“Amazon charges 55% for it’s Amazon Advantage Program because that is what self-publishing authors are used to paying distributors.” This came directly from the lips of an Amazon.com employee at a recent publishing conference. Since Amazon is acting in the capacity of a distributor when an author participates in their Amazon Advantage program, they feel 55% is fair. Unfortunately for their customers, they are not taking into account their computerized processes and lower overhead (nor their $29.95 yearly fee).

First of all, what is Amazon Advantage? In a nutshell, it is a sales program offered by the largest on-line retailer that allows independent writers and publishers the ability to list individual books on the Amazon.com website, thereby reaping the rewards offered by worldwide distribution and a gigantic brand name. Amazon’s Advantage program is clearly advantageous but is it really all its cracked up to be? Let us investigate the potential earnings a little closer…

For our example, we will take a 250 page book with a retail price of $14.95, an average figure on Amazon. If your book’s retail price is higher or lower, you will have to adjust the numbers in this example accordingly. Amazon takes 55% of your retail price right off the top, leaving an amount of $6.73. In order for them to sell your book, they need to have access to it, which means you will need to mail it to them. On average, Amazon requests 2-3 books at a time (“3 weeks worth of inventory” according to this Amazon source.) Never mind that mailing 2 books to Amazon costs approximately the same as mailing 6; you will be investing the time and postage to conduct three different mailings, each of them eating into your profit margin.

Let’s be fair and say the shipping and handling cost per book is $2. In actuality, it is probably higher if you factor in your hourly rate for taping up the box and traveling to the post office. That leaves you with $4.73 for each book. Now let’s factor in the printing cost. How much did that book cost to print with an off-set printer? It depends on your print-run, naturally, but let’s be generous and say it only cost $1.50, not including the shipping costs to you. Yes, this method has you paying for shipping twice, which is not unlike paying taxes twice. And who wants to do that?

In this generous scenario you are left with $3.23 of profit, plus the headache of shipping books, managing inventory, and accounting costs. You would like to list your book with Barnes & Noble.com, Powells.com, BAMM.com, and elsewhere, but who has the time? Amazon is already taking too much away from time better spent writing and promoting. Introducing 20% Amazon Listings With On-Demand Technology

What if an on-demand edition of your book could generate more profit with less work?

Thanks to new printing technology and inventory management software, custom on-demand publisher Outskirts Press can publish an on-demand edition of your book and make it available on Amazon for just 20%. Inventory, shipping, billing, and production are all handled by Outskirts Press and its wholesale partners. Let’s take the same 250 page paperback book with a retail price of $14.95. A 20% discount leaves you with $11.96 (instead of $6.73 with Amazon’s Advantage program). Granted, the on-demand production cost is higher (costing $6.65 per book with Outskirts Press’ Diamond Package). $11.96 minus $6.65 leaves you with $5.31 of profit. There’s no additional out of pocket printing or shipping costs since all of that is handled behind the scenes by Outskirts Press and its partners. You are making $5.31 for each book you sell on Amazon, rather than $3.23. Plus you are saved the hassles of inventory, shipping, billing, estimating print-runs, and paying interest and overhead. More profit. Less risk. How does Outskirts Press do it? Through an inventory management system known as EDI.

What is EDI?

EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange. The transfer of data between different companies using networks and the Internet. As more and more companies get connected to the Internet, EDI is becoming increasingly important as an easy mechanism for companies to buy, sell, and trade information. Amazon’s computerized system can manage sales and inventory with very little human involvement, particularly if one computer speaks to another. How does it work?

When an Amazon order is placed, EDI communicates the order through Outskirts Press wholesale partners and the book is produced. Turnaround time according to Amazon’s own website is 24 hours. Why does EDI drop the discount so substantially? Amazon would rather deal with 1 wholesaler via EDI handling thousands of books than with thousands of authors via email handling 1-2 books. They make their profit in volume, and hence the considerably lower discount.

Any other advantages? Yes.

All that time and effort involved in listing your self-published book independently with Amazon’s Advantage program has probably prevented you from listing it with Barnes & Noble, Powells, Books-A-Million and countless other online retailers. Each online retailer you pursue independently multiplies your time expenditure, and therefore further decreases your profit margin.

