# Page flip kicks me on the way out...



## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

My book one is already out of KU and listed wide (YAY) but book two is still in till November. I unticked the box and planned to wait it out but recently received a nice email from a reader saying she and her uncle both read my book Black Dragon Deceivers through KU. 

Seeing as the book has gotten meager page reads I wrote a nice reply thanking them and asking when they read it. She didn't know about her uncle but she read it a week ago. No page reads were recorded for either as far as I can tell. I mentioned page flip and she said she always uses it  

I just sent an email to Amazon asking to be released early from KU.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

But "Page flip has no material effect on pages read."

*snort*


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

David VanDyke said:


> But "Page flip has no material effect on pages read."
> 
> *snort*


That part's always cracked me up. I want to ask them how they know that, if they can't count them either.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

And yet there's a rumor floating around on Goodreads that PafeFlip was fixed months ago and everyone should be in KU.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Herefortheride said:


> Seeing as the book has gotten meager page reads I wrote a nice reply thanking them and asking when they read it. She didn't know about her uncle but she read it a week ago. No page reads were recorded for either as far as I can tell. I mentioned page flip and she said she always uses it


I've had similar feedback.

As far as I can see, several of my readers read just a tad under 1 mill words, and I received the grand total of 7c for it.

I see it every day now. The residual books left on devices after I pulled out, and single digit reads instead of 300-500 as I used to get.

What Amazon has done appears to be legal according to the TOS, but it sure isn't ethical.

I believe as much as 50% of my genuine reads were not being counted and paid for. But Amazon set it up so we cant prove it. And that isn't ethical either.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Adding a plus one to David's snort.

Note to Amazon readers here:  we aren't stupid. Too trusting, maybe, but not stupid.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

she-la-ti-da said:


> Adding a plus one to David's snort.


I'm not sure snort is an adequate response.

Here in Oz, the appropriate response is a full on dummy spit.


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## Word Fan (Apr 15, 2015)

Depending on what kind of file you have and how it was formatted, when you run that file through Amazon's *Kindle Previewer 3* app on your computer, it will sometimes tell you that it can't use its Enhanced Typesetting view to show you the file.

You get this alert:








This may mean that, when you upload that file to Amazon, it may not have Enhanced Typesetting enabled, and that means no Page Flip.

It's worth someone's doing some experiments to see if that's true. If it is, then that would be the file format to always upload if you don't want Enhanced Typesetting and Page Flip enabled.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Another test worth doing, is if the D2D mobi conforms or not. If that conversion process disables page flip (or doesn't enable it), it might be worth using on Kindle.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> Another test worth doing, is if the D2D mobi conforms or not. If that conversion process disables page flip (or doesn't enable it), it might be worth using on Kindle.


Don't you have to be direct with Amazon to be in Select?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Don't you have to be direct with Amazon to be in Select?


Sure. But as I recently found out, anyone can upload anything to D2D, and they will produce a Mobi, epub, and pdf version for you to download. The pdf is formatted for use in Createspace.

As long as you dont actually publish the book, you can use the mobi to upload to Amazon, and as long as the book isnt published, its not against KU TOS.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Word Fan said:


> Depending on what kind of file you have and how it was formatted, when you run that file through Amazon's *Kindle Previewer 3* app on your computer, it will sometimes tell you that it can't use its Enhanced Typesetting view to show you the file.
> 
> You get this alert:
> 
> ...


Clever idea! However, isn't it likely that Amazon will pretty quickly find a workaround and/or stop accepting files that don't allow Page Flip to be enabled?

Of course, I wish that weren't the case, but Amazon seems so committed to Page Flip that I have a hard time imagining the company just ignoring a sudden upsurge in books that couldn't be page flipped.

Like others, I wish Page Flip would be globally disabled for KU readers, but I know that isn't going to happen.


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## DmGuay (Aug 17, 2016)

If enough authors filed complaints with their state attorneys general, Amazon might be investigated for this. Seems like something that would catch on nationwide.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

DmGuay said:


> If enough authors filed complaints with their state attorneys general, Amazon might be investigated for this. Seems like something that would catch on nationwide.


I guess it depends how much other authors are losing out on. I haven't done advertising yet so I haven't lost much. I'm going to try out wide for a while.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2017)

Herefortheride said:


> I guess it depends how much other authors are losing out on. I haven't done advertising yet so I haven't lost much. I'm going to try out wide for a while.


I have a suggestion. Someone write up in 500 words or less a full description of what is going on with page flip and how it cheats authors and send it to a Huffington Post editor who handles Books and Media, and to editors of other online media. Complaining to Amazon apparently does no good, but there are media editors hungry for content exposing something like this, and maybe some negative pr will help Amazon come to their senses. It should be someone here who sells a lot of books and has the evidence of being cheated, and that is not me. You can request the editor not to use your name and books. Most online news media, including I think HuffPost, have a button to send tips, which is even easier than sending to an editor. The idea is that public attention may get some results.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> I have a suggestion. Someone write up in 500 words or less a full description of what is going on with page flip and how it cheats authors and send it to a Huffington Post editor who handles Books and Media, and to editors of other online media. Complaining to Amazon apparently does no good, but there are media editors hungry for content exposing something like this, and maybe some negative pr will help Amazon come to their senses. It should someone here who sells a lot of books and has the evidence of being cheated, and that is not me. You can request the editor not to use your name and books. Most online news media, including I think HuffPost, have a button to send tips, which is even easier than sending to an editor. The idea is that public attention may get some results.


I'd do it now, but its almost 3am and I'm about to go to bed. Also, I dont have any tangible evidence, just suggestive evidence. But it might be enough.

If no-one else has done this when I come online tomorrow, I might take my recent Quora post and rework it, maybe include some comparative Book report images.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> I'd do it now, but its almost 3am and I'm about to go to bed. Also, I dont have any tangible evidence, just suggestive evidence. But it might be enough.
> 
> If no-one else has done this when I come online tomorrow, I might take my recent Quora post and rework it, maybe include some comparative Book report images.


Mention that you sell a lot of books. That will be important so they don't think it's merely someone griping about no sales.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Going Incognito said:


> That part's always cracked me up. I want to ask them how they know that, if they can't count them either.


Stop. That question is too rational.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Becca Mills said:


> Stop. That question is too rational.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

LilyBLily said:


> Because no one chooses a book in KU and reads just one page and stops. That's not how people do things.


I do that with seven out of every ten books I start in KU. It's not that the book is bad. It's that it's not for me. I'm not the only one either. I talk to a lot of readers and they all do it. And I'm not joking, I know within one or two paragraphs if I want to continue.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2017)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I do that with seven out of every ten books I start in KU. It's not that the book is bad. It's that it's not for me. I'm not the only one either. I talk to a lot of readers and they all do it. And I'm not joking, I know within one or two paragraphs if I want to continue.


Dom't you get the one or two paragraphs in the Look Inside or sample without downloading?


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## Craig Andrews (Apr 14, 2013)

Modi Gliani said:


> Dom't you get the one or two paragraphs in the Look Inside or sample without downloading?


Not everyone uses the Look Inside feature, nor is it available on a mobile device (which is where I buy most of my Amazon stuff).


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I do that with seven out of every ten books I start in KU. It's not that the book is bad. It's that it's not for me. I'm not the only one either. I talk to a lot of readers and they all do it. And I'm not joking, I know within one or two paragraphs if I want to continue.


Same. Always have.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Modi Gliani said:


> Dom't you get the one or two paragraphs in the Look Inside or sample without downloading?


I never use the Look Inside. Ever.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Yes, Amazon should do this right. Yes, counting accurately in all cases is important. But...

I don't really see the loss to authors. This "loss" presupposes that Amazon will add $ to the pot to cover all these "lost" page reads when they get counted.

And that won't necessarily happen. Assuming it doesn't, and assuming that page flip usage is distributed roughly equally across KU authors, then what happens is 10% (number for illustrative purposes only) more pages are counted, the price per page drops 10% since the pool is a fixed amount, and you make exactly what you would otherwise.

So it seems rather revenue-neutral to me. 

Scamming and stuffing seem like more important issues because that's taking money out of the pockets of authors walking the straight and narrow.


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## Joseph M. Erhardt (Oct 31, 2016)

Herefortheride said:


> My book one is already out of KU and listed wide (YAY) but book two is still in till November. I unticked the box and planned to wait it out but recently received a nice email from a reader saying she and her uncle both read my book Black Dragon Deceivers through KU.
> 
> Seeing as the book has gotten meager page reads I wrote a nice reply thanking them and asking when they read it. She didn't know about her uncle but she read it a week ago. No page reads were recorded for either as far as I can tell. I mentioned page flip and she said she always uses it
> 
> I just sent an email to Amazon asking to be released early from KU.


Ouchie.

Let us know what they say.

I keep coming here from time to time to see if there is actual verifiable good news on the KU front, and I keep leaving disappointed. Ah, well.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Modi Gliani said:


> Dom't you get the one or two paragraphs in the Look Inside or sample without downloading?


I have never used Look Inside. I don't read books on the computer. 
I also don't read samples, ever. Even for books I buy. 
With KU, all we readers have to do is download, check it out and if its not what we want from the first page in, just return it and get another one. Lots of readers use KU that way. Why not?. Its unlimited. As long as I don't fill 10 slots up. And if I do, return, get another. Done. There is no point in getting the sample really. No benefit.


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## Word Fan (Apr 15, 2015)

Craig Andrews said:


> Not everyone uses the Look Inside feature, nor is it available on a mobile device (which is where I buy most of my Amazon stuff).


I don't know which "mobile device" you use, but I get the LOOK INSIDE on my iPad and my niece's iPod Touch, and those are certainly mobile devices.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2017)

J. Tanner said:


> Yes, Amazon should do this right. Yes, counting accurately in all cases is important. But...
> 
> I don't really see the loss to authors. This "loss" presupposes that Amazon will add $ to the pot to cover all these "lost" page reads when they get counted.
> 
> ...


Revenue neutral? If someone reads all of your book in page-flip, you get nothing, no matter what the payout is. How is paying nothing to you for a reading of your book "revenue neutral"? It's revenue neutral only for the entire group of authors, which is irrelevant for any single author. The fact that the average income in a population is such and such does not mean there are no desperate poor people in the population or people without any income at all. I don't think revenue neutrality is a valid couterargument here. If the pages of your book are not counted, you don't get paid. You may make more on another book. but what if you have only one book published?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> If the pages of your book are not counted, you don't get paid. You may make more on another book. but what if you have only one book published?


Which actually brings up an interesting thought. If they were all counted, would the page rate be even lower? Assuming even distribution (which there isn't, but let's assume), authors would still walk away with the same amount of money in their pocket (less page rate, but more pages counted). Makes you wonder what the true page rate actually is.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Modi Gliani said:


> Revenue neutral? If someone reads all of your book in page-flip, you get nothing, no matter what the payout is. How is paying nothing to you for a reading of your book "revenue neutral"? It's revenue neutral only for the entire group of authors, which is irrelevant for any single author. The fact that the average income in a population is such and such does not mean there are no desperate poor people in the population or people without any income at all. I don't think revenue neutrality is a valid couterargument here. If the pages of your book are not counted, you don't get paid. You may make more on another book. but what if you have only one book published?


I believe the point the poster was trying to make is that everyone suffers from PageFlip so it should, in theory, even out over the pool of authors. In essence, Amazon is not going to add to the pot, so if the PageFlip pages were suddenly added in, the per page payout would drop and offset the money gotten from the added PageFlip pages. I personally waffle on the argument, but if you only get one read a month and it's eaten by PageFlip that would be a vastly different situation from the individual getting 50,000 reads a month and losing a certain percentage to PageFlip.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> Which actually brings up an interesting thought. If they were all counted, would the page rate be even lower? Assuming even distribution (which there isn't, but let's assume), authors would still walk away with the same amount of money in their pocket (less page rate, but more pages counted). Makes you wonder what the true page rate actually is.


Yes, in theory, if the system is what Amazon says it is. But it seems they continually adjust the pot according to what criteria? They won't say. The consequence of not telling people what is going on is that nobody knows what is going on. Authors may revel in their independence, but they have no way of knowing if they are being cheated by accident or design and that really tarnishes their status.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2017)

Atunah said:


> I have never used Look Inside. I don't read books on the computer.
> I also don't read samples, ever. Even for books I buy.
> With KU, all we readers have to do is download, check it out and if its not what we want from the first page in, just return it and get another one. Lots of readers use KU that way. Why not?. Its unlimited. As long as I don't fill 10 slots up. And if I do, return, get another. Done. There is no point in getting the sample really. No benefit.


Which brings up an interesting fact. Every reader who downloads a book in KU without reading it or reading only one or a few pages (it's always at least one page), still adds pages to the total pages read, and thus reduces the payout per page for all authors. It sounds crazy but that's reality. So people who download books on whim without reading them are adding pages to the total and hurting the payout of all authors. That can mount up to be a significant deficit. The KU system truly makes me dizzy. Maybe whim KU downloading is more of a problem than all the other problems? Who knows? I for one don't know because Amazon gives out little information.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> Which brings up an interesting fact. Every reader who downloads a book in KU without reading it or reading only one or a few pages (it's always at least one page), still adds pages to the total pages read, and thus reduces the payout per page for all authors. It sounds crazy but that's reality.


Worse than that, the book gets the rank bump equal to a full sale. I personally think that's the primary driver behind a lot of authors staying in KU. Remove the rank bump from the borrow and tie it to page reads (say 300 page reads equal a rank bump equal to a sale) and the Amazon store would look *totally* different than it does today.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Modi Gliani said:


> Which brings up an interesting fact. Every reader who downloads a book in KU without reading it or reading only one or a few pages (it's always at least one page), still adds pages to the total pages read, and thus reduces the payout per page for all authors. It sounds crazy but that's reality. So people who download books on whim without reading them are adding pages to the total and hurting the payout of all authors. That can mount up to be a significant deficit. The KU system truly makes me dizzy. Maybe whim KU downloading is more of a problem than all the other problems? Who knows? I for one don't know because Amazon gives out little information.


From what I can see a lot of readers use it like Amanda and usedtopost here. I am not one of them though, I always kind of know what I am going to read and I pick KU books like I do any other books. No matter if I buy them, borrow them, or get them via subscription. I think I am probably in the minority though. Just like I never read samples. I do not like having partial stories in my head. I cannot have that. I do my vetting before I pick a book. But many readers use KU as their vetting and they are welcome to do so. The system lends itself really well for that. And most of us readers aren't going to care about the gears of KU. We pay our monthly fee and then we use it as we please. That is about as far as most readers are going to think. Next book please.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Modi Gliani said:


> Revenue neutral? If someone reads all of your book in page-flip, you get nothing, no matter what the payout is. How is paying nothing to you for a reading of your book "revenue neutral"?


KU has a fixed pool of money.

Page Flip affects all authors about equally. That means whatever its impact is, will affect everyone about equally and come out of the same fixed pool. We'll do the math for both with a ridiculous number of page reads attributed to Page Flip--fully half.

So, double the pages read in the month means half the per-page payment. (remember, pool of money fixed.)

So, Author X got 1000 pages read at 0.5 cents a page when Page Flip isn't counted and 2000 (yay!) pages read at 0.25 cents a page (boo!) when Page Flip reads are counted. Either way, that month, Author X made $5.

To think Author X will make more money she must assume one or more of the following:

1) Her books are highly disproportionately read in page flip mode. (Uh, oh. What if you've got that backwards--you might be losing money...)
2) Amazon will increase the pool proportionally with the impact that Page Flip reading is having on lost pages.

I don't think either of those is a good bet. So, basically revenue neutral. If you think either or both of those is a good assumption to make, I'll accept that speculation as a possibility.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Seems to me the backs of indies are being used to carry trad-pub deals.

I've heard the trads most definitely have a guaranteed payout and also that they're getting stiffed worse than indies. But somehow, the latter just doesn't ring true.

I think Amazon knows indies are so fractured that they won't/can't challenge the stiffing being delivered.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Like others, I wish Page Flip would be globally disabled for KU readers, but I know that isn't going to happen.


I don't read using Page Flip, and can't understand anyone doing it, but I would hate if it were disabled. I use it as it was intended, to jump back and forth in a book when I want to flip back and find something I'd read. I hope they fix it so authors aren't hurt by it, but I would be upset if they disabled it.

Betsy


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2017)

J. Tanner said:


> KU has a fixed pool of money.
> 
> Page Flip affects all authors about equally. That means whatever its impact is, will affect everyone about equally and come out of the same fixed pool. We'll do the math for both with a ridiculous number of page reads attributed to Page Flip--fully half.
> 
> ...


Still, if you have only one book, and it's always read with page-flip and you have no page counts, you get nothing no matter what 's going on with the "pot" and total page rates for all others. Yes or no? And if you have many books and all your books are read by page flip and you have no pages counted, how is that "revenue neutral" for you? With no pages counted, the actual payout means nothing to you. Anything times zero is zero, no?


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I never use the Look Inside. Ever.


Me neither.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Laran Mithras said:


> Seems to me the backs of indies are being used to carry trad-pub deals.
> 
> I've heard the trads most definitely have a guaranteed payout and also that they're getting stiffed worse than indies. But somehow, the latter just doesn't ring true.
> 
> I think Amazon knows indies are so fractured that they won't/can't challenge the stiffing being delivered.


Bingo.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2017)

J. Tanner said:


> KU has a fixed pool of money.
> 
> Page Flip affects all authors about equally. That means whatever its impact is, will affect everyone about equally and come out of the same fixed pool. We'll do the math for both with a ridiculous number of page reads attributed to Page Flip--fully half.
> 
> ...


Now let's say you have 10 books in KU of 300 pages each. If they are read fully and counted fully at a page rate of .005, that's 3000 pages x .005 or a payout to you of $15. Now suppose all the 10 books are read with page-flip and what is counted is 1 page for each book, a total of 10 pages. Then your take is 5 cents. Correct? Now how is any reasonable increase in page rate going to push for you 5 cents up to $15? If the page rate goes from .005 to .006 that is 6 cents for you when you should be getting $15.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Modi Gliani said:


> Still, if you have only one book, and it's always read with page-flip and you have no page counts, you get nothing no matter what 's going on with the "pot" and total page rates for all others. Yes or no?


Yes.



> And if you have many books and all your books are read by page flip and you have no pages counted, how is that "revenue neutral" for you?


It's not.



> With no pages counted, the actual payout means nothing to you. Anything times zero is zero, no?


That's true.

Fortunately, this imaginary author is psychic and can pick winning Lotto numbers flawlessly which counters all her unbelievably unlucky happenstance in regards to KU. 

When speculating, you kind of have to argue within the bounds of what's likely and typical. The Author X above almost certainly doesn't exist at any significant KU income level, so isn't worth basing high-level (and granted, spitball) analysis on.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2017)

J. Tanner said:


> Yes.
> 
> It's not.
> 
> ...


Please comment on my post about someone with 10 books.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Happy to!



Modi Gliani said:


> Now let's say you have 10 books in KU of 300 pages each. If they are read fully and counted fully at a page rate of .005, that's 3000 pages x .005 or a payout to you of $15. Now suppose all the 10 books are read with page-flip and what is counted is 1 page for each book, a total of 10 pages. Then your take is 5 cents. Correct? Now how is any reasonable increase in page rate going to push for you 5 cents up to $15? If the page rate goes from .005 to .006 that is 6 cents for you when you should be getting $15.


To make the situation typical, we'll assume Author X above is not some sort of special snowflake, and what is happening to her is also happening in roughly similar form to _most other authors_. Because we're talking about how the typical author should fare, right? We're not talking about outliers at the insanely far end of the normal bell curve, right?

Under your scenario, that means that Amazon is only counting about 1/300th of the real number of pages read _for most authors_. That means the month they figure this out, the total pages read will go from 1 billion (or whatever) to 300 billion (or 300x whatever). And the pool is the pool--it hasn't changed. And they will decide between using 1 Billion or 300 billion as the number of pages. Whichever they choose, Author X makes the same amount, right?

(I'm happy to show the math if you prefer, but some people don't easily grasp math and it seems kind of jerky to just post math into a conversation rather than try to explain the concept in a more relatable form. Which it appears I'm failing at, but such is life...)


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

J. Tanner said:


> Happy to!
> 
> To make the situation typical, we'll assume Author X above is not some sort of special snowflake, and what is happening to her is also happening in roughly similar form to _most other authors_. Because we're talking about how the typical author should fare, right? We're not talking about outliers at the insanely far end of the normal bell curve, right?
> 
> Under your scenario, that means that Amazon is only counting about 1/300th of the real number of pages read _for most authors_. That means the month they figure this out, the total pages read will go from 1 billion (or whatever) to 300 billion (or 300x whatever). And the pool is the pool--it hasn't changed. And they will decide between using 1 Billion or 300 billion as the number of pages. Whichever they choose, Author X makes the same amount, right?


Nah nah. Never mind making the example "typical" because that reverts to what you can call the error of the mean. The author in my example loses money, period. That other authors may make it up, good for them, but she loses money and the loss can be serious. "Revenue neutrality" in KU is revenue neutrality for the whole pool of authors, with severe punishment possible for individual authors. Focusing on the mean, as it always does, removes attention from the outliers. My guess is there are thousands of individual authors being screwed by their pages not counted.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Fair enough. I think it's more important to factor what's happening to the 96% rather than the 2% at either end but I don't disagree that those outliers can and do exist. For the 96% a change should be relatively revenue neutral. And the outliers will be evenly split between financial windfalls and total screwdom.


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

J. Tanner said:


> Fair enough. I think it's more important to factor what's happening to the 96% rather than the 2% at either end but I don't disagree that those outliers can and do exist. For the 96% a change should be relatively revenue neutral. And the outliers will be evenly split between financial windfalls and total screwdom.


You can't talk about 96% because you don't know the shape of the distribution. Amazon tells us nothing.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Modi Gliani said:


> You can't talk about 96% because you don't know the shape of the distribution. Amazon tells us nothing.


If I can't say it's probably typical, then you can't say it's probably atypical, which means we can't discuss it at all? And you can't posit there's an author out there with 10 books all of which were read in page flip mode. We quickly go down a path where we can't discuss anything which ain't a great way to interact on a discussion board...


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

I know there are lots of variables, but here's a visual of me, starting Jan 2016.

The first dot, above Feb 2016, is when KENCP 2 was announced. The diagonal line shows June 2016, my last good, stable-ish month. June 28th, 2016 is when Amazon announced Page Flip. My July droppped. My August dropped even more. This was when I popped up in here asking (ok, panicking big time) and was met with lots of 'no, nothing has changed, it's just you.' Then about September everyone else started also asking where their pages had gone.

The horizontal line is over Dec 2016, Jan, Feb, March 2017, when I'd gotten mad and went wide. December was looking like that low Feb, only an end-of-December wide bookbub saved both December and January. Feb scared me. March was scaring me, so I started putting most everything back in KU. April 2017, that tall month right after that horizontal line was my first full month back all in with KU. The dot over June 2017 was another bookbub, this one in KU. The last dot, over August 2017 was the new KENPC 3 announcement but also a huge promo month, countdown deals out the wazzo, etc. Course there's current Sept there at the end.

Don't know what y'all are going to get out of this visual as, like I said, variables like cliffs, new releases, promos, lower rates, more scammers, etc, but what I get is that page flip is kicking my ass.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Those looking at the dynamics are missing a factor.

The whole point of Amazon embracing page-flip is to limit the number of pages being paid out on.

Why? Because a 30% drop in author pages covers the massive number of scammer pages they dont seem to want to do anything about. It keeps the total pages at a level they want them at.

If authors were getting paid for all pages, the scammer numbers would hike the total pages so high, the payout per page would drop so dramatically, everyone would pull out in the same month.

Its all part of a massive manipulation of KU so Amazon pays out what it wants to, without losing too many authors, and without having to spend money on removing the scammers permanently, or removing page-flip.


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

J. Tanner said:


> If I can't say it's probably typical, then you can't say it's probably atypical, which means we can't discuss it at all? And you can't posit there's an author out there with 10 books all of which were read in page flip mode. We quickly go down a path where we can't discuss anything which ain't a great way to interact on a discussion board...


I never said we can't discuss. What I'm saying is our discussion is speculation because we lack information from Amazon. There may be many thousands of authors seriously hurt by page flip. No one knows. It depends on reading habits of readers and also the kind of books involved. How many authors there are with signicant page flip readings in KU no one except Amazon knows, so why talk about typical. You don't deny that some people can get seriously hurt, and maybe that's all we can say in the absence of quantitative information. When Amazon says it's not a problem, I don't know what that means when authors report pages not counted. It is certainly a problem for those authors. You're free to choose to emphasize what's happening to most authors, but in a pool of maybe hundreds of thousands of authors. a small percentage (even if it's really small) is a lot of people.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Going Incognito said:


> Don't know what y'all are going to get out of this visual as, like I said, variables like cliffs, new releases, promos, lower rates, more scammers, etc, but what I get is that page flip is kicking my ass.


The more interesting correlation is direct sales to KU page reads. While they both seem to trend relatively the same (which one would expect), direct sales seem to hit the same plateau between enrollment 1 and enrollment 2 (maybe what looks like a 10% drop). Whereas KU reads, come enrollment 2, decline what looks to be about 25-50%. That's a head-scratcher.


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## loonlover (Jul 4, 2009)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I don't read using Page Flip, and can't understand anyone doing it, but I would hate if it were disabled. I use it as it was intended, to jump back and forth in a book when I want to flip back and find something I'd read. I hope they fix it so authors aren't hurt by it, but I would be upset if they disabled it.
> 
> Betsy


Agree with Betsy on this. Page Flip was developed for readers who requested a method to easily navigate within a book. It does seem Amazon should be able to fix it so writers get paid if someone reads in page flip mode. Personally, I don't see why anyone would do this.


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> The whole point of Amazon embracing page-flip is to limit the number of pages being paid out on.


Page flip was developed as a reader navigational tool. Personally I use it all the time to flip back and forth within a book. It's effect on pages read is secondary. That's a pretty serious accusation to say Amazon embraces it to deliberately limit the pay out to KU authors.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Tilly said:


> Page flip was developed as a reader navigational tool. Personally I use it all the time to flip back and forth within a book. It's effect on pages read is secondary. That's a pretty serious accusation to say Amazon embraces it to deliberately limit the pay out to KU authors.


Amazon can come here and deny it. But I wont hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

They have 2 years of track record of deliberately lowering how much we get paid. The first time they did it by changing the KENPC. It was overt. This time they did it by using page flip, and its covert. But some of us can see it the manipulation clearly.

They can prove me wrong anytime they want to, but they wont.

I'm well aware page-flip was developed as a navigation tool. BUT they had an obligation to test it to make sure the new feature was not going to negatively impact on another area of Amazon, notably KU. We'll never know if they did or not, but ethically, page-flip should have been removed when they discovered it negatively impacted KU read numbers. Instead, they embraced it and rolled it out further. Unethical at best, deliberate manipulation at worst.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

The fact that Amazon won't change it rather speaks volumes as  to whether it was a "glitch."


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

loraininflorida said:


> The fact that Amazon won't change it rather speaks volumes as to whether it was a "glitch."


Exactly. If it was me in the development team, I'd have been mortified to find out anyone was suffering from a side effect. If I'd been team leader, I'd have backed page-flip out as fast as possible, talked to KU about page reads, and rebuilt it so no reads were lost. Then put it back in again.

This is what ethical people do when something untoward happens.

This is what IT is supposed to do, or least what it used to do. If it didn't work live, you backed it out and went back to the testing. But somewhere along the line with net based systems, this has been lost.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> The more interesting correlation is direct sales to KU page reads. While they both seem to trend relatively the same (which one would expect), direct sales seem to hit the same plateau between enrollment 1 and enrollment 2 (maybe what looks like a 10% drop). Whereas KU reads, come enrollment 2, decline what looks to be about 25-50%. That's a head-scratcher.


Yeah, 'that's odd' has been my middle name my whole life, lol. 
Looking purely at sales, they dropped during the whole fall debacle. They rose for both dec and Jan, but that was really one bookbub so late into dec that the sales were effectively divided in half between those two months, then they dropped again. They came up when my ranks went up, going back into KU in April, dropped in may, then rose again with another bookbub in June, but not much, really. June was also the first month with our new dashboard tho. Where new dash and old weren't lining up right and Zon finally just took away our ability to see the old dash numbers completely. Steady fall in sales since, despite countdown deals, but they were 99 cents instead of $3.99 so there's that.

What makes it hard to decide tho is seeing that my worst month in KU, which graphically would be now in sept, since there's still a week left on it, even 'knowing' I'm getting screwed with everything from pageflip to lowered rates to scammers to everything, that worst month in KU is still better than that wide feb.

Until now it's been a no brainer for me to stay in KU, but now? I bet if I drew in a line above that low, wide feb that represents where bn, Apple, gp put my total income, I've a feeling it would look a lot like my current September. When wide looks equal to KU in total income, it might be time for me to go wide again.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Joseph M. Erhardt said:


> Ouchie.
> 
> Let us know what they say.
> 
> I keep coming here from time to time to see if there is actual verifiable good news on the KU front, and I keep leaving disappointed. Ah, well.


Once I mentioned that I'm not getting paid for my page reads and that Amazon was in violation of their TOS they very quickly and diplomatically allowed me to opt out my second book and were very polite about it asking if they can "Do anything else to help me?" and "They hope that won't cause me any inconvenience."


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Does anyone know if a book already tagged for reading in KU, when read, is the version at the time they decided to read it, or the up to date version at the time its read?

Just wondering if KU readers always get the most up to date version or not.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> Does anyone know if a book already tagged for reading in KU, when read, is the version at the time they decided to read it, or the up to date version at the time its read?
> 
> Just wondering if KU readers always get the most up to date version or not.


I believe they have whichever one was available when they downloaded.


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## Joseph M. Erhardt (Oct 31, 2016)

Because the monthly KENPC payout is a fixed amount, it doesn't cost or gain Amazon anything to play with the page-counting mechanism.

However, the result we have now, based on the information we're able to glean, certainly suggests that the _distribution_ of the payout is unfair. The Page-Flip option is nailing authors whose works are being read in that mode. (And I'm still not certain that the Exit Point bug has been fixed--has anyone made a recent test?)

Additionally, the suspicion that certain trad publishers are being paid per borrow rather than per pages read skews the system as well, though probably far less than the skewing effect of the scammers.

Yes, if Page-Flip pages were properly counted, the number of pages read in a month would go up, and the per-page payout would be less. But at least the payout would be more _equitable_.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Joseph M. Erhardt said:


> Because the monthly KENPC payout is a fixed amount, it doesn't cost or gain Amazon anything to play with the page-counting mechanism.
> 
> However, the result we have now, based on the information we're able to glean, certainly suggests that the _distribution_ of the payout is unfair. The Page-Flip option is nailing authors whose works are being read in that mode. (And I'm still not certain that the Exit Point bug has been fixed--has anyone made a recent test?)
> 
> ...


I was recently connected with a trad. author by a publisher who was looking at bringing me on and this author seemed oblivious to the idea of page reads when we discussed it and said she got paid per download. Which surprised me.


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## Joseph M. Erhardt (Oct 31, 2016)

Herefortheride said:


> Once I mentioned that I'm not getting paid for my page reads and that Amazon was in violation of their TOS they very quickly and diplomatically allowed me to opt out my second book and were very polite about it asking if they can "Do anything else to help me?" and "They hope that won't cause me any inconvenience."


As we say down South here, "Well, bless their hearts!"*

Anyway, glad you got out.

*"Bless your heart" does not usually mean what it says--tip for those not in the know.


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## Word Fan (Apr 15, 2015)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Amanda M. Lee said:
> 
> 
> > I never use the Look Inside. Ever.
> ...


Wow. I use it all the time. What is your (both of "your") rationale? I really would like to know?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Going Incognito said:


> Until now it's been a no brainer for me to stay in KU, but now? I bet if I drew in a line above that low, wide feb that represents where bn, Apple, gp put my total income, I've a feeling it would look a lot like my current September. When wide looks equal to KU in total income, it might be time for me to go wide again.


Well, it's all a gamble in the end I guess. Either you gamble that KU will hold itself together, or you take the other side of the bet (or you hedge and put some wide and some in KU). When KU messed with me in 2016, I felt pretty confident that this thing was going to end badly. So regardless of how bad many people here told me wide would be, I did it anyway. For me, it worked out. I wish I had gone wide from day 1.

I went wide in January 2017 and *stayed* wide. To me KU is simply not an option no matter what incentives they offer; it's just too full of traits that *should not* be there. Who knows why zon can't fix these things, but it's crystal clear they can't (or won't). But I love zon on the direct side, that works just fine.

I get why people can't let go of the KU revenue though. But as people seem to be finding out, the revenue is going bye-bye eventually anyway. So people can suffer the decline, or suffer through the process of building out wide.

Subscription models simply do not work long-term (or short-term, but you can make them work short term if you really want to with lots of little tricks).


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Herefortheride said:


> I was recently connected with a trad. author by a publisher who was looking at bringing me on and this author seemed oblivious to the idea of page reads when we discussed it and said she got paid per download. Which surprised me.


Makes me wonder if the author has no idea KU1 is now KU3, and the payout is different. Make me wonder if the publisher never changed the wording on the reports the author gets.

One of the things about being trad publishing is you leave all that to them. So an author may no nothing at all about how KU works, only what they were told at the beginning.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> Does anyone know if a book already tagged for reading in KU, when read, is the version at the time they decided to read it, or the up to date version at the time its read?
> 
> Just wondering if KU readers always get the most up to date version or not.


