# My KU Math



## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Out of curiosity, I did some math with my current borrows. I have a series and one of the books is perma-free, and the rest in KU. To figure out this month's payout up until now for the next book after the perma-free, I simply multiplied the number of borrows x $1.37 (what I consider average payout--you could use a few cents more or less, but won't make a lot of difference.)

I have 221 borrows of that book x 1.37= 302.77

Now, to estimate how much I'd make on it if I had the exact same number of borrows next month, I took the borrows I have of the *next book, and used the data from that to figure it out.

I have 140 of those. I figure that someone who is borrowing books and then borrowed the next book, must have finished the previous book, right? That previous book has approx. 300 pages, so I am using a low estimate of  one cent/page for it, for $3.00 earned per book completed. 

140x3=420. 

That doesn't include any books read half-way through either. I think I might do better with this new model.


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## R. M. Webb (Jul 24, 2014)

I'm so very curious to see what the price per page ends up being. My gut says it'll be a fraction of a penny per page.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

R. M. Webb said:


> I'm so very curious to see what the price per page ends up being. My gut says it'll be a fraction of a penny per page.


That's my fear too, but if it is, then Amazon is going to be awash with bad press--especially since their example of the math was so astronomically high. It would almost seem to be purposefully misleading if they show an 'example' of ten cents/page, and then only actually pay just .5 cents/page.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

MaryMcDonald said:


> That's my fear too, but if it is, then Amazon is going to be awash with bad press--especially since their example of the math was so astronomically high. It would almost seem to be purposefully misleading if they show an 'example' of ten cents/page, and then only actually pay just .5 cents/page.


It doesn't matter, though. The regulations about bait and switch, etc apply to customers, not suppliers.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Cherise Kelley said:


> It doesn't matter, though. The regulations about bait and switch, etc apply to customers, not suppliers.


Oh, I'm sure it isn't illegal. After all, I'm sure Amazon has an army of lawyers going over the terms with a fine-toothed comb to make sure it's within the law, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have authors pulling out in droves and tons of bad press. Maybe that wouldn't change their terms, but Amazon would notice and their email to all of us authors about how they are responding to our concerns and such, would be held up to public scrutiny.

At least, that's what I think would happen.


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

MaryMcDonald said:


> Out of curiosity, I did some math with my current borrows. I have a series and one of the books is perma-free, and the rest in KU. To figure out this month's payout up until now for the next book after the perma-free, I simply multiplied the number of borrows x $1.37 (what I consider average payout--you could use a few cents more or less, but won't make a lot of difference.)
> 
> I have 221 borrows of that book x 1.37= 302.77
> 
> ...


I did roughly the same thing but I think pages are going to be lower than what we see so that has to be figured in. I think most of the book "stops" while reading will come with the first in series for me. I think I could possibly add as much as $1,000 per book each month for full novels for my main name (and that is figuring most of them at 200 pages even though they register at more than 300 now and one cent a page). I wanted a low estimate. I figured my pen name books at $500 each. Once I calculated a loss of about $900 in for each of the 25,000-word shorts I have, I think I could possibly see something like $25,000 extra a month. I have no way of knowing if that's feasible, though. It's fun to dream about for now.


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## David Wisehart (Mar 2, 2010)

Mary, you only know the borrows that have at least a 10% read-through.

Under the new system, you'll also be paid for ghost borrows that are read less than 10% through.

KU is a zero-sum game, and it's about to become something else:

A meritocracy.

With "merit" defined as "pages read."

Amazon will be paying much more than a penny per page read, because most pages won't be read.

Under the new zero-sum meritocracy, there will be a minority of winners and a majority of losers.

The money that would have gone to the losers will now go to the winners.

You should do very well under the new system.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Yes, I posted in some of the KU threads about how we'll now get paid for up to 9% for pages read that we never even saw before. That has to add up over time.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

David Wisehart said:


> Amazon will be paying much more than a penny per page read, because most pages won't be read.


I hope you're right, but I am not so optimistic.

