The second edition of my first novel, Cynicism Management, is now available on Amazon (the link should automatically take you to your local Amazon store) for $2.99 / £1.99.
HOWEVER! Be warned that this price can vary greatly between the countries you’re buying the book from, Slovenia being one of the most unfortunate ones. In Slovenia the $2.99 book will cost you $6.09. For example, these are the prices I’ve been able to confirm (when browsed in different countries, on Amazon US) after some research via VPN servers and/or with the assistance of friends living abroad:
- USA: $2.99 (my price at Amazon US)
- Germany: $3.29 (most likely my price of €2.99 at Amazon DE, with currency conversion from €)
- UK: $2.96 (my price at Amazon UK, with currency conversion from £)
- Switzerland: $ 3.26
- Latvia: $ 6.04
- Lithuania: $ 6.04
- Czech Republic: $ 2.99
- Romania: $ 3.71
- Slovenia: $ 6.09
- Portugal: $ 3.68
- Spain: $ 3.26
- Sweden: $ 3.74
I tried clearing up the issue with Amazon, but for three days of fruitless back-and-forth they kept evading and muddling the issue with diversionary tactics and nebulous quasi-information before finally sending the following statement (after I demanded explicitly that they send me a clear breakdown of how exactly they calculated the Slovenian price):
“The availability and pricing of titles in global Kindle Stores may vary by home country or region, because of taxes and other operating costs. However, it is our operational policy that we don’t disclose the breakdown to our publishers/authors. Unfortunately, we’re unable to provide why we can’t disclose these information to publishers/authors either.”
In other words, they won’t tell me why they charge the extra $3.10 in case of Slovenia, and they also can’t tell me why they won’t tell me that.
I know of no taxes and reasonable “operating costs” (of sending a digital file to a Kindle and charging a credit card) that could result in an increase of price in excess of 100 %. However, the last sentence of the final response was probably volunteered by a rather disgruntled Amazon support staff member, and the actual interpretation from “bamboozlese” would probably be – I’m reasonably sure – that Amazon applies some ridiculous arbitrary surcharge in case of certain countries… And they obviously don’t want to advertise this fact.
Be that as it may, the book will soon be published as epub in various other e-bookstores as well, hopefully without this astounding surcharge.
My favourite graphics and illustration wizard, Matej Peklar, has just come up with the first, rough sketch of the cover for my upcoming novel, Pendulum Pet. I love it – the “pendulum” dog, hanging from a leash, is as cranky as I have imagined him to be.
