One Writer Reveals Her Kindle Royalties
This Time Next Year We’ll Be Millionaires!
No, I haven’t suddenly gone into the business of flogging dodgy goods off a pitch at the market, nor will I be claiming that said goods have fallen off the back of a lorry either. But I did take a little peek at my Amazon Kindle books royalties for my M. S. Valentine novels and wah-hey – I’m now up to thirty bucks! (And yes, that’s in U.S. greenbacks.) Okay, I realise this might only get me a couple of foot-long sandwiches at Subway with a bit left over for a trip to Starbucks, but this could be a nice little earner, as Del Boy would say.
For those of you who haven’t read my previous blog post on the subject (”Is the Print Book Destined For Death”), my very first Amazon Kindle book The Captivity of Celia was published a few weeks ago, and since then the entire catalogue of my out-of-print M. S. Valentine erotic novels have been re-issued on this platform. I’m so impressed with the Kindle’s ease of use and potential for growth that I’m now looking into putting together a special collection of my short stories and having it sold via Kindle. This electronic reader is growing in popularity, and I’ve no doubt Amazon will develop a version compatible in other markets, such as the U.K. and Europe.
This is the first time I’ve personally seen an author disclose Kindle eBook sales. I’m unclear here as to why she’s claiming the figure as “royalties,” however, since she’s the publisher.
Is there any sort of forum where writers are swapping this news?
Any writers out there who care to disclose here in Comments?
Does anyone have any census of how many writers are self-publishing through the Kindle Store?
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Mike Cane 2008 
August 28, 2008 at 7:22 pm
I get a percentage from each of the books sold just as any other author does, so yes, they are “royalties” and they are stated as such in the Amazon agreement.
August 28, 2008 at 7:36 pm
When you say “percentage,” it better mean “most of the frikkin money” if you’re the publisher! Maybe you should do a post about the whole process. I know a lot of writers who are interested in that but have never seen eBooks and have no idea how to do one.
August 29, 2008 at 8:45 am
I’ll be publishing mine on Kindle (though that’s not the only ebook format I’ll be publishing it in), so I don’t have any numbers for you. But the Amazon agreement does call them “royalties.” From a really quick glance, it just looks to me like your regular discount/consignment system, only applied to an ebook format.
August 29, 2008 at 10:49 pm
[…] Any writers care to share dollar sales stats—-either through direct dealing with Amazon or reports from publishers? Mitzi Szereto, an erotic writer, talks about $30 in K-earnings from a series and seems to think that it is a promising start. Mike Cane would disagree. […]
July 15, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Amazon pays 35% of the price point … flat deal, unnegotiable — and/but here is the rub: this is what we’d earn, as writers, IF they paid up. I haven’t been paid yet, in six months, and since I earn about US$100/month they owe me a lot of money now. Problem is, I have no idea if I’ll ever get paid … it’s very difficult to wring an answer out of a human being at Amazon. I sell quite a lot of copies (and I *don’t* write erotica, which makes good sales somewhat surprising, these days, going by what I’ve learned of the market). It would be sooooo nice to get paid.
Have been on the forums at Amazon; other writers are in the same boat. If this keeps up till Christmas 2009 (another 5 months), they’ll owe me over US$1000, and I will pull my titles from their catalog. Sooner or later, the writers being cheated this way by Amazon will get a class action going, and I’d be glad to be part of it. Heck, I’d be glad to contribute to a fund-raiser to hire a expensive attorney and squeeze everyone’s royalties out of them in court!
Do I like Kindle? Yes and no. Being in Australia, I can’t even use one: it’s an Americans Only club, you know. I have a BeBook, and I like it a lot. Kindle is fine and dandy as a reader — it’s the service Amazin offers which is no good, because writers are going unpaid, Amazon keeps ALL the money. I wish I’d known this before I put a raft of my titles!