Forum: Author Hangout

Since I price my books at $5.99 it means I only have to sell one to make my money back and a small profit.

To nitpick (which I've been known to do), that's not exactly true. You're assuming $5.99-$5.00=$0.99 profit. But you don't get the full $5.99. For my books sold at $5.99, my net is either $4.92 or $4.80 (it varies). And then, of course, there are the PayPal fees.

But thanks for starting this thread. It's very interesting and something for me to think about.

You are correct, but my math is usually $4.89 net for a $5.99 book. I base this on last quarter when I sold 5 books total for 5.99 and netted $24.48.

I haven't encountered any PayPal fees yet. Last quarter the amount sent via PayPal matched the Net shown.

Malcom

I base this on last quarter when I sold 5 books total for 5.99 and netted $24.48.

To see the actual net, you have to catch it the day the book is sold. And you can only be sure if one book is sold because the net would be only for that one sale.

This quarter I sold $5.99 books on 8/9 and 8/13 that netted $4.80 each. But on 7/3 and 7/6 I sold $5.99 books that netted $4.92 each.

They were 4 different titles, but all were listed at $5.99.

My current quarterly numbers are 4 books at $5.99 each for a total of $23.96. The net for those 4 books is $19.44.

$4.92 + $4.92 + $4.80 + $4.80 = $19.44.

But $19.44 / 4 = $4.86. So it looks like I'm netting $4.86 on a $5.99 sale, but that's the average net, not the per book net.

The net changes depending on the sale of the book with a Paypal payment or using a credit card directly.

I knew it changed, I didn't know why. Thanks.

I have spreadsheets that track my sales and revenue from ZBookStore, Amazon KDP, and other sources. KDP provides the specifics for each book sale. But for ZBookStore, I have to do other calculations. One spreadsheet cell is the net for each list price. So I had the net for a $5.99 book at $4.92. Then another cell has a formula that multiplies the net for that book's list price times the number of books sold for the period. That's when I discovered the net for the book list price changed. The totals in my earnings spreadsheet didn't match the ones in ZBookStore's "Sales for Current Period."

When sales are slow because I haven't published a new novel in a while, like they are now, I can usually identify each sale's net. But when there's a flurry of sales, I end up fudging the numbers in my earnings spreadsheet.

Thanks for clarifying the reason the net changes. Amazon doesn't for KDP. For example, even though I'm set up to receive a 70% royalty, sometimes KDP pays me 30%. I think it's when someone buys out of market (e.g., someone in Germany buying from the U.S. store), but I don't really know. There are other times the royalty gets adjusted as well. But unlike you, I can't get a straight answer from them as to why. I know what the net is for each sale on KDP so it doesn't affect my spreadsheets, but it would be nice to know anyway.

Thanks again.