At no point did they ever commit to paying out the entire pool. Just because that money is set aside for paying us does not mean they have to pay it all out.


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

Cherise Kelley said:


> I hope you're right, but I am not so optimistic.
> 
> At no point did they ever commit to paying out the entire pool. Just because that money is set aside for paying us does not mean they have to pay it all out.


I wouldn't worry about that. Amazon would face a PR nightmare if that was the case. It won't happen. They might pay less into the pool at a later date but they certainly won't hold on to some of the announced pool.


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## Sonya Bateman (Feb 3, 2013)

I'm just going to expect that Amazon will send me a bill for the pages that people didn't read. Then, no matter what the payout ends up being, I will not be disappointed.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

I think your math is on the right track and this is exactly what Amazon is trying to do.

What might be a better way of looking at it is what lengths will benefit from the system and what lengths will be hurt by the system. Or what length, on average, will bring in the magical $1.35 for a borrow. I'm guessing that tradeoff is going to be somewhere a bit north of 100 pages/30,000 words. 

There's other things to be taken into account though. Contrary to what some people say, the same amount of effort and difficulty does not go into twelve 5k short stories, two 30k novellas, and one 60k novel. On average, the longer the work the more complicated plot you need, the characters need to be more two dimensional. Longer works are more difficult to edit. And you'll have the specter of not keeping the readers attention and having them drop the book. Not to mention the specter of the book not keeping the writer's attention and her dropping the book! 

We also shouldn't forget that not everyone is borrowing and prices don't general escalate in a linear manner. Half my income is from sales. Two 30k novellas selling at $2.99 may very well bring in more income than a 60k novel because the sweet spot to price that novel is more likely $3.99. The novel brings in twice as much borrow as a novella, but only 30% more sale income. 

I think the losers are clearly going to be shorts, but in general, I think the program will encourage longer more serious works and I doubt if we'll see people writing strictly to the system.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I think people are underestimating the read-through percentage in general. I think we'll be surprised when we see how often our books are abandoned. Think of your own reading habits. For me at least, I often start reading a book and then forget I was reading it - and that's aside from books I abandon b/c I just wasn't into the voice, or the MC, or whatever. And both those traits have become much more pronounced since switching to digital. I hoard more books, I have way more unread books, I ditch books more than I used to, etc. 

And with books that are essentially free - as they will be to KU subscribers - I'd say all those trends will be more pronounced again. They only have 10 books they can borrow, so they might be quite ruthless about returning something that isn't quite their cup of tea. We'll see.


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## R. M. Webb (Jul 24, 2014)

dgaughran said:


> I think people are underestimating the read-through percentage in general. I think we'll be surprised when we see how often our books are abandoned. Think of your own reading habits. For me at least, I often start reading a book and then forget I was reading it - and that's aside from books I abandon b/c I just wasn't into the voice, or the MC, or whatever. And both those traits have become much more pronounced since switching to digital. I hoard more books, I have way more unread books, I ditch books more than I used to, etc.
> 
> And with books that are essentially free - as they will be to KU subscribers - I'd say all those trends will be more pronounced again. They only have 10 books they can borrow, so they might be quite ruthless about returning something that isn't quite their cup of tea. We'll see.


This is exactly what I'm most curious about. As a reader, I'm very picky and my free time is at a premium. I abandon more books than I finish.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

**********


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

dgaughran said:


> I think people are underestimating the read-through percentage in general. I think we'll be surprised when we see how often our books are abandoned. Think of your own reading habits. For me at least, I often start reading a book and then forget I was reading it - and that's aside from books I abandon b/c I just wasn't into the voice, or the MC, or whatever. And both those traits have become much more pronounced since switching to digital. I hoard more books, I have way more unread books, I ditch books more than I used to, etc.
> 
> And with books that are essentially free - as they will be to KU subscribers - I'd say all those trends will be more pronounced again. They only have 10 books they can borrow, so they might be quite ruthless about returning something that isn't quite their cup of tea. We'll see.


