It has been easy to set a low price for the Kindle version of Vantastic France as a download, so it is just £1.96 in the UK and relative prices worldwide.
However as the paperback version is printed in the US by Create Space a division of Amazon.com, it is harder to get a lower price without receiving any commission on the sale. Unless I could find a publisher in the UK to publish it.
To allow the paperback to be marketed by other booksellers on Amazon, you have to join the expanded distribution. The minimum price for your book is $8.95 , this will give you small profit if Amazon themselves retail it, but nothing at all if it sold by other sellers on Amazon.
So I set my paperback book price to $9.95 which gives me 35 cents per sale. Not a fortune, but I did want to make the price as low as possible for when the book filters through into the UK, which is my best market. Also it can be distributed across US book stores.
As I have said, I wanted to get the book in the UK at a price comparable with book in the same genre, that are printed in the UK. Well thanks to the competition between book sellers, it is now just £5.95 + delivery 0f £2.80 in the UK. This now makes it very competitively prices in it’s sector.
There are a couple of sellers so far, but The Book Depository had the lowest selling price. The delivery will take just a few days longer than from a book printed in the UK, so that is the only downside. However there is talk of Create Space printing books in the UK later this year, which will help the profit margin and slightly quicker delivery.
As quite a number of people without a kindle wanted to read the book in the UK, they can now get it at a very reasonable price, so my book will also have a larger audience.
Please note that prices from 3rd party sellers will go up and down for the paperback version on Amazon.
Steve Bichard.com 
That’s a very fair price Steve. It’s interesting that CreateSpace will introduce printing in the UK – that will make it even cheaper.
Hi Steph
It will make a big difference for UK based authors, they all complain about it on the CS forum.
The other problem is that you get taxed 30% on US sales unless you have a US tax number, but it is easy enough to get one, well eventually.
It will be interesting to see how quickly the UK suppliers send the books as I ordered so for family members. Although I could have bought them direct from CS at trade prices, the postage from the US was expensive, then I would have had to post them out anyway.