Paperback Size

[LilyBLily]

I'm a mass market girl myself, having realized early on that (a) I didn't have the money to buy hardcovers and (b) my reading tastes ran to original paperback fiction or cheap classic reprints. I enjoy the fact that my Agatha Christie collection is of many different publication eras and origins. I have mapbacks and foreign editions and books by multiple publishers and they're all mass market but slightly different sizes. (Dell always did a shorter book than the standard until their Candlelight series, for instance).

The sizes don't matter; it's the amount of space they take up that's the issue. I know more than one person who keeps many thousands of books--in fact, we all probably do if we know lots of writers. Many of us never met a book we didn't find fascinating. One friend even has a separate building for his collection, all the shelves neatly organized. The only episode of the Bob Newhart show that I ever watched was about a bookcase someone had built in--whose shelves were too close together to accommodate any books standing upright. That's an issue with 6 x 9 books, not so much with 5.25 x 8.

[Bill Hiatt]

Good point about shelves. I always buy bookcases in which most of the shelves are adjustable and/or fairly spacious to begin with. However, I also shelve most of them on their sides because, with the right shelf sizes, it can be more space efficient.

I turned my open-air patio (which I never used) into a room some time ago, and most of my collection is stored there.

[TimothyEllis]

Good point about shelves. I always buy bookcases in which most of the shelves are adjustable and/or fairly spacious to begin with. However, I also shelve most of them on their sides because, with the right shelf sizes, it can be more space efficient.

I had my shelves custom made for a maximum size of 6x9. They hold them, smaller books, and dvd cases very efficiently. Bottom area was larger for large hardbacks.

[LilyBLily]

I have a variety of bookshelves and bookcases, but the mainstay for many years has been Hirsh metal shelving bought at the hardware store and utterly adjustable. Not the newer stuff, which is weaker and not particularly versatile, but the older. I've reconfigured them in a million ways and taken them completely apart for storage many times.

The truth is I no longer collect books. I'm slowly getting rid of my large collection of genre romances. Eventually, even Agatha Christie has to go. I have held onto hers with the fantasy that they're the perfect books to leave in a beach house or forest cabin or other seldom-visited locale where some entertainment might be welcome if it rains. Alas, I do not have a beach house or forest cabin. I should write about one.

   

[Hopscotch]

The truth is I no longer collect books. I'm slowly getting rid of my large collection...

Me, too.  I only buy books I expect to reread and shed anything not read in a long while.  With the goal of keeping just 100 books on my shelves (well, maybe 200) that I will reread until the universe flips my switch.

[Bill Hiatt]

I have to correct what I said about print prices. Amazon's announcement of printing cost changes, effective on June 20, differentiates between regular print sizes and large print sizes. Interestingly, 6 X 9, which Amazon always advertised as the norm, is now a large print size. That means a somewhat higher fixed cost and cost per page. It's hard to know exactly how much of the difference the cost per page will cause, as 6 X 9 would have somewhat fewer pages than smaller time sizes.

Amazon is offering a bulk price update for people who want to make the same royalty after the change as they did before. You can find the link to it and a link to the table showing the new print costs near the top of your bookshelf page. Particularly if you have a lot of titles, it would be good to do the bulk update. As KDP says it may take several weeks, and the price change is only a little over a month away, I'd suggest initiating the process now if you're going to.

I selected the bulk update, but I'll see how it turns out. If the prices end up being outrageously high, I'll tinker after the update is finished. I don't sell many paperbacks anyway. They exist mostly as a convenience for my readers. I'll just have to see how it shakes out.

[TimothyEllis]

Amazon's announcement of printing cost changes, effective on June 20,

What announcement?

I've seen nothing from them on this.

[Bill Hiatt]

The announcement is near the top of the bookshelf, right below the link to view your quality issues dashboard.

Unless the announcement itself is rolling out gradually, it should be there.

Actually, I noticed it by accident. If you're used to the same basic announcements being up there, it's easy to miss.

[TimothyEllis]

The announcement is near the top of the bookshelf, right below the link to view your quality issues dashboard.

Unless the announcement itself is rolling out gradually, it should be there.

Actually, I noticed it by accident. If you're used to the same basic announcements being up there, it's easy to miss.

I wasn't due to go in there again for another couple of weeks. Haven't been in there this month at all.

[Bill Hiatt]

Well, now might be a good time. I suspect a lot of people are going to flip the bulk update switch at the last minute and bog down the system.  Do it now, and the prices might be correct when the printing costs go up.

What I'd like to do is go back in time and make all my paperbacks a slightly smaller size. Unfortunately, doing it now means adjustment costs for all the covers and some time fiddling with the manuscripts (but not much, thanks to Vellum). I'm not sure it would be worth it. I'm not sure how fast my cover designer could do it, anyway.

[TimothyEllis]

Actually, I like my paperbacks being round .95 numbers.

Looks like I'm going to have to redo all of them manually one by one. Erk.

[Lynn]

When I first started, I copied the layout of other books. So I used prices on my back cover. I have been planning to redo some covers for a while to get rid of prices so I can make price changes when I want. Guess that time is now. 

[Bill Hiatt]

Actually, I like my paperbacks being round .95 numbers.

Looks like I'm going to have to redo all of them manually one by one. Erk.

