This is shocking -- well at least to writers

I was amazed today to find four of my books with Amazon.com. It was fantastic at first until I realized that I might be getting ripped off more than ever. The books run from $7 to $25 and my cut on the books is a lot different. It's zero -- or just about -- almost any way about it.

One thing that has always amazed me is how writers are usually the worst paid people in a book.

Printers, publishers and sales folks on a project always make more than the writer. They'll jump in and say there wouldn't be a shot on product sales and production without them. Writers nod at that, not realizing that there wouldn't be a product at all without them.

It's not a good thing for writers any way you look at it.

The writer's cut of the sales is very different in print and on the web. Writers are excited when the print books will give them 15 percent -- if they are lucky -- but that isn't from the retail sales. Publishers pawn books at rates much lower than retail and you can take out your calculater for the bad news

They may be very lucky to see five percent of the end sales.

It's a lot different with e-books, and that's very good and very bad. Writers find that they can get between 30 and 60 percent of the final sale. That can sound exciting when you think about how these books cost pocket change to put out, but it can adjust you to realize that there are billions of books on the web and writers are very likely to find out their books can't be pimped enough to sell decently.

Publishers aren't paying unions of paper printing staff. Just about everybody can get canned. It's sad but true that some money-making publishers can do almost all of their business in a two bedroom apartment.

In 2008 stats showed that the web books had more sales than the print industry. "Sales" is a fuzzy word in this, a huge amount of the web books were given away or sold for next to nothing.

All this in mind it's not really fantastic to have a book on Amazon.com.

Let's not even think about passed on or resold books. The writer doesn't make a dime off of those and it's how most books are read -- especially the good ones.

Oh, for the record Amazon sells used books. Lots of them. Don't expect to see a dime from them... all the folks in the industy will make a buck but you.

And my books are there...