An old friend, someone with whom I went to school, recently sent an unsolicited review of my first novel, A Line Between Friends, and I asked him to post a version of it on Amazon.com. He did. And when I went to the site to read it, I noticed there were two “new” copies of the book available from Amazon vendors for 1¢. One flippin’ cent. How can that be? Even I can’t get copies of my own books for under nine bucks!My friend Beaver, who has a thriving Amazon business, explained that vendors make more money on some of their items from the minimum $3.99 shipping allotment Amazon provides than they do on the product itself. I get that, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Placing the value of a story that I labored to write and edit, and on which my publisher invested printing and distribution expenses at a mere penny is, well, pretty damn degrading. It’s almost as bad as a negative review.
On a brighter note, my friend’s five-star review of A Line Between Friends was the 22nd five-star rating of the work posted on Amazon. And I know for a fact that reading it and reconnecting with his past (and with me) was worth far more than a flippin’ penny.
In the meantime, don’t bother looking for those new copies at the bargain basement rate at the Amazon site. I snapped them up. Now you’re going to have to pay as much as four dollars (plus shipping, of course) for my award winning first novel. It’s still a good deal on what “Steve from Florida” deemed, “an awesome book that addresses the universal experiences of college life and the relationships we develop during those times, especially that special one we all experienced.”
And one last thing I'd like to convey is that from those Amazon vendors, I don't receive one red cent.
