Price hike coming

I will have to increase print book prices.

It’s just getting silly. Some authors are selling and earning pennies because of my ‘cut the price to the bone’ policy. So all print books, except anthologies and books by H. K. Hillman (me), will get more expensive at the end of this month. I don’t need to boost books that other authors aren’t earning from.

I have had to, in some cases, pass the entire profit to the author because it’s embarrassing to admit they only earned a tiny profit. Also it was pointless to split it.

The new regime will be – a minimum of 75p above base price (the money we don’t get) so for every book sale, the author will get 50p and Leg Iron Books will get 25p. I planned to cut my 50% margin when sales got high enough but I have to do that sooner than anticipated. It’s not fair on the authors otherwise.

eBook sales are okay. The margins are small but reasonable. I’ll probably cut my percentage on those too but we still get a fair go on those.

I will adjust prices upwards at the end of March so I can better keep track of who earns what. Some books will go up by 50p, I’ve cut it that fine!

The point of Leg Iron Books was never to make me rich. I don’t need that much money. I have no desire to be George Soros, no desire to run the world, no wish to end up looking like the Dark Emperor with a skull that seems to be trying to escape my face. I just want to make enough to live on.

The point was to publish unknown authors and hopefully get them stolen away by big names. I have no ambition to be a big publisher. If I have any ambition at all, it’s to ride the coat tails of these authors and get my books stolen away too.

I see Leg Iron Books as a gateway. It’s proper publishing. You can approach a big name or an agent and have ‘published by Leg Iron Books’ on your list of previously published books. Not self publishing, not vanity publishing, the real deal. Even if it is a tiny operation with trivial income.

I have some really impressive authors on the books. I have no lousy authors. None. I won’t publish utter crap but I’ll publish anything well written (and legal) and I have seen so very much of that.

In cost terms though, I am constrained mostly by Amazon. Their base price is the minimum. If you publish elsewhere at a lower price they take you down. Since Amazon is global you can’t afford to piss them off.

But I have to be fair to the great authors on the Leg Iron Books list. So, from midnight March 31st, print book prices will go up. In most cases, only by 50p or a few pennies more, and a;ll future ones will be fixed at a minimum 50p per book for the author. I chose the end of the month because payments are set up by month.

If I have to cut the price, I will cut my share.