Chalk up another victory for Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world. In this case, it’s also a victory for mystery golf book fans who may want to purchase one of my books in paperback format.
As I’ve reported in previous posts, I’ve almost always had the dream of writing novels, starting with my first attempt, My Dog and I, at age six. Since I’ve also always had the desire to feed myself and, later, my family, I never let that dream get in the way of reality, though I did make the occasional attempt at landing a publisher. After my first golf-themed mystery, Snowman, had been rejected four or five times, I was ready to give up the dream entirely. But then one day I heard a news story on the radio about Lulu Press, one of the first print-on-demand (POD) publishing houses. Lulu was designed for ordinary folks like me, providing the opportunity to self-publish works that don’t meet the revenue goals of the traditional publishers. Soon thereafter, in 2006, Snowman was released to the world as a POD paperback through Lulu. As the popularity of eBooks grew over the years, I decided to add an eBook option for Snowman. Since Amazon was then and still is the dominant source for eBooks, I used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) for the eBook.
Somewhere along the line, Lulu also began offering worldwide distribution of paperback books through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Ingram Distribution, so I decided to opt into that to broaden the scope of availability for Snowman. Unfortunately, adding this additional distribution network required increasing the retail price of the paperback to a minimum of $15.00, to cover the additional costs of the various players in the chain. Lulu did allow setting a discount for purchases through Lulu, so the Lulu price was set to $13.50.
Since retirement gave me more time to write, I’ve subsequently added three more golf-themed mysteries to my repertoire, Slice, Lateral Hazard, and Dog Leg Left. All three were also published as paperbacks on Lulu and eBooks on KDP. All were priced in the same way — $2.99 for eBooks, $15.00 retail price and $13.50 Lulu price for paperbacks. I always found the publishing process to be quite easy, so I never really considered alternative POD publishers. I was often asked by other independent authors why I didn’t just publish the paperbacks on KDP, which has since added paperback publishing as well as eBooks. I’m a bit stubborn and averse to change, and I also felt that maybe Amazon didn’t need to get every last bit of my book business, so I just kept on with the way I had started.
But then, about a month ago, everything changed at Lulu. Some genius decided to “upgrade” the Lulu website. I visited the site one day to make a routine check on my sales and revenues, and found utter chaos. Some of the books on my author page did not have cover images, all displayed a note stating that distribution was “pending,” the sales and revenue page informed me that I hadn’t sold any books at all, and — worst of all — the discount for buying from Lulu was gone. I subsequently received some communications from Lulu explaining that they were working diligently to fix the missing cover images and the missing revenue data, while also implying that the higher price was also an error to be fixed soon. But, eventually, they posted an FAQ page about all the wonderful changes they’d made, including the fact that the discount was permanently gone.
The presumably unintended result of this grand upgrade was that I decided to explore publishing the paperback books on KDP instead of on Lulu. Lo and behold, I found that the process was just as easy and also that the publishing cost was actually less on KDP than on Lulu. The upshot of all this is that I am now able to offer the paperback books for $9.99 from Amazon, including worldwide distribution through other sources, and by dropping the global option at Lulu I can reduce the price to $9.99 there as well. I’ve done this already for Dog Leg Left and Lateral Hazard and will do it for Snowman and Slice in the near future. Check out the books page for details and purchase links.
So, as I said, another win for Jeff Bezos, as well as for mystery readers. Since I’m not exactly racking up world record book sales, I’m sure Jeff won’t even notice. But you can now save up to $5.01 for a thrilling read during the Covid-19 doldrums. Not too bad, eh?
Dave Saari 