Month: March 2021

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Live on Amazon

The paperback version of Dire Consequences is finally live on Amazon. What a PITD that process was, and truthfully not really Amazon’s fault. I am mentally exhausted from trying to deal with this shit and finish the first pass at the edit of my second book in the trilogy (Dire Circumstances) and deal with third parties to get completed product and…

Anyway. Let’s just say that I prefer writing any day over dealing with the business side of things. At least with the writing I control my own destiny and either produce good copy…or shite. But it’s all on me.

Still, paperback… Should be available for purchase in a day or so. I have more news, but it will have to wait for another time because I just don’t have it in me right now to put more words on the screen.

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Amazon Trials and tribulations…

So…I’ve had my hands on the final Print manuscript and full-wrap cover for a few days. I thought that uploading it and getting it up for sale would be easy sailing. It seems I was incorrect. The trials and tribulations of doing so on Amazon make me question whether I should go eBook only moving forward.

For the last two days I have been pushing the “Publish” button (repeatedly) on my Amazon Author page, only to be greeted by an error message telling me to correct the “highlighted fields”…only one problem with this scenario. There aren’t any highlighted errors…sigh

I researched this issue and found a few less than helpful suggestions, but one common problem seems to be with pricing…specifically the Japanese Yen conversion for royalties. I validated that this was not the issue and promptly opened a ticket with Amazon Support.

At this point I am waiting for a response.

I have to admit that I was shocked by the royalty structure on paperbacks. On an eBook I get 70% of the posted price ($2.99 for instance) as long as I meet the requirements. Simple enough, right?

Well when it comes to print the rules are different. Amazon charges $4.95 to print the book, takes an additional percentage off the remainder for their cut, and the author gets the leftovers. So, if you post a book at $12.99 the math looks like this: $12.99 – $4.95 = $8.04. Are you with me so far? Cool. Of that $8.04 the author royalty would equal $2.84 per book, meaning that Amazon keeps an additional $5.02. Wow…my head almost exploded.

Bearing this in mind, and all of the costs associated with preparing a book for print, I wonder if it’s even worth it.  $3600 for editing (80k word manuscript), and roughly another $800 for art and formatting, plus another $200 for odds and ends. $4600 total.  That means I have to sell 1620 units just to break even. Not ashamed to say that seems somewhat daunting for an unknown author.

By the same token, I would still need to sell 2226 eBooks to break even on the same outlay, but people are far more likely to drop $2.99 than they are $12.99, especially for someone they’ve never heard of.

Much as I love writing these stories at some point I am going to have to decide if my vanity/ego is worth the cost…lol.

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Skunks suck…

You may be asking yourself why skunks suck, and I’ll be happy to illuminate this subject for you.

Last night (very late) my Husky had a close encounter with the family of skunks who make their home around the house next door. I knew immediately when it happened because the stench penetrated the walls of the basement office where I work on my books.

Sure enough, the little bastard had gotten tagged. Not a direct hit, thank god, even though I have warned him off these vermin many, many times. Unfortunately, for those unfamiliar with Husky behavior, they have extremely high and aggressive prey responses. No cat, squirrel, bird, or apparently skunk, is safe from being pursued.

I had a difficult time getting him to come inside because he knew he’d not only screwed up, but he’d gotten caught screwing up. Eventually, I was able to get his ass into the basement and spent the next few hours repeatedly washing his stanky ass in an attempt to at least make him slightly less offensive.

It worked…sort of, but in the process I transferred some of his funk onto myself…sigh. Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep, and I spent hours today steam-cleaning the carpet trying to rid it of the stench. In that I succeeded, but the dog still carries a faint aroma and all of a sudden wants to cuddle and be a lap dog. WTF? Where was that behavior two days ago.

He’s not fooling me. Oh, and this isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with a skunk-marked Siberian. My last dog, Romulus, also fell victim to these horrid little creatures of no redeeming quality, but in his case he got the full dose.

Anyway, I’m hoping that I can safely return to work tomorrow and not have everyone in the office wrinkling their noses and wondering what that smell is. Wish me luck…

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