Agreeing with Herefortheride, they get the version they originally downloaded, unless there's an update available and they log into their 'content and devices' and choose to get the updated content.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> I went wide in January 2017 and *stayed* wide.


Which promo services work best for non-Amazon reach?

The ones I've been able to do so far on short lead times were mainly Amazon reach, and that's not what I need.


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## Joseph M. Erhardt (Oct 31, 2016)

Word Fan said:


> Me neither.
> 
> Wow. I use it all the time. What is your (both of "your") rationale? I really would like to know?


I _always_ use the Look Inside. Usually one para will let me know to dump it. Three pages without a cringe and I might buy. My buys are few and far between.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Going Incognito said:


> Agreeing with Herefortheride, they get the version they originally downloaded, unless there an update available and the log into their 'content and devices' and choose to get the updated content.


I'm interested from the perspective of I have some book which dont get read very often left in KU. I was thinking of generating the mobi's in D2D, and uploading to Amazon, to see if this made any difference to read numbers.

If KU people got the updated version, and if this works, then it would be worth updating all my books this way. Mine are still on peoples to read lists, and I still get a paltry amount of reads from them, across the range. So if the alternate method of making the mobi worked, and readers got the updated version, its worth the effort to update the books.


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## Joseph M. Erhardt (Oct 31, 2016)

Herefortheride said:


> I was recently connected with a trad. author by a publisher who was looking at bringing me on and this author seemed oblivious to the idea of page reads when we discussed it and said she got paid per download. Which surprised me.


That either tends to confirm that trad pubbers in KU get a better deal, OR that your author didn't understand the concept of KU borrows and was saying that they got paid per download where download = direct sale.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> Which promo services work best for non-Amazon reach?
> 
> The ones I've been able to do so far on short lead times were mainly Amazon reach, and that's not what I need.


ENT, bargainbooksy worked well for me. Kobo direct. Bookbub obviously. B&N has been a dud for me since day one. Kobo was a hit right off the bat. iTunes only went nuts after my bookbub.

I do think a permafree entry point is very helpful when wide (at least initially).

I also think, paradoxically, that when you go wide there's nothing wrong with still focusing on Amazon. The permafree strategy can be very effective at driving people into your catalog. Wide isn't a replace Amazon strategy, merely a replace KU strategy 

And I think you can charge more. The $2.99 crap on zon is created in reference to a KU payout. You start going up in price and people start joining KU to read your catalog (so you may as well price relative to KU when you're in it). But if you aren't in KU, then they gotta pay the price of each book. And there are LOTS of people who have no issue buying a book at $4.99 or whatever (provided they've entered your catalog at a low entry point - promotion or perma or something).

At least that's my view. I'm at $4.99 and I'm starting to think I'm priced too low. It's only when your book is in KU that $4.99 seems crazy high.

It's hard to describe, but once you've been wide for a while you start to see the cult-like groupthink that KU creates. But there's a whole other world out there where sanity still exists


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

A few questions. Hoping someone has data on some of these

Q1) If PageFlip reads were accurately counted, would it not be that we would reach one of two states i.e.

State 1: Money would be kept the same. However, the amount per page read would go down significantly, and therefore it would cause some percentage of authors to decide to leave KU. I'm making the assumption that there are a set of authors for whom there is a 'price per page read' limit. Below that they would leave

State 2: Amazon would increase the pool to ensure that the 'price per page read' doesn't go down too much. It does seem there is a focus on keeping this figure high for some psychological impact/effect of showing it is still a healthy figure

Q1b) When people suggest other End States i.e. amount per author would remain unchanged because Page Flip issues affects everyone equality (an assumption, mind you). Are they leaving out the impact of Pages Read figure going down and the resultant issues that would cause. Wouldn't Amazon be forced to pay more into the pool to make sure that things seem good to authors - If you suddenly see you are getting paid 15% less per page read or 30% less per page read, that's a pretty significant event for nearly every author

*************

Q2) What percentage of pages read are via Page Flip? Does anyone have any estimate for this?
Q2b) Are these PageFlip readers reading a lot of books or very few books? So is pages read via Page Flip a small figure (the 10% some people are suggesting) or a pretty large figure (30%?). Anecdotally every author affected is mentioning a large impact, suggesting it might be 30% of pages read or more are lost to Page Flip. Does anyone have some good estimate for this?


**************
Q3) What are the figures that are missing i.e.
Authors know their pages read
Authors know how much they will get paid per pages read
Authors know the total KU amount
Authors know that there are bonuses

What are the other data points that would help someone make a good decision on whether to stay or leave
Number of readers who actually chose to get the authors' books
Percentage that read the entire book
Percentage that read less than one chapter

What are the estimates we can derive if we had these other data points? Or could we derive them at all?
What percentage of readers would buy the book if it was not available via KU
For those readers, how many would actually read the book? Are there some that would buy and never read. For traditional paperbacks, there was one study that claimed only 10% of paper books are ever read beyond the first chapter
Is that a factor? Are authors leaving 'sales to readers who would never actually read the book' on the table when they switch to KU?

*******************

Q4 What is the growth rate of readers in KU?

We know how pages read are increasing
And we know the KU pool has increased

Everyone seems to be assuming that it matches growth rate of readers in KU

Are readers increasing at the same rate?
Or is it that readers are growing faster and certain 'bugs' like the Page Flip bug are resulting in growth rate of Pages Read not being the same as readers

********************************

Q5 What percentage of Pages read are via Page Flip? I see some authors suggest 10%, however the ones affected always seem to be seeing 25% to 50% range of impact

Does anyone have a good estimate or data points?

***********************************

Q6 I see the scammer issue brought up a lot. could someone explain more exactly what that is

As in
what exactly is being done? fake accounts doing pages read? How exactly do they do pages read using a fake account? are we talking about click farms in Asia with actual people flipping through the pages? Is it location based? Is that a way to stop it? Or is speed of reading a clue? surely they wouldn't actually be reading the book so speed at which they change the pages could be used to identify the scammers?
What percentage of pages read is going to scammers. Is it 10% or a large figure like 25%?

***********************************

Q7 Is there someone somewhere who is studying and quantifying all this? I see lots of authors make a record of the data that Amazon hands out. However, most of the valuable data is not shared. There must be some ways to analyze and estimate those i.e. how fast is KU growing? What percentage of reads are Page Flip? What percentage of reads are getting taken up by scammers? What percentage of readers quit before Chapter 1? What percentage of readers would buy the book instead if it was not in KU? For readers who buy Kindle boooks, how often do they read them?

The one metric I would love most is

For books that are bought straight up (and not borrowed) what is the distribution i.e
what percentage read all of it?
What percentage read nothing?
What percentage don't go beyond chapter 1?

what is the figure for 'Pages Read for books that are bought straight out'? i.e. If a 300 page book is being bought, how many of those pages (averaged across everyone who bought it) are actually being read? Is it 250 on average? 150? 50? 

Please Note: Each of those sales gives author the money, whether people actually read it or not
So it'd be fascinating to compare that with the behavior in KU where authors get paid only on actual pages read

*******************************************************************

Q6 Regarding this: Subscription models simply do not work long-term 

Agree totally with this. It's even worse for the content creator side. Also agree that you can do a lot of adjustments to make it work IN THE SHORT TERM. In the long term subscription models rarely work (even less so for the creators)

So do authors think

Option 1: Amazon has figured out a workable model and it's going to be sustainable for Amazon and authors
Option 2: The model is only going to be sustainable for Amazon
Option 3: The model isn't really sustainable and at some point Amazon is going to throw its hands up and go back to sales only

My suspicion is that a model where payment is made on number of borrows and/or number of borrows that are read beyond 10% is simply unsustainable. That people who join KU are reading so much that the old models of crediting a sale per 10% of the book read just breaks down

That the current model of pages read is sustainable up to some X point of money made per pages read. That when we go below that X (perhaps 60% of the current figure) most of the authors whose books are being read will leave and Amazon won't have any new pool of talented to somewhat-talented authors to replace it (does anyone see any attempts to create such a pool of replacement authors? i don't)


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> Well, it's all a gamble in the end I guess. Either you gamble that KU will hold itself together, or you take the other side of the bet (or you hedge and put some wide and some in KU). When KU messed with me in 2016, I felt pretty confident that this thing was going to end badly. So regardless of how bad many people here told me wide would be, I did it anyway. For me, it worked out. I wish I had gone wide from day 1.
> 
> I went wide in January 2017 and *stayed* wide. To me KU is simply not an option no matter what incentives they offer; it's just too full of traits that *should not* be there. Who knows why zon can't fix these things, but it's crystal clear they can't (or won't). But I love zon on the direct side, that works just fine.
> 
> ...


I've got an almost-done book that is a next in series. The series is in KU, so I'll just wrap it up, end the series early, put it in KU for a quick income boost and give the readers what they expect by keeping it in KU. Can always take it wide in 90 days. In the meantime I'll start a new series and it can go wide from the start. Straddle the line as I build wide.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> ENT, *was mainly Amazon for me.*
> bargainbooksy worked well for me. *on my list to do when my paypal is finally recharged.*
> Kobo direct. *cant do.*
> Bookbub obviously. *I wish.*
> ...


*Sanity is overrated. I've been off the planet for most of my life.  *


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> *Sanity is overrated. I've been off the planet for most of my life.  *


you gotta do kobo direct. Must must must.  I know you already know that though, so you must have your reasons. But the kobo promos on freebs works very well and it costs like $10 canadian (which I think is like 5 cents American).


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## DanaFraser (Apr 5, 2016)

David VanDyke said:


> But "Page flip has no material effect on pages read."
> 
> *snort*


They have admitted (a) they can't accurately measure reads with page flip, but state (b) "no significant effect"

Those two statements are incompatible. It's not the same as "I can't measure the temperature at the North Pole, but I know it's cold" but they're treating it as if it is the same.


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## DanaFraser (Apr 5, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> Those looking at the dynamics are missing a factor.
> 
> The whole point of Amazon embracing page-flip is to limit the number of pages being paid out on.
> 
> ...


I think you're really close (or spot on) to the truth here.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> you gotta do kobo direct. Must must must.  I know you already know that though, so you must have your reasons. But the kobo promos on freebs works very well and it costs like $10 canadian (which I think is like 5 cents American).


My understanding is you can only do kobo direct if you are with kobo. I've gone D2D to save on the amount of work getting 18 books wide at the same time. I'll think about putting #1 up with them, just to be able to do so.



DanaFraser said:


> It's not the same as "I can't measure the temperature at the North Pole, but I know it's cold" but they're treating it as if it is the same.


Its like saying, "I cant see any frozen bodies, because all I see is snow, and snow isn't a problem."


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> My understanding is you can only do kobo direct if you are with kobo. I've gone D2D to save on the amount of work getting 18 books wide at the same time. I'll think about putting #1 up with them, just to be able to do so.
> 
> Its like saying, "I cant see any frozen bodies, because all I see is snow, and snow isn't a problem."


I've been told by numerous sources that going direct with Kobo helps sales quite a bit so if I'm going wide I don't want to lose a lot of promotion value with D2D for Kobo. You seem like you also want to move the needle. Even though it's work it sounds like one of the answers is to go direct.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Herefortheride said:


> I've been told by numerous sources that going direct with Kobo helps sales quite a bit so if I'm going wide I don't want to lose a lot of promotion value with D2D for Kobo. You seem like you also want to move the needle. Even though it's work it sounds like one of the answers is to go direct.


I already have 4 versions of book 1 now for different platforms, just to get it out there covering all the bases. I guess doing Kobo direct is not so much of a problem. Just yet another login.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> Those looking at the dynamics are missing a factor.
> 
> The whole point of Amazon embracing page-flip is to limit the number of pages being paid out on.
> 
> ...





DanaFraser said:


> I think you're really close (or spot on) to the truth here.


Agreed. Page flip not counting pages has been admitted to being by design. Maybe it was designed that way so it couldn't be used as another jump-to-the-back tool and therefore meant to help, not harm. Maybe they really didn't expect readers to read in that mode. But that's as far as I'm willing to give them on the 'not intentional' front. But its continued use... yeah. And the fact that they don't allow books in KU to opt out. And the fact that they practically threaten you if you've somehow managed to disable it. Yeah. They don't want to fix it. To them, it's not broken.


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> Who knows why zon can't fix these things, but it's crystal clear they can't (or won't). But I love zon on the direct side, that works just fine.


Why would they fix it? It's revenue they get to keep when they don't pay the authors. And how are the authors to prove that Amazon is stealing from them? We can't see the ledgers, we don't know what the numbers really are. It's not like we can walk into Amazon HQ and demand to see the numbers for our page reads. They'd tell us to take a hike.

I released my first title last year in April and my fourth by September. They were all short reads, but in every single month I've had some level of page reads. Sometimes as high as 2000 pages, sometimes as low as a couple hundred. But, I always had some. This month? As of the 21st of September my page read count is zero. Not one single page read. Which is quite fascinating considering I released my first full novel on the 6th of this month. The only two sales I've had are to myself, one paperback and one Kindle. Other than that, I haven't seen any revenue generating sale or page read since sometime last month.

I have my next full novel scheduled for the 6th of next month. Let's see how many millions of dollars I get out of that. I'm not holding my breath.

But yes, I think Amazon has totally f****d something up and won't admit it and is enjoying the fact there are extra dollars being funneled into Bezos' pocket, instead into the author's bank accounts. Does anyone remember when Amazon was a bookstore? Back when what they cared about was getting people reading again? Now, what they care about is selling everything, but books.


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

This thread is the most important condemnation of KU that I have encountered. But since I'm new here, I don't know if any thread like this about KU has happened before.

As I've said elsewhere, I have a large catalog in several quite different genres. At this point I think I'm going to take everything out of Select and remain in Amazon direct sales and not use any other platform because I don't want to be bothered with that.

I will be leaving KU out of principle and probably take a 30% loss in revenue. So be it. I will see.

One problem is that Amazon controls the game and they can change the rules of the game essentially overnight and then we need to rethink everything. It's crazy and disappointing and aggravating.

The bottom line for me is that if I'm being cheated by design or accident I have no way of knowing and I don't even know if Amazon can be trusted.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> This thread is the most important condemnation of KU that I have encountered. But since I'm new here, I don't know if any thread like this about KU has happened before.


There have been plenty of KU bashing threads before, usually every single one goes that way. But this one is different.



> I will be leaving KU out of principle and probably take a 30% loss in revenue. So be it. I will see.


The interesting thing is seeing just how much KU cannibalizes sales. It was much worse than I'd thought, and it reminds me I didn't take enough notice of those saying it was several years ago. Back then it didn't matter though. Now it makes a huge difference.


----------



## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> There have been plenty of KU bashing threads before, usually every single one goes that way. But this one is different.
> 
> The interesting thing is seeing just how much KU cannibalizes sales. It was much worse than I'd thought, and it reminds me I didn't take enough notice of those saying it was several years ago. Back then it didn't matter though. Now it makes a huge difference.


Yeah, I'm not here to bash Amazon. I'm going wide and let's see how that goes. I'm a small prawn until I start my promotional push so I'm trying not to let stuff like this get me down.

Move forward!


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

I've been with KU for a long time but I too have unchecked the boxes. It started off last Fall as one-page reads, then it kept escalating. I suspect Page Flip now might be eating 30-50% of my page reads. I have little interest in going wide, but from my experience I believe KU _does_ cannibalize sales, and without those page reads it just isn't worth it to me anymore.


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

Modi Gliani said:


> This thread is the most important condemnation of KU that I have encountered. But since I'm new here, I don't know if any thread like this about KU has happened before.


You might find this thread interesting: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,242225.0.html


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

loraininflorida said:


> I've been with KU for a long time but I too have unchecked the boxes. It started off last Fall as one-page reads, then it kept escalating. I suspect Page Flip now might be eating 30-50% of my page reads. I have little interest in going wide, but from my experience I believe KU _does_ cannibalize sales, and without those page reads it just isn't worth it to me anymore.


To make it worse, I have the kindle app on my iphone and I don't know how to get out of page flip mode. It starts me there and it's very hard to get out. They've also made the screen bigger and better for reading through page flip.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

ShaneJeffery said:


> You might find this thread interesting: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,242225.0.html


All 132 pages of it.  

I gave up on continuing reading it a long time ago. I was surprised to find it wasn't locked.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

J. Tanner said:


> Yes, Amazon should do this right. Yes, counting accurately in all cases is important. But...
> 
> I don't really see the loss to authors. This "loss" presupposes that Amazon will add $ to the pot to cover all these "lost" page reads when they get counted.
> 
> ...


I addressed this in another thread, but the simple answer is as follows:

It may be revenue neutral to Amazon and everyone in KU collectively, but odds are (pun intended) it will vary wildly by individual author. In other words, instead of every author losing 7% and the pot compensating by its adjustment, most likely some authors will have no effect, or 1%, but a significant minority might lose 70%. Kind of like those people who have won the lottery a surprising number of times while similar people with similar ticket profiles never have. The results of chance are almost never evenly distributed.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Modi Gliani said:


> Nah nah. Never mind making the example "typical" because that reverts to what you can call the error of the mean. The author in my example loses money, period. That other authors may make it up, good for them, but she loses money and the loss can be serious. "Revenue neutrality" in KU is revenue neutrality for the whole pool of authors, with severe punishment possible for individual authors. Focusing on the mean, as it always does, removes attention from the outliers. My guess is there are thousands of individual authors being screwed by their pages not counted.


Exactly.

When the meteor storm hits and kills 34% of the population, some families are unscathed, some are wiped out. Very few lose exactly 34% of their members.


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

I have just requested from KDP Support removal of all my 700+ titles from Select all at once or at least at the end of the various enrollments, so that I don't have to uncheck so many boxes. I hope they agree so that I can be finished with this madness.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> I have just requested from KDP Support removal of all my 700+ titles from Select all at once or at least at the end of the various enrollments, so that I don't have to uncheck so many boxes. I hope they agree so that I can be finished with this madness.


It probably would have helped them to supply links, but 700 links is going to be a rather large message. 

Let us know if they agree or not.

Be interesting to see if that many titles coming out all at once gets you a different email from the rest of us.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> I have just requested from KDP Support removal of all my 700+ titles from Select all at once or at least at the end of the various enrollments, so that I don't have to uncheck so many boxes. I hope they agree so that I can be finished with this madness.


700 titles should dink their program a bit. They might not want you to leave.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

I have just sent an email to 2000 mailing list subscribers, asking them not to use page flip to read my books. We shall see if that does any good.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Doglover said:


> I have just sent an email to 2000 mailing list subscribers, asking them not to use page flip to read my books. We shall see if that does any good.


Interesting test. Let us know what happens. And any feedback you get.

I just uploaded 4 of my still in KU books, using the mobi files created by D2D. Reads on them are sporadic, so I dont know if I will see results or not. But its worth a try. If anything, single digits replaced by 3 digits would be a positive sign page flip is turned off.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> Interesting test. Let us know what happens. And any feedback you get.
> 
> I just uploaded 4 of my still in KU books, using the mobi files created by D2D. Reads on them are sporadic, so I dont know if I will see results or not. But its worth a try. If anything, single digits replaced by 3 digits would be a positive sign page flip is turned off.


I must have worded the email badly, as I just got a reply from one reader telling me she couldn't read printed books. I didn't want that! I think I shall have to send a new email tomorrow just to be sure.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Doglover said:


> I must have worded the email badly, as I just got a reply from one reader telling me she couldn't read printed books. I didn't want that! I think I shall have to send a new email tomorrow just to be sure.


Probably doesn't know what KU is. And is guessing its paperbacks.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> Probably doesn't know what KU is. And is guessing its paperbacks.


No, she knew what it was. I just worded it badly; I asked if they could read the old fashioned way and she thought that meant print. I think with 2000 subs, she is probably not the only one. I can't send another email today as I'm only allowed 2000 emails in 24 hours or Mailchimp will start charging.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Doglover said:


> No, she knew what it was. I just worded it badly; I asked if they could read the old fashioned way and she thought that meant print. I think with 2000 subs, she is probably not the only one. I can't send another email today as I'm only allowed 2000 emails in 24 hours or Mailchimp will start charging.


Do you have a less than intelligent character people will know?

Couch the next email as coming from that character.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Word Fan said:


> Me neither.
> 
> Wow. I use it all the time. What is your (both of "your") rationale? I really would like to know?


It stems from me being really, really lazy, and also being consistent with my reading habits from my paper book days.

I was never one to read the first few pages of a book to see if I liked it, though I know some did that even with paper books. (Some people read the ending ) I always went by cover, title, blurb on the back. I still do that. (Though blurb on the product page has replaced the blurb on the back.). I don't test drive books, I jump in for the journey. I read fast and I read a lot of books. I mostly finish books I start--though I think I've abandoned more lately than I used to. But when I sit down with a book, I'm ready to read. I don't want to read a few pages, then have to stop to download, even though Amazon has made it really easy to do so. (This is the really, really lazy bit.). And I don't want to pick up a book later, sometimes a LOT later, and think I've already read the book because the beginning sounds familiar.

Also, I don't generally browse Amazon to find books. I find books through recommendations from friends and family, and from reading posts here on KBoards by authors whose posts I find well written and interesting. And then do the vetting I've always done. I may look at the reviews, and if I do, I look at the bad reviews to see what the readers didn't like. Usually it's something that doesn't matter to me, but the bad reviews are more useful to me than the good reviews, since I don't know the people giving the reviews.

The point being that I don't feel the need to vet the quality of the writing--and I already know if the plot is something that interests me by reading the blurb. I love books in series, so if an author grabs me with the first book in the series, I'll binge read the series--and don't feel I need to vet subsequent books in the series. If the author doesn't write series, I'll binge read the author's books (Michael Koryta right now), and the same thing, once the author has hooked me, don't feel a need to vet the writing.

This kind of reminds me of something my quilting idol once said. When asked why she used a particular technique, she gave a clear explanation of her process, and then said "I just made that up." It's kind of the same thing. I don't NOT use Look Inside or sampling because of a long thought-out process--it's just never appealed to me, and the above is my best assessment of why I don't do it. Or it could be just that I'm really, really lazy. 

Betsy


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Herefortheride said:


> To make it worse, I have the kindle app on my iphone and I don't know how to get out of page flip mode. It starts me there and it's very hard to get out. They've also made the screen bigger and better for reading through page flip.


We have a Kindle user's section here where people can ask technical questions about using Kindles or Kindle apps. Let's Talk Kindle or Tips, Tricks & Troubleshooting 
 Just sayin'.

In the iPhone Kindle App, you just tap on the middle of the page to get in and out of page flip mode. But my books don't start in page flip mode--even if they were in page flip mode when I exited the book. So if your books are always starting in page flip mode, that's not right. You might want to uninstall and reinstall the app. The latest version is 5.15 released Sep 22--but I tested with 5.14, and it worked fine. If you try reinstalling and you continue to have problem, you might start a thread in the Tips, Tricks & Troubleshooting forum and post a screenshot of what your screen shows when you open the book so we can do more troubleshooting. And so we don't derail this thread with extensive troubleshooting. 

Betsy


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

These 2 books just went live after being uploaded from D2D mobi's.

Anyone want to try reading them in page flip?

Wisdom of the Ages 6 Accrued Karma http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KP5OYT8
Wisdom of the Ages 7 Healing the Indigo http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KP9BIPM


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Word Fan said:


> Me neither.
> 
> Wow. I use it all the time. What is your (both of "your") rationale? I really would like to know?


I discover most "new to me" authors via a free first in series or KU. I honestly can't remember the last time I discovered an author outside of those means. I shop for books 75 percent of the time on my Kindle Paperwhite. Much with KU books, I know within the first page whether I'm going to want to continue with a free book. There's no reason to waste time with the Look Inside. After reading the first book, I have no issue buying other books in the series once I know the writer's style so I simply have no reason to use the Look Inside.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

dgcasey said:


> Why would they fix it? It's revenue they get to keep when they don't pay the authors. And how are the authors to prove that Amazon is stealing from them? We can't see the ledgers, we don't know what the numbers really are. It's not like we can walk into Amazon HQ and demand to see the numbers for our page reads. They'd tell us to take a hike.
> 
> I released my first title last year in April and my fourth by September. They were all short reads, but in every single month I've had some level of page reads. Sometimes as high as 2000 pages, sometimes as low as a couple hundred. But, I always had some. This month? As of the 21st of September my page read count is zero. Not one single page read. Which is quite fascinating considering I released my first full novel on the 6th of this month. The only two sales I've had are to myself, one paperback and one Kindle. Other than that, I haven't seen any revenue generating sale or page read since sometime last month.
> 
> ...


I know you probably don't want to hear this but I checked and all your titles are ranked lower than 1M (except one, which is 900K). That's not a PageFlip problem. That's a visibility problem. No one is borrowing them to read them. You need to work on your visibility. At those ranks, that means no one has borrowed or bought them in weeks. You can't get page reads if no one has borrowed them.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> These 2 books just went live after being uploaded from D2D mobi's.
> 
> Anyone want to try reading them in page flip?
> 
> ...


Just FYI, to my knowledge, there is absolutely no way to disable single-page PageFlip. None. Period. The "workarounds" only work for disabling multi-page PageFlip and generally only for a short bit of time.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I know you probably don't want to hear this but I checked and all your titles are ranked lower than 1M (except one, which is 900K). That's not a PageFlip problem. That's a visibility problem. No one is borrowing them to read them. You need to work on your visibility. At those ranks, that means no one has borrowed or bought them in weeks. You can't get page reads if no one has borrowed them.


Yes, but the thing is, page flip is super-evident at that level of things. And you know if you normally get full reads or not from history.



Amanda M. Lee said:


> Just FYI, to my knowledge, there is absolutely no way to disable single-page PageFlip. None. Period. The "workarounds" only use for disabling multi-page PageFlip and generally only for a short bit of time.


Who's talking about that? This is a test. If someone can flip their way through the whole book, then its a failed test. At least we know. But if they cant flip at all, even if they can get into it, we know we have a workaround.

Its just a test. Don't be such a wet blanket. If it doesn't work, its no big deal. I updated 5 books with way out of date back matter instead of writing for a bit, so it wasn't a waste of time regardless of outcome.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> Yes, but the thing is, page flip is super-evident at that level of things. And you know if you normally get full reads or not from history.
> 
> Who's talking about that? This is a test. If someone can flip their way through the whole book, then its a failed test. At least we know. But if they cant flip at all, even if they can get into it, we know we have a workaround.
> 
> Its just a test. Don't be such a wet blanket. If it doesn't work, its no big deal. I updated 5 books with way out of date back matter instead of writing for a bit, so it wasn't a waste of time regardless of outcome.


It's a test on whether or not you can disable PageFlip and you can't disable single-page PageFlip.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> It's a test on whether or not you can disable PageFlip and you can't disable single-page PageFlip.


And that isn't my worry. An odd page here or there to using it for navigation, isn't a concern. That's obvious when you get a read count a couple less than a full read. Its insignificant. Its never been a problem.

The problem is when all you get is page 1 read, and then pop up into flip mode and dont go back. That's the problem, because you get paid for 1 page only, instead of losing 1 page on a full read. 1 page lost out of 300 isn't an issue. 299 lost out of 300 is the issue.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> And that isn't my worry. An odd page here or there to using it for navigation, isn't a concern. That's obvious when you get a read count a couple less than a full read. Its insignificant. Its never been a problem.
> 
> The problem is when all you get is page 1 read, and then pop up into flip mode and dont go back. That's the problem, because you get paid for 1 page only, instead of losing 1 page on a full read. 1 page lost out of 300 isn't an issue. 299 lost out of 300 is the issue.


It's easier to read a book in single-page PageFlip than Multi-Page PageFlip. Single-page doesn't mean you can only read one page of the book in Page Flip. It means you can only look at one page at a time and still navigate quickly. Multi-Page is when you can get like nine pages on your screen at once but they're so small you can't read them. Single-Page is one page -- which is easy to read depending on the device -- and that can never be disabled.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> It's easier to read a book in single-page PageFlip than Multi-Page PageFlip. Single-page doesn't mean you can only read one page of the book in Page Flip. It means you can only look at one page at a time and still navigate quickly. Multi-Page is when you can get like nine pages on your screen at once but they're so small you can't read them. Single-Page is one page -- which is easy to read depending on the device -- and that can never be disabled.


*sigh*

Whatever.

Its a test. I thought it up, I set it up, hopefully someone will check if anything is different.

I didn't ask for a lesson in flip dynamics. A simple yes or no to the hypothesis is all I need.

I'd do it myself, but I dont use KU. Hence I need to ask someone to try.


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## DanaFraser (Apr 5, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> ...
> Its like saying, "I cant see any frozen bodies, because all I see is snow, and snow isn't a problem."


I bow to your superior analogy


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> *sigh*
> 
> Whatever.
> 
> ...


*sigh*
It says PageFlip enabled on both product pages and if you upload something that doesn't have PageFlip enabled at the start that goes away until they get the PageFlip working again.
*sigh"


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> *sigh*
> It says PageFlip enabled on both product pages and if you upload something that doesn't have PageFlip enabled at the start that goes away until they get the PageFlip working again.
> *sigh"


Its still worth someone downloading and trying. We know websites take longer to update than the book content's does.

Let's dot the i's, and cross the t's.

By the way, you are good inspiration for the combat chapter I've been writing through all this.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

loraininflorida said:


> I've been with KU for a long time but I too have unchecked the boxes. It started off last Fall as one-page reads, then it kept escalating. I suspect Page Flip now might be eating 30-50% of my page reads. I have little interest in going wide, but from my experience I believe KU _does_ cannibalize sales, and without those page reads it just isn't worth it to me anymore.


Ya, there was a lot of people saying it does not cannibalize sales. Maybe that's the case for some, but it was obvious to me it did cannibalize sales. People who had bought my first book direct, were suddenly reading the rest in KU. Doesn't take a genius to figure out their first purchase was direct because they weren't in KU, and the rest were borrows because they subsequently signed up for KU. I can't blame them, why pay $25 when you can read all the books for free on a 30-day trial?

The solution to this is to make one book available in KU and the rest direct. Then you're accessing KU readers, but not playing the KU game. But that becomes a bit silly also, because then you can't have that first book wide (which you want if the rest of your books are wide).

I eventually threw up my hands with KU when I realized it was going to be nothing but a headache (and that the more successful I got, the more it was going to hurt me).


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> I eventually threw up my hands with KU when I realized it was going to be nothing but a headache (and that the more successful I got, the more it was going to hurt me).


That's the really insidious thing.

The better you do, the harder it is to see you are actually bleeding.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> That's the really insidious thing.
> 
> The better you do, the harder it is to see you are actually bleeding.


Yep. KU plays right into the basic sunk cost fallacy.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/173/Sunk-Cost-Fallacy

I've already committed x amount of time and energy into making KU work; to change strategies now would be throwing all that way.

It becomes very hard for people to gain perspective that long-term the losses may be far greater than accepting the initial losses.

It's the perfect little trap, especially for younger authors. Those of us who are a bit older tend to have learned via other life experiences that initial investment is not a reason to continue investing in something.

In investing there's the old motto: don't try to catch a falling knife. Same concept. It's human nature to chase your losses and to actually compound them hoping to "save the day".

The nice thing about getting older is you've usually burned your hand on the stove enough times that you realize it's easier to cut your losses than to chase them


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Is there any information KU authors actually get to know about their business when it comes to KU?

You're payed by the page at a rate that's a ****FUN SURPRISE**** because it's paid out from a pool that is also a ****FUN SURPRISE****. Only your actual pages read is a ****FUN SURPRISE**** because what is even considered a page for those purposes is a ****FUN SURPRISE**** and oh yeah there's an issue where sometimes those pages just aren't reported. But it's about 'visibility', yeah? Only how many people view and download you books in total is also a ****FUN SURPRISE****.

* ****FUN SURPRISE**** - Actual business critical information any company needs to function in the log term and make plans for their future development and growth that you straight up aren't allowed to know.

Imagine if Youtube didn't know how many views, subscriptions and notifications its videos had and also how mach each advertiser was going to pay once their term was up. They would have no idea which content providers to harass, de-monitize or just bury under algo-manipulation and would in turn be a better company for everyone.

Okay, bad example...


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

TimothyEllis said:


> These 2 books just went live after being uploaded from D2D mobi's.
> 
> Anyone want to try reading them in page flip?
> 
> ...


I'll be glad to not read the first one of these in page flip--which is to say, I'll download it and page flip through it.



Amanda M. Lee said:


> It's easier to read a book in single-page PageFlip than Multi-Page PageFlip. Single-page doesn't mean you can only read one page of the book in Page Flip. It means you can only look at one page at a time and still navigate quickly. Multi-Page is when you can get like nine pages on your screen at once but they're so small you can't read them. Single-Page is one page -- which is easy to read depending on the device -- and that can never be disabled.


Thanks for the explanation, Amanda--I wondered what the distinction was.

Betsy


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I'll be glad to not read the first one of these in page flip--which is to say, I'll download it and page flip through it.


Thanks, I'm off to bed, and off to OZ Comic-con in the morning, so will be tomorrow evening for me, before I see the result.

Thanks for trying.


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> The nice thing about getting older is you've usually burned your hand on the stove enough times that you realize it's easier to cut your losses than to chase them


There is nothing nice about getting older. The adult world is a snake pit and we were all better off as children. And if you get really old, everyone you loved and liked is dead and gone.


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## LadyG (Sep 3, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> There is nothing nice about getting older. The adult world is a snake pit and we were all better off as children. And if you get really old, everyone you loved and liked is dead and gone.


Wow, you're just a little bundle of sunshine, aren't you?


