Rescues, Book 7 in the Conrad Chronicles is published!

Book seven of The Conrad Chronicles has just gone to print. Rescues is the the seventh book in what will be a series of nine. Eight is being polished and nine is being written at this time. The journey of the Conrads of Karna and Aleron is almost at an end. Due to the printing costs and rising prices of materials, I made a decision with Rescues. The book will only be available through lulu.com or one of it's outlets. I skipped Global Distribution. For those of you not in the book industry, Global Distribuation means your book is available anywhere books are sold, including book stores, the internet, and can be found in a library's collection. Now I must explain why I skipped Global Distribution, and there are two main reasons. Without it I can price the same quality of book for significantly less, which is a benefit to the reader and at the same time I make a larger profit. Anyone who knows books, knows the Amazon Corporation has come to dominate the book market. As a result, they have set the bar high for their cut of the profits, which forces printers and publishers to charge more for books. The Amazon Corporation demands 60% of retail when a book sells (This may be different if one chooses to publish through them, which I have chosen not to do because I want full control of the rights to my books). Math-wise let me explain. Assume it costs $8 to print a book, it would then need to retail for $20 for Amazon Corporation to get their 60% of retail. So if a book sells at the price of $20 the printer gets $8 and Amazon gets $12 and the author gets $0. Let's say I decide I want a little money, so I raise the price of the book to $21. I still don't get $1 a book as Amazon takes 60% of the new retail price of $21. Now the printer gets $8, Amazon gets $12.60 and I get $.40. That is what selecting Global Distribuation has done to the price of books thanks to Amazon Corporation dominating the book market. Since I skipped Global Distribuation for Rescues, the book can only be found on lulu.com, but I can sell it for $12.99, which is a much fairer and more reasonable price for a trade paperback. As I move forward with my novels, they will solely be found on lulu.com for the time being. I also will not be formating any more of my novels as e-books because I have discovered that Google Docs has several of them available there in large segments (about 2/3 of each book in random pages) and has done this without my permission. I was very disheartened when a friend uncovered this and informed me. That is my current writing update. Happy Reading!