Amazon and the pricing of eBooks

It's a contentious issue on the web - Amazon getting it's grubby paws all over the prices of our ebooks.
Pricing is an art. Do I think my readers deserve or are interested to pay more than $1.99 for a short story of around 30 pages? No. But as we're based in South Africa, that's exactly what's happening.

The price I'm charged for Charles Cilliers's A Grain of Sand:

The price a UK/US-based buyer is charged:

The price it's listed at and applicable to US/UK buyers:

Look, I get it, if we want to list on Amazon, we abide by their rules. But it punishes local readers from a new market - one we're specifically trying to say to: "hey look, books are awesome, buy them online because they're cheaper there."

This is not a tax issue, by the way, that's a different story and we've paid our due. We're told explicitly that the price difference is because we're based in South Africa. And our royalties are based on the list price.

I've had a book blogger insist that Amazon won't ever raise it's prices above the listing price. Why not? Did they pinkie swear?

This issue is why it's absolutely important that Amazon doesn't become the only big player in the industry. If there's no real competition, ebook prices could go up to match those of physical books and leave behind a large section of the world's population that needs access to cheaper books.

Currently, A Grain of Sand is $1.99 on Kobo, click here to buy it. Or if you have an email address in the UK or the US or are based there, buy it here and here.

A Grain of Sand - where can you get it?

Where can you buy our new short story and for how much?

Wordsmack's first short story, A Grain of Sand is out. You can read my review on Goodreads here.

For some reason this is still cheaper on Amazon.co.uk than on Amazon.com - something to do with us being in South Africa. The cheapest option, however, is to buy it on Kobo, because Amazon makes the book more expensive because we are in South Africa.

Not another blog?

You can't walk down the street in Cape Town without tripping over a writer's group. However, for the rest of us peasants who don't get to live in the artistic hub of Africa, it can be a bit trickier to find a group of people who can offer sage advice when it comes to our writing.

What about all those self-published authors who had their work edited by a 'friend' who also happened to be a highly successful publisher? Who has access to those people?

The answer is: you do, as of now.

Wordsmack Publishers have noticed that most of our writers are real, everyday people with jobs, kids and mortgages. Getting together in Montecasino to discuss how Frances's use of her cats as main characters in her novels is going, is just not appealing.

So we've started a blog - we'll discuss the process of being published, how you go about world-building, we'll organise events (not at Montecasino, promise) and create an online community of writers and editors that will rival anyone of those you can trip over, physically, in Cape Town.

Get ready for some good stuff!

Leani and Louise