We did it--take that price gougers!

If you follow this blog you may be aware of a little mission Robin and I set out on. You see, recently Del Rey put the hardcover edition of Age of Swords out of print, and the third-party resellers on Amazon had a field day, taking the $28 hardcover and jacking up the price to astronomical levels. For instance, on 9/22 the prices for a new copy ran between $100.92 - $191.06.

Now, for the people who had put off buying their copies of Age of Swords, this would mean a hole in their collections, and I didn't want to have that.  So, Robin went to work to rectify the situation.

• Step 1 was getting our hands on as many copies of Age of Swords as we could, which would cut off the supply chain from the price-gougers.  We could do it, but it'd be expensive...nearly $9,000.  But we had to try.

• Step 2 was to run a crowdfunding campaign to raise the cash.  We sold the first three books of the series at a 20% discount and provided people with bonus perks like bookmarks, screensavers, and a new Legends of the First Empire Short Story.  The campaign raised more than $32,000 (more than enough to cover the buying, shipping, and storing of the books. Plus we sold more than 950 books in the process. Woohoo!

• Step 3 was to get the books on Amazon at $28.  We turned to Shawn Speakman at Grim Oak Press (a great guy who've we worked with before on anthologies such as Unfettered, Unfettered II, and Unbound). Shawn already had an Amazon Marketplace account, so we shipped him a bunch of books at $10 a piece giving he a nice profit margin to earn well when people buy the books at the original list price of $28.

And there you have it!  The book is back to $28, readers won't have a hole in their Legends of the First Empire hardcover collection, Shawn will make some cash, we'll make some cash, everyone wins!  Well, except for those poor, poor, price gougers who aren't going to be able to sell their books at those outrageous prices!

My thanks to Del Rey, Shawn Speakman, Robin, and most important to you, dear readers, for helping to get this problem solved. We make a pretty good team!