For reasons unknown to me, my first novella Insanity Factory has experienced a price spike on Amazon. There are still three used copies for sale. Until recently the three used copies were selling at around eight bucks plus shipping, but when I looked yesterday there’s now two selling for $23 plus shipping and the other one is selling for $40 plus shipping! Don’t ask me why… I just gave a copy away. Before I canceled the contract with IUniverse I ordered a few for myself- I have three with the photo of me on the back and five without the photo. Somewhere along the line I brought out a new edition without the photo of me on the back, because I was feeling all Castaneda-ish. So I’d say the ones with the photo of me on the back are rarer. As far as I know only fifty copies were actually printed- that’s if IUniverse was being honest about reporting how many were made. I canceled the contract with IUniverse because I was only making $2 per book sold, and I didn’t see it becoming a mega-seller. Better to have it be a rare book, thought I. Get a better contract someday in the future, maybe. I learned that royalties don’t pay the rent- a writer make his money by selling the publishing rights to the publisher. Royalties are just icing on that cake. And with IUniverse (and all Publish On Demand publishers) you’re basically giving away the most valuable thing you have for sale: the publishing rights. Not to mention no reviewer will touch a POD with a ten-foot pole. Are small presses any better than POD? Yes, but by how much?

E-book versions are available on my website for $7.50. I chose that price because it was just under what the used copies were selling on Amazon for. Such a deal!

Update: Now one of the three copies is gone and only two remain. Of the two, one is selling for more than $50 and the other is back to around $8 and change. Go figure…