On the other hand, with Outskirts Press and EDI, the same 20% discount can be applied across the board, resulting in automatic distribution and listing with all participating online retailers simultaneously. Even if you have already printed a book off-set or have published a book elsewhere, you owe it to yourself and your profit margin to explore adding an on-demand version of your book to take advantage of this win-win opportunity.

Jewelry Making & Beading for Dummies was first published in 2005 and is probably the most popular book available for teaching beginners about the basics of jewelry making and beading.

When the book was published a few years back I had already been making jewelry for quite some time so I wasn’t really interested in getting it.

Now that I focus more on teaching jewelry making I am always looking for jewelry making information that can help beginners, so I decided to get the book and review it.

Here is an overview of the contents of the book and my opinion about each section. If you are new to beading and/or jewelry making I hope you will find this useful.

The book is divided into five parts: Part 1: Creating Irresistible Jewelry, Part 2: Discovering Simple Jewelry-Making Techniques, Part 3: Implementing Design Ideas, Trends, and More, Part 4: Building on Your Jewelry Making Hobby, and Part 5: The Part of Tens.

The first part, Creating Irresistible Jewelry, covers from A to Z everything a beginner needs to know about the different strings, chords, and wire options available. There is also a complete explanation of the basic jewelry making tools and the different kinds of connectors (head pins, eye pins, jump rings, etc.) and clasps.

There is also a very comprehensive explanation about bead types, crystal beads, pearls, and stones. A small section is also dedicated to explaining where you can find jewelry making materials both online and offline.

The section finishes with a chapter dedicated to explaining how to best set up your workspace.

So Part 1 of the book is basically a description of “what” whereas Part 2, Discovering Simple Jewelry-Making Techniques, gets into the “how.”

Not surprisingly, it starts with stringing and knotting and how to use crimps. The next chapter is dedicated to Bead Weaving and focuses primarily on weaving with seed beads.

I thought it was a little unusual to focus so much on seed beads as there are many beautiful pieces you can make weaving with beads other than seed beads. So I think this chapter could be greatly improved by showing more details in that area, but still it does cover basic weaving patterns.

Part 2 ends with a chapter on wire wrapping which includes how to choose wire, basic wire wrapping techniques, and a nice section on how to use a wire jig.

So Parts 1 and 2 take up about half of the book and really cover everything you need to know as a beginner. I should also mention that there are simple projects spread throughout both sections so that you can practice what you are learning as you go along.

Looking at this from the perspective of a complete beginner, I think Parts 1 and 2 of the book are all you really need.

Part 3 of the book consists primarily of beading projects, and while they are all very nice pieces of jewelry, there are very few graphics showing step by step how to make the pieces. In my experience working with beginners I think many would find it difficult to make these pieces without detailed instructions or hands-on help like a class or video.

So if I were a beginner, I would learn everything in Parts 1 and 2, and put the book on the shelf for a while, and then maybe revisit Part 3 later after I had gained more experience.

Part 4, in my opinion, goes off on a tangent that I don’t think has much to do with learning beading and jewelry making.

Things are covered like how to decorate other objects with beads, making jewelry with kids, hosting a jewelry party, and tips for what to do if you want to turn your jewelry making hobby into a business.

I will say that the part about turning your jewelry making hobby into a business has some very good tips, especially on how to correctly price your jewelry. It shows you how to make sure that you include a cost for how long it takes you to make a jewelry piece. Most jewelry makers forget to do this and it leads them to significantly underprice their jewelry.

The final section, Part 5: The Part of Tens is so named because it gives you three chapters of Top Tens. The first top 10 is jewelry suppliers. It is good but a little dated. New suppliers have emerged since the book was published that are better than some listed in the book.

The second top 10 is common jewelry making mistakes to avoid and has very good tips for avoiding mistakes that beginners commonly make.

The third top 10 is ideas for making money selling your jewelry. There are some very good ideas in this section.

Overall, I would recommend this book to beginners as a good resource to get started. But keep in mind that if you’re learning style is more suited to learning by seeing things in action then you may have trouble actually learning beading by looking at this book simply because there are not a lot of “how to” graphics.

The book is available at many bookstores and also at Amazon.com.