My Books, Cheap!

GordonMcComb

I don't know what deals or promotions Amazon and my publisher have going on, but I just noticed today that several of my still-in-print robotics books are available in Kindle format for $1.21. That's only three cents more than a McDonald's breakfast burrito, but far more filling.

http://www.amazon.com/Robot-Builders-Bonanza-4th-Edition-ebook/dp/B005K8H1FE/

One could say this is shameless self-promotion, but at about 3.5 cents royalty per book (Jeff Bezos gets 60% on these so he can fly his rockets), I'll have to sell 15,000 copies at this price in order to afford an ELEV-8 v3. Well, I can dream, can't I?!

David Betz

Thanks! I nabbed one. You should be $0.035 closer to buying your v3. By the way, where did you see the v3 price?

GordonMcComb

No price seen; I was just assuming based on the standard selling price of the v1 and v2 -- I recall $550 or thereabouts.

Seairth

And done (got your Arduino version too)! Funny thing is, I have the 2nd edition of the book and never even made the connection! *doh!*

NWCCTV

I'm in for one. I have version 3 (I think that's the one) that I bought some time ago in printed version. Why is it the distributors make more than the writers? Seems a rip off to me.

mindrobots

I already have Kindle versions of your books, purchased at a slightly higher price.

erco

How can that be? I'll get it, of course, but a Kindle can't hold a Kandle to my treasured AUTOGRAPHED hardcopy from Gordon. I shared this egregious (yet tempting) price reduction at http://www.robotrebels.org/index.php?topic=316.0 and also http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?28252-quot-Robot-Builders-Bonanza-quot-eBook-for-a-Dollar-!!!&p=291907#post291907

Unrelated:
Ha... Google "egregious". The meaning has flip flopped! That's so dope!

1.
outstandingly bad; shocking.
"egregious abuses of copyright"
synonyms: shocking, appalling, terrible, awful, horrendous, frightful, atrocious, abominable, abhorrent, outrageous; More
2.
archaic
remarkably good.

erco

Don't take it personally, Gordon. Lots of dollar eBooks on sale now.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BPO7CC4?dpID=51tOnJRJtzL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_SL500_SR97,135_&refRID=CEMXFWYV2VRVPTNMDZ69&ref_=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_25

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006GMVISY?dpID=51XbQX5lh6L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_SL500_SR86,135_&refRID=R8MVJBSSA1D1MBQZ4HYC&ref_=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_3

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E5J37G6?dpID=51X7LUCdIyL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_SL500_SR95,135_&refRID=HGB2QP9W8434RK7NA7HE&ref_=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_7

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CZ1C5TQ?dpID=41UFvSixv3L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_SL500_UX300_PJku-sticker-v3,TopRight,0,-44_SR84,135_&refRID=ZD3E6PR8EFGWD8JPQJ3J&ref_=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_32

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BCHGOYG?dpID=51Znj2caB1L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_SL500_SR95,135_&refRID=F05BNMPVQJ14ZESFQWES&ref_=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_15

GordonMcComb

The low price seems to be something Tab (an imprint of McGraw-Hill) is doing with many of its titles. I'll be interested in how it works out.

The self-published eBooks printed through Amazon's publishing service, even at a couple of bucks, can make a reasonable amount of money, if they sell well enough. Here I think it's still 60/40 (60% to Amazon), so on a $1 book, that's still 40 cents. Many of those are books with less than 80 pages.

This is in fact what I'm doing from here on, with a new book slated for the first of the year. Take it to the people. By this time next year I intend to be as rich as Adele.

RS_Jim

GordonMcComb wrote: »

The low price seems to be something Tab (an imprint of McGraw-Hill) is doing with many of its titles. I'll be interested in how it works out.

The self-published eBooks printed through Amazon's publishing service, even at a couple of bucks, can make a reasonable amount of money, if they sell well enough. Here I think it's still 60/40 (60% to Amazon), so on a $1 book, that's still 40 cents. Many of those are books with less than 80 pages.

This is in fact what I'm doing from here on, with a new book slated for the first of the year. Take it to the people. By this time next year I intend to be as rich as Adele.

When You are, don't forget who your friends ae! LOL
Jim

Martin_H

Gordon, thanks for the heads up. I purchased both RBB and RRB for Arduino. Both my paper copies of RBB are pretty dog eared, so these will be helpful.

Publison

Got it.

Outrageous! They charged me a penny for tax!

David Betz

Publison wrote: »

Got it.

Outrageous! They charged me a penny for tax!

Move to NH. We don't have a sales tax. :-)

blittled

I'm old school. I prefer printed material. I have Robot Builder's Bonanza edition 3 and 4 already in print. It is tempting to get other books though but I have the Arduino Robot Bonanza book on my Christmas list. Besides I want to get Gordon a Elev-8 quicker so he can write a book on that .

