Sorry, I thought I deleted it before anyone had a chance to respond to it (I noticed something inside of it that was sufficiently confusing that I was going to try to follow up on it rather than broadcast it harder, as I was concerned I was just going to add /more/ confusion to the mess).
Regardless, as someone responded, here is the original text:
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Can you please make very very certain that you are not going to be paid that $54,805.14? As someone who runs an app store (and therefore am deeply embedded in “the lingo”), I think you are misinterpreting every quote and screenshot you have provided from Amazon. If not, then Amazon is being /incredibly confusing/ and that is a serious issue that should be frowned at.
Starting, Amazon said that the “price” of the placement is a “0% revshare”: I interpret that as meaning that they are going to /take/, for them, 0%, instead of their normal 30% revshare; this is backed up by their later phrasing “Amazon will not receive any sales rev share” and “at no cost to you”.
They then provided you a statement that claims that “sales” were $0, which is correct (the copies were all free), but the /”earnings”/ were $54k. This $54k is in the same column as the other parts of that table for “money the developer earned”, and simply would have no reason to be calculated in the first place if they were intending on giving you $0.
Finally, if we work the math out from that chart, we get that you normally get $1.89 per sale, making your normal sales price $2.70. On that day, however, for the 101,491 free copies, you got $54,805.14, which just so happens to exactly work out to 20% of that normal sales price, which is what everyone seemed to believe is what Amazon normally distributes.
To me, the way this reads is that normally they will give you a crazy placement on their site, but only if you pay them something: maybe if you give them 5% revshare (in addition to their normal 30%) they will elevate your product with “main page placement”. However, as the Free App of the Day, they do this for 0%: something they consider so important that their e-mail makes it bold.
So, really: are you 100% certain that you are not going to be paid that $54k? If so, Amazon really needs to get their wording more clear. Can you please please verify this?
For what it's worth, I initially read the emails and earnings statement the way that you described, and I thought to myself What in the world are these guys objecting to?! This is an incredible deal!
While true (I got a response on the original blog from the author that makes me feel confident that he is, in fact, not being paid the 20%; Britta also managed to find a few other reports of people not being paid), the reason I deleted it was simply that I realized that the first half assumed the 0% was vs. the 30%, but the later "to me" paragraph decided that the 0% was likely for the promotion, which meant that the entire comment was confusing and I realized I was just making things worse by posting it.
Regardless, as someone responded, here is the original text:
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Can you please make very very certain that you are not going to be paid that $54,805.14? As someone who runs an app store (and therefore am deeply embedded in “the lingo”), I think you are misinterpreting every quote and screenshot you have provided from Amazon. If not, then Amazon is being /incredibly confusing/ and that is a serious issue that should be frowned at.
Starting, Amazon said that the “price” of the placement is a “0% revshare”: I interpret that as meaning that they are going to /take/, for them, 0%, instead of their normal 30% revshare; this is backed up by their later phrasing “Amazon will not receive any sales rev share” and “at no cost to you”.
They then provided you a statement that claims that “sales” were $0, which is correct (the copies were all free), but the /”earnings”/ were $54k. This $54k is in the same column as the other parts of that table for “money the developer earned”, and simply would have no reason to be calculated in the first place if they were intending on giving you $0. Finally, if we work the math out from that chart, we get that you normally get $1.89 per sale, making your normal sales price $2.70. On that day, however, for the 101,491 free copies, you got $54,805.14, which just so happens to exactly work out to 20% of that normal sales price, which is what everyone seemed to believe is what Amazon normally distributes.
To me, the way this reads is that normally they will give you a crazy placement on their site, but only if you pay them something: maybe if you give them 5% revshare (in addition to their normal 30%) they will elevate your product with “main page placement”. However, as the Free App of the Day, they do this for 0%: something they consider so important that their e-mail makes it bold.
So, really: are you 100% certain that you are not going to be paid that $54k? If so, Amazon really needs to get their wording more clear. Can you please please verify this?