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Modi Gliani said:


> There is nothing nice about getting older. The adult world is a snake pit and we were all better off as children. And if you get really old, everyone you loved and liked is dead and gone.


Not every one was better off as a child. Some children had horrid childhoods and made better lives for themselves as adults. I had a good childhood, and have a much better adulthood. And am enjoying this stage of my life despite loss--which makes me appreciate the friendships and family that have been in my life.

I keep finding new things to enjoy at each stage of life, despite the bits that suck. 

Betsy


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Modi Gliani said:


> There is nothing nice about getting older. The adult world is a snake pit and we were all better off as children. And if you get really old, everyone you loved and liked is dead and gone.


That's like... so true, man. It speaks to the darkest parts of my dark soul, man. Love is like... an illusion. Hope is totes a lie and the universe is a hologram.

Just like Linkin Park.

_Crrrrrrawwwling innnn my skinnnnn / These wooooounds they will not heeeeeeeeal!_


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

Vaalingrade said:


> That's like... so true, man. It speaks to the darkest parts of my dark soul, man. Love is like... an illusion. Hope is totes a lie and the universe is a hologram.
> 
> Just like Linkin Park.
> 
> _Crrrrrrawwwling innnn my skinnnnn / These wooooounds they will not heeeeeeeeal!_


"I don't know, I'll never know: in the silence you don't know. You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on."

Samuel Beckett. The last words of The Unnamable.

Everyone has their own view and attitude. That's fine. It's all fine.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

Geez, what is this, the counter to the kboards "motivation" thread? So much doom and gloom. 


KU is great for some and not for others. Do what works for you. As far as page flip goes, I'm seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence, which - in my opinion - is not a strong enough indicator of some grander conspiracy at play.


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

jaehaerys said:


> Geez, what is this, the counter to the kboards "motivation" thread? So much doom and gloom.
> 
> KU is great for some and not for others. Do what works for you. As far as page flip goes, I'm seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence, which - in my opinion - is not a strong enough indicator of some grander conspiracy at play.


Linkin Park and Samuel Beckett motivate writers. But maybe not you. That's fine too.


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I know you probably don't want to hear this but I checked and all your titles are ranked lower than 1M (except one, which is 900K). That's not a PageFlip problem. That's a visibility problem. No one is borrowing them to read them. You need to work on your visibility. At those ranks, that means no one has borrowed or bought them in weeks. You can't get page reads if no one has borrowed them.


Yes, but now the question would be, what came first, the chicken or the egg?

Up until the middle of last month, those four short stories hovered between the 70,000 and 300,000 marks. Not great, I know, but decent for short stories. Then, after about the 21st of last month (August) the bottom just dropped out. No page reads, no sales, no nothing and the rankings just nose dived. The novel that I just released a couple of weeks ago, hit the rankings at about 125,000 and then just dove head first to the million mark, with not one single page read or sale.

So, why would the short stories, which were getting consistent reads every single month for over a year, all of a sudden just die, completely? And why would the new novel, which was at #10 in the new releases list in it's category, drop completely off the face of the earth, without even one page read? Are the page reads and sales falling because the rankings are falling, or is it the other way around?


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> Linkin Park and Samuel Beckett motivate writers. But maybe not you. That's fine too.


I was more referring to the 'adult world is a snake pit' and 'love is an illusion' and 'hope is a lie' and 'everyone you loved/liked is dead and gone' talk.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

[As far as page flip goes, I'm seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence, which - in my opinion - is not a strong enough indicator of some grander conspiracy at play.]

Authors who have a non-performing book and know someone who has KU, can replicate the Page Flip No Pays test. That makes the Page Flip thing not anecdotal, but verifiable. As far as the conspiracy thing goes, Amazon has had over a year to change Page Flip, put a warning to authors on Amazon's KDP page about it, or offer restitution. They haven't.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Tim, I borrow _Accrued Karma_ and went through the end book in Page Flip, then closed it without leaving Page Flip. This was on the Android Kindle app. I'll do the same thing to the other book but will leave Page Flip at the end, to see if that makes any difference.

ETA: With _Healing the Indigo_, I hopped out of Page Flip five or six times at different points in the book, as well as getting out of Page Flip before closing the book at the very end. I probably looked at ... hm ... maybe fifteen phone-sized pages outside Page Flip. Every time I got out of PF and turned a page in regular mode, it left a little dot on the reading status bar, so the app did appear to be seeing PF vs. regular pages differently.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

jaehaerys, Modi Gliani, and others ... knock off the sniping, please.


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## spellscribe (Nov 5, 2015)

dgcasey said:


> Yes, but now the question would be, what came first, the chicken or the egg?
> 
> Up until the middle of last month, those four short stories hovered between the 70,000 and 300,000 marks. Not great, I know, but decent for short stories. Then, after about the 21st of last month (August) the bottom just dropped out. No page reads, no sales, no nothing and the rankings just nose dived. The novel that I just released a couple of weeks ago, hit the rankings at about 125,000 and then just dove head first to the million mark, with not one single page read or sale.
> 
> So, why would the short stories, which were getting consistent reads every single month for over a year, all of a sudden just die, completely? And why would the new novel, which was at #10 in the new releases list in it's category, drop completely off the face of the earth, without even one page read? Are the page reads and sales falling because the rankings are falling, or is it the other way around?


At 70k rank and lower, you're not getting any love from the algorithms. Every sale is on you - the moment you stop whatever promoting you're doing, you run out of people to sell to etc, that's when you drop like a rock.

Page reads don't affect rank or visibility. They don't help you be seen, so it doesn't matter from that perspective if they're being counted correctly or at all.

Borrows (the moment someone checks out your book, regardless of whether they intend to read it) are what bump your rank. They are working, or at least no one is saying they're not. There is no reason for incorrectly counted page reads to affect rank, sales or visibility and the drop off you described is not only normal, but fairly expected (coming from someone who hangs out at those ranks).


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

dgcasey said:


> Yes, but now the question would be, what came first, the chicken or the egg?
> 
> Up until the middle of last month, those four short stories hovered between the 70,000 and 300,000 marks. Not great, I know, but decent for short stories. Then, after about the 21st of last month (August) the bottom just dropped out. No page reads, no sales, no nothing and the rankings just nose dived. The novel that I just released a couple of weeks ago, hit the rankings at about 125,000 and then just dove head first to the million mark, with not one single page read or sale.
> 
> So, why would the short stories, which were getting consistent reads every single month for over a year, all of a sudden just die, completely? And why would the new novel, which was at #10 in the new releases list in it's category, drop completely off the face of the earth, without even one page read? Are the page reads and sales falling because the rankings are falling, or is it the other way around?


Page reads don't impact rank. Rank does impact page reads, though. You literally can't get page reads without the corresponding rank. You can, however, see an increase in rank but have no page reads if someone decides not to read. Page reads themselves have absolutely nothing to do with rank.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

I pulled *everything* out of KU last year.

I put *one* title in a few months ago as a test.

Where I normally sell of a lousy offering 20 books per month, (300 of a good book), the KU book is selling the equivalent of 5 books - 2 sales and 3 books of page reads.

*KU isn't working for me.*

Might work for others. Great. Not for me. And I'm not going to continue to get the anal probe while other authors get my share.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I do that with seven out of every ten books I start in KU. It's not that the book is bad. It's that it's not for me. I'm not the only one either. I talk to a lot of readers and they all do it. And I'm not joking, I know within one or two paragraphs if I want to continue.


*raises hand* I do this too. I might like the blurb and cover but then start reading and don't like the writing style or maybe it's in 1st person present and that grates on my nerves. I'm too lazy to download samples first because if I like the book, I don't want the hassle of going back to get the real book. I return about 80% of the books I borrow after only reading a page or so, if that.


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> It probably would have helped them to supply links, but 700 links is going to be a rather large message.
> 
> Let us know if they agree or not.
> 
> Be interesting to see if that many titles coming out all at once gets you a different email from the rest of us.


It's done. They got me all out of Select almost at once. I am very happy and relieved. The email merely says "We've processed your request..." with a link in case I have any questions.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Becca Mills said:


> Tim, I borrow _Accrued Karma_ and went through the end book in Page Flip, then closed it without leaving Page Flip. This was on the Android Kindle app. I'll do the same thing to the other book but will leave Page Flip at the end, to see if that makes any difference.
> 
> ETA: With _Healing the Indigo_, I hopped out of Page Flip five or six times at different points in the book, as well as getting out of Page Flip before closing the book at the very end. I probably looked at ... hm ... maybe fifteen phone-sized pages outside Page Flip. Every time I got out of PF and turned a page in regular mode, it left a little dot on the reading status bar, so the app did appear to be seeing PF vs. regular pages differently.


Indigo has 13 pages, Karma 6.

Good test thanks. Bad news, but a good test.

Thanks.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> Indigo has 13 pages, Karma 6.
> 
> Good test thanks. Bad news, but a good test.
> 
> Thanks.


How many pages should they have?


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

Modi Gliani said:


> It's done. They got me all out of Select almost at once. I am very happy and relieved. The email merely says "We've processed your request..." with a link in case I have any questions.


700 books out is a wonderful statement.
I have also unchecked all renewal boxes.
It's gotten to a point where it's just ridiculous.
_(can't decide which is worse, the Amazon "response" or the KU3 stats)_


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2017)

MelD said:


> 700 books out is a wonderful statement.
> I have also unchecked all renewal boxes.
> It's gotten to a point where it's just ridiculous.
> _(can't decide which is worse, the Amazon "response" or the KU3 stats)_


I did say in my email request that I wanted out because of "the page flip problem and the uncertainty of counted pages." I hope that will help getting them to do something about page flip.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

MelD said:


> 700 books out is a wonderful statement.
> I have also unchecked all renewal boxes.
> It's gotten to a point where it's just ridiculous.
> _(can't decide which is worse, the Amazon "response" or the KU3 stats)_


I'll say this for amazon, they are very good about letting people out of KU. I mean, almost any excuse will prompt them to remove you at once.

I mean, zon has their chit together on all other fronts. It's just KU that is a bloody mess.


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2017)

Jeff Tanyard said:


> I'm still trying to process the concept of one person having published 700 books.


Simenon did more, if you count his novels and short stories. And there have been others.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> Indigo has 13 pages, Karma 6.
> 
> Good test thanks. Bad news, but a good test.
> 
> Thanks.


My pleasure. Sorry not have found better results, though. 

Sent from my SM-G360V using Tapatalk


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## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> It's done. They got me all out of Select almost at once. I am very happy and relieved. The email merely says "We've processed your request..." with a link in case I have any questions.


I'm glad you are happy, and I wish you all the success in the world in going wide. Some books don't seem to do very well in KU, and so there's no downside in going wide.
Perhaps your books sell well on Amazon but don't get borrows. If so, going wide might increase your sales considerably. If, however, the books are not selling on Amazon, I wonder what you plan to do differently so that they will sell at other outlets. Or perhaps, that isn't the point. You have the peace of mind of getting out of KU and maybe that's enough. Best of luck to you.


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2017)

Arches said:


> I'm glad you are happy, and I wish you all the success in the world in going wide. Some books don't seem to do very well in KU, and so there's no downside in going wide.
> Perhaps your books sell well on Amazon but don't get borrows. If so, going wide might increase your sales considerably. If, however, the books are not selling on Amazon, I wonder what you plan to do differently so that they will sell at other outlets. Or perhaps, that isn't the point. You have the peace of mind of getting out of KU and maybe that's enough. Best of luck to you.


I got out of KU not because of low sales but as a protest against uncertain page counts when readers use page flip. As I've said before, I'm remaining exclusive to Anazon but only in direct sales.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

with all the talk of page flips, i thought this old video of steve jobs was apropos. I'm not a Jobs fan, but he had this right (except here, you can probably replace sales and marketing with algos).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

For those of you leaving KU do take the opportunity to *let Amazon know why*. Mention a lack of confidence that your pages reads are being counted and paid accordingly. The more we do this, the more likely we see something change.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> How many pages should they have?


Karma 392
Indigo 394

As of stats right now, Karma has had 116, and Indigo 13.

Not sure now how many people tried using Karma now. Thanks to those who did.



Herefortheride said:


> For those of you leaving KU do take the opportunity to *let Amazon know why*. Mention a lack of confidence that your pages reads are being counted and paid accordingly. The more we do this, the more likely we see something change.


I was explicit about why I wanted out, and told the the whole situation was totally unacceptable. I also told them as little as 2 months ago, I had no thought of leaving KU at all, and KU3 was a disaster.


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> Karma 392
> Indigo 394
> 
> As of stats right now, Karma has had 116, and Indigo 13.
> ...


So now the idea that the evidence of a serious page flip problem is only anecdotal is baloney. This evidence from Ellis and others says KDP may be shorting authors many millions of $$$$. If several authors, not only one, get to the media with this, it will be hot news and maybe Amazon will be forced to do something. As I suggested, I think you should do something with the Huffington Post Books and Media editor and maybe also the Business and Tech editors. I think if they get email from a number of big authors at the same time, the poop will hit the fan.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

I'm writing something now. First draft done. I'll post it for comment after eating.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> As I suggested, I think you should do something with the Huffington Post Books and Media editor and maybe also the Business and Tech editors. I think if they get email from a number of big authors at the same time, the poop will hit the fan.





> Kindle Unlimited is broken for Authors
> 
> For the second time in 2 years, Authors are in exodus from Amazon's Kindle Unlimited subscription service. This includes one author who has just pulled over 700 books out, with a single request to KU.
> 
> ...


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Speaking as a reader, I never doubted the theory that if a person reads a book from front to back 100% in page flip and never comes out of it before returning the book, then that book will not record reads. My takeaway is that it works as designed: page flip was never intended as an alternate way to read the book, only a way to flip to other parts of a book just as you might with a paper one.

What I doubted, and still doubt, is that there is a high percentage of readers who actually do that. I'm sure there are some. And I suspect Amazon was surprised to find _anyone_ using the feature that way.  I also would guess that, on learning it, they've done an analysis to figure out if it's a problem -- if, for example, half the people who borrow KU books use the feature to actually read, that would be a problem. They've decided that it's not. Which is clearly where some of you disagree. 

Of course, I have no evidence one way or the other, and I don't think anyone here does either. But I suspect it's not more than 1 - 2% of readers who read that way, anecdotes shared here not withstanding. I further suspect that any negative effect such reading habits produce are probably spread pretty evenly across the KU continuum -- or, at least, across the more popular books.

That said, I've done some personal experiments.

In an app you will go out of page mode automatically if you close the app, though not if you leave it running as you can do with android devices. If you close the app and then open it again, you may be in the same book, but you will NOT be in page flip mode. And, given it's an app on a phone or tablet, it is probably always connected 'cause that's where the value in the device comes from! So pages will get recorded if the app is working properly.

On eInk kindles, you can't switch to a different book while in page flip mode -- the only way to get back to the home screen requires you to go to regular mode and then go home. So, if someone is halfway through and wants to take a break to read something else, they have to go to 'regular' mode and then home to pick the other book. That page will be recorded and reported next time the device connects.

I suppose, if a reader using an eInk device never turns on wireless, then no page reads will ever get recorded. I'm sure there are some who have no reliable wifi and regularly borrow/buy books and transfer them via USB. I suspect there's no good way for those page reads to be recorded.  But I think, even if you read 10 books while off line and have removed them from the device, the next time you do connect, 3 months later, those page reads will record at that time. So it really would need to be someone who NEVER has wireless on. Even those with unreliable wireless at home probably periodically connect when somewhere else.

Another scenario would be a person for whom wireless is normally off and that person religiously -- whether reading the regular way or via page flip mode -- goes back to page 1 every time they finish a book before they do turn on wireless. Again, no page reads will ever get recorded. However, anecdotes shared here not withstanding, I believe it is a TINY percentage of people do that. Most people I've talked to -- though this is also anecdotal -- either don't pay attention, or make sure to get to the END so they can record the read on GR. I think I've only met one person who said she likes all her books to open at the beginning so goes back to the cover before putting them away after finishing. And, even then, as wireless is usually on, it's still not an issue since pages are being reported as she reads.

All that said, I've followed a lot of these discussions. I do think you're mostly making mountains out of molehills.  Still, I see nothing wrong with educating your readers via gently worded emails about the issue so that if they are ones who read that way, they are reminded to drop OUT of page flip mode, and connect to wireless, when they finish a reading session so that the reads get counted. If they use an app on phone or tablet, the easiest thing is to close the app vs leaving it running, and when they open it again they will be right where they left off and can re-enable page flip, if, indeed, that is their preferred method of reading. Meanwhile, the pages get recorded. For eInk devices, just remind them to go to the home screen and connect at the end of the day so the pages they read that day get recorded. And then if they want to go back to page 1 so things are nice and neat, they can do that afterwards.  I suspect most readers are happy for you to be paid, and won't mind a courteous explanation of how they can make sure that happens.  I think complaining to them that Amazon isn't fair to you won't have quite the same effect.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Ann in Arlington said:


> What I doubted, and still doubt, is that there is a high percentage of readers who actually do that.


This is what Amazon are counting on. Everyone doubts it, so as long as people do, they can continue to ignore it.



> All that said, I've followed a lot of these discussions. I do think you're mostly making mountains out of molehills.


That molehill puts food on my table. When amazon does something which reduces the molehill by 30% overnight, I take it personally.



> Still, I see nothing wrong with educating your readers via gently worded emails about the issue so that if they are ones who read that way, they are reminded to drop OUT of page flip mode, and connect to wireless, when they finish a reading session so that the reads get counted. If they use an app on phone or tablet, the easiest thing is to close the app vs leaving it running, and when they open it again they will be right where they left off and can re-enable page flip, if, indeed, that is their preferred method of reading. Meanwhile, the pages get recorded. For eInk devices, just remind them to go to the home screen and connect at the end of the day so the pages they read that day get recorded. And then if they want to go back to page 1 so things are nice and neat, they can do that afterwards.  I suspect most readers are happy for you to be paid, and won't mind a courteous explanation of how they can make sure that happens.  I think complaining to them that Amazon isn't fair to you won't have quite the same effect.


The problem with this is people forget. They go with habit. I never turn my kindle app off. I just close the flap on it, or press the button to get back to the icon screen. People will always go with habit, no matter how hard you try to educate them.

This is what Amazon are counting on. As long as people forget to do all those things, they make a profit off not paying us for genuine reads.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

TimothyEllis said:


> Karma 392
> Indigo 394
> 
> As of stats right now, Karma has had 116, and Indigo 13.
> ...


Timothy,

I also page flipped through Karma yesterday, Tim, and might have gone out of it to regular reading mode for 2 or 3 pages, one of which was at the end of the book.

(I note that the product page says Karma has 280 pages, though the book has 1295 locations, which seems even much shorter to me; another Kindle book that I have says it has 144 pages, and is 2568 total locations.)

Betsy


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> Karma 392
> Indigo 394
> 
> As of stats right now, Karma has had 116, and Indigo 13.
> ...


So the next test you need to do is have Betsy (edit: anyone but betsy, as her page reads wont count anymore) read the book in regular mode. If you still end up with 116 and 13, then page flip wasn't the cause.

I only suggest a second (regular mode) test, because there's a very small possibility that KU simply doesn't count page reads properly period (irrespective of page flips).


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> (I note that the product page says Karma has 280 pages, though the book has 1295 locations, which seems even much shorter to me; another Kindle book that I have says it has 144 pages, and is 2568 total locations.)


One of the oddities, where KENPC actually is higher than product page length. It does happen sometimes. These were odd books, and not in a conventional format. They were also uploaded long before I found out what KU was, and have never been edited since.



Seneca42 said:


> So the next test you need to do is have Betsy (edit: anyone but betsy, as her page reads wont count anymore) read the book in regular mode. If you still end up with 116 and 13, then page flip wasn't the cause.
> 
> I only suggest a second (regular mode) test, because there's a very small possibility that KU simply doesn't count page reads properly period (irrespective of page flips).


By all means yes.

Although if Betsy did it, I should see a number of 392-13=379. 

And this is what should be happening with these strange numbers. Partial read on one day followed by the rest of the next day. Only it isn't happening.


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

I think the reason we're seeing a difference now is that before KU3, if a reader dropped out of page flip at the end of the book for any reason, then all the pages up to that point were counted As if they were read. This was a problem that could be (and was) easily scammed. So Amazon fixed it. Now if a reader reads through and drops out of page flip, only the actual pages opened in page flip count as read. 

I'm seeing a lot of strange numbers. 35 pages ready one day, 20 the next, 18 the day after, on for a week at a time on a 500 odd KENP book. Could be a reader reading through very slowly on a low borrowed book, or could be several readers starting it and getting bored, or could be page flip. No way of knowing unfortunately.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

As a former reporter Tim, you're going to run into several problems with your plea for coverage:
1. It doesn't read like a press release. You need to keep emotion out of it and get legitimate numbers into it.
2. How do you know there's a mass exodus in KU? What were the number of books in KU before August? What is the number now? You need facts to back up rhetoric. I don't have the numbers either (but I believe multiple people keep track) and I'm going to bet there are more books in KU now than there were at the start of August, so that "fact" is not actually a fact. You can claim "mass exodus" all you want but the numbers don't bear that out and that will become an issue.
3. You need a timeline. PageFlip came out months before the September 2016 downturn that people were complaining about. You need to be able to answer questions like, if it's all PageFlip, how come it didn't impact authors before September since it was out before September?
4. If you're going to say "one saw this" and "one saw that" you need to get permission to list those authors so they can be interviewed. No decent journalist is going to take your word on other people's numbers. You need to make it as easy as possible. John Smith said this. Then put his contact information in parenthesis so the reporter doesn't have to go looking.
5. PageFlip was already available on most devices before KU3. The big change with KU3 was that you could no longer trigger a full read just by scrolling to the back of the book on an ereader (you still can on the online reader, though, so that fix is still coming).
6. And, finally, you go to conspiracy theory territory once you get to Amazon's agenda. A few simple questions are going to reveal things like:
* Amazon picks the rate they will pay regardless so it doesn't matter how many pages are read.
* Amazon doesn't lose money if more pages are read.
* You can't assign emotion to Amazon because it's a business.
* Amazon goes after link scammers constantly.
* And, finally (and this is picky) you have random capitalization that could very well have them discarding the post before reading more than a chapter.

Speaking of that, it's too long. You need to cut it down, wipe out the hyperbole, supply actual numbers and contacts, and erase the emotion. Also, newspapers/online news sites write about things that readers care about. Very few people care about the the KU numbers because it doesn't affect a lot of people. You need to come up with a way (one that's not emotional) to hook a reporter's interest because this affects so few people they won't care about it unless you give them a reason to care about it.
The biggest thing is numbers. Bullet facts (and they have to be actual facts) for easier access for the reporter. Lay things out without delving into rhetoric. Wipe out the conspiracy theories because that's going to have the note thrown away before anyone reads from beginning to end. Even with all the changes, the odds of someone reading everything are slim. Make it like a book blurb, short and punchy. You need to get your salient points out right away because otherwise no one is going to read it.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Amanda, it wasn't written as a press release, for a reporter, or needing numbers.

The call was for something for the huffington post, so I wrote it like I'd expect to come from them. They seem to be long on hyperbole and short on numbers.

I dont intend to do anything with it. I put it out there as an example of what could be written. If someone wants to reword it and send it to someone, go for it. 

If you want to be so picky, how about you write something you think would work?


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

Very well explained. Thank you for taking the time.
After reading this, the only people still denying a huge problem would be Amazon's KDP "support".

However, Amanda has some valid points even though I agree with everything you wrote. Maybe there's a talented editor here (or an experienced press release writer) who could perform some magic with your great first draft. Something really good can come out of this.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

MelD said:


> Maybe there's a talented editor here (or an experienced press release writer) who could perform some magic with your great first draft. Something really good can come out of this.


Anyone is welcome to go for it.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> If you want to be so picky, how about you write something you think would work?


Two reasons:
1. I'm not leaving KU.
2. I don't have the numbers either. You need them to get any interest, though, and I know other people keep them. You need to work with facts and provable anecdotes. That means you're going to need access to people's dashboards for money/page reads lost as proof, etc. I already work 60-80 hours a week. Gathering facts and numbers is not something I'm willing to do.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> The call was for something for the huffington post, so I wrote it like I'd expect to come from them. They seem to be long on hyperbole and short on numbers.


  Yep, and that means you wrote it well.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Not wishing to nitpick   but my editing mode thinks adjenda should be agenda.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Ann in Arlington said:


> What I doubted, and still doubt, is that there is a high percentage of readers who actually do that. I'm sure there are some. And I suspect Amazon was surprised to find _anyone_ using the feature that way.  I also would guess that, on learning it, they've done an analysis to figure out if it's a problem -- if, for example, half the people who borrow KU books use the feature to actually read, that would be a problem. They've decided that it's not. Which is clearly where some of you disagree.
> 
> Of course, I have no evidence one way or the other, and I don't think anyone here does either. But I suspect it's not more than 1 - 2% of readers who read that way, anecdotes shared here not withstanding. I further suspect that any negative effect such reading habits produce are probably spread pretty evenly across the KU continuum -- or, at least, across the more popular books.


I hear this "but why would anybody read in page flip?" a lot and it constantly surprises me, because to me page flip is so self-evidently a much easier way to read (as long as the screen is large enough) - so much more like reading a paper book, that in my view the question should be "but why _wouldn't_ anybody read in page flip?"

Now, since I'm a fairly middle-of-the-road kind of person, I've always taken the view that if I like something, then there are probably a lot of other people who like it too, and that goes for page flip like anything else. As a reader I love it, but as a writer, it was certainly a factor in my coming out of Select.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Lydniz said:


> I hear this "but why would anybody read in page flip?" a lot and it constantly surprises me, because to me page flip is so self-evidently a much easier way to read (as long as the screen is large enough) - so much more like reading a paper book, that in my view the question should be "but why _wouldn't_ anybody read in page flip?"
> 
> Now, since I'm a fairly middle-of-the-road kind of person, I've always taken the view that if I like something, then there are probably a lot of other people who like it too, and that goes for page flip like anything else. As a reader I love it, but as a writer, it was certainly a factor in my coming out of Select.


I also think it depends on what device you read on. I have a PaperWhite and reading on PageFlip in that would be tedious, annoying and altogether frustrating.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> Not wishing to nitpick  but my editing mode thinks adjenda should be agenda.


One of my proofreading blind spots.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I also think it depends on what device you read on. I have a PaperWhite and reading on PageFlip in that would be tedious, annoying and altogether frustrating.


I imagine it would. But on a Kindle Fire or Android device it works really smoothly. I can whizz between pages and skip back to remind myself of what I read five pages ago and have already forgotten (short attention span).


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

It looks horrible on my fire and my android tablet and phone. Never in a million years would I think that is a normal reading mode. It would be unreadable on an e-ink. My phone is big and its unreadable. Bust most of all, it looks so ugly and out of place and has a frame with other "stuff" around it. To have it more like a book one wants as little icons and distractions on a screen as possible. Just the text of the book. Page flip is anything but. 

Looks just as ugly on my husbands ipads I tried it out on. I don't use ithingies myself, but wanted to see. Still ugly and obvious. I don't see any advantage in reading like that to the normal mode. Both swipe, both tap, its the same navigation. Just a smaller and uglier screen with stuff around it. And I dare anyone to read on the multi page flip. I don't believe you if you say you read on that.  

I am with Ann. Have yet to hear from any reader that would prefer to read books in that weird mode. Especially is its the same to get there as it has always been to change fonts and such. So every reader that has ever read a kindle book would know that isn't a reading mode, but a navigation mode. 

Most readers wouldn't even know what the heck page flip is. They know its not normal reading mode though, obviously. KU readers tend to be voracious readers. They know when something is in navigation mode.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Atunah said:


> Have yet to hear from any reader that would prefer to read books in that weird mode.


I've had several from my face book group, and in response to the email I sent my list about why I pulled out.

Several people here have said they only read in flip mode, and one made it quite clear she'd stop reading any author who stopped her being able to read in flip mode. (if it was possible)



Atunah said:


> Most readers wouldn't even know what the heck page flip is.


And that is the real problem. Even people are who are aware we dont get paid using it, have no clue if they are in it or not. And that's part of the insidious nature of the problem.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

I read on my Kindle, my iPad and my iPhone in that order of "oftenness" . I really don't see any advantage to reading in PageFlip, I can move around quite easily using the normal mode, and, like Atunah said, it's a cleaner and more "page-like" experience for me.

I don't doubt people who say that they like reading on it better, I just don't and don't personally know any who do other than the ones who've posted in this thread. Sounds like a good question for Let's Talk Kindle (though maybe we already did this the last time the topic came up?).

At any rate, the main point is the impact of page flip on payout...however many people actually use it.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

TimothyEllis said:


> Several people here have said they only read in flip mode, and one made it quite clear she'd stop reading any author who stopped her being able to read in flip mode. (if it was possible)


I have seen some here saying they do not want a feature taken away. Not that they read a whole book in the mode, but that they use it to navigate as it was intended. I do the same. Its great for that. If I need to flip back to a spot because I forgot a name, or a date. Its something that makes navigation easier. Not to be confused with actually reading a book in that mode.

But you have been set in your opinions about this and that is your right. I do like to know though which authors are in this exodus you say is happening. Just in case I need to download some books. Not one of my current wishlists has gone away in the last 2 weeks and I have 1000's on them. I have lost 2 from my wishlist in the last 4-5 months. I actually gained books that I had on a waitforKu wishlist. I hang out at reader sites where there is specific talk and search for KU books and I have seen no exodus of authors and books out of KU talked about.

But again, its your prerogative to believe such a high percentage of readers would chose to read in an navigation mode. I don't believe that is a high number. Like Ann, maybe 2 %. Sounds about right.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

I believe I remember from the really long thread when this all started that going back to the start of a book also wipes away page reads. Several people tested it and said page reads actually disappeared. I'm not in KU, but probably many readers do as I do and always go back to the cover page after reading. So that might be another reason for authors seeing fewer page reads. On the other hand, I've had people who are wide tell me that sales have taken a nose dive over the same period that people were reporting far lower page reads. So all this could be caused by something unrelated that's affecting what people are reading and how much. Many possibilities here.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> At any rate, the main point is the impact of page flip on payout...however many people actually use it.


This is one of the things I find frustrating. An inability to get feedback from readers in any useful number.

I'd like to just ask my readers how they read. But my list is tiny in comparison to other peoples, my FB presence is smaller again. I can ask the question on FB, but I wouldn't get more than a dozen answers. Mainly because FB wont show posts to everyone.

For those people with list above 10k, please think about polling your list for people in KU and how they read.

And for that matter, it might be an idea if we had a poll here. How many read using KU, how many dont. Those in, do you read using flip or not. The questions need to be specific though, and very unambiguous.



Atunah said:


> in this exodus you say is happening.


Again, written for Huntington post. The use of the word exodus is probably excessive, but that was the point. Inflammatory reporting. Nothing like a good inflammatory word in an article to get people talking and arguing. 

But if you read the threads in recent times, the number of people who have confirmed they pulled out in the last few weeks is significant. I found another one too at the comic-con I was at today. She'd pulled out because her reads had tanked, and had no idea why or what had happened to them.



Sarah Shaw said:


> On the other hand, I've had people who are wide tell me that sales have taken a nose dive over the same period that people were reporting far lower page reads. So all this could be caused by something unrelated that's affecting what people are reading and how much. Many possibilities here.


Since going wide, I can see exactly how badly KU was cannibalizing my sales. Sales vary every day, but mine improved within 2 days of leaving KU, and I'm still making nearly 3/4 of the money I was while in KU. Reads turned back into sales. I cant say I've seen any downturn, other than the normal Amazon BS dive after a good day.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

TimothyEllis said:


> And for that matter, it might be an idea if we had a poll here. How many read using KU, how many dont. Those


We did have a poll here on the use of page flip, the end of 2016:
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,245353.0.html

I think it would be fine to have a new poll in Let's Talk Kindle if you want to start one. You could make sure the questions are as specific as you would like. Then, those of you who want to, could ask your mailing list to take the poll by providing a link.

Betsy
Betsy


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> We did have a poll here on the use of page flip, the end of 2016:
> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,245353.0.html
> 
> I think it would be fine to have a new poll in Let's Talk Kindle if you want to start one. You could make sure the questions are as specific as you would like. Then, those of you who want to, could ask your mailing list to take the poll by providing a link.


Interesting. I'm not surprised by the last vote. But things have changed.

Its 1am here and I've been writing a council session between posts. So I'll leave the poll until tomorrow. But if someone else wants to post it before I'm back, by all means go ahead.

Can people not registered here actually vote on a poll?


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## restlessthoughts (Aug 10, 2017)

I read in page flip when I read on my phone, for a slightly different reason than I've seen mentioned previously.

When I read on my phone, it's because I am running errands, playing chauffeur or going to appointments, all of which mean that I have to pay attention to time.

Pre-page flip, I could tap on my phone once, and it would bring the clock up on the top bar, without changing the page size. My eyes would flick up to check the time, then flick back down and find my place almost instantly. There was almost no interruption in my reading. The clock bar would disappear on its own after a few seconds with no more effort or thought from me.

Now, when I tap to bring up the clock, it goes to page flip which shrinks the page. Whether or not I tap again to get back to normal size, the changing size messes with whatever eye/brain connection that lets me quickly find my place. I have to scan the page to pick up where I left and the interruption in the flow of reading is frustrating.

If I start and stay in page flip, the clock is up always and I don't have to worry about it.

