[Travis McGee]

For authors with conventional publishing contracts, Amazon might not be optimal, since they are splitting the Amazon royalties with their legacy publishing companies.

For a self-published author like myself, Amazon is tops, paying me 70% royalties, and I can set my price anywhere I like. My printed books retail for $20, Amazon discounts them for about $15. Originally I set my Kindle prices at $10, but that is too high for an e-book by a non-famous author. I set them to 4.99 for my first novel and 6.99 for the others, and my income increased.

I think that this is the golden age for self-published authors. I have no desire to get a dinosaur contract with a legacy publisher just for bragging rights. I like the 70% royalty better than the bragging rights of being on the shelf at the few brick and mortar bookstores remaining.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=bracken#/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=matthew+bracken&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Amatthew+bracken

[chaosagent]

Fully agree.

As I said I have a good friend who’s done VERY well on Amazon. Well enough so that Amazon paid the $1000 stipend to have all 5 of his fiction books turned into Audiobooks.

[MHGinTN]

Golden Age indeed ... check out the story of the modern Historian, Richard Dolan. He now has his own publishing company taking in other authors.