GordonMcComb

FWIW, the sale seems to be only Amazon U.S.

erco

GordonMcComb wrote: »

FWIW, the sale seems to be only Amazon U.S.

Yes, UK & Aussie Picaxe peeps are seeing $20.

GordonMcComb

Some US-based links for the Kindle version are coming up full price. So I imagine this is part of some price testing they are doing. Too bad the publisher didn't think to email their authors about it.

erco

I told everyone to send you an extra dollar, Boss. 3.5 cents ain't cuttin' it!

erco

Moving targets. Now I see that RBB is up to $17. Arduino RB is still $1.21. I went on a little buying spree and grabbed 6 more books before Amazon finds the problem.

BTW, I see that you can't "lend" RBB to other Kindle users as you can some books. And I guess there's no way to stockpile a dozen dollar copies to distribute to classes or clubs. So act fast! Lowest prices this side of the Pecos! Won't last!

John Abshier

I covered a third of the Kansas sales tax on a breakfast burritto.

John Abshier

GordonMcComb

Lending seems to be mostly on a per-publisher basis. McGraw-Hill doesn't seem to do it for many of their titles, the same with O'Reilly/Maker Media. But Wiley's Dummies and their other books do have it. Add to this some publishers offer the book for rent, and others don't. Some let you try the book for free, and others don't.

I think they all try to see what works. All I know for sure is that it ALWAYS works for Amazon. They're the only ones in the chain pretty much guaranteed a piece of the action.

erco

Didja see this defective eBook? http://www.amazon.com/Making-Mechanisms-Inventors-Hobbyists-Artists-ebook/dp/B004E9SYHY/ref=pd_sim_351_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=51b84S8YkNL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR118,160_&refRID=1E299HDTRKGKPP42FR9C

Item Under Review
This book is currently unavailable because there are significant quality issues with the source file supplied by the publisher.

The publisher has been notified and we will make the book available as soon as we receive a corrected file. As always, we value customer feedback.

Jeff Haas

Sounds like Amazon is doing some split testing to see if periodic sales will help drive awareness. It's pretty common these days...whenever you go to Google, for example, what you get as results is a variation that they're testing out to see if it's more effective, etc.

Seairth

Though only slightly related, some of you may also be interested in the latest Book Humble Bundle.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Gordon,

At only $0.035 royalty per ebook, I hope your publishers sell millions of them! I can only assume this rate is part of a contract you agreed to awhile back. How much negotiating room did you have, if any? Do the publishers really have you over a barrel when it comes to book contracts? 'Seems like a tough way to make a living, if so ...

-Phil

GordonMcComb

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) wrote: »

At only $0.035 royalty per ebook, I hope your publishers sell millions of them! I can only assume this rate is part of a contract you agreed to awhile back. How much negotiating room did you have, if any? Do the publishers really have you over a barrel when it comes to book contracts? 'Seems like a tough way to make a living, if so ...

Surely you jest! (Sorry for calling you Shirley.)

Dan Brown and JK Rowling may be able to set such fine points as specific pricing (their royalties are usually based on cover price anyway), but these things are traditionally reserved by the publisher at their free will. Royalties for most of these kinds of non-fiction technical books are set as a percentage of monies received by the publisher, less returns, bad debt, etc. -- yes, authors lose out if a bookseller goes bankrupt. That's happened several times with the large chains.

Royalty amounts for regularly priced ebooks are fairly decent, though at least in my experience, ebooks sell far less than printed copies. This is the first time I've seen a "blow out sale" of ebooks, and it's likely some program the publisher has with Amazon.

NWCCTV

So if I purchased this for the Kindle, is there any way to get it in another format? I would rather have it on my laptop tat has an ereader on it.

Seairth

NWCCTV wrote: »

So if I purchased this for the Kindle, is there any way to get it in another format? I would rather have it on my laptop tat has an ereader on it.

You can install kindle reader on your PC. Also, you may be able to use a tool like calibre to convert to another format.

NWCCTV

Yea, After posting I figured that out. I can get on my phone but that is a bit small!!!! However, I can now read the books on my laptop while traveling, which is nice because I gave the Kindle to my wife.

erco

Ardybook still cheap: http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Robot-Bonanza-Gordon-McComb-ebook/dp/B00BPO7CLK/ref=pd_sim_351_11?ie=UTF8&dpID=51acnYHewDL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR127,160_&refRID=14962HDZBQ3A19N7XAQ1

GordonMcComb

Yep, and Simon Monk, another Tab/McGraw-Hill author with a lot of in-print books, still has three or four as well.

Come next accounting period it'll be interesting to see how it went. For at least RBB4, it's an interesting concept to spend a full year writing a book only to get less than four cents per copy. To make even minimum wage for that amount of time, it would have to sell half a million copies, a wild idea for a niche-of-a-niche topic.