I do, however, make sure that I only read purchased or library borrowed books when reading on my phone, so I don't have to worry about remember to go back and flip through for KU books. Also, I have a Samsung Note and really good eyesight, so I have no problem or issues reading pageflip on my phone.

I guess my point is, that the page flip had a lot of unintentional consequences to the way people read that Amazon didn't take into account.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Ann in Arlington said:


> What I doubted, and still doubt, is that there is a high percentage of readers who actually do that.


I certainly don't read in Page Flip. I read almost exclusively on my phone these days, and Page Flip makes the type unreasonably small. I'd never inflict that on myself! Then again, I'm middle-aged, so I'm starting to have trouble seeing close-up things. Also, most phones and all tablets have larger screens than mine. Even for my middle-aged eyes, the type-size difference between Page Flip and regular mode on one of my Kindles isn't significant. So ... dunno. Maybe it depends on what devices people are using now, how old they are (tiny type made no difference to me five years ago), and whether they're tuned in enough to notice when they're in Page Flip.



Rinelle Grey said:


> I think the reason we're seeing a difference now is that before KU3, if a reader dropped out of page flip at the end of the book for any reason, then all the pages up to that point were counted As if they were read. This was a problem that could be (and was) easily scammed. So Amazon fixed it. Now if a reader reads through and drops out of page flip, only the actual pages opened in page flip count as read.


Yep, good point. That was abundantly apparently in the test I did on Tim's book. Now there's no way for those readers who really want to read in Page Flip to do so while still making sure authors get paid.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

Atunah said:


> I am with Ann. Have yet to hear from any reader that would prefer to read books in that weird mode. Especially is its the same to get there as it has always been to change fonts and such. So every reader that has ever read a kindle book would know that isn't a reading mode, but a navigation mode.
> 
> Most readers wouldn't even know what the heck page flip is. They know its not normal reading mode though, obviously. KU readers tend to be voracious readers. They know when something is in navigation mode.





Atunah said:


> I have seen some here saying they do not want a feature taken away. Not that they read a whole book in the mode, but that they use it to navigate as it was intended. I do the same. Its great for that. If I need to flip back to a spot because I forgot a name, or a date. Its something that makes navigation easier. Not to be confused with actually reading a book in that mode.
> 
> But you have been set in your opinions about this and that is your right. I do like to know though which authors are in this exodus you say is happening. Just in case I need to download some books. Not one of my current wishlists has gone away in the last 2 weeks and I have 1000's on them. I have lost 2 from my wishlist in the last 4-5 months. I actually gained books that I had on a waitforKu wishlist. I hang out at reader sites where there is specific talk and search for KU books and I have seen no exodus of authors and books out of KU talked about.
> 
> But again, its your prerogative to believe such a high percentage of readers would chose to read in an navigation mode. I don't believe that is a high number. Like Ann, maybe 2 %. Sounds about right.


Completely agree with all of this and with Ann's points in her earlier post. I don't think there's a conspiracy to defraud authors. Mountains, mole hills and all of that. I think it's possible there are some bugs that need to be worked out with page flip, there seems to be anecdotal evidence pointing in that direction, but in the big picture, page flip is a feature Amazon's implemented to enhance the reader's experience and it's likely something they'll work on and continually improve. Like anything else it's a work in progress, and like Atunah and Ann suggested, I'm thinking the vast majority of readers do not read in page flip mode. I'd chalk this up to growing pains effecting a pretty small percentage of overall page reads in KU.


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

jaehaerys said:


> Completely agree with all of this and with Ann's points in her earlier post. I don't think there's a conspiracy to defraud authors. Mountains, mole hills and all of that. I think it's possible there are some bugs that need to be worked out with page flip, there seems to be anecdotal evidence pointing in that direction, but in the big picture, page flip is a feature Amazon's implemented to enhance the reader's experience and it's likely something they'll work on and continually improve. Like anything else it's a work in progress, and like Atunah and Ann suggested, I'm thinking the vast majority of readers do not read in page flip mode. I'd chalk this up to growing pains effecting a pretty small percentage of overall page reads in KU.


I just don't get why there is a need to deny a problem the clearly exist.
-Writers (not all, but several) complain across boards on the internet.
-Readers (not all, but several) admit to reading complete books in page flip mode.

I totally get why Amazon says everything is perfect.
However, I find it harder to understand why some fellow writers do. Why would other readers and writers be lying about their page flip experiences?
We have people here (and on other boards) posting screen-dumps of their sales stats. Those graphs tell the same story as my own graphs do. That severe nose-dive in August is real. I had two new books out that month. These were my best sellers so far, but my KENP completely crash landed. Several days with zero reads and even more days with 1, 2 and 3 reads. That's a pretty intense dive from previously having thousands. Other writers report the exact same thing happening to them during this same period. Is this merely an unfortunate coincidence? Or did something change over at Amazon's end in August? I guess we all know the answer.


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2017)

MelD said:


> I just don't get why there is a need to deny a problem the clearly exist.
> -Writers (not all, but several) complain across boards on the internet.


Several authors have said there is a problem out of how many in KU? 10,000? 100,000? Those who are saying there is an issue are a tiny proportion of total authors in KU.



MelD said:


> Why would other readers and writers be lying about their page flip experiences?


Can you quote where anyone in this thread has said authors are *lying*? I haven't seen anyone deny that books read in page flip result in an issue, but you must be reading posts I have missed.

There's a number of issues, including the lack of quantifiable data. How many readers will read an entire book in KU? How many use page flip as a navigational tool and skip a few pages?

There's another issue with some authors with very low visibility claiming that Amazon are suppressing their pages read, when the real issue is that their books aren't being borrowed, or due to the book not meeting reader tastes only 1 page is being read and the book returned. How do you seperate the genuine "page flip is an issue" instances from authors who have a product and visibility issue and who would prefer to blame Amazon for their lack of visibility/sales/borrows?


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

MelD said:


> IHowever, I find it harder to understand why some fellow writers do. Why would other readers and writers be lying about their page flip experiences?
> 
> That's a pretty intense dive from previously having thousands. Other writers report the exact same thing happening to them during this same period. Is this merely an unfortunate coincidence? Or did something change over at Amazon's end in August? I guess we all know the answer.


Because some authors are happy making what they're making. So they don't care or refuse to admit there's a problem. Some do admit there's a problem, but won't make a change because they think they can't (income restraints).

This allows Amazon to use indies as essentially slave labor, throwing us the crumbs they want us to have. It's almost as bad as the farmers who would sign on, slave away, and be forced to buy all their supplies through the "company store." It's another form of slavery.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

MelD said:


> I just don't get why there is a need to deny a problem the clearly exist.
> -Writers (not all, but several) complain across boards on the internet.
> -Readers (not all, but several) admit to reading complete books in page flip mode.


It's not denial of a problem, I've said there appears to be some anecdotal evidence out there of bugs in the system. It's more that I don't agree that Amazon is purposefully ignoring the issue, however pervasive it is or isn't, just like I also don't believe they're willingly trying to profit from it. I'd also point out that 'several' is semantic. Again, we're talking about anecdotal evidence here and we don't really know how widespread the issue is. I lean toward the 2% number Ann had mentioned. Could be wrong, could be right. We're all just guessing here.



> I totally get why Amazon says everything is perfect.
> However, I find it harder to understand why some fellow writers do. Why would other readers and writers be lying about their page flip experiences?


I don't think anyone's lying, but I do think there is some hyperbole around this topic, and since money is involved, I get why that's the case. I think it's understandable how anecdotal evidence gets blown up into talk of a conspiracy, I think it's human nature. I personally don't believe there is a grand conspiracy at play here, but that's just me.

I think it is possible Amazon has a buggy design feature, and if they do they're probably aware of it and interested in fixing it. It's not in their interest not to fix it because they're continually trying to improve the customer experience.

And yes, you could say it is in their interest not to fix a prospective page flip issue because it would represent 'x' amount of dollars that they wouldn't have to pay for page reads for effected authors. But to believe that, you'd have to believe that the issue effects a not insignificant percentage of authors (which I don't) and that Amazon would rather defraud that large number of authors of what is essentially a drop in the bucket of their overall revenue than to pay them what they're owed.

It's only my opinion, but I just don't believe that the company would purposefully and maliciously do that. I get that it's a big corporation and that corporations sometimes, even often times, do bad things, but this particular instance just doesn't pass the sniff test to me. It's just not enough money, in my opinion, for them to bother being withholding over. I think if the problem is as real as is being suggested, it's a customer-faced feature not performing optimally, and I do think they'll fix it...even if progress on that turns out to be frustratingly slow...such is life.



> We have people here (and on other boards) posting screen-dumps of their sales stats. Those graphs tell the same story as my own graphs do. That severe nose-dive in August is real. I had two new books out that month. These were my best sellers so far, but my KENP completely crash landed. Several days with zero reads and even more days with 1, 2 and 3 reads. That's a pretty intense dive from previously having thousands. Other writers report the exact same thing happening to them during this same period. Is this merely an unfortunate coincidence? Or did something change over at Amazon's end in August? I guess we all know the answer.


I don't want to discount what you're seeing, not at all. And I'm not suggesting you're lying. I believe you. But I also know there's a lot of murk in these waters. We don't know collectively as a group why the numbers are doing what they're doing. We have a lot of anecdotal evidence of things happening, but the leap occurs when we take that evidence and then try to spin it into a narrative that suggests something malicious or nefarious is going on.

I'm not willing to make that leap. I need more solid evidence, something more concrete than the anecdotes. Does that make me right? No. I could be completely off-base. But at this point I don't think we know what's "right" and what isn't. There's a lot of questions and fewer answers. So we make guesses. I'm erring more to the cautious side and not willing to say there's a wider conspiracy at play. I may wind up eating those words, but only time will tell. Or at least, we can hope that it will.

Regardless, I am sorry to hear about those that have lost revenue, and I hope if there is a widespread buggy-ness infecting the system that it gets worked out sooner than later so we can all get on with making a living from our stories in as healthy a content eco-system as possible.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

jaehaerys said:


> I don't want to discount what you're seeing, not at all. And I'm not suggesting you're lying. I believe you. But I also know there's a lot of murk in these waters. We don't know collectively as a group why the numbers are doing what they're doing. We have a lot of anecdotal evidence of things happening, but the leap occurs when we take that evidence and then try to spin it into a narrative that suggests something malicious or nefarious is going on.


I grew up in the day when we would call it as we saw it. If a green elephant charged into the room, we wouldn't sit down and equivocate and debate on the shade of green.


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## hjordisa (Sep 4, 2017)

Tilly said:


> How many use page flip as a navigational tool and skip a few pages?


I think this is the main thing that needs addressing. How will they differentiate between people navigating with page flip and people reading with it? How many people are using it to navigate forward (rather than backward to what they already read, which shouldn't make a difference if I understand)? Should it care if people skip over pages to get to the good bits? People do that in physical books. They probably do that in kindle when they aren't in page read, and that still counts. Should they set a minimum time they have to stay on the page for it to count? Some people are fast readers, and some might be slow navigators, but it might work better than the current system. And what about scammers? That seems to be a factor. How would they play into this system? (I don't know much about any of it, so am speculating, mostly, and throwing out thoughts to those more knowledgeable.)

I don't know. Maybe there's not a perfect solution here. The tool is useful to readers, so I certainly don't want it taken away. I do know it matters if genuine reads aren't being calculated accurately. Even if the problem is small, if there's an author that doesn't get many downloads, and one of those downloads is read in page read (if I recall, this is what was described in the OP) then the problem is noticeably cutting their profit. It may be a small profit, but a large percentage of it is being lost to this. That matters. To Amazon I'm sure it doesn't. And that says a lot. Because they should care about counting page reads as accurately as possible. Even if some authors DO lose money because of it. Sure, they define what a page read is. But if two readers each read every word of a book start to finish, you can't reasonably argue that they read a different number of pages just because they had different settings on their devices.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Somebody at the EPA recently asked "Gee, I wonder if Volkswagen has written up a computer program to trick our emissions testings and has inserted it into millions of its cars for the last seven years making us think their emissions are forty times better than they actually are?" Someone else at the FDA asked "Gee, I wonder if Beech-nut has been selling 'pure apple juice' for babies that's really sugar beet juice?" And of course the famous one,  Frances Kelsey at the FDA telling a very big drug company "I don't CARE how long you've been selling thalidomide in Europe, you're not selling it in America until you fork over the fetal effect studies!"

Just sayin'.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

loraininflorida said:


> Somebody at the EPA recently asked "Gee, I wonder if Volkswagen has written up a computer program to trick our emissions testings and has inserted it into millions of its cars for the last seven years?" Someone else at the FDA asked "Gee, I wonder if Beech-nut has been selling 'pure apple juice' for babies that's really sugar beet juice?" And of course the famous one, Frances Kelsey at the FDA telling a very big drug company "I don't CARE how long you've been selling thalidomide in Europe, you're not selling it in America until you fork over the fetal effect studies!"
> 
> Just sayin'.


 

There are always those that feel something's wrong. There are always those who refuse to believe.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Folks,

If you don't believe there's a problem, or a significant problem, with page flip counts, and you've expressed your opinion to that effect, which if fine, your work in the thread is probably done.  If you have suggestions on how to best test the hypothesis that there's a problem, that's of use to the discussion here.  Otherwise, let's everyone stop making comments about each other and stick to the issue in the thread.  It's starting to get a bit personal.

Betsy
KB Mod


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2017)

> It's only my opinion, but I just don't believe that the company would purposefully and maliciously do that. I get that it's a big corporation and that corporations sometimes, even often times, do bad things, but this particular instance just doesn't pass the sniff test to me. It's just not enough money, in my opinion, for them to bother being withholding over. I think if the problem is as real as is being suggested, it's a customer-faced feature not performing optimally, and I do think they'll fix it...even if progress on that turns out to be frustratingly slow...such is life.


I also do not believe there is malice on the part of Amazon as a corporation. But think about this: The individual or group that invented and pushed to have PageFlip installed has a vested interest in denying any big problems involving money, since if there is indeed a big problem, they will certainly face a lot of heat in the company.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> I also do not believe there is malice on the part of Amazon as a corporation. But think about this: The individual or group that invented and pushed to have PageFlip installed has a vested interest in denying any big problems involving money, since if there is indeed a big problem, they will certainly face a lot of heat in the company.


Not so sure about that. Subscription models are basically designed to run on auto-pilot. The thing with direct sales is that you don't get paid if there's a problem. You have to meet a certain threshold to entice a sale. With a sub model, just like a buffet, quality is tertiary at best. Don't like the crap in tray one, chuck it in the garbage and try the crap in tray 2 or 3.

So page flip is only an "issue" if it impacts subscriber revenues. If it actually enhances them (ie. makes KU more appealing), then it's not a problem at all. Authors might get upset, but it's quite clear no one gets in trouble at zon for that hehe.

And the trad's get paid for the borrow, not the page reads, so they aren't affected either. And by the way, why would amazon do that? For the obvious reason that trad's would throw a freaking fit if they had to deal with this stuff.

Naw, zon could care less about accurately counting page reads. Who's going to know in the end anyway? Other than a few authors who piece together that something is wrong but can't really prove it.

Ultimately, if you're in KU, you bought the ticket now you take the ride.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> Not so sure about that. Subscription models are basically designed to run on auto-pilot. The thing with direct sales is that you don't get paid if there's a problem. You have to meet a certain threshold to entice a sale. With a sub model, just like a buffet, quality is tertiary at best. Don't like the crap in tray one, chuck it in the garbage and try the crap in tray 2 or 3.
> 
> So page flip is only an "issue" if it impacts subscriber revenues. If it actually enhances them (ie. makes KU more appealing), then it's not a problem at all. Authors might get upset, but it's quite clear no one gets in trouble at zon for that hehe.
> 
> ...


What you say in general is true--until there is a legal case involving big bucks that goes into arbitration or court. If many authors have indeed been shorted, there will probably be millions involved, and if Amazon loses, the people who invented and pushed PageFlip will take plenty of heat, especially after so much denial of a problem.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

For those on Amazon's side, I've already been converting to wide. I'm not merely complaining about this, I'm doing something about it. We've done numerous tests with more than a dozen authors on these boards and they all have had similar results. The pages don't get read and in some cases are wiped from the records. 

Amazon admits themselves that pages don't get counted in page flip mode. On my own kindle app it's very hard to get out of page flip mode and is very easy for me to read in that mode.

If you want to stay, no one is stopping you but some of us want to be paid for the services we provide to Amazon.


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

Tilly said:


> There's another issue with some authors with very low visibility claiming that Amazon are suppressing their pages read, when the real issue is that their books aren't being borrowed, or due to the book not meeting reader tastes only 1 page is being read and the book returned. How do you seperate the genuine "page flip is an issue" instances from authors who have a product and visibility issue and who would prefer to blame Amazon for their lack of visibility/sales/borrows?


If it strikes at a certain date for a group of people I'd say it's triggered by Amazon rather than a visibility problem. If it was a quality problem, why on earth did people first find out about that in August? But let's agree to disagree since we clearly do.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Herefortheride said:


> but some of us want to be paid for the services we provide to Amazon.


We want to be paid fairly.

I'm thinking about a flip poll right now, but need my caffeine to kick in.

Oh, and on the comment about this all being a bug in the system? Any programmer who cant find and fix such a bug in 6 weeks should be fired. It hasn't been fixed because its not being considered a bug by Amazon. Its what they want.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Just out of curiosity, and I am in no way trying to be snarky or disrespectful, for those of you who believe the Page Flip thing is real but not intentional, what do you think the reason is for why Amazon allows it to continue?


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

loraininflorida said:


> Just out of curiosity, and I am in no way trying to be snarky or disrespectful, for those of you who believe the Page Flip thing is real but not intentional, what do you think the reason is for why Amazon allows it to continue?


Because they're customer centric and the customers lobbied for it and want to keep it.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2017)

loraininflorida said:


> Just out of curiosity, and I am in no way trying to be snarky or disrespectful, for those of you who believe the Page Flip thing is real but not intentional, what do you think the reason is for why Amazon allows it to continue?


That's a good question.

The way I have always looked at this is that what we call "Amazon" is an abstraction. Like any company, it's a collection of people with various personal agendas. The whole of KDP is merely a tiny monetary mote to the top brass, nothing but a funnel to get people into the general store. So if someone below the top brass involved with KDP tells them there is no problem with something that some people have been talking about, the top brass wave their collective hand and say fine. They don't want to be bothered as long as they're covered by someone who is supposed to know what's going on down in the hold.

But now what about below the top brass? Down in the hold, you have two groups. One group is not directly connected to Select/KU and they don't care because they can't be blamed for anything. The other group is connected directly and those in that group who pushed for the installation of PageFlip, plus the programmers who designed it and wrote the code, that sub group is at the moment terrified because if this thing mushrooms into something big with bad pr and the possibility of substantial monetary damages, they are cooked.

So what do they do? They are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If they admit there is a problem, they are cooked. If they deny there is a problem and it turns out the problem is exposed as real, they are also cooked. Their only chance is the gamble that if they keep denying there is a problem the actual problem will somehow go away or the authors protesting go away or some angel with wings will float down and make things better with a wave of a magic wand. So they have no choice but to keep denying.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2017)

loraininflorida said:


> Just out of curiosity, and I am in no way trying to be snarky or disrespectful, for those of you who believe the Page Flip thing is real but not intentional, what do you think the reason is for why Amazon allows it to continue?


Because it's a navigational tool that enhances the reader experience. Amazon is customer-centric NOT author-centric, probably because its readers/customers who pay for KU subscriptions.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Oh, that explains it. When some people say "intentional" they are referring to the original design of Page Flip, while others are referring to a 'glitch' that Amazon has subsequently decided to keep.

Personally I don't have an opinion on which, but from we authors' viewpoint, I doubt the distinction really matters. It would in a court though.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

The following is a poll idea to find out how many KU readers use page-flip and how.

I'm doing it here first so it can be refined before going live.

*Poll to determine the use of Page-Flip by Kindle Unlimited subscribers.*

This poll is for people who subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, to determine the extent of the use of the Page-Flip feature.
Page Flip is when you press the screen, and another screen pops up in smaller print, which allows you to navigate and swipe faster.
Please choose the options which apply to you. Please share the poll with other people you know using Kindle Unlimited. You do not need to be registered on the forum to vote.

I never use Page-Flip.
I use Page-Flip to navigate, but never to read.
I partially read books if the pop up screen is active.
I always read using Page-Flip.
Other, please comment in the thread.
I read using a Kindle device.
I read using an Apple Smartphone.
I read using an Android Smartphone.
I read using an Ipad.
I read using an Ipad Mini.
I read using an Android Tablet.
I read on a PC.
I read on something else.
Anyone have anything to add to the options, or changes to the wording suggestion?

The mods have indicated anyone will be able to vote, so the idea is we all use whatever social media we have to advertise the poll's url, so we get as wide a response as possible.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> But now what about below the top brass? Down in the hold, you have two groups. One group is not directly connected to Select/KU and they don't care because they can't be blamed for anything. The other group is connected directly and those in that group who pushed for the installation of PageFlip, plus the programmers who designed it and wrote the code, that sub group is at the moment terrified because if this thing mushrooms into something big with bad pr and the possibility of substantial monetary damages, they are cooked.


It's been a while since I've been in tech, but tech companies generally have verification teams that beat the living crap out of any product before it goes out. They aren't part of the coders and product development teams. In fact, they are kept as a separate unit because obviously there would be conflicts of interest if they designed and tested a product.

The verification guys are the ones on the hook if something goes out with bugs in it.

So regardless if there are 10 different teams contributing to the product, their work ultimately gets funneled to a verification group that tries to break it every which way from Sunday. If they release it without finding bugs, and it turns out there are bugs, someone on that team gets their head cut off. And no VE team would intentional cover up flaws, that's their job, they get rewarded for finding them.

So the notion that you can really cover anything up internally is almost impossible for me to consider. There is "one" person though who can do that, usually the VP of whatever (often times engineering or software development, lots of different titles). All engineering divisions report into that person (at least they did back in the day). So they technically could receive the report from the verification engineers and choose to ignore it.

But in this process there are also marketing people, who get big feature reports (forget their official name) about every little feature that's in a new release. They also get to see the VE reports (or at least a summary of them). So again, the VP of Marketing would also be aware of this flaw and would have to agree that there was no significant marketing risk in ignoring it.

The notion that Amazon doesn't have all these standard processes I find impossible to believe.

Sure, sometimes a bug gets through, but rarely something as big as screwing up the page reads. They would 100% know about it and would have chosen to ignore it (at multiple levels of management). Either that or they have the most incompetent product release process in the entire world.

This belief (not you op, just in general on kboards) people have that a company like Amazon is just cobbling things together is beyond the pale. Not only does Amazon know about every single little bug, flaw and scam associated with their product, they likely know of dozens we have no idea about.

There are only two realistic scenarios at play here. Either nothing is broken (and people are drawing faulty conclusions and there are other explanations for the data they believe exists) or, Amazon does not feel the need to escalate internal resources to resolve these issues. Either because it's too much trouble to fix them, or they want them there, or a variety of other reasons I probably can't even imagine.

I don't believe the most advanced tech company on the planet, is also the most incompetent tech company on the planet  Ergo, I conclude either nothing is wrong, or they just don't care to fix the problem. The lackluster response to botters, makes me think it's the latter.

(btw, I happily conceed to anyone else that has a more modern understanding of the internal processes by which products get released today. Although I'd be shocked if the VE process is not still in place).


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2017)

MelD said:


> If it strikes at a certain date for a group of people I'd say it's triggered by Amazon rather than a visibility problem.


I don't even understand what you are saying - are you claiming that Amazon decided in August to suppress visibility for a bunch of authors, which is why their books are now ranked in the millions?


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Tilly said:


> I don't even understand what you are saying - are you claiming that Amazon decided in August to suppress visibility for a bunch of authors, which is why their books are now ranked in the millions?


You should probably get some background on this.

We had lots of authors, some of them full-time authors doing quite well who noticed a HUGE difference in page reads. We also started testing with less read books if pages were being read. There are numerous threads here showing the results of tests and I don't think a single test ever gave the correct page reads.

We also have readers telling us they prefer reading books in page flip which Amazon has admitted doesn't pay.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Interesting. After the test on Karma the other day, today it has 1 page listed.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> I don't believe the most advanced tech company on the planet, is also the most incompetent tech company on the planet  Ergo, I conclude either nothing is wrong, or they just don't care to fix the problem. The lackluster response to botters, makes me think it's the latter.


I know very little about tech companies. But is Amazon a tech company or an online department store and bookseller? There are so many errors in the book search engine that could easily be fixed but are not fixed. I've had a tradepub print book on Amazon with the the product page so screwed up it was unreadable. They apparently don't have software sophisticated enough to detect badly formatted ebooks. And so on. I don't deny what you say about tech companies, but is Amazon really a tech company or simply an online retail/wholesale operation with a masterful approach to custoer relations?


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

Tilly said:


> Because it's a navigational tool that enhances the reader experience. Amazon is customer-centric NOT author-centric, probably because its readers/customers who pay for KU subscriptions.


And it's the authors that create the content for the KU subscribers to read. Seems like Amazon wants to treat one group like royalty and the other group like dirt.


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

Herefortheride said:


> We also have readers telling us they prefer reading books in page flip which Amazon has admitted doesn't pay.


Which is a good reason for Amazon to include the option for whether or not to allow page flip in a book, selected by the author. I write novels and I don't have any back page materials, illustrations, maps or the like to flip back and forth between. So reading my novels with page flip is not really necessary.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> I don't deny what you say about tech companies, but is Amazon really a tech company or simply an online retail/wholesale operation with a masterful approach to custoer relations?


yep, they are considered a tech company. But admittedly, they are so big now who knows what they really are anymore. But it's definitely the tech behind the scenes that makes them special; their web services power things like Netflix and a ton of other companies.

If you're on youtube just search "overview of amazon" or "history of amazon" to see how it all played out.

Anyway, the notion that zon doesn't know about these issues is almost impossible. They know. And they have their reasons for ignoring it. With page flip they clearly feel the value to the customer outweighs any concerns authors might have. There's no way to prove whether or not they screw you on page reads, so there's no need to fix it.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2017)

TwistedTales said:


> The reason Amazon do nothing about the page flip issue is most likely arrogance. They don't see anything wrong with not being able to count pages, even though they pay based on page reads. They don't see anything wrong with adding a feature that doesn't have any way to track how much of a book was read.
> 
> Collectively, Amazon staff have convinced themselves both of these things are reasonable, valid, fair and equitable. They have so little respect for authors they don't see any reason to question their position. Sure, some Amazon staff might, but none with sufficiently strong voice to sway anyone else.
> 
> ...


I think you're right. But if the top brass knows everything, what is the agenda? Maybe the agenda is merely to reduce the number of authors in KU, because certainly authors will leave in droves. Why doesn't Amazon care? Maybe because they need to reduce the number of authors as the number is getting to be expensive to maintain. If many authors leave, there are two possible consequences. Either what is left of the content doesn't change much because new authors come in or the exodus is random or what is left of the content is reduced to garbage and their stats tell them their are enough garbage-eating readers to sustain and even increase profits if they get more of them. They don't mind losing good authors because garbage makes them as much money (maybe more) than quality content. Meanwhile if they reduce the number of author, it will make KU more profitable. What other reason could there be for driving authors out of KU? Unless there is no reason at all and we are in la la land.


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## spellscribe (Nov 5, 2015)

Herefortheride said:


> You should probably get some background on this.
> 
> We had lots of authors, some of them full-time authors doing quite well who noticed a HUGE difference in page reads. We also started testing with less read books if pages were being read. There are numerous threads here showing the results of tests and I don't think a single test ever gave the correct page reads.
> 
> We also have readers telling us they prefer reading books in page flip which Amazon has admitted doesn't pay.


These are two totally separate issues. Low rank and visibility have nothing to do with the page count issue. In fact, one of the factors supporting those authors claims is that their rank was GOOD, and not being reflected in purchases or reads (ie, huge numbers of people people borrowed the books -hence the great rank - yet no pages were recorded)

Low rank means the book wasn't borrowed, which means there is no one reading, paid or otherwise.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

spellscribe said:


> These are two totally separate issues. Low rank and visibility have nothing to do with the page count issue. In fact, one of the factors supporting those authors claims is that their rank was GOOD, and not being reflected in purchases or reads (ie, huge numbers of people borrowed the books -hence the great rank - yet no pages were recorded)
> 
> Low rank means the book wasn't borrowed, which means there is no one reading, paid or otherwise.


I didn't mean rank. I meant number of page reads.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Poll is active. http://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=255757

Needs a mod to allow it to be voted on without being registered, so for now, its limited to the forum only.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

loraininflorida said:


> Just out of curiosity, and I am in no way trying to be snarky or disrespectful, for those of you who believe the Page Flip thing is real but not intentional, what do you think the reason is for why Amazon allows it to continue?


As Amanda said, it's great for customers. As a reader I was thrilled when they brought it in, because it made navigating through a book so much easier. But then I found out that authors don't get paid for pages read in that mode, which is not so great. I do believe it never even occurred to Amazon that people would read that way, but for me it was one more reason not to stay in KU, alongside many other factors including the seemingly random way KENP numbers are calculated for each book, the scamming, the frog-boiling WRT payouts etc.

I would actually like them to keep page flip, but I don't know what the answer is to the payments problem if Amazon doesn't perceive it as one. It may well be that not many people are reading in page flip, but that's not the point. Amazon promises KU authors will be paid for every page read, and clearly that is not happening, whether to a greater or a lesser degree.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

TimothyEllis said:


> Poll is active. http://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=255757
> 
> Needs a mod to allow it to be voted on without being registered, so for now, its limited to the forum only.


I'm not sure who indicated that we could change the setting to allow one to vote without registering, Timothy, but I don't believe that's possible without changing global settings for the forum. I'll double-check.

Betsy


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

I forgot to mention, I came out before the latest rejig of KU, so didn't see any unusual drop in pages read.


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

Tilly said:


> I don't even understand what you are saying - are you claiming that Amazon decided in August to suppress visibility for a bunch of authors, which is why their books are now ranked in the millions?


Oh, sorry. I thought you had followed the discussion. In August Amazon introduced KU3. That's when authors started reporting disturbing oddities with the numbers presented to them.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Due to forum restrictions, I've transferred the poll to Survey Monkey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FN6VMKW

Please share it to everyone you know who subscribes to KU, to your list if you feel comfortable, and your social media.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

The agenda of the "intentional bug" is probably not nefarious. Most likely, it is an Amazon strategy to combat scammers and the indie authors are getting hit with the blunt hammer.

But I most certainly do believe this issue is intentional.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

A question for anyone who'd care to share...

Assuming a statistically significant number of responses to Timothy's poll, what percentage would you need to see for the option "*I always read using Page-Flip*" to be concerned?

For me, it'd be 15%.

How about you?


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

Anarchist said:


> A question for anyone who'd care to share...
> 
> Assuming a statistically significant number of responses to Timothy's poll, what percentage would you need to see for the option "*I always read using Page-Flip*" to be concerned?
> 
> ...


...or the more direct version of that same question;
How low would you accept the KENP rate to go before pulling out of select?

_(I have already unchecked all renewal boxes, but will also contact support to see if I can get out immediately instead of waiting for the books to expire)_


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

that survey was actually interesting. 

You'd think one of the big blogs would do something like this. I was surprised to see I'm the only one that uses an Android tablet.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Anarchist said:


> Assuming a statistically significant number of responses to Timothy's poll, what percentage would you need to see for the option "*I always read using Page-Flip*" to be concerned?
> 
> For me, it'd be 15%.


Preliminary Scare time.

On the SurveyMonkey site, there have been 30 surveys completed.

20% say they always read in Page Flip.
36% say they always use page flip to return to the start of the book before closing.

Not a big sample as yet, and its interesting to see the author results here are different.

Nearly bed time for me, I'll post what I find in the morning.

Spread the word. The more people who take the survey, the better the sample is, and the more meaningful the results. Ideally, if we can several thousand readers doing the survey, we'll get a result which means a lot.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Couple of questions/thoughts. Everyone who keeps saying August, do y'all mean August as in last month or August of 2016? Cause page flip was introduced over a year ago and hasn't been counting pages since its inception. My drop can be pinpointed to its release. June 2016, normal. Page flip announced June 28, 2016. My July 2016 dropped almost in half. August 2016 almost halved again as updates rolled out. But from what I can tell, you guys are saying August like page flip was just released last month. The only change last month was the change in how KENPC is tallied, correct? Plus the 'fix' to issues regarding linear reading that was announced and then that line disappeared from the announcement very quickly, tho we know most devices now can't jump ahead. They didn't alter page flip at all last month. Did they? So how could last month's drop y'all are seeing be page flip specific? Not doubting, just wondering. I've been there. You know when something's not right. 

Related thought- everyone yelled (me included, so still not doubting or arguing or whatever, still just wondering) that Amazon should do something to stop the whole you can jump to the end and all the pages count thing. So- if they fixed page flip and pages read in page flip mode were counted- wouldn't that then be a whole nother way for scammers to pop into page flip mode, zoom to the back, and boom, all pages read? Wouldn't that basically un-fix the fix?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Going Incognito said:


> Couple of questions/thoughts. Everyone who keeps saying August, do y'all mean August as in last month or August of 2016?


August 1 2017, Amazon pushed out changes to most devices, putting Page-Flip on those which hadn't had it before.

So while it has been around for a year, its been an insipid thing in the background for a lot of us, but not actively costing us too much. We thought anyway.

Suddenly, our read counts went down 30%.

So far, results on the poll offsite are holding above 20% using page-flip to read whole books, and still holding above 35% of those who reset to the beginning after reading, thus wiping out the read count.

More stats tomorrow.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

The lawyer in me has been demanding for some time that I point this out so I guess I finally will.

We know that there is something in Page Flip that prevents our page reads from being reported to us.

That it also prevents our page reads from being reported to Amazon is pure assumption.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2017)

MelD said:


> Oh, sorry. I thought you had followed the discussion. In August Amazon introduced KU3. That's when authors started reporting disturbing oddities with the numbers presented to them.


I was aware of KU3. My understanding was that it mostly impacted those who stuff and who incentivised readers to jump straight to the back to trigger a full read for stuffed content.

I've not seen Amanda comment on any significant drop in her reads - unless I've missed that?


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Part of the recent update on Android is that is that when you first open a book with Page Flip a pop up offers you a tutorial on how to use it, so Amazon are actively promoting it (as a navigation tool). Page Flip is essentially a feature compatibility issue. Amazon did not want those who liked the Google Reader equivalent to stop buying books on Amazon so introduced a copycat feature, but it appears that the feature team did not discuss it with the KDP team. I read on Page Flip on a smartphone, but mostly read on an old eInk that can't do PageFlip. As an author I would not read in PageFlip for a KU book, but I am not currently a KU subscriber so no danger of costing anyone lost payment. I would however consider not reading anything further from an author who emailed me to ask me not to read in PageFlip. Just like I leave a website that insists I click through a pop up before I can read any page on the site. Amazon should rewrite PageFlip and I quit KU as soon as Amazon admitted that it was deliberately designed not to count pages. I've since come back to KU, but since returning I've had more sales than page reads.


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## DanaFraser (Apr 5, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> Due to forum restrictions, I've transferred the poll to Survey Monkey.
> 
> https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FN6VMKW
> 
> Please share it to everyone you know who subscribes to KU, to your list if you feel comfortable, and your social media.


I took the survey and also shared it on FB - ONE thing to have asked might have been along the lines of "if you don't always return to the beginning of the book after completion, what percentage of KU books would you estimate that you begin re-reading."

That's one of the things with romance readers - a lot return to the beginning of the book because they anticipate re-reading if they enjoyed and others don't return immediately, but will again to start re-reading or to re-read a favorite scene earlier in the book.

So "yay, your book is good enough people love re-reading it...except every time they go back to the beginning, you lose previously credited page reads and if they stop on the final re-read before they reach the end, you are again credited for less than what was actually read." Thanks, Amazon.


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## DanaFraser (Apr 5, 2016)

loraininflorida said:


> The lawyer in me has been demanding for some time that I point this out so I guess I finally will.
> 
> We know that there is something in Page Flip that prevents our page reads from being reported to us.
> 
> That it also prevents our page reads from being reported to Amazon is pure assumption.


If Amazon has different numbers for our books than what they report to us, wouldn't that make them a bad actor? Or "really" bad actor.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> August 1 2017, Amazon pushed out changes to most devices, putting Page-Flip on those which hadn't had it before.


Do we have any confirmation this is actually true? My understanding is that the August update was to make sure that devices were actually registering the pages read so you could no longer use the bar to skip to the end and trigger a full read (you can still do it on the online reader). PageFlip has been out and available on every device (at least to my knowledge) since last year. I don't believe the August update had anything to do with PageFlip and everything to do with counting pages in regular reading mode.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Do we have any confirmation this is actually true? My understanding is that the August update was to make sure that devices were actually registering the pages read so you could no longer use the bar to skip to the end and trigger a full read (you can still do it on the online reader). PageFlip has been out and available on every device (at least to my knowledge) since last year. I don't believe the August update had anything to do with PageFlip and everything to do with counting pages in regular reading mode.


That's my understanding as well. All the devices that support it (fires, touchscreen e-inks, and apps) had it by early July 2016 and older devices (like my Kindle KB) won't ever get it. All new devices released after the announcement include it on day 1.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2017)

J. Tanner said:


> That's my understanding as well. All the devices that support it (fires, touchscreen e-inks, and apps) had it by early July 2016 and older devices (like my Kindle KB) won't ever get it. All new devices released after the announcement include it on day 1.


This is what I don't understand... page flip has been around for over a year yet people are saying reads only dropped in the last couple of months. *IF* people reading in page flip was the huge issue a few are making it out to be, why did nobody notice it for so long?



TimothyEllis said:


> Preliminary Scare time.
> 
> On the SurveyMonkey site, there have been 30 surveys completed.


I think you are being premature in your survey results. How many KU subscribers are there? Over a million? 30 responses (most likely from authors) out of 1,000,000+ readers isn't even the margin for error. You will need at least 100,000 responses to even have something that would register as statistically significant.

It's like people claiming pages read is a huge issue because several authors say it is - given there could be 100,000 authors in KU (purely guessing, does anyone know how many KU authors there are?). Personally I would need to see at least 20,000 (or 20%+) saying there is an issue with page flip, as opposed to those confusing it with visibility issues due to problems with the product/marketing.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Tilly said:


> This is what I don't understand... page flip has been around for over a year yet people are saying reads only dropped in the last couple of months. *IF* people reading in page flip was the huge issue a few are making it out to be, why did nobody notice it for so long?


Wishful thinking, mostly? (But to be fair some did notice significant changes at that time.)

There may be some new problem counting pages introduced when they "fixed" the back-of-book link issue but I doubt it has anything to do with Page Flip. (And I expect if they improve the counting algo further to resolve Page Flip counting, it won't be the financial panacea many people in this thread seem to be expecting, but I covered my reasoning much earlier in the thread and there's little point in repeating myself. Read my earlier posts if you're interested.)


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

For those people who don't think the Page Flip thing is real, may I ask, what do you think happened to the OP's page reads?


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

My page reads have dropped consistently ever since I began in KU. I finally quit late last year. I put my first book in KU in 2014? For two years, nothing but decreasing page reads. Not only that, but periodic adjustments of my "pages" downwards.

Even outside of KU, my e-book page reads are 25% below reality. 100 paperback page books being listed as 65 pages. And I use Kindle approved formatting: 12 point Times Roman, single spaced.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

loraininflorida said:


> For those people who don't think the Page Flip thing is real, may I ask, what do you think happened to the OP's page reads?


Page reads don't happen in a vacuum. They don't hit a number and stick at that number every single day. Numerous things could be to blame:
1. August often starts a lower volume time period. When back-to-school time starts, people get busy. This is always my lowest stretch of the year. That's why I release the way I do to combat it. If my release plan goes as I hope, I won't see a seasonal dip ... and I haven't so far. I had to adjust my releases to combat it, though.
2. It looks to me that the OP's first series ended in December 2016. That was a known quantity and had dedicated readers. He launched another series after and it appears to not be as popular with readers. I'm going simply by reviews and rankings, though, so I might be wrong.
3. It looks like the OP releases four times a year. I think that's what I'm seeing, at least. There's a lot more competition than two years ago. There's a lot more competition than even one year ago. I have to release in frequent fashion to maintain my numbers and even with two releases a month (one under each name) I see fluctuations as much as 100K reads from day to day. Nothing is static is this industry.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

I'm referring to the two books the readers read whose page reads didn't show up on his graph.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

loraininflorida said:


> For those people who don't think the Page Flip thing is real, may I ask, what do you think happened to the OP's page reads?


Not sure if you're including me in that group or posting after me is just coincidence.

I think the fact that Page Flip doesn't count pages is about as close to established fact as we can get and the OP was probably affected by that based on reader comments.

I don't think getting those pages counted will result in significantly more money for most KU authors including the OP, so it should be a lower priority for authors to pressure Amazon about than other things.

And I don't think Page Flip had any meaningful change in the last couple months (nor the last year) so recent downturns in reads are more likely due to other factors.


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## Nate Hoffelder (Jun 9, 2014)

Herefortheride said:


> My book one is already out of KU and listed wide (YAY) but book two is still in till November. I unticked the box and planned to wait it out but recently received a nice email from a reader saying she and her uncle both read my book Black Dragon Deceivers through KU.
> 
> Seeing as the book has gotten meager page reads I wrote a nice reply thanking them and asking when they read it. She didn't know about her uncle but she read it a week ago. No page reads were recorded for either as far as I can tell. I mentioned page flip and she said she always uses it
> 
> I just sent an email to Amazon asking to be released early from KU.


Why would anyone read an ebook in this mode?

it makes the text tiny and difficult to read.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

Nate Hoffelder said:


> Why would anyone read an ebook in this mode?
> 
> it makes the text tiny and difficult to read.


Not on a tablet. On a tablet, the text is fine.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Tilly said:


> I was aware of KU3. My understanding was that it mostly impacted those who stuff and who incentivised readers to jump straight to the back to trigger a full read for stuffed content.


Seriously? Have you not read one word anyone has said recently?

None of the people who experienced the drops in reads like I did have done anything like stuff or jump to back. We are honest authors, kicked in the teeth by Amazon.



> I've not seen Amanda comment on any significant drop in her reads - unless I've missed that?


Of course not. Of anyone here, Amanda is the least likely to see any serious drop. Her daily figures would be so high as to make this sort of thing invisible to her. And didn't I read somewhere she doesn't check daily figures? This sort of thing doesn't show up in monthly figures, unless you are selling single digits a month. Which she isn't.



Nate Hoffelder said:


> Why would anyone read an ebook in this mode?
> 
> it makes the text tiny and difficult to read.


I've just had a fan tell me he has a Kindle Fire, and he cant get it out of page-flip mode. If anyone knows how, let me know so I can tell him.



Amanda M. Lee said:


> I see fluctuations as much as 100K reads from day to day.


This is why Amanda cant see what I see. Her normal variation is larger than the total of those who can see the problem in daily figures. Any effect she sees is lost.

I see the bushes under the tree. Amanda see forests on the planet. We are not looking at the same perspective levels. Its not a criticism, just a reality. Those doing the best have the least capacity to see the issue in action.

Stats are interesting this morning. Will figure out how to get them to you once my caffeine kicks in.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

TimothyEllis said:


> I've just had a fan tell me he has a Kindle Fire, and he cant get it out of page-flip mode. If anyone knows how, let me know so I can tell him.


You tap the screen like you always have to do to change fonts or size or anything else? Like any other app on android and fire tablets? tap the middle and it pulls up the menus. Its no different for the navigation mode. 
He has never change the font, or the size of the font, or the light level on his fire before? 
You have to pick to go into the navigation mode/page flip. Its just like picking fonts and anything else, its a mode.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Atunah said:


> You tap the screen like you always have to do to change fonts or size or anything else? Like any other app on android and fire tablets? tap the middle and it pulls up the menus. Its no different for the navigation mode.
> He has never change the font, or the size of the font, or the light level on his fire before?
> You have to pick to go into the navigation mode/page flip. Its just like picking fonts and anything else, its a mode.


That's how you do it on the iPhone app, too.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

> The lawyer in me has been demanding for some time that I point this out so I guess I finally will.
> We know that there is something in Page Flip that prevents our page reads from being reported to us.
> That it also prevents our page reads from being reported to Amazon is pure assumption.


What is reported to Amazon we can assume is what Amazon reports back to us in the Monthly Reports. Either that or Amazon is a nuthouse cooking the books.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Offsite poll has 197 responses now, but I can only view the first 100.

Always read in PF 9%
Partial read in PF 5%

Always return to start 21%

More responses than I thought, so looks like I need to upgrade for a month to get the actual results. I'll do that once things slow down.

The return to start figure is high enough to be alarming, since it wipes your reads away.
Even around 10% of people reading full books in PF is enough to be a serious issue Amazon shouldn't be able to duck.


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## Joseph M. Erhardt (Oct 31, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> What is reported to Amazon we can assume is what Amazon reports back to us in the Monthly Reports. Either that or Amazon is a nuthouse cooking the books.


I think it's a fair assumption that Amazon gets way more statistics reported back to it than make it to our eyes. This does not, necessarily, imply shenanigans, however, except in the self-admitted case of Page-Flip.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

Joseph M. Erhardt said:


> I think it's a fair assumption that Amazon gets way more statistics reported back to it than make it to our eyes. This does not, necessarily, imply shenanigans, however, except in the self-admitted case of Page-Flip.


Well, yes. But the question concerned what is reported to Amazon concerning page counts in PF.


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## hjordisa (Sep 4, 2017)

Modi Gliani said:


> What is reported to Amazon we can assume is what Amazon reports back to us in the Monthly Reports. Either that or Amazon is a nuthouse cooking the books.


We can assume what they report to authors is accurate (if we have any trust left in them anyway). We can't assume that it's all the data they have. If they've decided (and they apparently have) that reads in page flip mode don't actually count as page reads, even though some uses of the mode are identical to reads out of page flip mode as far as the information a reader would receive, then they wouldn't necessarily report to authors reads in page flip mode. Because they aren't considered relevant to the author under the current system. Since they aren't "page reads," the unit on which authors get paid. That they don't report it to authors doesn't mean they can't track it.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

hjordisa said:


> We can assume what they report to authors is accurate (if we have any trust left in them anyway). We can't assume that it's all the data they have. If they've decided (and they apparently have) that reads in page flip mode don't actually count as page reads, even though some uses of the mode are identical to reads out of page flip mode as far as the information a reader would receive, then they wouldn't necessarily report to authors reads in page flip mode. Because they aren't considered relevant to the author under the current system. Since they aren't "page reads," the unit on which authors get paid. That they don't report it to authors doesn't mean they can't track it.


I don't really disagree. But if they are deliberately reporting less pages read than what is receive from the device, then they are cooking the books and it's fraud plain and simple. I don't think they are that stupid. Crazy, maybe. A nuthouse cooking the books. Especially crazy since people are doing tests. So I think it's safe to assume that what they report is what the device reports to them. I think that is the most reasonable assumption. No fraud and not crazy. What we see in the Monthly Reports is what the reading devices have reported to them. Unless I am missing something in this Alice in Wonderland fandango. (But we are talking about page counts and not other data.)


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

hjordisa said:


> ... they wouldn't necessarily report to authors reads in page flip mode. Because they aren't considered relevant to the author under the current system. Since they aren't "page reads," the unit on which authors get paid. That they don't report it to authors doesn't mean they can't track it.


I think you hit the nail on the head. This is almost certainly how they would see it. It's the old "it depends on what your definition of _is_ is" defense.

The good news in all this is that even if one were to produce incontrovertible proof of page flip and other issues, it wouldn't matter. Which means, really people should just make their KU call based on the simpler metric... is your income increasing or decreasing?

Have you tried unenrolling for a couple weeks or a month at the end of a term to see if your direct sales start going up? (ie. Is KU cannibalizing you?). No need to go wide to test this. If page reads aren't being counted, but you are sticky with readers, you'll see a big boost in direct sales (because some KU readers will follow you, but you'll also get the buy that otherwise would have been absent as uncounted page reads). It's not that tricky to test just how much KU is hurting you (or not).

For some of us it was quite shocking to discover that KU was cannibalizing sales big time. Especially when your direct units go for a higher price.

The program is what it is. If it's not working for you, or working less effectively than it used to, time to at least work up a plan for what you're going to do if things get worse.

Whether your sales are dipping because you've lost favor with KU readers, or KU is broken, or KU is cannibalizing direct sales... it almost doesn't really matter. If it ain't working for you, figure out your next move.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> I think you hit the nail on the head. This is almost certainly how they would see it. It's the old "it depends on what your definition of _is_ is" defense.
> 
> The good news in all this is that even if one were to produce incontrovertible proof of page flip and other issues, it wouldn't matter. Which means, really people should just make their KU call based on the simpler metric... is your income increasing or decreasing?
> 
> ...


I am getting confused. Do you really think Amazon is committing fraud by reporting less pages read than they know have been read? Or are they merely reporting what the device tells them are pages read?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> to see if your direct sales start going up? (ie. Is KU cannibalizing you?).


On a bad day, my sales are more than triple what they used to be. So the gap from losing KU income isn't as bad as I thought it might be.



Modi Gliani said:


> I am getting confused. Do you really think Amazon is committing fraud by reporting less pages read than they know have been read? Or are they merely reporting what the device tells them are pages read?


Here's my thing....

I think its fraud both ways.

If the device is not reporting pages read but not counted, they are still guilty of fraud, they just dont know it.

Edit: And not knowing is NOT a defense.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> Here's my thing....
> 
> I think its fraud both ways.
> 
> ...


I don't know. In one case it's negligence. In the other case, it's deliberate malicious intent. I don't know that a judge or jurors would treat the instances the same.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> I am getting confused. Do you really think Amazon is committing fraud by reporting less pages read than they know have been read? Or are they merely reporting what the device tells them are pages read?


Personally, I find it impossible to believe that page reads [edit: flips] aren't part of what they track. It's zero effort to track every single thing you do with your kindle.

I think HJ was right on the money. They don't count page -*flips* as page* reads*. So why would they tell you about them, they only agreed to pay you page *reads*.

As for whether that's fraud, to me it would be, but I'm not a lawyer. Or perhaps zon takes the view of an earlier poster, that since it effects everyone, it all comes out in the wash in the end. They may feel that ultimately no one is really losing. They could give you more page reads, but then the pot would be lower, so you'd still end up getting paid the same.

Someone posted (in another thread) the KU T&C's and they are very clear that it's at their discretion what is considered a page read and what they decide to pay for it.

So yes, to me KU is a fraudulent system, but legally it may not be.

The same logic holds for people who were botting page reads. Amazon creates a flawed system, loses millions to scammers, and they pay that out of the pot (they don't cover those losses themselves, they take it from your cut). That's fraudulent as well, at least in my view.

But no matter how much proof or data you accumulate, when you present it to zon they will reply with "we've investigated your concerns and have determined that the system is working properly. Thank you for contacting us."

Back in 2016 there was clearly a massive issue. Zon was calling people that complained (something they rarely do unless you are a big shot). I think back then they sort of worried that they might be on the verge of authors rebelling. Authors did not rebel however, so now they really don't care. hehe. They know there's plenty of whipping that the indie community will take.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> Personally, I find it impossible to believe that page reads [edit: flips] aren't part of what they track. It's zero effort to track every single thing you do with your kindle.
> 
> I think HJ was right on the money. They don't count page -*flips* as page* reads*. So why would they tell you about them, they only agreed to pay you page *reads*.
> 
> ...


If all of this is true, any author in KU should leave KU at once.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> If all of this is true, any author in KU should leave KU at once.


Well, you can also argue fraud the other way (if we want to play a little mind game for fun).

It's also possible that the payout zon was giving was never legit. That .0042 was what people should have *always* been getting and that they bumped it up to .0057 or whatever it's been in the past, simply to attract authors and keep people happy. In that scenario, zon was using its own money to fraudulently pay you more than you deserved (or put differently inflate the pot beyond what it should have been).

Or you could look at bonuses. This is why zon is very careful not to say that everyone shares in the pot equally. Becuase they don't. Zon gives out giant bonuses to top sellers in KU. Now, that's coming out of the pot, but it's not a payment for page reads. So you're payout is (presumably) going down so they can give bonuses to their top sellers.

Again, there's the "spirit" of KU (ie. what everyone thinks it is) and then there's the reality of it, which is that zon divvies up the subscriber revenue however it damn well pleases (and they are clear about that in the T&C's).

It's not a sensible business model in the least. But indies, for all their huffing and puffing about how they are "entrepreneurs", generally don't care in the least about business practies, they just want to get paid.

As tom cruise said in that movie: SHOW ME THE MONEY!


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> Well, you can also argue fraud the other way (if we want to play a little mind game for fun).
> 
> It's also possible that the payout zon was giving was never legit. That .0042 was what people should have *always* been getting and that they bumped it up to .0057 or whatever it's been in the past, simply to attract authors and keep people happy. In that scenario, zon was using its own money to fraudulently pay you more than you deserved (or put differently inflate the pot beyond what it should have been).
> 
> ...


It's amazing. We have drifted or gravitated from faulty software to deliberate fraud and the fraud argument seems more and more irrefutable.


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## spellscribe (Nov 5, 2015)

Herefortheride said:


> I didn't mean rank. I meant number of page reads.


But the quote/thread was talking about 'books ranked in the millions' and low visibility.


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## hjordisa (Sep 4, 2017)

Covering worn ground here, but:

I agree that it's shady. It's absolutely absurd to argue that if two people fully read the same book in different modes one nets you page reads and the other doesn't. (I understand to an extent if it's a scammer deterrent, but am confused because they don't seem to otherwise care about scammers.)

But if they can determine what a page read is completely at their discretion (and they can) I'm not sure it's legally fraud.

On the other hand, I seem to recall that I've heard of companies getting in trouble over technically legal things. So I'm not 100% sure that this couldn't, under the right circumstances, with the right argument, bite them. If so, I'm sure they know that and have determined it's not worth worrying about. But I'll leave it to the lawyers.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> It's amazing. We have drifted or gravitated from faulty software to deliberate fraud and the fraud argument seems more and more irrefutable.


Ironically, I'd actually be MORE upset if they were padding the pot. Although almost every single author here on kboards would be proud of them if they were doing that (what great guys zon are to bump up our payout).

The reason I consider that more nefarious is because it hides the true nature of what you've signed up to. You "think" it's better than it is and you make business decisions based on that.

I almost prefer the scenario where they are gipping people, because that's far easier to spot. It's nearly impossible to spot inflated payouts or page reads.

Then when they take the punch bowl away, everyone can't understand what is happening.

Anyway, no one knows what the heck is going on, and never really have. KU is a black box and the only one who knows is zon. Simple as that. Trust it, don't trust it, everyone is proceeding based on assumptions and how they read the tea leaves as it were.

I just think subscription models were created by Satan himself, so for me it's a pass. hehe.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

The KDP agreement is a legal contract and is governed by contract law. Under contract law, all parties must live up to the terms of the contract. The terms of the KDP agreement include: "A customer can read your book as many times as they like, ... we will... *pay you for the number of pages read *the first time the customer *reads them.* It may take months for *customers to read pages in your book,* but no matter how long it takes, *we'll still pay you once it happens.*" Emphasis added. These are the terms of the contract and any violation of them is a breach.

BTW, issues related to lack of payment are _never_ considered "immaterial" under the UCC which is the law most everywhere in America, including Seattle.


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## hjordisa (Sep 4, 2017)

loraininflorida said:


> The KDP agreement is a legal contract and is governed by contract law. Under contract law, all parties must live up to the terms of the contract. The terms of the KDP contract include: "A customer can read your book as many times as they like, ... we will... *pay you for the number of pages read *the first time the customer *reads them.* It may take months for customers to read pages in your book, but no matter how long it takes, *we'll still pay you once it happens.*" Emphasis added. These are the terms of the contract and any violation of them is a breach.
> 
> BTW, issues related to payment are _never_ considered "immaterial" under the UCC.


See, this is what I mean. (I'm not in KU, or published, so I haven't read the contract.) I suspect/ed the "determines what a page read is" language was meant to relate to how many words constitute a page read. Amazon can argue that it doesn't specify that (specificity in your contracts, people!) but it wouldn't necessarily work. Especially with the above section indicating that authors are meant to be paid every time a customer reads the book, when they clearly aren't.

I recall this story: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html?mcubz=0
It's not really related, but it does indicate that the big company can lose regarding ambiguous contracts. (I don't know where I originally read it, but there was an interesting comment about how the commenter, a lawyer, would go about determining the intended meaning of the contract based on the wording. It was to do with the parallel gerund forms, and the notable fact that distribution wasn't one.)


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

> Anyway, no one knows what the heck is going on, and never really have. KU is a black box and the only one who knows is zon. Simple as that. Trust it, don't trust it, everyone is proceeding based on assumptions and how they read the tea leaves as it were.


I am truly flabbergasted, because if we can't trust the numbers in KU, why should we trust the numbers in direct sales? How do we know that our direct sales reports are not cooked by Amazon?


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Just so everyone knows, this too is part of the KDP contract--

"Any dispute or claim relating in any way to this Agreement or KDP will be resolved by binding arbitration....The United States Federal Arbitration Act and federal arbitration law apply to this Agreement.... [A]n arbitrator can award on an individual basis the same damages and relief as a court (including injunctive and declaratory relief or statutory damages), and must follow the terms of this Agreement as a court would. To begin an arbitration proceeding, you must send a letter requesting arbitration and describing your claim to our registered agent Corporation Service Company, 300 Deschutes Way SW, Suite 304, Tumwater, WA 98051, USA. The arbitration will be conducted by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its rules, including the AAA's Supplementary Procedures for Consumer-Related Disputes. The AAA's rules are available at www.adr.org or by calling 1-800-778-7879 (in the United States). Payment of all filing, administration and arbitrator fees will be governed by the AAA's rules. We will reimburse those fees for claims totaling less than $10,000 unless the arbitrator determines the claims are frivolous. Likewise, Amazon will not to seek attorneys' fees and costs in arbitration unless the arbitrator determines the claims are frivolous. You may choose to have the arbitration conducted by telephone, based on written submissions, or in person in the United States county where you live or at another mutually agreed location."


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> I am truly flabbergasted, because if we can't trust the numbers in KU, why should we trust the numbers in direct sales? How do we know that our direct sales reports are not cooked by Amazon?


Well, with anything digital you can never know for sure.

However, if a lawsuit were ever filed, it would be relatively easy to for them to pull up say all the mastercard purchases of "Billy The Bear". If mastercard shows 200 purchases, but payment from zon to the author only records 100 purchases, then case closed. Mastercard isn't going to lie for anyone (or if they were to, then we're in a different era where laws no longer matter).

Might a company still try to scam direct payouts? Possible, but you'd have employees (both on the tech side and in accounting) who would know what was happening. You'd have to make sure to never fire them or they'd go rat the company out. All that is way too much headache for most companies (unless they are a bank, then it's probably par for the course; robo signatures and all that).

Subscription models are different. There is literally no way to know if a vendor were to rip you off, because technically there is no purchase of your book. The customer pays zon for access to KU, and zon pays you per read; no digital trail and no third-parties involved. So it all comes down to whether zon's ability to count pages is accurate. As said many times, KU is a black box, and therefore the only accountability it has is whatever zon chooses for it to have.

But moreover, none of the employees would ever know, except for a tiny group at the top (back to the verification team). And the ones who did know, would assume someone else was being assigned to look after it (they'd see it as a product glitch on the roadmap to be fixed). Whereas with direct sales, employees would see clearly "hey, we're stealing from people!".. because with direct payments there's no "glitches"... you'd have to literally hide the royalty payment from the author (versus simply not counting pages read).

I'm not convinced that zon set out to do any of this. I think subscription models are just fatally flawed to start with. But in their arrogance, I think they thought they could patchwork as they went and make it work in the end. Now they've got this Frankenstein of a program, with people ripping them off, manipulating ranks, faking reviews, potentially a flawed page count system... but they've got all these subscribers paying them that they don't want to just cut off. So they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Which is why the most logical course of action if I'm zon is to at some point migrate everyone over to Prime and shut KU down. Or simply continue to lower the payouts until people leave; then leave KU running but fill it with trad authors and Amazon imprints and pay them per borrow rather than page read (which is how KU initially worked; paid per borrow).

I don't know, it's quite comical to me at this point. It's like a giant traffic jam that only keeps getting worse and everyone is now getting out of their cars and screaming "WTF IS GOING ON?"


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> I am truly flabbergasted, because if we can't trust the numbers in KU, why should we trust the numbers in direct sales? How do we know that our direct sales reports are not cooked by Amazon?


btw, trust is suppose to be a part of business. I mean, if I have someone come paint my walls, I'm trusting them that they are using the paint they say they are, and not some cheap crap with lead in it.

But if someone wants to rip you off in life, there's not much you can do to stop them. The system, though, is suppose to have protections (ie. not allow paint with lead in it to be sold), thereby making it very hard to screw people.

That's why all these "leave us be, let the free market reign" people are nuts to me. I hear them and all I hear is "I don't want any protections, please leave me at the mercy of billion dollar transnational corporations."

pure lunacy hehe.


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## hjordisa (Sep 4, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> I'm not convinced that zon set out to do any of this. I think subscription models are just fatally flawed to start with. But in their arrogance, I think they thought they could patchwork as they went and make it work in the end. Now they've got this Frankenstein of a program, with people ripping them off, manipulating ranks, faking reviews, potentially a flawed page count system... but they've got all these subscribers paying them that they don't want to just cut off. So they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.


These are my thoughts as well.

I wonder if comixology unlimited has similar problems (of the ones that work for comics; I doubt anyone reads them in page flip). They seem to run quite differently than amazon. (The FAQ even implies that you can get DRM free backups of ALL your purchased comics, though that's not to do with unlimited it's a striking contrast to Amazon.) The approval process is much stricter, so at least some forms of scamming would be impossible. They're much more dominated by traditional (although many still aren't in unlimited). I think fewer indies opt into unlimited as well. I'm not sure how the unlimited works from the author's end (are they then exclusive, how is the pay?), all the FAQ is from the reader's and I'm not up to digging deeper right now. 
Maybe starting outside of the Amazon umbrella has made a difference, or maybe it's just less saturated. Perhaps Amazon will ruin it yet, if they haven't already.
I'm not sure what lessons could be learned from this. I'm not sure we want Amazon learning lessons like rejecting for "too many grammatical errors," which they're free to interpret as they wish.
Just some idle musings in a state of half-sleep.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

loraininflorida said:


> Just so everyone knows, this too is part of the KDP contract--
> 
> "Any dispute or claim relating in any way to this Agreement or KDP will be resolved by binding arbitration....The United States Federal Arbitration Act and federal arbitration law apply to this Agreement.... [A]n arbitrator can award on an individual basis the same damages and relief as a court (including injunctive and declaratory relief or statutory damages), and must follow the terms of this Agreement as a court would. To begin an arbitration proceeding, you must send a letter requesting arbitration and describing your claim to our registered agent Corporation Service Company, 300 Deschutes Way SW, Suite 304, Tumwater, WA 98051, USA. The arbitration will be conducted by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its rules, including the AAA's Supplementary Procedures for Consumer-Related Disputes. The AAA's rules are available at www.adr.org or by calling 1-800-778-7879 (in the United States). Payment of all filing, administration and arbitrator fees will be governed by the AAA's rules. We will reimburse those fees for claims totaling less than $10,000 unless the arbitrator determines the claims are frivolous. Likewise, Amazon will not to seek attorneys' fees and costs in arbitration unless the arbitrator determines the claims are frivolous. You may choose to have the arbitration conducted by telephone, based on written submissions, or in person in the United States county where you live or at another mutually agreed location."


Has anyone gone that route yet? On the provable things? Those filings would be just as public record as the ones Zon initiated. I'm guessing no, or we'd have heard something. How would that even go, do you think? In a case like the OP's specifically?
I definitely think page flip is a thing. I know it is. It may be a part of a bigger issue with those who've only seen drops since last month, but Zon tinkered for sure June 1st, cause we've got the new dash to show for it. That was its own controversy when new and old didn't match, Zon said show me how you're seeing this, people did, and, like the lists of who received all star bonuses, they just hid what they didn't want anyone to see. They also tinkered August 1, cause we got the ta-da email. But that doesn't mean that they haven't tinkered with other things or on other dates, and we just don't know about those tinkerings. They tinker all the time. 
But if someone like the op filed for arbitration, how would that go?

I'm filing for arbitration on the grounds that I think KU is being run fraudulently.

Ok, show us some proof.

Shows provable page flip stuff like the op's emails vs reports. Or like all the videos people posted last year when we figured page flip out.

Arbitrator turns to Amazon. What say you?

We know. Page flip doesn't count pages. By design. We've said that. But it's fine. It doesn't effect anything in any measureable way. There aren't enough people reading in that mode to make a difference.

How do you know that? If it can't count pages how do you know if the amount of pages not being counted are a lot or a little?

We don't really, but we say right in the terms of service that it doesn't matter. Even if it's not counting a [crap] load of pages. Cause we've said, and they've agreed to it, that it's up to us to determine what even counts as a page read. We can say today that a page is this fancy KENPC number we pull out of a hat. And tomorrow we can say that a page read is every twelve times someone borrows your book we'll count that as one page read. That way we don't even need to track anything but borrows. Then the next day we can decide that we'll call every time you spend a dollar in ams ads a page read. See... that's the beauty of the whole thing. So it doesn't matter if the device can count. It makes no difference, cause today we've decided to give them one page read every third time they refresh their month to date reports. But we'll take away a page read every time they then click on book report. See? We win! No fraud. We told them that we'll pay them whatever we see fit. It's right there. It can't be fraud when we tell you right up front that we're making it up as we go.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Going Incognito said:


> We don't really, but we say right in the terms of service that it doesn't matter. Even if it's not counting a [crap] load of pages. Cause we've said, and they've agreed to it, that it's up to us to determine what even counts as a page read. We can say today that a page is this fancy KENPC number we pull out of a hat. And tomorrow we can say that a page read is every twelve times someone borrows your book we'll count that as one page read. That way we don't even need to track anything but borrows. Then the next day we can decide that we'll call every time you spend a dollar in ams ads a page read. See... that's the beauty of the whole thing. So it doesn't matter if the device can count. It makes no difference, cause today we've decided to give them one page read every third time they refresh their month to date reports. But we'll take away a page read every time they then click on book report. See? We win! No fraud. We told them that we'll pay them whatever we see fit. It's right there. It can't be fraud when we tell you right up front that we're making it up as we go.


I feel sick.

That's exactly it. And nothing I saw before going into KU gave that impression, or I'd never have touched it with a 100 ft barge pole.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> I feel sick.
> 
> That's exactly it. And nothing I saw before going into KU gave that impression, or I'd never have touched it with a 100 ft barge pole.


They can be held accountable for misrepresentation in their advertising to authors. The advertising makes promises that are not kept and sucks authors into a scheme of exploitation. A contract is a contract, but what is done to get you to sign a contract cannot involve misrepresention and falsehood without your being liable for damages.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

Modi Gliani said:


> I am truly flabbergasted, because if we can't trust the numbers in KU, why should we trust the numbers in direct sales? How do we know that our direct sales reports are not cooked by Amazon?


People can buy a copy of their book or have someone else do it and see it reported. They can also flip through their book on KU or have someone else do it and see it isn't being reported. This lack of confidence comes from testing, not at random.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

Modi Gliani said:


> They can be held accountable for misrepresentation in their advertising to authors. The advertising makes promises that are not kept and sucks authors into a scheme of exploitation. A contract is a contract, but what is done to get you to sign a contract cannot involve misrepresention and falsehood without your being liable for damages.


There is no falsehood because they said they'd pay you "an amount". Even if they counted that thing they decided to call pages wrong, it doesn't matter considering the writer agrees to be paid any amount per page read.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

It is not assumption that Amazon is not getting page counts from PageFlip. They are on record as stating that they designed it deliberately not to count pages. Amazon is a hard taskmaster with a high staff turnover (including a the high paid tech level) and cannot risk a disgruntled (ex-)staffer going to a big name author who is on record as calling for government action against Amazon. That admission about PageFlip would have been signed in triplicate by the legal eagles before it was allowed out of the door. Remember that they made that admission and then went silent. The legal eagles were not going to sign off an on-going conversation.

The PageFlip problem is that the Amazon designers were likely shown the Google Play Reader version and told give us something like that to help our users navigate. By showing bits of the previous and next pages they made it harder to read in PageFlip than on the Google Play Reader, but the designers did not need to show text at all. Text editors, word processors, etc, are often designed to allow easy movement around the text by showing headings. If the design team included showing scene breaks they could allow for the navigation without allowing for reading in PageFlip. It is fixable but only if the text is removed. A navigation tool that counts pages is a gift to scam farms, so the only possible solution is a navigation tool in which readers cannot read the text, only the headings or scene breaks.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

There is nothing left to do except for every author to pull out of KU. If you are making a pile of money in KU, congrats, but you don't know if you are making only half or even less of what you are entitled to. Sooner or later you will pull out also. KU is finished.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Poll update, which looks a lot better than before.

216 responses.

6.48% always use PF.
6.94% sometimes read in PF.
16.2% always return to the start in PF before closing down.
There is also an Other vote with variations, some of which amount to a lot of page reads in PF.

I still call this a worry. The accumulation is enough to account for the drops in reads a lot of us have seen.


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> Poll update, which looks a lot better than before.
> 
> 216 responses.
> 
> ...


Very interesting. Thank you for taking the time to set up this poll.
If these numbers turn out to stabilize as more people participate, another question would arise.

Even though it's pretty bad for people in select to lose those reads (combined with the ever decreasing KENP rate), what else happened in August?

When a collective of people suddenly report 30% loss (sometimes even more) of read pages, something must have happened to trigger it.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

MelD said:


> Very interesting. Thank you for taking the time to set up this poll.
> If these numbers turn out to stabilize as more people participate, another question would arise.
> 
> Even though it's pretty bad for people in select to lose those reads (combined with the ever decreasing KENP rate), what else happened in August?
> ...


Something _*did*_ happen in August. Amazon plugged a hole (although they have more to go). It used to be that Amazon recorded reads by the furthest spot you read in a book. So, therefore, if you read 60% before getting bored and flipping to the last 5% to see how it ends, you got paid for 100%. Now, that's not the case. They've plugged that hole and you only get paid 65% and the skipped material isn't counted. They still haven't plugged the hole on the online reader but they have on the readers, and I'm guessing that led to changes for ALL of us.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Something _*did*_ happen in August. Amazon plugged a hole (although they have more to go). It used to be that Amazon recorded reads by the furthest spot you read in a book. So, therefore, if you read 60% before getting bored and flipping to the last 5% to see how it ends, you got paid for 100%. Now, that's not the case. They've plugged that hole and you only get paid 65% and the skipped material isn't counted. They still haven't plugged the hole on the online reader but they have on the readers, and I'm guessing that led to changes for ALL of us.


That might be the case on standalones, and first in series, maybe even second, but when you can see people reading through a 13 book series and 4 more in a spin off series across reports, I seriously doubt they are skipping.

I can accept the theory on my book 1, but the same thing happened to all my books at the same time.


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> That might be the case on standalones, and first in series, maybe even second, but when you can see people reading through a 13 book series and 4 more in a spin off series across reports, I seriously doubt they are skipping.
> 
> I can accept the theory on my book 1, but the same thing happened to all my books at the same time.


I totally agree.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

> So "yay, your book is good enough people love re-reading it...except every time they go back to the beginning, you lose previously credited page reads and if they stop on the final re-read before they reach the end, you are again credited for less than what was actually read." Thanks, Amazon.


It's my understanding that kinde records the furthest page read only once. So If I read to the end, the page is recorded. If I open the book the next day to read from the beginning but get sidetracked at page 5, the full book will show as read. Provided, of course, that people have wifi turned on. If WiFi is off, then amazon have no way of knowing what you do with your kindle.



> I think you are being premature in your survey results. How many KU subscribers are there? Over a million? 30 responses (most likely from authors) out of 1,000,000+ readers isn't even the margin for error. You will need at least 100,000 responses to even have something that would register as statistically significant.


If you do a properly randomized survey, to get a 95% confidence in the result with a margin of error not more than, say 5% (which is actually pretty big) you'd need to have responses from at least 385 of the million people. There are simple sample size calculators on line you can use to adjust the parameters. Obviously if the population is greater than a million, or you wanted a higher level of confidence or smaller margin of error, you'd need more responses.

HOWEVER

Given the survey is 'opt in', I don't think it would count as 'properly randomized'. So I'm not sure that it would be considered statistically valid in any event.  You're not really surveying a random sample. You're only counting people active on whatever sites you're publishing it who care enough to answer it and, as pointed out, might have an abnormally high percentage of authors who do, of course, have a vested interest in the response.

Also, I think the population is WAY more than a million because, arguably, anyone who uses a kindle or kindle app would be a valid user of the page-flip feature and their responses, it seems to me, would be valid. THAT SAID, any one can take it -- they don't have to be a KU subscriber, so maybe that makes your sample pool tainted? It's been 35 years since I took statistics, but it seems to me that, if you really only want to count KU subscribers, that should be the first question and, if they answer NO, they should not be able to go on and their response recorded at that point.



> I've just had a fan tell me he has a Kindle Fire, and he cant get it out of page-flip mode. If anyone knows how, let me know so I can tell him.


To get out of page flip mode, just touch the page displayed. If his is not working this way, he should probably contact Kindle customer service because he has a faulty device. My personal experience is that it takes a couple of touches (seems like you have to be in just the right spot) to get INTO page flip mode, but I can always get out with one touch in the middle of the page/screen. That might be because I don't use the Fire at all often so I'm not in practice of where you have to touch.

When you open/turn on a fire and swipe away from the lock screen you are wherever you left off before. The only time you'll be in page flip mode is if you left it there -- closed the cover or let it fall asleep -- without ever going to anything else. In that case, when you open the cover and swipe the screen, the book you were reading will show in page flip mode. See above for how to get out of it. 

In general, however, if you go to the home screen, or another book, or game, or whatever, it goes out of page flip mode. You can even use the square icon at the bottom to switch between applications, but, though you might see a 'page flip mode screen' with the book you were reading, when you touch it to go there, you're back at the 'books' app and you have to touch the cover of the book to open it -- and it opens in standard mode.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Ann in Arlington said:


> you'd need to have responses from at least 385


226 now, and still going up. With luck, we will get to the 400 mark in a week. I actually didn't think we'd get to 100, so this is way better than my expectations.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> That might be the case on standalones, and first in series, maybe even second, but when you can see people reading through a 13 book series and 4 more in a spin off series across reports, I seriously doubt they are skipping.
> 
> I can accept the theory on my book 1, but the same thing happened to all my books at the same time.


Really? The longer I go in a series the more skipping I do because I know which parts I'm most interested in.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Really? The longer I go in a series the more skipping I do because I know which parts I'm most interested in.


Fine for third person books. And I do that second time around and after on some of the really big doorstoppers. But never first time around. If an author keeps repeating themselves across books, I tend to stop reading completely, rather than skip.

My first series is all 1st person, and its a single point of view the whole way through. If you skip, you start missing important stuff. There's maybe 10 pages you skip over in the whole first 13 books.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> Fine for third person books. And I do that second time around and after on some of the really big doorstoppers. But never first time around. If an author keeps repeating themselves across books, I tend to stop reading completely, rather than skip.
> 
> My first series is all 1st person, and its a single point of view the whole way through. If you skip, you start missing important stuff. There's maybe 10 pages you skip over in the whole first 13 books.


I skip stuff all the time on second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh (and so on) books. It doesn't even have to be repeated stuff. I know what I like and I go straight for those parts. I don't believe for a second that my readers hang on my every word. I think they like some words more than others.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Ann in Arlington said:


> If you do a properly randomized survey, to get a 95% confidence in the result with a margin of error not more than, say 5% (which is actually pretty big) you'd need to have responses from at least 385 of the million people. There are simple sample size calculators on line you can use to adjust the parameters.


The online calculators I've seen are overly simplistic. They don't take into account the number of answer options.

If respondents have two options - for example, "pick your gender" - you can get to 95% confidence with a minimal number of respondents from a given population.

If respondents have 15 options, getting to 95% confidence requires a far greater volume of respondents from that same population.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Anarchist said:


> The online calculators I've seen are overly simplistic. They don't take into account the number of answer options.
> 
> If respondents have two options - for example, "pick your gender" - you can get to 95% confidence with a minimal number of respondents from a given population.
> 
> If respondents have 15 options, getting to 95% confidence requires a far greater volume of respondents from that same population.


Agreed. My example was based on a VERY simple premise; a more complete analysis would probably show that you need way more than 385.

And even then, as previously noted, a voluntary survey is NOT THE SAME THING as a statistically valid sample survey. So I personally would not view the results as concrete evidence, but rather simply probable cause that more digging is needed. Which, frankly, based on discussions here, is not really in doubt for most people.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

Will the statisticians please estimate the odds of a 15% variation in the results if the sample size in a survey of this kind goes from 200 to 2000 t0 20,000?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

TwistedTales said:


> A survey might be amusing, but it won't prove anything.
> ...
> which a random and somewhat skewed survey isn't.


The whole point is amazon says NOBODY reads using page-flip. Any kind of survey which gets a result above zero, is challenging that statement, and for right now, all I want to be able to do is show Amazon's statement to be the complete crap it is.

It doesn't matter how accurate the number is. The fact people are counting themselves as doing what Amazon says is not being done, is enough. It's evidence Amazon is dead wrong.

Why is the survey skewed?


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Agreed. My example was based on a VERY simple premise; a more complete analysis would probably show that you need way more than 385.
> 
> And even then, as previously noted, a voluntary survey is NOT THE SAME THING as a statistically valid sample survey. So I personally would not view the results as concrete evidence, but rather simply probable cause that more digging is needed. Which, frankly, based on discussions here, is not really in doubt for most people.


I agree with you.

I wanted to head off the potential claim that "_we've received 400 responses and 10% chose '*I only read through Page Flip*,' so this issue is definitely having a massive effect._"

The extent of the effect is unlikely to be knowable given how the survey is constructed and the reachable population.

As you noted, most people in this thread would probably agree that more digging is needed. But I think there's a temptation among some to assign significance to - and draw conclusions from - insufficient data.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

TwistedTales said:


> To run a survey you need to be independent, which means even holding it through kboards makes it skewed.


Not so. It started here.

The offsite survey I'm quoting was sent to my mailing list, placed in six FB groups, only 1 of which was an author group, and on my wall, and series page.

How far its spread from there, I've no idea. But several of the groups have big numbers in them, all but 1 group (not including the author group) dedicated to reading.

I tried putting it on Quora, but they deleted it as spam.

So its not a limited survey of people here. They are coming from all over.

edit: and the fact the percent saying they use pf to read full books dropped from over 20% to just over 6%, shows it is getting a wide range of people, and isn't just located on people here.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Voluntary surveys are most likely to be filled in by people with an agenda, especially when activists go on social media and say answer the survey especially if you do read in page flip. Slacktivism is its own worst enemy as it makes all such surveys about as much use as a paper shopping bag on a rainy day in Manchester.


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

I find this discussion to be very interesting.

-We have Amazon that claims everything to be perfect (and not particularly interested in this discussion).

-We have authors who want to prove the big problems they experience.

-We have authors who don't experience any problems and therefor say they don't exist (or mean much).

-We have authors who are vaguely updated on the situation with strong opinions about it.

-We have authors who don't want to dissect the situation who suggest others to just stay in- or leave Select without making a big thing out of it.

My conclusion:
Full transparency would have made life much easier for so many.
Why all the secrecy in a perfect system?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Mercia McMahon said:


> Voluntary surveys are most likely to be filled in by people with an agenda, especially when activists go on social media and say answer the survey especially if you do read in page flip. Slacktivism is its own worst enemy as it makes all such surveys about as much use as a paper shopping bag on a rainy day in Manchester.


The whole purpose of doing this survey was to demonstrate people really did read full books using Page-flip, and they really did reset to the start of the book before closing it.

And already its proved people do. No-one can say it isn't happening anymore, or they cant understand how or why people would. They do, and we're getting a good indication of the percentage of people who do. The how or why doesn't matter. People are confirming they do it.

That's all I wanted.

_edited; PM if you have questions -- Ann_


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> The whole point is amazon says NOBODY reads using page-flip. Any kind of survey which gets a result above zero, is challenging that statement, and for right now, all I want to be able to do is show Amazon's statement to be the complete crap it is.


The problem is, how many Kindle readers even know what Page Flip is? How many just turned on their devices one day and started reading the same way they always have and don't even really know what it is or even care? I guess I have it in my Kindle Reader on my smartphone, but it isn't something I use or would use. Whether or not it's turned on, I don't know, because I still read the books I read, the same way I always have.


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

TwistedTales said:


> You can't analyze the situation based on the page rate alone or page flip. Step back and see the bigger game and you start to see that, from Amazon's viewpoint, the payment mechanism is just irritating math that the less authors know about the better. That way they can change it whenever it suits them and they do.


I just wanted someone else to say it.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

When customers get a free KU subscription and borrow books, do authors get paid for those page reads?

I just read an article this morning about how they are offering a free 12 month KU subscription in China when people buy a Kindle (surprisingly, it's in partnership with Alibaba).


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> When customers get a free KU subscription and borrow books, do authors get paid for those page reads?


Yes, we do.

But the freebie periods are part of the problem too, since the scammers use them so they dont ever pay a subscription.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

The most serious problem for me is that obviously many authors think there is a serious problem and yet Amazon does not even have the courtesy to address their concerns in a detail explanatory email. That suggests to me they are hiding something on instructions of the legal team, and that in turn suggests it has to be something very serious. It's not confusion and it's not merely arrogance. The lack of transparency is deliberate and part of an agenda, and in this case it's not an attempt to protect market share, it's an attempt to prevent an exposure that could cost them much in public relations and possible litigation. Their strategy of silence says there may be even more going on than we realize. It's too bad. It suggests a core of stupidity inside Amazon that ultimatey may cause the end of KDP.


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## hjordisa (Sep 4, 2017)

Mercia McMahon said:


> A navigation tool that counts pages is a gift to scam farms, so the only possible solution is a navigation tool in which readers cannot read the text, only the headings or scene breaks.


This seems like a reasonable compromise to me. If it's really meant as a navigation tool, why not? I guess because then the readers who read in page flip wouldn't be able to. Amazon prefers to keep them happy over authors, and there's enough wiggle room in the contract that they can do so.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> Their strategy of silence says there may be even more going on than we realize. It's too bad. It suggests a core of stupidity inside Amazon that ultimatey may cause the end of KDP.


Gotta remember though, kboards represents maybe a tiny fraction of the indie community. Even if every single author on these boards were stark raving mad (which they are not; only tiny percentage of kboarders are really upset with all this), it still would be utterly inconsequential to zon. It's only dangerous if it spreads beyond kboards, then it must be dealt with.

I'm not so sure they are stupid so much as they don't see any real and present danger from the situation.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Modi Gliani said:


> The most serious problem for me is that obviously many authors think there is a serious problem and yet Amazon does not even have the courtesy to address their concerns in a detail explanatory email. That suggests to me they are hiding something on instructions of the legal team, and that in turn suggests it has to be something very serious. It's not confusion and it's not merely arrogance. The lack of transparency is deliberate and part of an agenda, and in this case it's not an attempt to protect market share, it's an attempt to prevent an exposure that could cost them much in public relations and possible litigation. Their strategy of silence says there may be even more going on than we realize. It's too bad. It suggests a core of stupidity inside Amazon that ultimatey may cause the end of KDP.


I hate to say it, but I suspect a more likely answer is that KDP accounts for like .2% of Amazon's revenue, so the larger company's level of interest is limited. No interest = no resources = no dedicated employee hours = no detailed engagement with the problem.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Modi Gliani said:


> The most serious problem for me is that obviously many authors think there is a serious problem and yet Amazon does not even have the courtesy to address their concerns in a detail explanatory email. That suggests to me they are hiding something...


They did. In multiple emails when the feature was new around a year ago.

Short answer, they say they've thoroughly vetted the system, and rechecked everything when authors complained, and it is not significantly impacting authors.

So this is all a rehash of what was discussed in 2016 (which is fine, since some people are new, but there are a lot of claims being thrown around that don't reflect a knowledge of the history.)

Here's a link to a pretty good overview of the prior kboards thread so you don't have to wade through tons of posts:

https://ruthnestvold.wordpress.com/2016/10/14/a-chronicle-of-the-amazon-page-flip-controversy-or-how-to-piss-off-a-ton-of-your-vendors-all-at-once/


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> Yes, we do.
> 
> But the freebie periods are part of the problem too, since the scammers use them so they dont ever pay a subscription.


Okay. This confuses me a little bit. If they do get paid, then that's yet another source of watering down page rates (not overall payout, but the page rate).

Think about it... all those people who aren't paying $10 a month, but rather, $0, are still generating page payouts for the authors who are read (which comes out of the pot, I assume.).

Ergo, the entire KU community is essentially paying for Amazon to give away all these free subscriptions. Because if those subscribers were paying, then the pot would be higher, and KENP rates would therefore be higher. So it's kind of a forced participation in Amazon's marketing efforts.

hehe, in essence, it's really the authors paying for all those free subscriptions regardless of whether the page reads are paid or not (if they weren't paid, then the page rate would be higher, but there would be less page reads going on).

This massively favors the top end books, which are the ones new subscribers are most likely to read (because one has to assume zon gives them the most visibility).

No wonder people selling big in KU love it. There seem to be a lot of "diversified" costs that get spread out to the entire base of authors, but which likely benefit (in terms of generates reads) a select few at the top.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

J. Tanner said:


> They did. In multiple emails when the feature was new around a year ago.
> 
> Short answer, they say they've thoroughly vetted the system, and rechecked everything when authors complained, and it is not significantly impacting authors.
> 
> ...


Thank you, I have a full knowledge of the history. What has happened since their denial of a year ago are new tests that show their denial was a lie. These new tests need to be addressed. The emails of a year ago are now irrelevant. I'm not providing you with any links because all you need to do is read this thread.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Their attempt to combat scammers is hurting indies because we don't have trad-pub deals on borrows instead of pages read.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

TwistedTales said:


> @modi, I'm all for dancing on the much hoped for grave of KU, but you need to read the email they sent. You won't look it up, but here it is:
> 
> "Thanks for the recent questions from some authors about how Page Flip is being used by customers and its possible impact to pages read. Page Flip is designed to make it easy to explore and navigate in books while automatically saving your place, and that is how customers are using it. We checked for effects on pages read before launching Page Flip, and investigated it again to re-confirm that there is no impact. * We do not see any material reading volume happening within this feature*, but we will continue to monitor it closely."
> 
> ...


Right. And I know all of this. But if according to new evidence 6 percent are reading via PF, that is literally millions of pages lost over the whole population of readers. Which says to me their statement that there is no material reading volume is a lie and their email of a year ago means nothing anymore. Six percent of 3 million subscribers is 180,000 subscribers using PF to read. Let's suppose each subscriber reads 10 books a month via PF. That is 1,800.000 books a month read via PF. Suppose the average number of pages of each book is 300. That is 540 million pages that are not paid for to authors. That's $2.268.000 not paid to authors, and that is over $27 million lost to authors in a year. with popular authors losing the most money. That may not be "material" to a company with $100 billion annual revenue, but for individual authors it could be a small fortune and for some enough to pay off a mortgage. Anyway, maybe someone could check my numbers because I just did the calculation and I'm not fully awake yet.

Added: The total lost to authors is about 10 percent of the total paid out to authors. Material?


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

TwistedTales said:


> Aside from pointing out we don't know how many subscribers there are to calculate a meaningful number, I wouldn't argue your logic that money owed isn't being paid.
> 
> The whole problem hinges on the meaning of the word "material". By stating there's no "material" reading volume, it implies there is some, so they're not denying that. What number "material" represents is the question, and we've no reliable means of knowing that. Just because it's a year later, time hasn't changed the facts. All we know new today is that Amazon are more strictly enforcing the availability of page flip on more devices.
> 
> ...


Publishing in general is beyond shabby. I could tell you stories, but then I would be accused of doom and gloom.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Couple Page Flip with the downward revisions seen of 30% or more in total pages read and it's an issue for us indies. This is a two-part assault on the scammers and we're caught in the crossfire.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

My estimate is 3 million KU subscibers. Total revenue per month $30 million Amazon keeps $10 million, Global Fund $20 million to authors. But of course no one of us knows.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2017)

Another point: Given that Amazon says the loss to authors is "not material", why don't they just pay the money back to authors and then everyone is happy?


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Modi Gliani said:


> Which says to me their statement that there is no material reading volume is a lie and their email of a year ago means nothing anymore. Six percent of 3 million subscribers is 180,000 subscribers using PF to read. Let's suppose each subscriber reads 10 books a month via PF. That is 1,800.000 books a month read via PF. Suppose the average number of pages of each book is 300. That is 540 million pages that are not paid for to authors. That's $2.268.000 not paid to authors, and that is over $27 million lost to authors in a year. with popular authors losing the most money.


Assuming all that is true (which is a pretty big assumption to me, but I'll go with you on it) why would you assume this company with so little regard for its vendors (again, under these assumptions) would increase the fund by $27M rather than let the page rate drop which costs them nothing?


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

We'd all be surprised at the past conspiracy theories that turned out to be true.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Off hand thought, from another thread.

Of those who think there is no real problem, or its an old problem.....

Are you using BookReport or similar, and comparing day to day stats which are actually meaningful?

Just wondering if the difference between those of us rabid on this subject and those who are not, is the level of stats we're looking at?

I know Amanda doesn't look at daily at all. But is it BookReport and the like which is allowing some of us to see the real picture?


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> Off hand thought, from another thread.
> 
> Of those who think there is no real problem, or its an old problem.....
> 
> ...


I use BookReport combined with the KDP stats + plenty of time to analyze sales, reads and trends. It's dead necessary to be able to calculate the ROI for my promo campaigns. Unfortunately this hasn't been a very pleasant hobby lately.


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## Guest (Sep 27, 2017)

I use Book Report and I hardly ever look at the KDP stats.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

I'm prawn enough that when someone borrows one of my books I can often pretty much see it, and how long it takes them to read it, and how far into the book they read. Since 2014, the norm (almost always) for me was that a borrower would read the entire book, and within two days. But then Page Flip happened and by last Fall I started getting one-page reads. By Winter my graph was sprinkled with them. By Spring I would still see the borrows, but the borrowers' reading ended at all sorts of page numbers, the net result being about a 30% drop in pages read for me. I took the Summer off but then ran AMS ads this month and was astonished when the reads looked like borrowers were reading about 50% less, again, their reading ending at all sorts of page numbers. My conclusion is that what I was seeing was the spread of Page Flip among borrowers. Some will no doubt say, Nope, it's that people don't like your books and stopped reading, but if that's so why was it not so up until Page Flip?


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## Guest (Sep 27, 2017)

I don't think KU will be shut down. I think it will be radically changed.

What I would like to see is a tiered fixed payout based on KENP pages, something like this:

20 to 200 KENP pages: $0.50
201 to 300            1.50
301 to 400            2.00
401 to 500            2.50
501 to 600            3.00
601+                    3.50

The payout schedule is fixed and does not change each month.

The above payout schedule is actually close to what it is now, so there is no big loss to Amazon.

Long books get more than short books, which is fair.

PageFlip can stay and it now has nothing to do with author earnings from KU. Readers can flip around all they like.

The lack of variation from month to month means everyone knows what they are getting in advance and they can plan their books accordingly.

Internal links to anywhere in the book are not relevant for payout to authors.

Only the pages of the primary content will count. You can stuff a book all you want and it will not increase your payout.

No more scamming based on automatic page reads.  

I think this hybrid system will solve a lot of problems for both authors and Amazon.

Meanwhile, the schedule can be tweaked. These are just suggestions. And of course it's open for discussion here.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> I think this hybrid system will solve a lot of problems for both authors and Amazon.


Nothing will work. Sub models are fatally flawed at concept. It's impossible to stop the bots, so that's that.

Sure, you can get around page flip by linking payment to borrows. But borrows are even easier to bot than page reads. So if you want to have a surge in bots stealing from the pot, to stop page flip from stealing from the pot... but it's all the same in the end (at least page flip is, hypothetically, distributed across the entire author base).

There is no fixing KU. Amazon could offer a $1B prize for anyone that fixed all its flaws, and no one would ever win that prize. You could bring Einstein back from the dead and ask him to fix it, and he'd tell you that you were crazy.

It's a burning bus racing down the street and will remain so until they kill it.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> It's a burning bus racing down the street and will remain so until they kill it.


That created the most awesome visual.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

hjordisa said:


> This seems like a reasonable compromise to me. If it's really meant as a navigation tool, why not? I guess because then the readers who read in page flip wouldn't be able to. Amazon prefers to keep them happy over authors, and there's enough wiggle room in the contract that they can do so.


I don't read with page flip, but I don't use it for navigation the way Mercia described it...I use the Table of Contents for that kind of navigation. I use it the way people skim back in a book to re-read a passage or check a detail--and for that, I have to be able to see the text. I'm pretty sure this was the intent of the feature, and it's what I remember being described when the feature was released. And it's the reason that once one skims back using the tool (or forward), there's a one click return to the page one was on before using page flip. So I would be very unhappy if Amazon changed it to have only headers visible during page flip. I do agree that Amazon wants to keep its customers happy.


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## Guest (Sep 27, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> It's a burning bus racing down the street and will remain so until they kill it.


All right. Then KU is dead. End of story. Someone suggested earlier I was dancing on KU's grave. But I'm not dancing at all. I think it's sad because it's good for readers. Anyway, dead is dead.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> All right. Then KU is dead. End of story. Someone suggested earlier I was dancing on KU's grave. But I'm not dancing at all. I think it's sad because it's good for readers. Anyway, dead is dead.


Interestingly enough, Kobo is working on something similar to KU, only without the page read nightmare. Only available in 2 countries right now (European), but it still might be a start in the right direction.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> All right. Then KU is dead. End of story. Someone suggested earlier I was dancing on KU's grave. But I'm not dancing at all. I think it's sad because it's good for readers. Anyway, dead is dead.


Naw, it's great. It means when the dust settles the market will eventually return to paying content providers a decent royalty. Even those of us who aren't in KU are still affected by the general downward margin pressure that KU creates on the market as a whole. Some of us can escape those pressures simply because we have an audience that allows that (ie. we've built traction wide), but it doesn't mean those pressures can't grow in time to eventually impact us. At a certain point, if KU sticks around, heaven forbid grows, it will destroy the other vendors. Then we'll be living in a true monopoly and we're all screwed.

I'd argue the price for indies direct is easily sustainable at $5.99 or even higher prices. But not with KU around. It puts a ceiling on the direct side of the business (with a few exceptions that is, some people have made higher work).

I hear you on the readers though. I personally would *love* a tiered payment model. I wish I could charge someone who was poor next to nothing (hell, even nothing), and charge the millionaire $100 for one of my books. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in for the time being.

So yes, it's sad for the readers, but it will be good for the authors in the long run. Obviously, with the caveat, that some will suffer as KU deteriorates; but if that happens they will go wide, sell direct, and sell books the way they were always meant to be sold (as products, not 4/10th-of-a-cent rentals).

And honestly, no matter which way it goes (maybe I'm wrong and KU will rule the world in the end), a lot of authors (including myself) are going to learn a lot from this from a business perspective. The rose-colored glasses need to come off this industry, and that will be a good thing.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> Interestingly enough, Kobo is working on something similar to KU, only without the page read nightmare. Only available in 2 countries right now (European), but it still might be a start in the right direction.


man i hope they kill that thing. Any sub model can be scammed. I was so disappointed to see Kobo launch that.

But, it's so beta it's not really worth worrying over. And I have faith in Kobo that they'll only extend it if they can actually control it. All of Kobo's promos benefit most authors who price high... they actually discourage authors from pricing low; they actually want authors making more, not less (because then they make more). But that's logical; zon only commodifies books to lure customers in to the rest of the store. Kobo doesn't have that incentive.

From what I've seen from them, they don't seem like a company eager to create problems for themselves. Zon on the other hand, tend to act first and think later.

So I'm halfway confident they'll eventually kill that sub model. [edit: I think they only started it as a backup in the eventuality that KU grows rather than dies. As KU deteriorates, I think Kobo will back away from this subscription stuff. It's also possible they want it in their profile to be a more attractive acquisition/partner target; just in case someone like Walmart wants a sub model there just because zon has it.).


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## SerenityEditing (May 3, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> I know Amanda doesn't look at daily at all. But is it BookReport and the like which is allowing some of us to see the real picture?


But Amanda said in an earlier post "I see fluctuations as much as 100K reads from day to day." Is that something different from what you're talking about?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

SerenityEditing said:


> But Amanda said in an earlier post "I see fluctuations as much as 100K reads from day to day." Is that something different from what you're talking about?


That amount completely hides the whole activity of page-flip reading effects.

The reason some of us can see it happening is the reads are in the 3 digit range, and go down to 1 digit.

A 6 digit variation which still leaves 4 or 5 digit numbers on each book, hides 1 digit read values so badly, they are lost inside this.

Now, if Amanda was getting 6 digits on Aug 1, and 1 digit on Aug 2, she would see what I've been seeing. I saw 4 digits turn into 1 digit. But once you're at 5 digits and above on each book, you cant see it.

Now, that 100k variation may indeed by page flip, but because Amanda has so many other variables going on, no-one can tell. But that could well be $400 she isn't being paid on 1 day. But then again, $400 on a day for Amanda might be pocket change and so insignificant as to not be worth even thinking about thinking about it. On the other hand, $400 for me on a day is a HUGE deal.

But this is how it works, and what Amazon is counting on. Those authors doing really well, are not losing enough to worry them. The authors in the mid-list have seen major hits. And other authors have seen their reads almost wiped out. But who cares about us?


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## SerenityEditing (May 3, 2016)

Okay, but my confusion was about is she checking daily numbers, because you said not.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

SerenityEditing said:


> Okay, but my confusion was about is she checking daily numbers, because you said not.


That's what I saw.

The monthly figures will show nothing at all. Not unless your getting very few reads.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Here's a new one, at least for me.

Other than scamming, I'd always wondered why people would skim to the back.

Someone who just did the survey emailed me to say as an after thought, he thought he should mention he used page-flip to skim to the back of the book rapidly to use the rating facility. Now it occurs people who want to rate a book, use PF to skim over the backmatter to the rating page, then skim back to the start.

On facebook today, someone posted images of his smartphone, showing the book he was reading to be perfectly and easily readable. So the whole cant read on phone in PF, rubbish. You might have to play around with the font, and settle for only 2 sentences per page, but it is readable.

259 responses now. Holding around 5.5% use it to read a full book, and 15.5% return to the start.

So some interesting numbers come from that, as wooley as they are. 55,000 people per million subscribers, reading our books and we dont get paid for them. And another 155,000 who wipe their read data and we dont get paid for them. With probably some intersection. Its not nothing.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

TwistedTales said:


> * We do not see any material reading volume happening within this feature*


Be funny if they meant it literally. We do not *see* anything happening cause we designed it not to *show us* how many pages we could now not-pay, cause they aren't counted so we can't see them.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Just because I only look at my numbers once a week, that doesn't mean I don't look at each day that week. Thanks to that handy-dandy bar graph on our dashboard, it's easy to see reads each day. I also have Book Report and look on Sundays. The argument that I couldn't possibly see PageFlip work doesn't make a lot of sense to me since I would think it would work out to a certain percentage drop no matter what and it should be obvious.
As for "KU being dead," I think that sounds like wish fulfillment for some people. While I don't think KU will last forever, especially how it is now, that doesn't mean I think it's any immediate danger. If you're sitting back and waiting for KU to die, I think you're going to be wasting some prime years when you could be getting a foothold because it's certainly not going anywhere over the next few years.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

FWIW, my opinion.

Kindle Unlimited will continue as long as there are sufficient numbers of subscribers that it continues to be profitable for Amazon. If it is NOT profitable, they'll revamp it -- from the customer's perspective -- or end it. (I recognize that part of their profitability question is their costs which includes paying authors whose books are in the program.)

I would guess their most desirable subscriber is the one who has the subscription but rarely ever uses it. I also suspect there are quite a few of those -- folks who subscribed and tried it for a month or two and sort of forgot about it and the subscription renews invisibly on a credit card that they don't check charges on, or annually, so they're paying for something they don't use.

From a subscriber viewpoint, I looked at it as an experiment for myself. I wasn't sure how I'd want to use it but I gave it a try for a year. From a customer point of view, at roughly $10 a month, I'd need to borrow and read to the end 3 to 4 books a month if they would otherwise cost me $3 or $4 to buy. At that level, I won. I also won in that I could try any book that looked even a little interesting and throw it back as a DNF if I didn't like it and not feel like I'd wasted money.

However, if, as a customer, I find that most of the books I pick are the 'throw it back' kind, and only 1 or 2 a month are the 'read to the end' kind, why should I continue as a subscriber? That IS what *i\I* found and I did not renew when my first year was up. Yes, I discovered one or two new authors/series that I'll continue to follow -- but it didn't make sense for me to pay $10 a month when I was only finding 1 or 2 books each month that I really liked.

Note: I'm not talking about obvious scammy books; I'm talking seriously published books that, for me, were just not well written, or were not good stories. Obviously, this is a clear case of YMMV because it could be the same books I found not worth my time are read voraciously by a lot of other people. And that's o.k. I'm only addressing *my* experience with KU as a subscriber, and my impressions of the quality of the books to be found based on that year.

I mention this because, while I totally get that an important consideration for you all is getting paid appropriately, it sometimes helps to remember that Amazon tend to focus on positive customer experience and that is going to inform almost every decision it makes as a company. I'm not saying there is no adjustment needed; I'm saying you can't expect Amazon to decide to pay you a lot more if that's going to mean they lose subscribers (because they have to charge them more without providing additional service/product). Subscriber loss is going to mean lost profits and, while Amazon is remarkably 'woke' for a humongous company, they do still want to make a profit. So any solution has to take that, as well as customer satisfaction with the program, into account.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

No matter what Zon does to KU, scammers will increase every single day. KU has always been scammed and will continue to be scammed. It's a sub service that pay on reads - whether pages read or borrows.

All that means is a never-ending flow of scammers downloading the book and reading it - whether page flip or not. Page Flip just made the scamming faster is all. So the Zon changes didn't do much except slow them down. The scammers are still crowding in to rake in all they can off an essentially free welfare system.

There is no fixing it. If Zon removed PF and strictly counted pages by time spent, the scammers would simply program pages to be turned every so many seconds. They'll still rake in millions - robbing us indies of money. Amazon's efforts are fruitless.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

I think the obvious solution is that KU will eventually be by invitation only. They will pick and choose which authors will be able to participate.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

I doubt that supplying books to KU will be curated as it is the main reason to be exclusive to Amazon. It might also lead to legal action on the basis of KU rank boosts not being available to all suppliers. That is not going to happen as the borrow rank boost is a wonderful marketing tool for Amazon Publishing (who outsell four of the Big Five in the Kindle Store).


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> If you're sitting back and waiting for KU to die, I think you're going to be wasting some prime years when you could be getting a foothold because it's certainly not going anywhere over the next few years.


I agree with you that timing its demise is more difficult. It's sort of like any "bubble". Anyone saying the 2008 housing bubble was going to burst was called crazy... heck the prez and Bernanke were saying there was zero chance housing would collapse. And then it did.

All I know is that the fundamentals are broken and can only get worse. Now whether the demise comes from authors leaving KU, or amazon itself simply transitioning to something else, or customers leaving KU, or all three, it's hard to say. Likewise, Amazon could decide to inflate the pot and pay out .008 - in which case KU would live on forever.

But, I won't be surprised if it's essentially dead by the end of 2018. When things start to fall apart, they tend to do so quickly.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Ann in Arlington said:


> However, if, as a customer, I find that most of the books I pick are the 'throw it back' kind, and only 1 or 2 a month are the 'read to the end' kind, why should I continue as a subscriber? That IS what *i\I* found and I did not renew when my first year was up. Yes, I discovered one or two new authors/series that I'll continue to follow -- but it didn't make sense for me to pay $10 a month when I was only finding 1 or 2 books each month that I really liked.


This is the exact problem that Netflix encountered. It was cheap, but 90% of the content was crap. So they had to spend money to get higher quality content (oh look, KU letting in TP's), and even began producing their own content (just like Amazon Imprints).

I really think people underestimate how consumer behavior changes over time. When something is new, people are happy to give it a shot. As time goes on, it better have value to keep them around.

Netflix keeps raising its prices. Why? Because it's clearly done the analysis and found that the more quality content it buys, the more subscribers they get (quality content is *more* important than low price).

I genuinely think people will be surprised how quickly KU crashes if the higher quality authors start leaving.

But I think until payouts go below .004, people will keep dreaming the dream that all this stuff is just a temporary rough spell.

[edit: also, if something has established its value, you don't keep giving it away for free. That should be one of the bigger signs that KU isn't as strong as people think. Zon has to keep giving away 30 days to draw people in. By this point the reputation should be strong enough to move away from that.]


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> [edit: also, if something has established its value, you don't keep giving it away for free. That should be one of the bigger signs that KU isn't as strong as people think. Zon has to keep giving away 30 days to draw people in. By this point the reputation should be strong enough to move away from that.]


You mean like permafree books ... or those samples they hand out at Costco ... or certain "by one get one free" promotions?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> You mean like permafree books ... or those samples they hand out at Costco ... or certain "by one get one free" promotions?


The permafree strategy would be more like KU saying "Join KU for free and enjoy one free book per month indefinitely; but at any time upgrade to our $10 package and consume as many books as you like."

And the samples at Costco are more like book samples.

Costco would be insane if they offered one month worth of shampoo. That's why you get little bottles that will last you three days.

Additionally, yes, if an author builds up millions of readers, then they are nuts to stay permafree. You'll never find Stephen King or JK Rowling giving their work away for free.

But, if you want to compare KU to struggling authors trying to gain visibility, that's fine. I think it's an apples to meatloaf comparison myself.

But I readily admit that Netflix has value and they offer 30 day free trials also. The difference is they aren't paying content providers on page reads (and their system isn't being gamed). So they are absorbing the cost of that. With KU, the cost is coming out of the pot without those free subscribers contributing anything to the pot. So damage is being done to the author pool, whereas on Netflix it isn't (although, I suppose you could argue that Netflix's free trials diminish their ability to pay for content by a certain percentage).

But also, I don't even know anyone that cares about the Netflix free trial. I think it's there for baby boomers or something (or it's a standard in that segment of the industry, which is still relatively competitive). KU has no competition, so there's no need for a 30-day free trial after years in operation.

Anyway, I don't think KU is anywhere near as strong as people think. On the surface it is, but I think the loyalty of subscribers is fickle at best the deeper you look.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

There's a difference between reality and wish fulfillment. For example, I really wish you didn't have to be exclusive in KU, that the payout was a static number and that they would magically catch all the scammers. That's not reality, though. While I certainly don't think that KU will last forever (especially as it is now) I also don't believe it's going anywhere for years. If Amazon was thinking of shuttering the program they would've keep adding it to other territories. If they really wanted to save money, they would stop paying All-Star bonuses. I don't believe Amazon makes a profit on KU. I don't even think they care that much about it. What they care about is customers coming for the books and staying for the televisions. They want people to think of them first when it comes to buying everything. When it comes to KU numbers, I think they want to keep it in a certain range and that's basically it.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> man i hope they kill that thing. Any sub model can be scammed. I was so disappointed to see Kobo launch that.


Kobo makes it harder to scam by not paying for reads from free trial accounts. Less incentive for scammers when they can't just keep setting up new free trials and making bank.

For me, I never made money to speak of in Kobo's test markets, so everything coming from Kobo Plus is pure gravy.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> There's a difference between reality and wish fulfillment. For example, I really wish you didn't have to be exclusive in KU, that the payout was a static number and that they would magically catch all the scammers. That's not reality, though. While I certainly don't think that KU will last forever (especially as it is now) I also don't believe it's going anywhere for years.


I've acknowledged that's a possibility and that what kills KU (if anything) won't necessarily be one thing (much less that thing being Amazon deciding what to do with KU; their options may get made for them). But I don't see survival as 100% certain. In fact, I think it's 50/50 right now. Let's talk again when payouts reach .0035.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

To me, KU is like free checking at a bank.

The bank offers free checking to lure folks in. Once someone opens an account, the bank cross-sells money market accounts, mutual funds, mortgage loans, home equity loans, business loans, etc. Each product strengthens the relationship, and discourages going elsewhere.

Amazon offers KU to lure people in. Once someone creates an account and links it to a credit card, Amazon cross-sells a ton of other products. Each one strengthens the relationship, and discourages going elsewhere.

The bank doesn't try to make money off of free checking. Likewise, I suspect Amazon isn't trying to make money off of KU. That's not the product's purpose.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Anarchist said:


> To me, KU is like free checking at a bank.
> 
> The bank offers free checking to lure folks in. Once someone opens an account, the bank cross-sells money market accounts, mutual funds, mortgage loans, home equity loans, business loans, etc. Each product strengthens the relationship, and discourages going elsewhere.
> 
> ...


I completely agree, but, you don't have thousands of scammers bilking the bank because of free checking.


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## Alarmcall (Oct 13, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> This is the exact problem that Netflix encountered. It was cheap, but 90% of the content was crap. So they had to spend money to get higher quality content (oh look, KU letting in TP's), and even began producing their own content (just like Amazon Imprints).
> 
> I really think people underestimate how consumer behavior changes over time. When something is new, people are happy to give it a shot. As time goes on, it better have value to keep them around.
> 
> ...


So... to piggyback on your Netflix analogy, I think you're right and I think that Amazon is trying to curate their own content by doing that "Pen to Publish" contest and actually becoming a real publisher themselves.
If they succeed at getting really good content there wouldn't be any need get rid of KU.... just like Netflix didn't have to close it's doors because it didn't get HBO's content... it just made it's own Emmy Winning content.


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## Alarmcall (Oct 13, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> Worse than that, the book gets the rank bump equal to a full sale. I personally think that's the primary driver behind a lot of authors staying in KU. Remove the rank bump from the borrow and tie it to page reads (say 300 page reads equal a rank bump equal to a sale) and the Amazon store would look *totally* different than it does today.


I thought it was already tied to page read ever since they did away with the KU Borrows... ?


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## Word Fan (Apr 15, 2015)

Laran Mithras said:


> Anarchist said:
> 
> 
> > To me, KU is like free checking at a bank.
> ...


Actually, it's more like (as many banks do) the bank giving you $100 if you set up Direct Deposit to your Checking Account and keep the account for 60 days... and then the bank lowers the interest rate on everyone's savings accounts and certificates of deposit because so many people are setting up bogus temporary checking accounts to get the free cash and then closing them out.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Alarmcall said:


> I thought it was already tied to page read ever since they did away with the KU Borrows... ?


Nope, rank is still tied to borrows, only now we don't get told how many borrows we get. 
When someone borrows your book, you get a rank bump, period. 
Totally unrelated, when someone opens your book they already borrowed, right then or a year later, and reads, you get money per page they read. Period. 
That's the simplified version, of course. It depends on how/where they read if those read pages even get counted or paid, BUT pay is totally separate from rank. If they borrow you then return you unopened, you never make even a half-cent, but you still get the sales rate bump from the borrow.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think the obvious solution is that KU will eventually be by invitation only. They will pick and choose which authors will be able to participate.


Except they'd need real people to vet the invitees (wouldn't they?), and they seem allergic to using real people.


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## Guest (Oct 9, 2017)

Becca Mills said:


> Except they'd need real people to vet the invitees (wouldn't they?), and they seem allergic to using real people.


Yes. But if the "vetting" is done by algos, with the emphasis on previous sales, they won't need any humans for the vetting.


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## Alarmcall (Oct 13, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> you gotta do kobo direct. Must must must.  I know you already know that though, so you must have your reasons. But the kobo promos on freebs works very well and it costs like $10 canadian (which I think is like 5 cents American).


@Senneca42 and anyone else going wide... care to post how much you made in KU vs what you made going wide?

Because for all this talk of how good "going wide" is I'd like to see some numbers to back it up, because if we're only talking about a few sales of that don't amount to more than $1k per month encouraging people to go wide is straight garbage.

And I'd be willing to share my numbers openly as consistently make $13k-18K+ (page flip is obviously a factor here) per month being exclusive to Amazon.

I'm a squeaky clean publisher (no scams EVER) and I've been as high as $21k in early 2016 so let's talk apple to apples here.


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## Guest (Oct 9, 2017)

For what it's worth: Pulled a large catalog in several genres out of KU two weeks ago. Expected a 30% drop in revenue. Remain exclusive to Amazon. Result: No drop in revenue, instead a doubling of direct sales and a huge increase in total revenue. That is all I am saying.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

In pulling out of KU, my sales doubled and more than made up for what I lost in reads by 20% plus.

As far as wide, *I've* never claimed wide beats Amazon. But the sales (5%) are a step to a broader audience. My Apple sales are increasing every month I'm wide.

Enough to cover KU pull-out? *NO.* Only direct Amazon sales have done that. And I'm far above my KU days for income.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Alarmcall said:


> Because for all this talk of how good "going wide" is I'd like to see some numbers to back it up, because if we're only talking about a few sales of that don't amount to more than $1k per month encouraging people to go wide is straight garbage.


So that's how you're deciding what's logical, who has the most sales? So KU guy says "I make $100k and I say this"... well that's right then... oops, then wide guy comes along "I make 150k wide." ... OHHH then wide must be right.

You got a case for KU state it. 

_Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Modi Gliani said:


> Yes. But if the "vetting" is done by algos, with the emphasis on previous sales, they won't need any humans for the vetting.


I don't know. Scammers seem to find the holes in Amazon's automated processes very quickly. Might be as quick as investing $1,000 in sales when you start a new KDP account, then they're in and can scam to their heart's content. Given current technologies, I don't think this really gets fixed without human eyeballs and brains applied to actual book submissions.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

The case for KU or wide is basically, as the poster said, whether it works for you. From what I've seen, it's pretty individual. If you are making tens of thousands per month on borrows, that is awfully hard to make up. But again, depends on you, what you write, how fast you publish, how much you are willing to spend to advertise. How hard or easy it is to replicate that kind of KU money outside. It probably won't happen very fast. If KU isn't working well,not course, that's an easier call. If it's working great, you're probably also getting some extra support and visibility from Amazon on the basis of your activity there. Even if you make enough wide to make that up, it can be tough to maintain that as your visibility drops on Amazon due to having 80% or 50% of the sales you did. 

It's tricky. This thread is a bit of an echo chamber, but There's no check box. There are nuanced answers you can find for yourself based on your own situation and goals, but nobody else is likely to be able to make "a case" for you doing anything that will bring you ***success!!!*** long term. Not that simple.


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## Guest (Oct 10, 2017)

Becca Mills said:


> I don't know. Scammers seem to find the holes in Amazon's automated processes very quickly. Might be as quick as investing $1,000 in sales when you start a new KDP account, then they're in and can scam to their heart's content. Given current technologies, I don't think this really gets fixed without human eyeballs and brains applied to actual book submissions.


Then consider the expense. What willl a vetting editor cost? $35,000 a year minimum? And how many books can they vet in a day? Five or six, if they have to read most of the books. I don't think just glancing at a book would be sufficient. And how many new ebooks are uploaded each day to Select? Maybe thousands. As a vetting team you will need not just 3 or 4 people, but maybe a 100 people. At $35,000 a year minimum, that's $3.5 milllion a year for starters. Of course AZ has the money, but are they going to spend it if they can avoid it? As usual. we're guessing in the dark because they tell us nothing, treat the authors as the enemy. Any author having to subject themselves to such manipulation is a sad thing.


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## AlecHutson (Sep 26, 2016)

Well, with the current quality of scam books in KU, I think I could go through 15-20 books an hour pretty easily. Obviously the gobbldegook books are easy to spot, and with other books opening a few chapters and at random points to make sure it doesn't shift from paranormal romance to recipe book would be enough. Also make sure it's not stuffed to the gills with 80% fluff and done. 

The problem is that the scammers would just adapt. Instead of putting up gibberish they will copy / paste a non DRM book from somewhere else and submit that. Unless Amazon had a way to cross-reference the text instantaneously I don't think a human checker would be able to tell that the scammer didn't write the book. 

That said, I'm all for hiring 100 people - and it doesn't have to be in the States, you could pay good wages in other countries where they speak English very well - and having them comb through the submitted books. I'd rather wait a week after submitting to see it published and at least make life harder on the scammers than the current situation.


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## Alarmcall (Oct 13, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> For what it's worth: Pulled a large catalog in several genres out of KU two weeks ago. Expected a 30% drop in revenue. Remain exclusive to Amazon. Result: No drop in revenue, instead a doubling of direct sales and a huge increase in total revenue. That is all I am saying.


Word up to that! I'm getting ready to do the same thing If I can't find a way to turn off pageflip.

One thing that I noticed though is that, while looking through other authors catalogs that are still publishing page flip disabled books, it looks like if the book (that previously had pageflip turned off) was published before July pageflip has been turned back on, while everything published in the month of July and beyond, is still pageflip disabled.

I have no idea why this is happening, it's just an observation that I made (and I have a theory as to why).

Though it was around this same time (July) that I noticed my back catalog, which was pageflip disabled, was slowly becoming page flip enabled and anything I published, using the same method going forward, was page flip enabled.


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## Alarmcall (Oct 13, 2016)

Alarmcall said:


> @Senneca42 and anyone else going wide... care to post how much you made in KU vs what you made going wide?
> 
> Because for all this talk of how good "going wide" is I'd like to see some numbers to back it up, because if we're only talking about a few sales of that don't amount to more than $1k per month encouraging people to go wide is straight garbage.
> 
> ...


Oops!

So I should clarify.

KU is about 60% of my revenue since I'm in a Fiction that reads a lot.

But It looks like some people were able to make up for the potential loss of revenue when they left KU.

So that's all I wanted to know!


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## Alarmcall (Oct 13, 2016)

Laran Mithras said:


> In pulling out of KU, my sales doubled and more than made up for what I lost in reads by 20% plus.
> 
> As far as wide, *I've* never claimed wide beats Amazon. But the sales (5%) are a step to a broader audience. My Apple sales are increasing every month I'm wide.
> 
> Enough to cover KU pull-out? *NO.* Only direct Amazon sales have done that. And I'm far above my KU days for income.


Hey thanks for the sound reply.

So, the last question... are you in fiction or non-fiction?


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Alarmcall said:


> Hey thanks for the sound reply.
> 
> So, the last question... are you in fiction or non-fiction?


Fiction, Erotica, Subniche genres. As always YMMV.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Alarmcall said:


> Oops!
> 
> So I should clarify.
> KU is about 60% of my revenue since I'm in a Fiction that reads a lot.
> ...


hehe, ah that's totally reasonable. I thought you were asking for a *&^% measuring contest 

When I was in Ku it was a 50/50 or 60/40 (KU/direct) split most months. When I went wide, the first month I was shocked that Kobo replaced my KU revenues. The first three months my revenues were the same or a bit higher. I think I had one month where they dipped wide. Then after that, revenues started taking off.

In terms of revenue if I compare my highest month in 2016 versus my highest month in 2017... my revenues are 2000% higher this year than last for my peak month. I'm not a six-figure author, but I'm not selling one or two books a month either. If I compare total revenues in 2016 versus 2017 (even though this year isn't over)... I'm up 800% (I went wide in Jan 2017).

Now, is that all because of going wide? Or is it that I got a bookbub _because_ I was wide? Or.. would my revenues would have gone higher in KU as well? And how much of it is simply a natural progression that simply coincided with going wide?

I couldn't tell you the answers to all that. All I know is that wide didn't kill me in the least and my experience with it has been the polar opposite of what so many on kboards say to expect. I'm not saying they are wrong, just that for my situation they were.

If someone is happy in KU, they should stay in KU. If you're not happy, as I wasn't, then maybe wide is a better alternative.

A lot of folks want to be told that wide will either be 100% better or 100% worse. It's impossible to know for all with certainty. For me, I felt KU was a total mess and would only get worse, so I said that's it for me.

But I get why it's hard to make that call if you're pulling in $100k from KU. That said, I really don't think there are that many authors making that kind of bank out of KU. I used to think there were; but suffice to say, my opinion on that has changed


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## Guest (Oct 11, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> A lot of folks want to be told that wide will either be 100% better or 100% worse. It's impossible to know for all with certainty. For me, I felt KU was a total mess and would only get worse, so I said that's it for me.
> 
> But I get why it's hard to make that call if you're pulling in $100k from KU. That said, I really don't think there are that many authors making that kind of bank out of KU. I used to think there were; but suffice to say, my opinion on that has changed


What hurts is that Amazon could advise authors about strategies on the basis of their own stats without affecting their market share. But apparently and unfortunately they don't give a damn and that's too bad. (Please don't tell me about the world as is and the world as it should be. I know all about it---and all about Alexander Pope, who said whatever is is right, including the poorhouses and high infant mortality in England. The hell with that. (OK, never mind politics.)


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> What hurts is that Amazon could advise authors about strategies on the basis of their own stats without affecting their market share. But apparently and unfortunately they don't give a damn and that's too bad.


Well, that's what a smart business would do... empower their suppliers and foster a symbiotic relationship with them where both parties work together to maximize sales. In fact, in most competitive industries businesses have entire divisions dedicated to their suppliers and their resellers. They often will incentivize them (ie. through co-marketing initiatives) to maximize sales. All in the effort to have those suppliers and sellers invest in their channel-to-market over their competitors.

That's not zon's business model though. Their model is very simple... the tyranny of monopoly. Own the market, then squeeze the suppliers.

That's why monopolies are so bad, they erase all the fundamental drivers of a so-called capitalist market that only functions properly when there's competition in the market. With a monopoly (and 90% control of the ebook market is basically that) you get capitalism in name, but tyranny in practice.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Laran Mithras said:


> But this is straying a bit from the thread.


This is straying a lot from the thread. Please, no political discussions. I'll be removing some posts. PM me if you have any questions.

Betsy
KB Moderator


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

I think Modi and I readily agree Amazon uses strongarm tactics that we think is abhorrent.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

I just got the latest Fifty Shades of Grey book. The first two pages were ads for Page Flip, urging me to make it a permanent part of my reading.


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## great_gazoo (Jul 7, 2017)

What exactly is Pageflip?

If someone skips to the back of the book is there still a full payout? Is that similar to page flip?


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

great_gazoo said:


> What exactly is Pageflip?
> 
> If someone skips to the back of the book is there still a full payout? Is that similar to page flip?


Pageflip is where you can see a page as well as the page before it and the page after it. Then, in order to get somewhere quicker, you just sort of slide it along. There is a rumour that when someone actually reads using this method, the pages don't count for page reads.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Doglover said:


> Pageflip is where you can see a page as well as the page before it and the page after it. Then, in order to get somewhere quicker, you just sort of slide it along. There is a rumour that when someone actually reads using this method, the pages don't count for page reads.


It's not a rumor. Amazon has admitted many times that pages aren't counted in page flip. Their rationale is that page flip is not a mode readers are meant to use to read through a book.


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## great_gazoo (Jul 7, 2017)

So they admit authors are getting screwed over and there’s no plan to change it? Wow


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

great_gazoo said:


> So they admit authors are getting screwed over and there's no plan to change it? Wow


No, Amazon claim no-one reads this way, and so there is no problem.

We know they are screwing Authors, they've been sent evidence of there being a problem, but they continue to deny any problem.



great_gazoo said:


> What exactly is Pageflip?


On any page of a book, press the page. Before page flip, or on a book without it (there are still some) a screen popped up giving you the menu down the left side, which included the options of going to the library, beginning of book, or the cover. After page flip, this page pops up a smaller version of the page in a higher definition, with the page before to the left, and the page after to the right. Scrolling back and forth is extremely fast. On any standard sized or bigger device, it is now very easy to read in page flip mode, even with the smaller text.


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## Guest (Nov 28, 2017)

great_gazoo said:


> So they admit authors are getting screwed over and there's no plan to change it? Wow


It's a special problem for short story collections. A KU reader, for example, reading a story that gets boring, can move into the page-flip mode to scan the story quickly to the end to find out what happens, and then move to the next story in the normal mode. Meanwhile, the author is not paid for the pages scanned in the first story, something that never happens in a direct sale, since in a direct sale the reader pays for the whole book, period. Whether or how they read the book now or next year, the whole book is paid for. No matter what Amazon's intent, page-flip robs authors of money. What's even worse, is that many readers in KU do read in page-flip, and if they return to the beginning of the book after they finish reading the book and exit from there, the author gets nothing. Amazon keeps insisting it's not a problem, but it is a problem and how could they not know it's a problem?


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## great_gazoo (Jul 7, 2017)

Modi Gliani said:


> It's a special problem for short story collections. A KU reader, for example, reading a story that gets boring, can move into the page-flip mode to scan the story quickly to the end to find out what happens, and then move to the next story in the normal mode. Meanwhile, the author is not paid for the pages scanned in the first story, something that never happens in a direct sale, since in a direct sale the reader pays for the whole book, period. Whether or how they read the book now or next year, the whole book is paid for. No matter what Amazon's intent, page-flip robs authors of money. What's even worse, is that many readers in KU do read in page-flip, and if they return to the beginning of the book after they finish reading the book and exit from there, the author gets nothing. Amazon keeps insisting it's not a problem, but it is a problem and how could they not know it's a problem?


So if a reader skips to the end of the book it triggers a full payout? But if they read the whole thing and then skip back to the beginning, the author gets nothing? I thought Amazon had begun counting individual pages... not just where the reader left off. Ugh


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Puddleduck said:


> is either deliberately stupid or plain lying.


There is no 'or' about it.

It's deliberately stupid plain lying.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

loraininflorida said:


> I just got the latest Fifty Shades of Grey book. The first two pages were ads for Page Flip, urging me to make it a permanent part of my reading.


In Darker? I just went to look, clicking the look inside, but didn't see that. I can't imagine the author put that in the file. Is it an extra that Amazon is adding, then?

ETA- just downloaded the sample to see. No page flip ads.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> What they care about is customers coming for the books and staying for the televisions. They want people to think of them first when it comes to buying everything. When it comes to KU numbers, I think they want to keep it in a certain range and that's basically it.


That would be my take.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Going Incognito said:


> In Darker? I just went to look, clicking the look inside, but didn't see that. I can't imagine the author put that in the file. Is it an extra that Amazon is adding, then?
> 
> ETA- just downloaded the sample to see. No page flip ads.


I pre-ordered the book. It arrived at fourteen minutes past midnight (today is its release day). I sent it to my Kindle Fire. I opened it, the first page was the cover, the second page was all about how I should use Page Flip, the next page was more of the same.

I imagine James got some serious money from Amazon allowing them to stick those ads in, and in such a noticeable placement. And the fact that Amazon chose what was a Bestseller book even before release shows that Amazon is dead serious about getting everybody using Page Flip.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

loraininflorida said:


> I pre-ordered the book. It arrived at fourteen minutes past midnight (today is its release day). I sent it to my Kindle Fire. I opened it, the first page was the cover, the second page was all about how I should use Page Flip, the next page was more of the same.
> 
> I imagine James got some serious money from Amazon allowing them to stick those ads in, and in such a noticeable placement. And the fact that Amazon chose what was a Bestseller book even before release shows that Amazon is dead serious about getting everybody using Page Flip.


What's the wording of the ad? Do they talk about Page-Flip as though it's just for navigating the book, not reading it?


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

great_gazoo said:


> If someone skips to the back of the book is there still a full payout?


That's a separate issue from Page-Flip. It used to be the case that skipping to the end generated a full payout, but they seem to have fixed that problem on most devices. Now only the pages someone actually looks at are counted, so if you look at p. 1 and then skip to the last page, the author gets paid for two page-reads, not the whole book.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

loraininflorida said:


> I imagine James got some serious money from Amazon allowing them to stick those ads in, and in such a noticeable placement. And the fact that Amazon chose what was a Bestseller book even before release shows that Amazon is dead serious about getting everybody using Page Flip.


dead serious about not paying for page reads is more like it


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

So what's their next line to us going to be? 'It's not being used that way' never really worked on anyone, but surely they won't be able to stick with that when they're pimping it out even more actively.


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## great_gazoo (Jul 7, 2017)

So they know we don’t get paid per page with pageflip but they don’t care if peddling it hurts the authors?


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## Alarmcall (Oct 13, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> hehe, ah that's totally reasonable. I thought you were asking for a *&^% measuring contest
> 
> When I was in Ku it was a 50/50 or 60/40 (KU/direct) split most months. When I went wide, the first month I was shocked that Kobo replaced my KU revenues. The first three months my revenues were the same or a bit higher. I think I had one month where they dipped wide. Then after that, revenues started taking off.
> 
> ...


Seneca! Thanks so much for your thorough answer.

And I'm right there with you... people MAY have been pulling in that much before pageflip but no WAY they are doing it now... it seems it's mathematically impossible.

BUT...

I'm looking at expanding into Ibooks next... in your opinion, does the apple platform/algorithm work the same as Amazon's (i.e. reviews & sales give you better visibility in the store) or does Apple do it differently?

That's my only major concern...learning the way a new platform works with no real documentation...


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Puddleduck said:


> In other words, they're not trying to make things better for authors because they're trying to get everyone they can't kick around to leave. Because they don't want business partners; they want servants. I predict that, long-term, this trend will only continue.


I used to say that KU was for the desperate. Oh people hated that. But I still believe it (with the exception of a handful who can move massive volume in KU; and another handful who are in KU so they can grey hat their way to the top). "I can't sell books, so I need KU." is the mantra of most KU authors.

I'll be clear, there's nothing wrong with being desperate. *This industry is brutal*. But that desperation has given zon total control over all the authors in KU. Everyone is going to learn a very valuable lesson in life... which is being subservient is never rewarded, it is always taken advantage of. As it should be, because if you had power you'd never submit to zon... so they know you aren't submitting to KU because you care about zon, you're doing it because you feel you have no other choice (you're chasing what dollar bills you can). And so they are going to turn you out seven ways from Sunday just because they can.

KU was broken from day one, and it will remain forever broken.

And it's only going to get worse. Those who track top 100 ranks will notice something BIG is going on right now. A lot of KU "a book a month" authors are in for some real pain in the coming months.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

great_gazoo said:


> So they know we don't get paid per page with pageflip but they don't care if peddling it hurts the authors?


Welcome. Welcome to hell. Want me to pass the kool-aid? Whiskey?


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

loraininflorida said:


> I pre-ordered the book. It arrived at fourteen minutes past midnight (today is its release day). I sent it to my Kindle Fire. I opened it, the first page was the cover, the second page was all about how I should use Page Flip, the next page was more of the same.
> 
> I imagine James got some serious money from Amazon allowing them to stick those ads in, and in such a noticeable placement. And the fact that Amazon chose what was a Bestseller book even before release shows that Amazon is dead serious about getting everybody using Page Flip.


If this is the case, I think it needs its own thread, as it's being buried in here. I'd also like to see a screenshot, as it's not showing for me.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Alarmcall said:


> I'm looking at expanding into Ibooks next... in your opinion, does the apple platform/algorithm work the same as Amazon's (i.e. reviews & sales give you better visibility in the store) or does Apple do it differently?
> 
> That's my only major concern...learning the way a new platform works with no real documentation...


I don't really track how the other platforms work. iTunes is a mystery to me because I go through D2D, so no point even learning about how they work since I have no ability to interact with them directly.

Kobo I love and am direct with them. B&N is a wasteland, although after my last bub I got a review there and sold some books. So that was nice.

But Amazon remains my top seller. Personally, I no longer view the industry as KU versus wide. I see it as subscription model versus direct sales.

Even if I only sold on Amazon, I'd still do it directly and not in KU. Then again, I sell for $4.99. If I were selling at $2.99 or $1.99 maybe KU would make sense (although I think I'd still need to consume a bag of LSD for it to do so)


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

I'm sorry I didn't take a screenshot, but I was on my Kindle Fire, not my PC. I also did not read the Page Flip ad word for word as it was two pages long and I was anxious to get to the Fifty Page content. When I opened the book back again today, the ads were gone. This is normal for a Fire, ads disappear.

My first impression when I saw the ad was "Why would James put a treasure map in Fifty Shades?" The design of the ad was very colorful with professional graphics (the second page was just black and white instructions). The ad was all about telling people about Page Flip, educating them how to use it, and strongly encouraging them to do so.

Amazon puts a lot of its ads on my Fire, but this is the first time (for me anyway) that I saw an Amazon ad *inside* a book, and I read a fair amount of bestsellers on my Fire.

I think the purpose was pretty clear. Amazon knew, from the pre-orders alone, that an avalanche of readers would be reading that book. So, Amazon designed and placed an ad that would trick/trap a reader eager to get to Fifty Shades content into instead reading an ad about Page Flip.

I am in no way disparaging anyone in KU (I stayed in for years). But I think any hope that Amazon has any interest in making Page Flip less injurious to indie authors is pretty much a pipedream. The intent of that ad was to get as many people as possible using Page Flip and to get them to use it as much as possible.


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2017)

loraininflorida said:


> I am in no way disparaging anyone in KU (I stayed in for years). But I think any hope that Amazon has any interest in making Page Flip less injurious to indie authors is pretty much a pipedream. The intent of that ad was to get as many people as possible using Page Flip and to get them to use it as much as possible.


Yes. But can anyone tell me what benefit PageFlip is to Amazon except to reduce the pages payout to authors? I don't understand why they are more interested in getting people to use PageFlip than any other enhancement. What the devil is going on? This thing has become an enigma.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> Yes. But can anyone tell me what benefit PageFlip is to Amazon except to reduce the pages payout to authors? I don't understand why they are more interested in getting people to use PageFlip than any other enhancement. What the devil is going on? This thing has become an enigma.


There is no enigma here.

Page flip is the 2nd method of reducing author payouts by 30%.

I'm now waiting to see what the 3rd one is. We'll know midway through 2018.


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> There is no enigma here.
> 
> Page flip is the 2nd method of reducing author payouts by 30%.
> 
> I'm now waiting to see what the 3rd one is. We'll know midway through 2018.


But if what you say is true, why don't they just reduce the Global Fund padding? Wouldn't that be the quickest and easiest way to reduce author payouts?


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## AnnaB (May 14, 2016)

I might have seen something like that (and zapped it so fast I barely remember what it was), but it wasn't an ad, or part of any particular book I think. Just what was displayed shortly after I re-opened the (Android) application for the first time after an update.

On the other hand they seem to have made page-flip less trigger-happy which I appreciate. For a few months I always ended up triggering it when I just wanted to turn the page but swiped "too much" at the center (as I could do earlier before the app got blighted with it), instead of sticking to the edges. Wished I could just deactivate it, not because of author concerns as I'm not a KU subscriber, but because I never made use of it. Sequential page reads/skims and the sliding rule at the bottom or the table of contents were just fine.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

BTW, the ad I see when I turn on my Kindle Fire is to join KU --one month free. I guess they have to finance that _some _way.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> But if what you say is true, why don't they just reduce the Global Fund padding? Wouldn't that be the quickest and easiest way to reduce author payouts?


Gotta be seen to be doing better and better. It's all just optics. Everything about KU is designed to lead authors into believing that that's where the money is and that's where the visibility and readers are.

Zon plays the smoke and mirrors game just as much as the grey hatters.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> But if what you say is true, why don't they just reduce the Global Fund padding? Wouldn't that be the quickest and easiest way to reduce author payouts?


The payout rate is the defacto way in which authors judge if KU is worth being in.

If they reduced the payout down to .0035, authors would simply pull out en-masse, which would obviously be fatal to KU. Amazon know this. The longer it takes them to get down that low, the less authors they lose in the process.

The reduction in the payout rate is a long term strategy, designed to reduce the amount paid to authors, partly through redirecting sales into a mechanism that pays much less. But in the short term, they wanted to pay less, so they changed the pages determination, and then made a device change. It will take several more years before 0.003? becomes normal, but another 30% downgrade will most likely happen well before then. imo.

There are plenty of authors in KU out there who have never even heard of page-flip, and have no idea how it affects their pages read. These are the ones who only look at the payout. These are the ones who would freak, if Amazon reduced the payout to where they want it.

Amazon first changed the page counts on books to lower payouts by 30%.

Not being able to do this again, they took a device mechanism change to do it a second time.

Both of these allowed them to keep the payout higher than they want, and so keep authors from freaking out too much.

They can cope with authors leaving as they figure out the scam. They cant cope with a mass exodus. Just look at Google Play. Threatened with tens of thousands of books leaving their catalogue when Pronoun removes them early next year, they suddenly opened up offers to authors to sign up with them again. Amazon is not going to risk losing large chunks of KU in a short time. So they use back door methods of reducing their payouts instead.


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> The payout rate is the defacto way in which authors judge if KU is worth being in.
> 
> If they reduced the payout down to .0035, authors would simply pull out en-masse, which would obviously be fatal to KU. Amazon know this. The longer it takes them to get down that low, the less authors they lose in the process.
> 
> ...


You may be right. I don't know. Maybe sooner or later someone inside Amazon is going to pull down the curtain and the Wizard will be very embarrassed.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

The people who I feel sorry for are the authors who know nothing of Page Flip and look at their KDP graphs and think "Reader only read 10 pages of my book, I must be terrible" or "So few people are reading my book, maybe I should give up." IMO that's the real tragedy in Amazon doing this, even beyond the money, letting authors think people aren't reading their books.


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## Jessica has the Power (Dec 8, 2011)

"I can't sell books, so I need KU." is the mantra of most KU authors.  

What Seneca said ^

I have friends who are some of the biggest sellers in KU (romance, of course). One took hers out in an attempt to go wide and was so frustrated with her first wide release that she eventually put it back in KU.

Personally, I would have toughed it out but it's hard to see your income slashed so I understand the fear. When you're a KU author though, for many, because they don't get X amount of $ or visibility right away like they would with KU, they might say going wide is too hard. All i know is that when you're in KU and have never had an audience at the other retailers, it's going to take time to win them over PLUS build up your Amazon readers and re-train them to PAY for your books. But it will eventually happen. They just need to stick it out for a few books (then again...maybe not? Maybe some books are just better suited to KU).

I'm a wide author, hybrid in all ways, and just did a KU book straight into the system. In the past I've waited a few weeks or months to drop a book in so I was curious to see how I would do with going straight in.

First, I released at the wrong time - this time of year is always bad for me. And despite surging to the top 20 on the Amazon charts (in the top 100) that was only my core base buying or borrowing the book. The KU crowd (a new audience for me) didn't discover me because my also-boughts took five to six days to kick in (same with my paperback). Usually it tales two (and I release monthly). Those five days, my book was dead in the water (I say that because of how fast I dropped and because I had high expectations of how the book would do in KU).

Then I got one of the Amazon notifications (the daily thing they send to everyone's phone) and the book surged. Saved my ass. This was after I complained to my rep about the also boughts so maybe they took pity on me or maybe they always had this planned. All I can say is thank god for that notification! Brought me back almost to the top 10.

The funny thing about being in KU with this book though is that in comparing it to my best selling book (which was wide) of 2017, it doesn't come close, despite this KU  book still in the top 100 two weeks later. Because of this, I'm still not sure I'll do KU again. I don't sell well at the other retailers and never have (wish I did) but for my books in the past, people will fork over the money to purchase it and maybe that's something I need to hold on to. After all a sale is a sale and that's especially true if these page reads aren't what they used to be (my KU pals say that this is a fraction of what they used to get. One author, who isn't even hugely popular, said she had 4 mil in one day...man, those must have been the days!)

And honestly, if I hadn't gotten that notification, my book would have done far worse being in KU then a normal wide release from me. Because that itself is something I couldn't control or ask or pay for, what are the odds that Amazon will do it again for me? Low, I'm guessing.

In some ways I wish I could have gone in with KU back when the going was good and people (in my genre) were averaging 500K+ page reads a day. They got all the audiobook deals, the foreign publications, the huge followings. Now it seems like I missed all the max profit KU could bring (though I do love the benefit that new readers are discovering my backlist this way). But that's life. Better to try it out now and see for myself then not try it at all and wonder.

ANYWAY I'm rambling, so sorry. AND I know that this thread had little to do with the page reads ad inside of Darker (though honestly I was just talking with my husband the other day about how ads are going to star running inside our kindles...maybe this is the start?).

PS long time lurker, just wanted to say I love you K-Boards guys, though I rarely comment, your information, theories and even bickering have always been helpful, if not entertaining.


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## Jessica has the Power (Dec 8, 2011)

Seneca42 said:


> And it's only going to get worse. Those who track top 100 ranks will notice something BIG is going on right now. A lot of KU "a book a month" authors are in for some real pain in the coming months.


Can you elaborate further on this? What's your theory and what kind of changes (I do release a book almost every month but I'm also mostly wide).


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

loraininflorida said:


> I pre-ordered the book. It arrived at fourteen minutes past midnight (today is its release day). I sent it to my Kindle Fire. I opened it, the first page was the cover, the second page was all about how I should use Page Flip, the next page was more of the same.
> 
> I imagine James got some serious money from Amazon allowing them to stick those ads in, and in such a noticeable placement. And the fact that Amazon chose what was a Bestseller book even before release shows that Amazon is dead serious about getting everybody using Page Flip.


That's odd, because that particular book isn't available in Kindle Unlimited. Seems it would make no difference to the author if you did read it in page flip.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Doglover said:


> That's odd, because that particular book isn't available in Kindle Unlimited. Seems it would make no difference to the author if you did read it in page flip.


It wouldn't. That's kinda the point.


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## Mercedes Vox (Jul 22, 2014)

Doglover said:


> That's odd, because that particular book isn't available in Kindle Unlimited. Seems it would make no difference to the author if you did read it in page flip.


But the latest 50SOG rehash's Kindle version will land in front of an awful lot of readers--romance readers, specifically--many of whom are voracious consumers of the genre and subscribe to KU as a result. Seed planted.

If Amazon acknowledges that page reads via page-flip are not being counted for payment _and_ they're actively pimping the feature to one of KU's biggest audiences, that's downright insidious.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

One side of the mouth:"Readers don't use Page Flip so the author isn't affected." Other side of the mouth: "Please, read your stories using Page Flip!"

So, yeah, in this case, Zon is evil. I'll allow a little bit of cynicism into my usual reality-optimism.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Seneca42 said:


> I used to say that KU was for the desperate. Oh people hated that. But I still believe it (with the exception of a handful who can move massive volume in KU; and another handful who are in KU so they can grey hat their way to the top). "I can't sell books, so I need KU." is the mantra of most KU authors.


Long before KU I tried to put my books on other platforms. When I attempted to register on some of them it would ask what country I came from using a drop-down menu. I would list South Africa. It would then ask for an address and zip code. Unless you entered a US zip code you couldn't proceed further. Other platforms required a US bank account. I eventually gave up. That is why I am in KU  There are probably other authors with various reasons for staying in.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Jessica has the Power said:


> Can you elaborate further on this? What's your theory and what kind of changes (I do release a book almost every month but I'm also mostly wide).


They've clearly switched up the algo. The top 100 in scifi has lots of movement in it now (has for about a week) and there are far fewer new releases. It's early, but I think they may have killed the NR bump completely (or maybe it's down to 5 days). A lot of older books with lots of reviews are suddenly back in the list and a lot of the newer books are out. I've never seen as much movement in the list as lately, so something clearly has changed.

I think zon has had enough of people churning the NRL and bum rushing the charts with street teams, so they've tweaked the algos to kill all that.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> I think zon has had enough of people churning the NRL and bum rushing the charts with street teams, so they've tweaked the algos to kill all that.


That would actually be quite a relief if true.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Lydniz said:


> That would actually be quite a relief if true.


When I read Seneca's post, I was thinking the same thing in some ways. I know in the past authors have complained that Amazon was pushing their back lists out of sight. Maybe there's been a change in the way new releases are handled, but there may also have been some tweaking if the algorithms were deliberately pushing the back lists out of sight.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Bill Hiatt said:


> When I read Seneca's post, I was thinking the same thing in some ways. I know in the past authors have complained that Amazon was pushing their back lists out of sight. Maybe there's been a change in the way new releases are handled, but there may also have been some tweaking if the algorithms were deliberately pushing the back lists out of sight.


It dovetails with the deranking on bubs / sales spikes. I hesitate to call it "curation", but zon are gating the top 100 for sure.

Further observations:

1) there are more non-KU books there than before
2) there seems to be almost no 99c books (hard for me to know for sure though cuz I'm canadian, so what I see as price isn't always what the US price actually is). But if true, they are keeping promos out of the top 100 by weighting overall sale value (ie. a book for $5 counts as five 99c)
3) Books can still break in, I've seen a number of them including some kboarders. But they get kicked down super fast now, whereas before they used to stick for weeks.

Something has changed big time. Big enough that the model of releasing a book every 2-4 weeks is over; at least if your intent was visibility in the top 100.

What will be interesting is if this change is system-wide and will impact AMS and other such things.

But it's clear, zon does not want all these bum rushing street teamer grey hatters owning the charts. So they've changed things up to get rid of them.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> They've clearly switched up the algo. The top 100 in scifi has lots of movement in it now (has for about a week) and there are far fewer new releases. It's early, but I think they may have killed the NR bump completely (or maybe it's down to 5 days). A lot of older books with lots of reviews are suddenly back in the list and a lot of the newer books are out. I've never seen as much movement in the list as lately, so something clearly has changed.
> 
> I think zon has had enough of people churning the NRL and bum rushing the charts with street teams, so they've tweaked the algos to kill all that.


Here's my thing: No new release bump, no visibility, no sales, no flowthrough/flowback. May as well give up.

No author can live on a new release only lasting for days.

While this seems like a good thing, in reality, this kills everyone except those spending $10,000 a month on advertising.

Which I suspect is the whole object - force those writers who dont do AMS advertising into doing it, because if you dont, your new release, regardless of how big the day 1 spike is, will just be a stone in the lake - 1 splash and gone forever.

Once again, Amazon screws the average author over, while people think its a good thing.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> Here's my thing: No new release bump, no visibility, no sales, no flowthrough/flowback. May as well give up.
> 
> No author can live on a new release only lasting for days.
> 
> ...


I'll agree and disagree.

Without knowing exactly how the algo works, the surge in older works with lots of reviews suggest they are factoring in an author's "presence" or "cumulative activity" on zon. Not saying 100%, but some kind of weight. There could be a 100 variables that are being factored differently. Regardless, the result is books that have sold a ton and which are currently selling, seem to be back in the ranks... which essentially pushes out the "flash in the pans" and the "street team" brigades (or makes it exponentially harder for them to get sticky). Who knows, maybe they've decreased the weight that a KU borrow generates, which is how the street teams were bum rushing the ranks.

You are correct though, it will just be a different set of authors occupying those top spots.

However, I'm personally okay with that. If a book has sold tens of thousands (and assuming it's still selling well today) it should be up there. I have no issue with genuinely hot selling books being at the top of the charts... that's what's suppose to be there 

What annoys me to see are these gangs of authors who team up and use every tactic in the book to swarm the charts. They are all using KU's "borrow for rank" loophole to get visibility. If rank was based on reads, they wouldn't be anywhere near the top of the charts.

I don't think this will lead to more marketing spend. In fact, the opposite. The very fact you could bum rush the charts and then stay sticky through marketing spend was partly what was driving marketing costs so high. Now, marketing spend (hoping anyway) will be detached from the charts for the most part because that game is over. You ain't going to break 100 for long and you ain't going to get sticky just by spending a ton of money; you'll actually need real readers. That's why I hesitate to call this "curation", but it's something akin to it. Somehow zon is weighting books people are actually reading (not borrowing) more than they use to.

Now, what zon needs to work on next is removing the "pay to win" from AMS. That's why i was saying, if this change is system wide it will be very interesting. If they start valuing diversity (ie. the consumer experience), rather than the deepest pockets get all the visibility and everyone else gets none, it will be a good thing.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> It's early, but I think they may have killed the NR bump completely (or maybe it's down to 5 days). A lot of older books with lots of reviews are suddenly back in the list and a lot of the newer books are out. I've never seen as much movement in the list as lately, so something clearly has changed.


I'll pitch in with my anecdotal support. My backlist has suddenly churned up surprising sales and I have seen a change in the carousel for my own books. I am seeing older titles of mine listed in some of the current offerings I have where just a few weeks before there were primarily only competitors listed there. I say "primarily" because I usually have two good sellers going at once and the one always shows in the other's carousel.

What is interesting is to see books of mine from my backlist show up in competitors' carousels.

Yes, something has definitely changed.

I have also noticed a tightening of the visibility via ranking on a new release. Much less effect now than last month. More velocity appears to be required to get the same boost.


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## Guest (Nov 30, 2017)

1) This is Spot on



> It dovetails with the deranking on bubs / sales spikes. I hesitate to call it "curation", but zon are gating the top 100 for sure.
> 
> Further observations:
> 
> ...


2) This is also spot on



> While this seems like a good thing, in reality, this kills everyone except those spending $10,000 a month on advertising.
> 
> Which I suspect is the whole object - force those writers who dont do AMS advertising into doing it, because if you dont, your new release, regardless of how big the day 1 spike is, will just be a stone in the lake - 1 splash and gone forever.


******************

3) What was the old old model of Publishing

Tight control of what gets published
Selling books at high prices
Big Publishers buying $5,000 and $10,000 ad spots from the book stores and/or offering them placement money (i.e. a higher cut of book sales)

****

4) What is the threat of the new model

A) Indie Authors taking over with free books as marketing and then a steady supply of $0.99 books, $0.99 box sets (almost unstoppable), and $2.99 books
Measures to Mitigate this: Reducing bumps, hiding lower priced books, changing bestseller lists to 'top grossing lists'

B) Bestseller lists getting inundated with low priced books
Measures to mitigate this: Tighter control of Top 100, reducing tail of promotions, requiring more sales to hit Top 100 lists, introducing new lists of 'Most Read' and 'Most Sold' etc. which are very focused on higher priced books

C) No more sales of $5,000 and $10,000 spots. No more placement money revenue being as big because those higher priced books aren't selling as much

Measures to mitigate this: Advertising Channels being slowed. Routing Authors to one Advertising Channel that only allows big spenders to do well. Hiding lower priced books which have no placement money and instead showing only higher priced books

***********************

5) It's really good that more and more people are realizing this

6) It's really good that now the algorithms have to resort to extreme measures like hiding ranks to achieve its goals

**********************

7) The algorithms have all ten fingers and five toes in the dam. But the dam is still going to break

 There is a book called SIMPLIFY/SIMPLICITY by Richard Koch. It talks about how people underestimate what lower prices do

When ebooks are in the $0 for marketing and $1 to $5 for sales range. As opposed to $5 to $20

Number of book sales will go up a lot
People will read a lot more
Authors using free as marketing and $1 to $5 for paid books will COMPLETELY take over - seeing sales 10 to 50 times more than Publishers sticking to $5 to $15

So the $32 billion a year trade market

will basically TRANSFORM into a market focused on lower priced ebooks and higher sales of those lower priced ebooks

$20 billion a year for indie books
$5 biillion a year for Publishers etc (down from $25 billion or so)

New Markets and New Countries that might contribute anywhere from $10 to $20 billion a year. However, those too will be dominated by indie authors

*************

9) It's creative destruction due to innovation by indie authors i.e. free as marketing, $0.99 books, $0.99 box sets

The prize is that indies go from perhaps $5 billion a year in book sales to $30 to $40 billion

The downside is that established players (including book stores and ebook stores) might see their share go down massively. Down from $25 billion a year to $5 to $10 billion a year. This would wipe out nearly all of them. Because they were built for a world with $5 to $15 ebooks. They simply can't survive in a $0 to $5 ebook world


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

I don't feel the free-marketing and 99 cent approach is causing a downward spiral.

If anything, I see bounce-back. I see a lot of authors raising prices on books, rather than continuing to reduce them.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Laran Mithras said:


> What is interesting is to see books of mine from my backlist show up in competitors' carousels.
> 
> Yes, something has definitely changed.


This tells me that zon feel they have a content issue. That what they've been presenting to consumers has grown stale or one-dimensional.

What will be interesting to see is whether these changes also take into account sub categories, which are also a giant chit show. The same authors bum rushing the charts are also category stuffing. If we start to see them getting pushed out of categories they shouldn't be in, then we know zon is doing more than just refreshing how the charts work, but are actually curating to some degree.

And looking at my sub cat, it actually seems to have changed a bit for the better. It used to be 95% of the books didn't belong there, and now it's about 60% of the books don't belong there. Which may mean it's just going to take some time for the changes to push the books that don't belong there out completely.

Ultimately though, it doesn't make a ton of sense for zon to boost up older books as a curation method. The *only* reason to do that (to my mind) is they want to squash the gang of authors who are running a pulp mill to leverage the NRL bump and their massive street teams. It would seem zon is tired of that crap.

See, the thing these authors all seem to have in common is that their new release does gangbusters (because of their street team) but their older works are selling almost nothing. Similarly, their reviews pile up like grease lightning for a few weeks, then suddenly stop (as their street team effect ends). So if you weight back catalog sales, you can squash this particular group of authors quite easily while still allowing other new release authors to do well regardless.

Zon is clearly shifting towards some kind of model that cares about the general performance of an author, not just the one-time push they are able to generate. It looks like the days of paying people off craigslist for reviews and borrows is coming to an end 

It would seem also that bookbub was just an unfortunate casualty in all this. Although, I still say, it would have taken no effort on zon's part to whitelist bookbub books. WHy they didn't is beyond me.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Because Bookbub is a competing factor for advertising dollars. If they rank-strip for bookbubs - even temporarily - much of the attraction is muted. Authors would then be more likely to advertise using AMS.

With the ever-increasing click costs, Zon smells profits.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Laran Mithras said:


> Because Bookbub is a competing factor for advertising dollars. If they rank-strip for bookbubs - even temporarily - much of the attraction is muted. Authors would then be more likely to advertise using AMS.


Amazon is wise enough to know it's not an either-or situation. It's not like people who get Bookbubs therefore don't use AMS. And people who get Bookbubs are also often aiming at sell-through, which benefits Amazon too. I don't think they're trying to defeat Bookbub.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Lydniz said:


> Amazon is wise enough to know it's not an either-or situation. It's not like people who get Bookbubs therefore don't use AMS. And people who get Bookbubs are also often aiming at sell-through, which benefits Amazon too. I don't think they're trying to defeat Bookbub.


You're missing the point.

BB now have a similar advertising mechanism to AMS which is a direct competition. Dollars spent in the Bookbub auctions are not spent in AMS. So the more authors Amazon can put off using the BB auction system, the more come back to spend the money with AMS.

A lot of authors use both now. But that wont stop Amazon considering the BB advertising system as a competitor.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Lydniz said:


> Amazon is wise enough to know it's not an either-or situation. It's not like people who get Bookbubs therefore don't use AMS. And people who get Bookbubs are also often aiming at sell-through, which benefits Amazon too. I don't think they're trying to defeat Bookbub.


This is sort of true in the sense that there are plenty of authors willing to spend money on advertising. So I suspect both bub and zon have more ads coming in than they can show.

However, never discount the role of ego. There are still humans behind all this and people get upset over the oddest things. "how dare they challenge our ad system, we'll show them."

That said, I really think this has way more to do with some early-days attempt at curation. The diversity in the scifi top 100 is impressive lately. New names, different types of stories, etc.

As a reader the top 100 had become utterly useless. Now it's not.

So the primary motive behind this change, i believe, is not profit driven, it was to get rid of the circlejerk author gangs that were working together to usurp the charts, using borrow bumps to do it. It's possible they've diminished the weight given to a borrow. Maybe it takes two or three borrows now to equal a sale.

It's too early to tell, but in a month or two someone will figure out what they've done.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> You're missing the point.
> 
> BB now have a similar advertising mechanism to AMS which is a direct competition. Dollars spent in the Bookbub auctions are not spent in AMS. So the more authors Amazon can put off using the BB auction system, the more come back to spend the money with AMS.
> 
> A lot of authors use both now. But that wont stop Amazon considering the BB advertising system as a competitor.


Bookbub is an occasional advertising opportunity. AMS is something you can do all the time. If a miracle occurred, and I got a Bookbub, would I cut my ad budget on AMS? No. If I could get a Bookbub every month on every book I advertise in AMS, only then would I stop using AMS--and we know that scenario is impossible.

Someone on a really tight budget might cut back on AMS to pay for a Bookbub, but those aren't going to be people spending a lot on AMS even if Bookbub doesn't exist.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Someone on a really tight budget might cut back on AMS to pay for a Bookbub, but those aren't going to be people spending a lot on AMS even if Bookbub doesn't exist.


Additionally there's no need to cut back. Bookbub 100% pays for itself and more. You never ever lose money on it. Well, maybe if you are running a freebie, but you'll still make back more than the ad in sell through easily.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Bookbub is an occasional advertising opportunity. AMS is something you can do all the time. If a miracle occurred, and I got a Bookbub, would I cut my ad budget on AMS? No. If I could get a Bookbub every month on every book I advertise in AMS, only then would I stop using AMS--and we know that scenario is impossible.
> 
> Someone on a really tight budget might cut back on AMS to pay for a Bookbub, but those aren't going to be people spending a lot on AMS even if Bookbub doesn't exist.


No. This is not what I'm talking about. The once in a blue moon ad is not the issue here.

*BB ALSO have an anytime as much as you want to spend advertising mechanism very like AMS.*

It has nothing to do with being selected, and everything to do with how much you spend.


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## Guest (Dec 2, 2017)

1) This: If I could get a Bookbub every month on every book I advertise in AMS, only then would I stop using AMS--and we know that scenario is impossible.

* Actually that scenario is not impossible

eReaderNewsToday and PixelOfInk had millions of readers (including huge presence on Facebook) in 2012

If in mid 2012 and early 2013 they had not embraced 'stop showing as many free books' due to affiliate money restrictions, their readers would not have migrated to other sites, and they would have between 5 and 20 million readers each. 2012 to 2017 is 5 years. Combine already being in the millions and word of mouth and they could easily reach 10 to 20 million each

They would be BIGGER than Bookbub, because in 2012 Bookbub had just started and even Jan 2013 it was not at a million readers, whereas ENT and POI were at millions in mid 2012 itself

PLUS

You would have (if the algorithms weren't dropping acid) another 3 to 5 book promotion companies that would be very big

So you'd have at least 5 and perhaps more outlets of the size of Bookbub

And it would also help accelerate things because - the more big promotion sites - the more indie authors and authors can do well - the more earnings - the more money for big promotion sites to grow
************

2) This: BB ALSO have an anytime as much as you want to spend advertising mechanism very like AMS.

This is SUPER spot on

The authors who are willing to pay ANYTHING. They are the most lucrative

We OFTEN have to turn away people who want to spend $10,000 (as we can't generate 5,000 sales for a book, yet). However, there are many many people who for various reasons (building their business, getting a reputation, getting a movie deal, getting a following, etc.) are willing to pay anything

And they will spend it ANYWHERE

without any thought of ROI or instant ROI

for many people - one bestseller launch means their business gets a permanent 25% boost in sales as they can say - #1 Bestseller in Business, or something similar

*************

3) Other marketing venues allow EVERYONE to advertise

If you want TIGHT control of what sells in your store
You need TIGHT control of what is in the Top 100

that is impossible if you have big marketing venues (or a combination of big and small marketing venues) that allow absolutely anyone to promote and get sales

3b) The book stores if they control main marketing venues/channels can combine Church and State i.e.

They can take advertising money only from those who also make them a lot of revenue share money

They can stop taking money from those who make them some advertising money but very little revenue share money

3c) In fact, it could be argued that it is ALL about saving that revenue share money. If $10 ebooks get replaced by $0.99 ebooks in a bestseller spot, then the bookstore is replacing $3 to $5 per book (depending on placement money cut) with 65 cents per book. The latter 65 cents might not even be enough to keep things running and fund R&D etc.

*********

4) As stated above - never discount the human factor.

There is a human need to feel that if you spent 10 to 15 building up an ebook store (as most ebook store companies have), then you are entitled to control of the store and make the lion's share of the money

15 years building up a book store

OR

someone comes in and in 3 to 6 years gathers up all readers via discounted offers and suddenly is threatening to take over the store completely

**************************

5) In all of this authors are making a VERY BIG ASSUMPTION

that the new model (if promotion sites are wiped out successfully) will still have room FOR THEIR BOOKS

that if there are new channels dominant, those would still allow indie authors to do what promotion sites and promo stacking allows them to do

Let's consider the last set of people who made a similar assumption

It was affiliate partners/promotion sites that bought into - Just replace free with $0.99 and $0.99 with discounted ebooks. Readers won't go anywhere

what was the REALITY?

a) readers went to other promotion sites that didn't walk away from free books and $0.99 deals
b) The affiliate program kicked out promo sites when they were no longer as big

Here: http://the-digital-reader.com/2016/06/15/amazon-brings-the-hammer-down-on-discount-ebook-sites/

The last time people bought into the MYTH that you can suddenly convince readers to start buying $5 to $15 books instead, it only weakened those people, and once they were weak they were eliminated from the ecosystem. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it

Those promotion sites that didn't buy into the BS being sold that reader habits can be changed - now have 10 million+ and 5 million+ readers
Those that did - are either going or gone or weakened

******************************

6) This is NOT a bug. This is a feature

The ecosystem is set up so that everyone who is becoming strong (whether on creation side or on marketing side) gets wiped out every 3 to 4 years

If you look in any other ecosystem, you have the early companies becoming very big

IBM -> Microsoft
Microsoft -> Software companies
Internet -> Google
Apple -> app companies
Android -> Samsung via phones, Xiaomi, etc.

How is it that in this ecosystem we don't have the early mover companies and early mover authors becoming SUPER BIG?

In fact, hardly any of the very early companies or authors are very big. How is that possible??
Bookbub is 2012 launch

Why aren't the 2007 to 2011 launched sites big any more? Every year from 2008 to 2012 there were 1 or 2 companies that were the BIGGEST. How is it possible that all of them got weakened. If the ecosystem were functioning properly many/most should still be strong

Now do that analysis (not anecdotes, actual analysis) for other participants of the ecosystem. What pattern do you see there? Are the early winners still winners? Or is there a design to keep everyone small


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## Guest (Dec 2, 2017)

Doesn't Amazon own GoodReads? They have just opened another channel for advertising free ebooks:

From the GR blog:

    Today, we’re announcing our new U.S. giveaways program, with two packages offering new high-impact features to drive increased book discovery and reader reviews. The new program is designed to deliver additional marketing benefits that authors and publishers have been asking for, including more ways to reach the author’s readers, and automatically adding the book to the Want-to-Read lists of anyone entering the giveaway. And for the first time, Kindle Direct Publishing authors can run giveaways for Kindle ebooks—a feature previously only available to traditional publishers. All of these benefits are included in the Standard package which costs $119 for up to 100 copies (either Kindle ebook or print book). The new Goodreads Giveaways program, which replaces our current Giveaways program, will go live on January 9, 2018, and will initially be for giveaways open to U.S. residents.

    We’re also introducing a Premium package, offering special “Featured” placement on the highly-trafficked Giveaways page, as well as all the benefits of the Standard Package. The Premium package is $599 and is available for either print books or Kindle ebooks.
    To celebrate the new Giveaways program, we’ll be offering special introductory pricing of $59 (save 50%) for all Standard giveaways and $299 (save 50%) for all Premium giveaways created between January 9, 2018, and January 31, 2018.

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Again, it looks like Amazon is indeed pushing to get Indie authors to advertise on their channels.


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## Phxsundog (Jul 19, 2017)

I have to dissent. Not ready to say there's been a significant algorithm change quashing the new release bump. There's no sign this is happening in contemporary romance, one of the biggest markets. The romance top 100 is still infested with the same group of pen names who use heavy email spam to push new books to the top. They do the same thing every month. There are roughly ten of their books in the top 100 right now published middle to late November. I'll believe new releases are no longer prioritized once romance changes. If anything is happening it's limited to other categories like sci-fi.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Phxsundog said:


> I have to dissent. Not ready to say there's been a significant algorithm change quashing the new release bump. There's no sign this is happening in contemporary romance, one of the biggest markets. The romance top 100 is still infested with the same group of pen names who use heavy email spam to push new books to the top. They do the same thing every month. There are roughly ten of their books in the top 100 right now published middle to late November. I'll believe new releases are no longer prioritized once romance changes. If anything is happening it's limited to other categories like sci-fi.


It's definitely happening in scifi. it's only getting more pronounced as time goes on. I don't track romance, so wouldn't know. But keep us updated on romance. It would be interesting to see if they are only targetting certain categories with this. It's also early days, so they may be rolling out the changes slowly.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> No. This is not what I'm talking about. The once in a blue moon ad is not the issue here.
> 
> *BB ALSO have an anytime as much as you want to spend advertising mechanism very like AMS.*
> 
> It has nothing to do with being selected, and everything to do with how much you spend.


I stand corrected, but it's the original kind of BB ad that causes the huge spikes. I could be wrong, but I've never seen anyone report that kind of huge spike from the serve-yourself ads. In fact, some people have reported far lower ROI from them than from the "real" Bookbub ads.

Yes, I guess it's a competitor--as are FB, Twitter, Google, and others. Is it enough of a competitor to be regarded as a threat by Amazon? I don't know. Would anyone here spend more on AMS if BB didn't sell non-selective ads?

I know one thing, though: if there is a real competitor to AMS in the BB ecosystem, it's the selective ads. I can see Amazon worrying about those a little, though more of terms of their huge ranking impact than in terms of their competition with AMS, which I think we both agree is minimal.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Bill Hiatt said:


> I stand corrected, but it's the original kind of BB ad that causes the huge spikes. I could be wrong, but I've never seen anyone report that kind of huge spike from the serve-yourself ads. In fact, some people have reported far lower ROI from them than from the "real" Bookbub ads.
> 
> Yes, I guess it's a competitor--as are FB, Twitter, Google, and others. Is it enough of a competitor to be regarded as a threat by Amazon? I don't know. Would anyone here spend more on AMS if BB didn't sell non-selective ads?
> 
> I know one thing, though: if there is a real competitor to AMS in the BB ecosystem, it's the selective ads. I can see Amazon worrying about those a little, though more of terms of their huge ranking impact than in terms of their competition with AMS, which I think we both agree is minimal.


Also, it used to be you had to be invited to use even the non-selective ads. Is that no longer true?


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## Guest (Dec 2, 2017)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Also, it used to be you had to be invited to use even the non-selective ads. Is that no longer true?


Nope. Just apply to have access. I got approved the next day. I find BB ads great for driving traffic to the other retailers.


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