How should I buy- Amazon, BN, direct? What best helps you?

Updated: Amazon.com no longer gives a significant discount. 

I have been asked this question by a number of people. The question is- what puts the most money into my hands, or what in general helps the cause of Birth Pangs the most. It is an interesting question. There is something to be said about having my book’s rank on Amazon.com be higher, but when they’re selling it for only $10 you can guess that my cut is not so much. And just because BN charges more for the book, don’t think my cut is any higher- it isn’t. It’s exactly the same. Naturally, if you buy it from me for full price, from a purely financial point of view, I get a larger cut.

Let’s keep in mind that if you buy from me direct, your copy is signed, whereas obviously the major distributors can’t do that.

Having heard this so often now and having spent a little time thinking about it, if you want to try to help out in both ways- Amazon’s ’status’ measure and my bottom line, you can buy from Amazon and send me a paypal payment to make up the difference. So, if you buy the book from Amazon for $10.50, simply subtract $10.50 from $15.95 and send me a paypal payment for $5.45. Now my rank goes up on Amazon, but I’m not shorted on the profit.

Now, I completely understand you may just want to grab the book cheap and check it out. That’s just fine by me. I’m not trying to guilt anyone here. I’m just responding to a question that keeps coming up. And of course, if you want to send more then the difference, I won’t stop you. I have plenty other expenses, like marketing and advertising and web hosting expenses.

Just a note- if you buy more than one copy via Amazon, it won’t increase the ranking. It increases on a ‘per order’ basis. So, just keep in mind that buying 10 copies on Amazon won’t help in that regards more than buying 1.

Without further ado, here is the Paypal donation form: