Basically thread title. If I wish to support the authors but don’t need the physical book, does it make sense to add more to the free tier price like itch.io usually allows me to?
by Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov || Food you can make so you don't die. · By
They aren't being flippant. There's literally no option to pay anybody for this book on Itch.io. You have to go to Amazon to do that, and jahtnamas probably missed that link. God knows I missed it the first (and second!) time that I looked.
The authors are probably paid if you buy from Amazon, because they are listed on the Amazon entry and tRaum Books is not.
The ebook should be free everywhere—though Amazon is janky enough that 1 person has paid for it, somehow.
The long version of the story is that tRaum Books published my fiction novella, Query. When Rachel & I wanted to re-release The Sad Bastard Cookbook so we could make the free e-book more accessible, we asked Rysz (who runs tRaum), if he could do the updated layout. For his sins, he agreed. (Never agree to do layout on a book with arrows pointing to bits of the text. I'm surprised Rysz is still friends with me after that experience.) We were looking for places besides just Amazon to post the free e-book, since Zon is mega janky and we hate it, but most book sites don't let you publish PDF. Rysz offered to host on his Itch platform. This is a story of tRaum Books, and Rysz specifically, being rad af to his authors.
That said, I really appreciate that you are looking out for authors vanderZwan—Rysz is a gift but not every publisher is as awesome as he is.
I know Ko-fi allows you to publish PDFs and with free, PWYW, or set-cost options; they do take a 5% fee and there are processing fees on top of that, BUT one-off donations/tips on Ko-fi are always fee-free. So a little roundabout, but you could have a free PDF on their shopfront system, and folks could tip you through the one-off option.
Regardless, thanks for your work in putting out this awesome low-spoons resource, and thanks to tRaum for hosting it so kindly ♥
Hi Erik!! We deliberately decided to NOT have a tip function <3 (I could enable it on here as well) so that people can just download the book and not maybe feel a pressure to donate.:/ (Processing fees here too are quite reasonable, so if the authors DO ever change their mind and wish to enable the PWYW button, I can certainly do that! But until then, it's totally free). If someone wants to kindly support the writers, they can 1. purchase the print cookbook (on Amaz*n), or 2. buy Zilla Novikov's ebook for QUERY on this site <3 or 3. Rachel A. Rosen's eco-fantasy CASCADE (on various other sites). Thanks for looking out for the writers ;-; (They, and the illustrator, Marten Norr, are all great people <3)
If you want to support us financially, you're welcome to buy one of our other books (Query by Zilla Novikov, Cascade by Rachel A. Rosen), but we want to leave it free for the cookbook e-book itself. We don't want anyone to feel like they "should" contribute to us when they're reading a book about surviving late-stage capitalism. It's wonderful that people want to, since I also enjoy purchasing goods and services, but I also appreciate people looking after their own needs and needs of people in their community.
Ugh this is EXACTLY WHY I didn't want to even have a tip option on the book
we have a tip option right now (because we're currently a banned book on a certain major online book retailer) but the tip option is a temporary thing AND we want people to just take the book and read it, if you win the lottery then buy one of our other books (Query or Cascade pls) but til then PLEASE just take the book for free
if you don't take the book for free I will SERIOUSLY RECONSIDER having a tip option even in these troubling times
This is probably not the right thread to post this on, but I haven't been able to locate the information I'm looking for.
I have a few independently published game books on Amazon. . I'm just now setting up an itch.io page and I'm trying to figure out exactly how or if itch takes 10%.
For example one of my D&D journals on Amazon is $7.49. After Amazon takes its cut and I get about $1.45. Does itch take 10% of my $1.45 (roughly 15 cents)? Or do they take 10% of the cover price (roughly 75 cents)? Because if it's taking 10% of the cover price, then it's getting more than 50% of my meager profit.