Sean @ Paganarchy

I was asked by a good friend why Liber Malorum is not yet on Amazon. This is what I told her.

The full story is this:

I was using lulu.com at first, before I registered for an ISBN and stuff, and I still use lulu for their lovely hardcover versions but they have nothing to do with my distribution to amazon.

I went to a local printer in cardiff and organised my print run of 1000. they cost me about 4 quid each. expenses add up to about 2 quid each so i called my cost price 6 quid.

i though, hey, i will need to make it double that price. [I assumed that it would cost that much to organise everything] so i put the RRP on to £12 quid. BIG MISTAKE!!! i hadn't done my research. as you might know, amazon (and many large chains) require a 60% discount on books... plus they expect me to pay for postage. effectively if i had my book on amazon i would be losing about 3 quid per copy!!! i registered Liber Malorum on Amazon and had to immediately withdraw because of this. [This is why it still says "temporarily out of stock"].

so in another window, i hooked up with a distributor AK Press. AK told me that Amazon were great to do business with, once it was set up and they were great at dealing with small independent presses and distributors. AK told me i should change the RRP to something manageable otherwise i would never get on Amazon - and i should do it sooner rather than later because it would be harder to change later. i figured out what was the minimum i could have the RRP for - it is now £14.99 (which coincidentally adds up to 23). that covers costs and i still make a few pennies if i end up posting books to amazon myself via royal mail. [As a side effect of this, the book is for sale at many different outlets all at different prices. happy bargain hunting!]

But amazon hasn't (yet) accepted the price change. well amazon said they will accept it, and they said my price change is being processed, but that was over a month ago, and they are a very hard organisation to talk to. i'm still waiting for the RRP to change on the site, and then i (or my distributor) can finally start placing books there. meanwhile, we are all waiting to see what happens and hopefully the amazon behemoth will finally get it together.

phew!

with that in mind, if you have any ideas i would love love love to hear them! i don't expect you to stand on your head or anything drastic! but feel free to if you think it will help

and are you doing distribution at the moment? if you are able to help me get Liber Malorum out there, either via distribution or clever ideas or contacts at amazon or friends in the spirit world then that would be really appreciated. all pointers and tips are very very graciously welcomed!

love and apples (and probably some chocolate blessings too) from sean

(ps - i will post this on my blog coz others might be wondering just the same thing you asked)

x x x