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Post by Deadshot on Jan 20, 2024 9:56:18 GMT
Maybe not to do directly with Lulu but I am not really sure what is happening and what algorithm is being used.
One of my books on Amazon (published via Lulu GD) has been a best seller for over a year. During that period, the expected royalties have not been reflecting a best seller revenue. Actually, it is almost negligible revenue from that particular book.
How come? I have no idea. Something is fishy here. There has always been some talk about PODs skimming some of the royalties but it is difficult to find the culprit reason.
Anyone had a similar situation and doubts?
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jan 20, 2024 16:53:16 GMT
Maybe not to do directly with Lulu but I am not really sure what is happening and what algorithm is being used. One of my books on Amazon (published via Lulu GD) has been a best seller for over a year. During that period, the expected royalties have not been reflecting a best seller revenue. Actually, it is almost negligible revenue from that particular book. How come? I have no idea. Something is fishy here. There has always been some talk about PODs skimming some of the royalties but it is difficult to find the culprit reason. Anyone had a similar situation and doubts? One possibility is your book is so niche it doesn't have much, if any, competition on Amazon meaning even minimal sales would make it a best-seller in its category. Another possibility is the sales numbers are high, and as you stated something murky is going on before royalties are sent to you. In order to determine which possibility is true, you'll have to do some forensic accounting. If you can, find out the book's sales numbers from Amazon, then compare those numbers to what Lulu shows. |
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Post by potet on Jan 20, 2024 18:32:41 GMT
About three years ago, I discovered that the sale of a copy of my _A Grammatical Pandect of Written Tagalog_ by Amazon had brought me no royalties. I asked Lulu, and the answer was that actually Amazon had lost money on this particular sale because the price of my book was too low. Lulu advised me to use their grid and start with the royalties I expected; the program would immediately calculate the required sale price. Since then, I noticed that all my books sold by Amazon had to be expensive for 5€ of royalties per copy!
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Post by And Kevin 2024 on Jan 20, 2024 23:56:58 GMT
Maybe not to do directly with Lulu but I am not really sure what is happening and what algorithm is being used. One of my books on Amazon (published via Lulu GD) has been a best seller for over a year. During that period, the expected royalties have not been reflecting a best seller revenue. Actually, it is almost negligible revenue from that particular book. How come? I have no idea. Something is fishy here. There has always been some talk about PODs skimming some of the royalties but it is difficult to find the culprit reason. Anyone had a similar situation and doubts?
I doubt Lulu would skim, because they have no need to. They make money off you automatically when a book is sold. They take their legitimate cut. Other retailers, such as Amazon, also take a large chunk of any sales. What is left, if anything, is yours. You need to check what you have set profit at, because it may no longer be enough what with printing cost increases and what not. |
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Post by Deadshot on Jan 21, 2024 13:02:39 GMT
Thanks for the responses.
I had a look at the historical data since 2013, the date of the first edition of the same book:
- There has been a sharp decrease in revenue from Amazon (KDP) since I changed to Lulu. Expected.
- The number of copies sold of the same book has remained constant, if not increased overall. Reasons? possibly, a saturated market. Amazon's visibility and reach are far greater than Lulu's.
- The increase in printing cost (from Lulu) meant that the royalty decreased - maintaining the same retail price of the book on both Lulu and Amazon.
- I have done no promotion or advertising whatsoever. That particular book has been selling thanks to word of mouth.
Yes, the market is somewhat niche. It is a language book that has been used as a textbook in schools since 2013. I now see that Lulu is the main marketplace for my publications and that is not going to change anytime soon, if I have a choice.
Amazon have stopped publishing RtL books (via KDP) and that still defeats me. Why? I'd love to understand the market reasoning for it. I never thought Lulu were skimming. I did suspect Amazon taking the Lion's Share.
I do not check my sales and I should regularly. I have always been content with whatever the books return as income.
With Lulu, I can set promotional pricing, which I will try to use. However, I do not think there's an option to offer discount codes to some clients / schools for bulk orders. If I am right, I would love Lulu to offer this option.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jan 21, 2024 17:55:03 GMT
When it comes to promotional pricing on Lulu Press, it only works on Lulu Press, while making the price more expensive on other vendor sites like Amazon.
I had done the promotional discount on hardcopy at Lulu Press and the end result was my books [with at most $1.25 to $1.50 in royalty] were too expensive to sell on Amazon.
You might want to check IngramSpark, since Lightning Source does RtL books and you can set up the book store discount schema.
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Post by And Kevin 2024 on Jan 21, 2024 23:58:20 GMT
"Amazon have stopped publishing RtL books (via KDP) and that still defeats me. Why? I'd love to understand the market reasoning for it." It's not something I know anything about, and I cannot find anything out about Amazon not allowing them via KDP. You can always ask them. I assume you are aware of this? blog.reedsy.com/amazon-author-central/ |
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Post by And Kevin 2024 on Jan 22, 2024 0:03:26 GMT
When it comes to promotional pricing on Lulu Press, it only works on Lulu Press, while making the price more expensive on other vendor sites like Amazon. I had done the promotional discount on hardcopy at Lulu Press and the end result was my books [with at most $1.25 to $1.50 in royalty] were too expensive to sell on Amazon. You might want to check IngramSpark, since Lightning Source does RtL books and you can set up the book store discount schema.
Many people were increasing their prices on Lulu only so they could 'discount' them, but that often over-inflated price was passed on to other retailers. |
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Post by And Kevin 2024 on Jan 22, 2024 0:10:11 GMT
I cannot recall if you get notified of even sales that make you no money.
I do think that with ePubs and such, when a person downloads a book to some other device they have previously bought and downloaded originally to something else, it often shows as a £0 sale. It can confuse people, but it's often forgotten that when a digital file is bought on line, it includes the option to download it to just about anything that it will work on ad-infinitum.
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