Amazon

I got a bad shock a couple of weeks ago...took me a while to get over it.

A year or so ago, I discovered that Amazon was allowing people to publish their blogs on the Kindle. People who did so receieved a 30% commission.So, if a person's blog cost 99 cents to subscribe to, the author would receive 30 cents for each one. If the blog cost $1.99, the blogger would receive 60 cents.

However, the blogger has no control over how much Amazon charges for the blogs. And they ALL start at $1.99.

After a while, some blogs drop to 99 cents...no one knows why, while some stay at $1.99.

So it was with me. I had established somewhat of a blog publishing empire. I published 10 blogs...indeed, more than that, as I figured quantity of blogs would help my income.

I had three successful blogs. After about 5 months, one of them had 70 subscriptions. It cost 99 cents, and had done so for about a week after I'd started it, so I was quite happy with getting 30 cents per sub.

Of my other two blogs, one had over 90 subs, and was $1.99. THe other had over 160 subs, and also cost $1.99

So, to recapituatle, I had 2 successful blogs that were earning me 60 cents a piece, and I continued to get subscriptions every single day.

Then, a week or so ago, mid-month, I saw to my horror that my two very successful blogs had been reduced in price to 99 cents. So my income was reduced in half. For the month of September, I earned $170, in October, my income will be $90. I'd anticipated getting 1000 subs by early next year, which would have earned me $600. Now, it will be $300. That's a loss of $300.

Well, I was mad enough to spit. The more so because my 7 blogs that have 1, 2, 3 or 4 subs...still cost $1.99!!!!!

I emailed Amazon's "help desk" and requested, astringently, that my blog prices be put back to $1.99, but I was refused.

So, it's taken me a week or so to recover from my fury. I'm still in the process of shutting down my blogs - I'm not going to help Amazon - at least the Kindle portion of it - earn any money. (The more so because they've also cost themselves money by reducing my prices!)

My one very popular blog, The Rush Limbaugh Report, continues to get subscriptions. I am allowing it to continue for a while - hell, I need the money, even if it is half of what I should be getting - but as soon as my desktop publishing books take off, I'll dump these things.