"DLS, can you even make one statement that isn't a political stab?"

On this openly leftist political forum? [staring] The answer is "yes," though you know that already if you actually read all that I post, such as about the Smokies recently.