Amazon pricing?

[Lorri Moulton]

Two of my ebooks are not returning to the price I've set.  When I contacted Amazon, the rep said it could be a delay...or it could be they're holding the price lower than other retailers to make Amazon more competitive?  I've never heard of that, but then a paperback price went down and shows on sale for 11% off. 

I'm not a big seller, but I did recently go wide.  Is this typical for wide books?  The Amazon rep said we get paid the royalty for our set price, even if they reduce it.  Is this a new thing?

[A. N. Onymous]

In my experience, Amazon will match or beat any price if a customer tells them about a lower price from their competitors, or they will periodically have your book on sale. If they reduce the price, you get the same royalty as what you set. If you change it the royalty changes accordingly.
Always been that was as far as I know.

[TimothyEllis]

The culprit here is often Google Play. They discount massively, and then Amazon matches it. Which is why the advice is to price GP at high enough so the discount price is still higher than Amazon's price.

If you're not in Google, then it might be another platform doing the discounting without you knowing.

[notthatamanda]

My guess is because they discounted the price of the paperback and then discounted the ebook to be lower. You can't do anything about it. I went about 20 rounds with them over that, before someone in Seattle called me (and they told me it was an Amazon promotion and I should have been paid full royalty then changed their mind for the tenth time again and I gave up). There is someone on the other place reporting the same thing.

My paper books are through Ingram, though in my case I'm 99% sure it's because they bought them by the case for a better discount and are trying to get rid of the last of them. Are your paper books through Ingram, Lulu or Amazon, if you don't mind me asking.

Edit - and no they do not pay full royalty when they reduce the price to be lower than the paperback price that they reduced. That's the real hand closing around our throats if you ask me.

[alhawke]

When you're wide, it's much much more difficult to bring prices back to normal (as notthatamanda's headache will attest). I've gone 10 days contacting Amazon by phone 3-4x trying to return a book to its normal price. I made a post here once about that. One of the members on writersanctum said they contact Amazon every time they try to return their book to normal price. In my experience, I've had to contact them direct only about 50% of the time.

The only trick I can suggest is that if you run a promotion, bring the price back to normal on Amazon last. Return all the other retailers first, then wait 12 hrs or even a day.

I'm so used to this problem that I'm actually planning a promo where I'm running an extra promo day for Amazon only on the last day. That way I can patiently wait a day to return the book on Amazon to normal price while, hopefully, selling more books through Amazon (of course, the promo on the last day advertises to Amazon only). I'll let you know if the book still gets stuck at 99c (probably will, right?).

As far as paperbacks, my paperbacks have sold for as low as $4 from price matching. That used to bother me, but Amazon will match your price for paperbacks. So, if people buy a ton of low priced books, the only one losing money there is Zon. If you sell a ton when discounted and your royalty's higher, they'll raise it back up I'm sure ;)

[notthatamanda]

Sorry I didn't explain it right. I have had the problem with bringing prices back up after a promotion, but this is not that. This is all Amazon's doing. They discounted the paper copies because they wanted to, not because they were price matching somewhere else. They flat out admitted that. Then in the TOC they are allowed to reduce the ebook price to keep it lower than the paper book price. And they reduce the royalty accordingly.

Today the ebook is back up at full price even though they still have one paperback and two large print in stock. And I sold two today at full price, so half-hearted 

[TimothyEllis]

Sorry I didn't explain it right. I have had the problem with bringing prices back up after a promotion, but this is not that. This is all Amazon's doing. They discounted the paper copies because they wanted to, not because they were price matching somewhere else. They flat out admitted that. Then in the TOC they are allowed to reduce the ebook price to keep it lower than the paper book price. And they reduce the royalty accordingly.

That's a powerful reason for not doing paperbacks at all.

Or doing them through someone else, and not linking them on Amazon.

[Simon Haynes]

I make 10% of my total royalties from paperbacks. I only publish via KDP Print, so the chances of a price match destroying my ebook prices is pretty low.

[Lorri Moulton]

I called again and they're all back to normal.  Even the paperback.  However, I did lower the prices for my series to make them both $2.99 for a Facebook party.  I don't like the third book being more expensive than the second, even though some writers price that way.

I would prefer Amazon not lower my prices without my consent.  This was not to price match...this was to make Amazon more preferrable to buyers.  Again, this was one person's explanation, not an official Amazon response.  So, we'll see what happens when I raise the price of my series back to $3.99 today.

[Lorri Moulton]

I'll have to wait the 72 hours, but they raised the price on the third book...and not the second one. 

[JRTomlin]

The culprit here is often Google Play. They discount massively, and then Amazon matches it. Which is why the advice is to price GP at high enough so the discount price is still higher than Amazon's price.

If you're not in Google, then it might be another platform doing the discounting without you knowing.

As far as I can tell (no guarantees though) Google Play has stopped playing silly buggers with discounting. None of mine have been discounted in months.