A couple of things.  First, it appears this blog platform of Yahoo’s is shutting down.  After July-something you will not be able to post comments.  That should not be a big deal as not many people have posted in the past.  As long as I keep the topic off of Barack Obama, no one will miss anything.

I do have another blog listed on the homepage, which (as far as I know) will remain active.  However, I start that one off with the “downer” instruction for only serious questions or comments.  That has been the case, but still … not a lot of serious questioners so far.  I ask for only serious questions because I answer most non-serious questions in the other pages on the site.  Seems to make sense to me, and I don’t have to allow any non-serious blogs to appear on that blog program.

The other thing is a rant about publishing.  I have ranted before about print-on-demand publishers being a rip-off.  They still are.  However, this rant stems from myself branching into the print-on-demand publisher business, publishing my own books without a middle man to rob all the royalties.  In that endeavor, I have had my two books released in E-book format, through an agreement with Mobipocket, which is a French (thus not bound by US laws) lister of E-books, but Amazon.com has since advertised much of the Mobipocket base on its new (relatively new) Kindle database.

Here’s the rant.  I advertise an E-book for $12.  If someone I talk to about the book (no other reason anyone would ever know to look for it to buy it), and he-she-it goes to purchase it, that person pays $12 to whoever advertised the E-book.  I get half of that price, which is $6.  That is why I list it for $12, I want $6 for the sale of one book.

I did the agreement with Mobipocket in 2006.  I sold one copy in 2006.  Mobipocket owed me $6, but informed me that Mobipocket is too important to be bothered with sending out checks for $6, so they will just keep my $6 until they owe me $150.  Hmmmmm.  I though, that’s not fair.

Well, I being the thinker that I am, figured out that: A. I would rather Mobipocket sell another one of my books and lose $6; or B. If I ever sell another copy I will have to be paid $150, so I could get my $6.  So, I raised the price of my E-book to $300 on Mobipocket. 

Well, stupid Amazon.com began selling copies of my E-book.  They listed the price at $300, but struck through that price with a red line and said Kindle customers could save 93.5% by just paying them $19.50 (where they came up with that price I do not know, but the print book sells for $19.95).  So they say they sold one copy in the 4^th quarter 2008, and (I guess) two copies in the first quarter 2009, and tell me they are direct depositing $306 into my LLC’s bank account. 

I had no clue the 2009 figure of $300 was for only two E-books sold.  I thought Amazon was finally coming around as a bookseller, and buying a block of 50 E-books to sell, which would mean I got $300.  Great!  I thought.  Finally some movement.  But, then near the end of May, both of my E-books vanished from the Kindle pages.  No longer available.  So, I contacted Amazon by email and finally found out that the reason they tore up our agreement is they “overpaid me for my book sales.” 

Now, I don’t know what you know about the publishing industry and the way they do things, but think about this for a moment.  You want to sell books for a living.  You have a house, and you want to just sell books from your living room, to keep your costs down.  Answer me this … if you want to sell books, do you buy them first, keeping the profits after you sell them?  Or, do you get them “fronted” to you, sell them, hold onto the money until the vendor asks, “Where’s my money?”, only to tell them, “I have to sell fifty copies before you get paid.”?  Has anyone in a real publishing house ever told an author, “We really like your book.  We want to print copies of it and sell them to bookstores?  If the sales go well, we will pay you royalties.”  I doubt if Steven King would “front” Doubleday a novel and then wait for them to send him a mystery check.  The industry is full of history that says clearly, “Pay the author first.  We’ll have to promote it so we all get filthy rich after that.”

Therefore, I was not “overpaid for my book”.  I was advanced money for my books.  It was moronic for Amazon to take the books off their Kindle pages, because that means they will never make their money back.  That saddens me.  But then, I did not write my books for Amazon to get rich off of their sales, nor did I write them for myself to get rich.  I wrote them so they could be read. 

I will be redoing this site and making the E-books available for $6 each.  I will also be putting out two new books, and republishing one of the two E-books.  All will be available through this site (the redone version) as print copies or E-books.  Of course, they will all be available on Amazon (print copy only), but at a higher price that I will list them for here.  I have to list them higher so Amazon can suck off 25% of the list price, without doing anything but list it on their site.  Buy through here and save that 25% markup.