Help! Amazon Discounted My Book! What to Do When Amazon Puts Your Book on Sale.

If you’ve published your book with proper settings to meet retailers’ requirements, such as Barnes and Noble, you probably set your wholesale discount to 55%. When you do this, not only does it meet their requirements, but it’s also an added incentive for them to drive more sales to your book by putting it on sale.

Does this mean you as the author (or publisher) make less money? Nope! When a retailer sells your book at a discount, they’re eating that cost from the discount you’re already giving them.

A Breakdown of the Numbers

Let’s say you have a typical 200-page book that retails for $15 and your print cost is $3. When you set your book up properly distribution channels and give them the customary 55% discount, your numbers will be as follows:

$15 sale price

$8.25 to retailer

$3 print cost

$3.75 profit to you/the publisher

If the retailer such as Amazon puts your book on sale at 20% off, the numbers would be:

$12 sale price

$5.25 to retailer

$3 print cost

$3.75 profit to you/the publisher

As you can see, you make $3.75 profit either way, which on a $15 book is an excellent “royalty.” Now if your book has a middleman vanity publisher, they will take a cut and your numbers will look more like this:

$15 sale price

$8.25 to retailer

$3 print cost

$2.44 to the vanity publisher

$1.31 to you, the author

From these numbers you can see why I’m not a fan of vanity publishers. The most common royalty they will pay is 35% of net, which as you can see is more than you, the author, will make. Usually that’s after you’ve already paid them an upfront fee for your book’s production. And unlike traditional publishers, they didn’t pay you an advance or front the money for your first print run.

So what can you do if your book is put on sale? Only one thing—promote that baby! Since you make the same amount of money either way, take advantage of the marketing power retailers like Amazon are giving you by selling your book at a discount and drive sales to them! It’s a win-win-win. The retailer wins by selling more books. The readers win by saving money. You as the author win by both selling more books and not having to take payment and fulfill all those orders yourself (part of that 55% you’re paying retailers to handle).

Typically Amazon will put a book on sale within the first couple weeks it shows up on their website. If you find Amazon has put your book on sale, spend some time promoting the sale to your audience. Announce it on Facebook to your friends and followers, send out an email broadcast, advertise it in your e-newsletter and fill up your Twitter stream. Drive more book sales to your bottom line, spread your message to more people, touch their lives, and write your next book so it can be put on sale as well!