I like .99 myself. But it might be worth waiting until Amazon does its automatic update and then make what fixes are necessary. Otherwise, you're going to have to do all the price calculations manually to get to about the same amount. If I were you, I'd let Amazon do that part for you, leaving you to have to do only the rounding.

[TimothyEllis]

Got an email just now.

I think the bulk change is the way to go, and then after the date, manually re-tweak all of them.

[LilyBLily]

Thanks for the information. I chose the bulk update.

A long time ago, trade paperbacks were all even dollar prices. The hardcovers were the ones with the odd numbers, like $12.95 (I did say a long time ago). I've been pricing my paperbacks starting at $12.99 and always ending in 99 cents, but maybe it's time to revisit that paradigm. KDP's automatic worldwide pricing results in very odd numbers as it is. I usually have to manually adjust them for the English-speaking countries where I get 99.9% of my sales.   

[Bill Hiatt]

It used to be said that having uniform prices (like always ending in the same number) was attractive to prospective buyers. I wonder if that's still true.

[LilyBLily]

Most people mentally round down from 99 cents even though they should round up. My prices ending in 99 cents are meant to take advantage of that error, since Amazon is the bargain basement of ebookstores and customers want to see low prices. They see a mirage of their own making.

It would be interesting to price the books higher on other bookstores by a penny in order to look classier, except I don't think anybody makes that mental distinction anymore--not since NYTimes best sellers routinely became discounted at most big bookstores.

[Bill Hiatt]

When Amazon said the the bulk update would take several weeks, that was pessimistic. Mine was done yesterday, though it may take a little longer to show in the stores. I haven't yet looked this morning.

My prices all end in .24 or .75 now. Oh, one is .00. And the prices are the new ones in the US store. Now I have to think about how I want them to look.

[alhawke]

I just opted for the bulk price update too. Got paperbacks and hardcovers at very odd prices also. Like $23.24  . There goes the "_.99" thing.

I'm gonna leave it because my prices tend to get weird from price matching anyway. Not to mention, if you set it as "_.99" it will only show up as such in your originating country after converting to foreign currencies internationally.

[TimothyEllis]

I just opted for the bulk price update too. Got paperbacks and hardcovers at very odd prices also. Like $23.24

Can you give some examples of old price - new price?

I've not had a look at it yet.

[alhawke]

It appears to be only a tiny mark-up so it might not be worth it for you to bother. As far as I can tell, it appears to only by an increase in about $.25 USD. The Guardian was set at $8.99. Now it's $9.24. This is a novella. But my larger books were also only increased by .25: Broomstick $14.99 to $15.24 for the paperback; $22.99 to $23.24 for the hardcover. If I had known it was such a small amount, I wouldn't have done it.

Like I said above, I'm not going to change anything because the price drops from Amazon's price matching anyway. Broomstick, for instance, was selling on Amazon for $11-something. So keeping it at _.99 is a hopeless endeavor.

The only positive from the bulk price increase is that it raised the very low-priced paperbacks that were dropping some of my ebook prices. For now. Until it's price-matched again. Those of you who are running into that algorithm AI mess might want to do it just to fix that alone.

[LilyBLily]

I just rounded the new prices on a couple of my books. Made the EU a flat 14 euros, and so on. But then I hit the KDP button that said "Publish my books" and that means--I presume--that my books will be reviewed all over again. Should I just save as draft? Or back out? Or close the tab?

[alhawke]

I just rounded the new prices on a couple of my books. Made the EU a flat 14 euros, and so on. But then I hit the KDP button that said "Publish my books" and that means--I presume--that my books will be reviewed all over again. Should I just save as draft? Or back out? Or close the tab?

I'm not sure how to advise you. In the US, I just checked off "bulk price update". I wasn't given any prices until it was done.

[Bill Hiatt]

I just rounded the new prices on a couple of my books. Made the EU a flat 14 euros, and so on. But then I hit the KDP button that said "Publish my books" and that means--I presume--that my books will be reviewed all over again. Should I just save as draft? Or back out? Or close the tab?

It also says that, but if you're just changing prices, I've seen no evidence that the book goes through a complete review. In any case, price changes post very rapidly, at least when Amazon is having a good day.

[Bill Hiatt]

Mine went up a little more than .25 because they're  6 X 9, so there's a little extra charge for that. Even so, I think it's only about 1.25. Considering that shifting to a smaller trim size would increase the number of pages, the net increase from the size is probably not that large. Anyway, I can certainly live with it.

I think--because with Amazon, there's no way to be sure--that Amazon automatically changes prices in international stores (those other than your home store) when exchange rates change. Every time I go to do a price drop for a BookFunnel sales promotion, the EU prices are different than they were before. (I know because the EU regular price is part of my BookFunnel page, and I have to make a small change to reflect the Amazon price change every single time.) I'm sure the other international markets shift as well. That suggests that trying to even out prices in international markets really is futile.

[alhawke]

Ah, size changes the rate. That makes sense. The ones I was looking at are 5.5 by 8.5.

[LilyBLily]

I did receive the notifications very quickly from KDP that my book was published, so maybe it doesn't go into full review when only a price change is involved.

I like to manually even out the prices for some of the international markets, and for the U.S. market the only advantage I see of leaving it at an odd number is customers might think that's a discounted price. But they might also think it was a third party offering, with all the attendant negative possibilities.

Guess I will go through and update the rest of the bulk-changed titles.