Kindle Royalty Statements

[I. J. Parker]

Help!  I hope someone can help with this.  My Kindle royalty statements show that Amazon is selling my titles at both 70 % and 35 % royalty levels.  All the titles are listed at 2.99 - 5.99.  The 70 % should apply to all sales.  When only one or two sales were involved, I could see this, but now the biggest numbers are sold at the 35 % rate.  This is costing me major bucks.  What gives??  I should add that all the titles are Amazon exclusives, so no underselling by others is involved.

[Benjamin Sobieck]

Were they foreign sales? This could affect the royalty.

[I. J. Parker]

I know what you mean.  There are some countries that aren't covered by the 70 % agreement.  That's what I meant when I said I didn't worry when the numbers were very small.  Now I have 98 sales for Rashomon Gate being counted at 35 % and only 26 at 70 %, and both are listed for the U.S Store. And the figures don't match up with Novelrank's.  Something is fishy.

Actually, there is no explanation of whether they were domestic or foreign.  UK and FR and other Amazon stores are listed separately (but also with the 70 % and 35 % split) 

[Pepper Smith]

Likely it's the foreign sales, and the statement is just confusing.

Does Amazon pay monthly, or on some other schedule?  They don't pay my publisher right away, which means any sales reflected on our statements were from months previously.  This would help explain the Novelrank discrepancy.

[I. J. Parker]

Pepper, I go through my agency with this.  They get more complete royalty statements than I do with my own pubs. These they pass on to me every month.  And yes, Amazon pays every month.  Publishers should, too.

As for the delay:  Amazon figures reflect sales 2 months previous.  I.e. I'm looking at December sales now.  However, I track my sales and have the figures for December.  There is a big discrepancy.

[Eric Christopherson]

This is how the statements always are. It's perhaps unusual to have more sales at 35%, so I wonder if Japanese historicals are more popular overseas.

[I. J. Parker]

Not only is it unusual, but it has changed dramatically lately.  I signed up with Kindle Select in December and wondered if that has affected percentages.  In any case, I don't like it one bit.

[I. J. Parker]

With apologies:  I cleared up the strange case of RASHOMON GATE selling more books at 35% than at 70 %.  Seems I ran a 99 cent special that month.  My bad -- as they say.

 

The other instances (and there are quite a few) may well be sales to foreign countries not covered by agreements with Amazon.

[Susan]

Hi Folks, by the end of my 2-day giveaway in Feb, I had 5,000 + downloads. More than 3,000 in UK. since then I've been selling very well over there. problem is, I'm not sure where the sales are coming from. If I look at  my 6 weeks prior royalty stmts, some are at 70% and some at 35%. And I've never been able to figure out this VAT business, the tax they add to price of e-books in EU?

I'm happy to be getting lots of sales there, but I wish they were 70% royalty, not 35%.  Sigh. 

[I. J. Parker]

The UK and a number of English-speaking countries (also many European countries) are actually under the umbrella.  Those 35 % sales aren't coming from them.  I don't think Australia, China, Japan, and other Asian countries are covered.  Most likely those foreign customers buy through the Amazon UK store, or the Amazon U.S. store, etc.

I anticipate that Amazon is busily working on getting agreements with them also.  Kudos to Amazon.

[Susan]

Thanks IJ. Wish I knew which countries those sales were coming from. When you refer to amazon working on getting agreements with them, does this mean we would then get 70% royalties? That would be nice.

[I. J. Parker]

Yes.  I think so.  That's why you get 70 % on any of the British sales, and Canadian ones, and German and French ones.  Amazon negotiated those deals last year.