Boycotting Amazon

While I think of myself as an educated person, I don't have all the facts and answers at my fingertips. A few months ago I quit buying from Amazon.com and even B&N whenever possible to support my local indie. (You can read about that here.)

Those of you who are writers know how tough it is to make a profit from writing. (I'm not even talking about living off your profit--I'm talking making one.) What I didn't realize was how hard it is for publishers to make any money. But yesterday I learned from this blog that on top of everything else a publisher must pay for, if Amazon sells the book for them, Amazon takes 60%. 60%! And they charge a restocking fee. For this particular small press publisher, it ended up costing them money every time someone bought a book from Amazon.com.

You read that right. Instead of making money from the sale, they spent money every time they sold.

Granted, that's not going to be the case for big publishers who print much larger orders. But if Amazon takes 60%, the author takes another 10%, the publisher is left with 30%. And they still have paychecks to write.

I'm not sure how much a bookstore charges, but I've heard something closer to 40%. (Anyone want to correct me on that?)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, I'm willing to pay a few extra dollars to avoid Amazon. In fact, I'm going to skip the shipping and handling altogether and order it from my local indie.

Sequel revisions:
today's goal: 84/164
actual: 80/166
tomorrow's goal: page 90/166