Hi Everyone

I’ve missed you all so very much. Despite all my best laid plans life decided to take me down a completely different path. Today’s post tells you about my health nosedive, Amazon print price hikes for EVERY book–large or small, and my Website/Platform building progress–or lack of!

Recent Health Challenges

On top of the fibromyalgia and longterm disability, in early January I got sick. Real sick. Everyone, including the GP, thought I’d caught a stomach bug from my Grandson. I may have done, but whatever those initial three days of absolute ickiness and dehydration were, I am now waiting for a CT scan of just about everywhere and at the least a gallbladder removal surgery. Perhaps stomach surgery too if the lump they found with a camera is as big as they think–there seems to be a bit of confusion around that. At least the CT scan will make everything clearer. Even as an urgent case, it will likely be a 4 to 6 month wait for surgery, and that’s after the scan, which I don’t know when will happen. In the meantime, I’ve lost kilos and kilos. [For those not on the metric system, a kilo is equal to 2.205 pounds.] Food and drink are not my friends anymore. All of this has had me in constant Fibro flare up, which is incredibly tough to deal with all at once.

The Silver Lining

I look great! hahaha

Building My Author Website Hub: Progress Update

Most of my not-so-grand plans have not progressed. Many have simply fallen by the wayside. Alongside my health going downhill, a platform I joined for a year, at great cost, which initially inspired and gave me a new lease of life and lots of opportunities isn’t working out so far. Too many glitches and products that don’t do what the platform says they should. At first I thought having every app in one place for one price was great … buuuttt … it’s also dangerous. Over the years, I’ve seen–too many times–how easy and quick it is for a good thing to go bad. Do I REALLY want to put all my different, lovely offerings in one single place? Nope!

So, I’m taking this forced downtime to do some serious thinking. Do I cut my losses and go a different route to get where I want to be? I think I’ll have to, especially as the platform doesn’t deliver all it promises, and I’m going to have to spend more money anyway. Sigh.

Because of this, it seems to me I’m better off taking the domain name I bought recently for my personal bookstore, using this platform’s servers, and making it my own instead. The bookstore STILL hasn’t delivered on giving us ePubs instead of just PDFs and Audiobooks. That is such a shame as the store looks great! You can find it here: https://harmonykenthub.com. And it was so easy to set up, using one of many done-for-you templates. But it just don’t do it’s job. Anyhooo, ‘nough said on that!

Amazon Print Price Hikes: What Authors Should Know

This one has upset me greatly. When I got the email telling me I had to go in and raise my prices on print books, I didn’t feel too concerned. They’d–surely–discern between long and short books, right? Nope!

Even my once-cheap journals and birthday date books, etc., … i.e: the low content stuff … has to be a minimum of 9.99 for the UK, US, and Europe. For Canadian Amazon sales I’ve had to up the baseline to a whopping 13.99 UAD. My poetry books … the same price. My novellas … the same price. My big novels … the same price. This is not fair.

The print costs differ on book page counts. This smacks of a certain company wanting more profit. All of us authors are going to suffer due to this policy. I’d love to hear from any of you who have had the same notification and what country you’re in. What are your minimum print prices to keep your royalty rate as is?

To summarise: EVERY book, large or small, now costs the same at the baseline rate in print. This is bad.

Print Costs versus Minimum Allowed Print Price

I checked the raises and the print costs. Right now the print costs are the same (a lot lower than the required base prices–always have been). I plan to check after June 1oth, when the changes take effect, to see what the rates go up to then. What I did see was who’s making the biggest–and I mean biggest–profits … yep, the big A. Certainly not the authors. And our readers will see some big price rises on print books, which is another big hit for indie authors.

Some books I had to raise by cents or pennies. Most, sad to say, had to go up by 3 or 4 pounds/dollars. Especially for Amazon Canada. That hurts me greatly and reinforces my urge to get my own store up and running as soon as I physically can (even though I thought I had that one sorted, ugh).

If you don’t meet the minimum print cost, Amazon will take yet another 10% off you in royalty payments. You’ll get 50% instead of 60%. So this really puts authors in a squeeze.

What Authors Can Do

Authors have a choice: either raise the print price for every book to the minimum for each country or take the 10% hit on a low-priced book.

Where I’m at

Somehow, I need the energy, time, and brain power to get a new website up and running which will be my hub, owned and run by me, and will have all my different offerings under one umbrella controlled by me. All using a host I love and trust (Hostinger: for those interested). Their customer service is second to none and prices good. They also have minimal downtime (I hope I ain’t just jinxed that, Ma!)

I’ll do my best to keep you updated:

That’s it from me for now. I’m still alive if not kicking, exactly. I still have plans, but need to find a new and affordable way forward. When I find what works , I’ll let you in on the process.

Soon, I’ll have my last (for a while) NetGalley video book review on YouTube, and I’ll focus on catching up on YOUR books. All those fab releases I’ve missed. So, please do list any new release–keep it to one for my sanity lols!–and I’ll do my utmost to read and review, including video review, for you. However, that must come with the caveat of let’s see how my health goes. As we’ve seen how my plans took a side-swipe already! I tell you, head in hands, all that work so far and everything has come to a standstill. It’s taken so much simply to write this post.

As things stand, and I’ll let you know as they change, you can find me anywhere I am on the web via this one handy link: https://clickly.net/Harmony

I love this bookmark thingy so much, I had to show you a picture. Do Click on the link in the post to see the live animated version! It’s lovely

 

Finally, as you will have guessed, I’m unlikely to be online much. I sincerely hope the universe decides to prove me wrong on that count, lols, as I miss our interactions greatly. 

Take care, all, and thanks so much for keeping in touch! Hugs all around

 

The post When Life Disrupts: Health Challenges, Amazon Print Price Hikes, & My Website Journey first appeared on Welcome to Harmony Kent Online.