Being a book publisher is a very hard way to make a living. The biggest problem is the size of the discounts you have to give. Now, I can understand that booksellers have rent and rates to cover, but some of the big chains expect 55% or 60%. I won’t give it to them, so they don’t stock my books. I don’t think they would anyway, but even if they did it wouldn’t be worth it.

Let’s look at an example. I can’t afford to print and bind thousands of copies and then warehouse them so I use print-on-demand. A copy of Schoelcher’s Life of Handel in hardback costs me £9.40 a copy, plus delivery charges. I sell it for £25 which is what I think the market will bear. If I give a bookshop 55%, I receive £11.25. Postage on that book is probably at least £3, so I’ve already made a loss before allowing for the costs of research, design, typesetting, sourcing illustrations.

I sell most of my books through Amazon on so-called ‘short discounts’ (i.e. less than 55% discount) but if I had to sell through Amazon’s Advantage programme, I’d have to give them 55%. The Advantage, I have to say, is all Amazon’s. Not that I’m knocking Amazon. Without them I’d have no business at all. However, I have to say that the lack of competition in the online bookselling business is very bad.

The other major online bookseller is ABE Books (go here in the UK, here in the US). They’re great for out-of-print books. They also sell a lot of new books but I find that most of the new books I buy from them take an age to arrive (many are shipped from the States) and often cost more than they would from Amazon.

A slight frustration I have with Amazon is that I don’t really have a direct relationship with them. My relationship is with my printers, Lightning Source. They supply Amazon directly, which is great for me. The downside, though, is that my books don’t always appear on Amazon and there’s little I can do about it. For instance, why is my paperback edition of Bibliomania available from Amazon in the US but not the UK?