Fair Trade books?

I've mentioned previously about the incredibly low royalties authors are getting these days from traditional publishers.

You pay $20 in a bookstore for a book, only to discover, later on, perhaps from reading this blog, that the author got maybe 80c royalty for it.

No wonder so many authors are ditching their publishers and going "Indie".

Image © Fair Trade Foundation

I'm calling it 'Fair Trade Books' because more of the money is going to the creator instead of the middle-men (publishers, distributors, bookstores etc). Just like the bananas, tea and coffee - when you buy it, you know more of the money is going back to the source - the people who made it - rather than the traders in between.

But I've also been keeping track of royalties from electronic sales for indies, and it's not pretty.

My favourite place to sell at the moment is Apple's iBookstore. They pay the author (or the publisher, if it's going via a publisher first) a royalty of 70% based on the sale price. Whatever the price. 70% no matter how much you charge for it.

Wherever you are in the world.

For example. I'm selling my earlier two Ondine titles for $2.99 in the USA iBookstore. I'm getting 70%, which is $2.10 in royalties, per sale. Which is WONDERFUL!

And I thank every single reader from the bottom of my heart for supporting the Ondine books.

However, Amazon does not have a flat royalty rate, and it's seriously confusing and frustrating.

To get a 70% return from Amazon, the books must be priced between $2.99 and $9.99.
Below that, they give you a 35% royalty. And above that they give a 35% royalty. They are trying to squeeze publishers and authors into a narrow price range. I get why they're doing it, but it's arbitrary and unfair.

In the UK, Amazon gives authors 70% royalty rate on all e-book sales where the cover price is between £1.49 and £7.81.

Because another thing - that 70% royalty is only for sales in the UK, USA, and a few European countries.
Everywhere else in the world is 35% royalty, no matter what the price is.
Australia is one of these 'elsewhere' countries and I can't help feeling, as an Australian author, that I'm getting ripped off.

For a start, the first two titles are sold via my publisher, for $5.54.
The publisher (Egmont) will only get $1.93. This is the 'net' price I talked about in the earlier post.
So the author (me) will receive $0.19

When I'm selling books 3 and 4 of Ondine around the world, I'll be setting the price at $3.99.
Sales from Amazon USA will give me $2.79 in royalties.
But Australian Amazon sales will only mean $1.35 in royalties.

Same price for the reader, same download.

I have no idea who pockets the rest. Amazon, maybe?

Amazon is so big I can't afford not to sell on their site. But I will be doing my best to redirect readers to the iBookstore instead.

It doesn't cost the reader anything more to buy 'Fair Trade', but it will mean a LOT to the author to make sure they get the most out of their royalties.

Fabulous Plans

It's fabulous getting emails and tweets from readers who love the ONDINE books. It makes the angst (and chocolate, and curry pies) of writing them all worth it.

Alas, there's no satisfying some people. They want to know when the NEXT Ondine adventure will be out. Greedy, hungry, readery people.

Yay!

So here's what's going to happen.

I've written the Ondine trequel, The Winter of Magic. It's funny and emotional and swoony and magic. It's more of the same but different. It's more Hamish (yay!) more Lord Vincent (boooo!) more Infanta (uh-oh) and Mrs Howser and Melody are back. Oh yeah!

And Old Col, the world's most useless chaperone.1

And of course, plenty more Ondine coping with some weird and crazy magic. Loads of crazy. Embrace the crazy.

"But when will it be out?" I hear you cry.

In Winter. Winter 2013. The northern one.

Yep, The Winter of Magic will be ready for your reading pleasure in December 2013, to match the European (and North American, ehem) winter.

YES! ONDINE WILL ALSO BE AVAILABLE IN THE USA

The reason it's taking so long for The Winter of Magic to go on sale is I have to get The Summer of Shambles and The Autumn Palace ready for USA ebook formats. This means changing all the spelling and fixing the two typos in book 2 and formatting for kindle, ibooks etc and getting some beautiful, new thematic covers.

Release schedule:
1:The Summer of Shambles - June 2013 in the USA
2:The Autumn Palace - September 2013 in the USA
3:The Winter of Magic - December 2013 Worldwide! 2

The first two are already available as paperbacks and kindle/ibooks etc in the UK and Australia. This is because Egmont UK has the rights to publish in commonwealth and selected territories. However, I have the rights to the USA and Japan and other places, so I'm going to make the readers happy and release the first two books in these unclaimed (!) territories ahead of the release of book 3. Before I let book 3 out in public, I will hire a couple of very clever editors to make sure it's in top shape.

WHY SO LONG?
Because I am also writing stacks of other books and searching for a new agent in the USA. I've written a ghost story, a time slip novel and a reboot of Robin Hood. It's all crazy, and incredibly time consuming. But I also love it and I hope you will love these books too.

***
1. As voted by Modern Chaperone magazine, May 2011.
2. But with USA spelling for the whole world, because if I make different versions for different English-speaking territories, it will break me.