I don't think I'm underestimating my read through. I write series. I took into account the difference between book one and book two in a series. While I'm sure there is some abandonment on later books since the drop off between books after book two is minuscule I think it's a fairly decent watch tool. I don't think there are a lot of people borrowing book two, three, four, etc. just to read fifty pages and abandon it.
As a reader, I generally know whether I'm going to like a book in the first chapter and that's when I abandon it. A lot of people in KU were getting abandoned by me long before I hit the ten percent threshold so they never saw a dime for that. A lot of people were getting read completely through, too.
I'm certainly not saying my math is correct. It's something I liked playing with. I undersold my page counts drastically, played the change between books one and two up, didn't count any money for partial reads and then skimmed another $5,000 a month right off the top. I also figured $.01 a page even though I think it's going to be more than that.When I switched up the numbers and "dreamed big" I came up with an additional $80,000 a month and those were numbers I immediately discarded, lol. I honestly do think I'm going to do better, though.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

dgaughran said:


> And with books that are essentially free - as they will be to KU subscribers - I'd say all those trends will be more pronounced again. They only have 10 books they can borrow, so they might be quite ruthless about returning something that isn't quite their cup of tea. We'll see.


Well, 10 books at a time, as many as we can read in a month. I have a regular turnover in my KU subscription. I borrow probably 15 books a month on average, and read maybe 3-4 of those to completion. The ones I don't read turn me off for any number of reasons, whether it's poor writing, not interesting characters, or whatever. Far too many books to read to waste my time with a story that doesn't engage me.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I don't think I'm underestimating my read through...


Apologies. Poor choice of words by me.

Rather than "read through" I should have said "completion percentage" or some such - i.e. the percentage of readers who complete the book. People seem to be assuming that 50% or 80% of readers will finish. I think it will be a lot lower.


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

dgaughran said:


> Apologies. Poor choice of words by me.
> 
> Rather than "read through" I should have said "completion percentage" or some such - i.e. the percentage of readers who complete the book. People seem to be assuming that 50% or 80% of readers will finish. I think it will be a lot lower.


I think that's true for people who start a first book. I think those numbers shift once you get into sequels. There's not much sense of starting and abandoning book two if you've already started and abandoned book one.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

dgaughran said:


> People seem to be assuming that 50% or 80% of readers will finish. I think it will be a lot lower.


My out-of-thin-air guess would be 40%.

Bear in mind that under the present system, a borrow doesn't even register until 10% has been read. I would guess that most abandoned books are discarded within a few pages, and won't reach the 10% point at all. On my books, 10% is 6-8 chapters, so there's already quite a commitment on the reader's part.

But it will be fun to find out just how little of our carefully crafted prose readers actually read.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

I created a small calculator on my monthly spreadsheet using data from last month to calculate what May's payout per page would be, totaling the (number of pages for each book times the number of borrows), divided by (the total number of borrows for each book times 1.34).

Four of my books are very close to the same page count. On average, throwing out my shortest and longest books, they payout would need to be about .43 cents per page to break even.


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

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I created a small calculator on my monthly spreadsheet using data from last month to calculate what May's payout per page would be, totaling the (number of pages for each book times the number of borrows), divided by (the total number of borrows for each book times 1.34).
> 
> Four of my books are very close to the same page count. On average, throwing out my shortest and longest books, they payout would need to be about .43 cents per page to break even.


I think I must be missing something (and it's quite possible because I just woke up, so bear with me) but that doesn't make sense to me unless your books are much shorter than I realized. If you break it down in a simple way:
1. Say you had 100 total borrows at $1.34 in May. That would be $134.
2. Now say you had those same 100 borrows and they were read 100% (that will be fluid, but we will ignore it for now). If you had a roughly standard 250-page book my calculation is that you would make $250 on $.01 a page for the same 100 borrows.
Was I wrong about the length of your books or am I missing something because I'm technically still asleep?


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

David Wisehart said:


> Mary, you only know the borrows that have at least a 10% read-through.
> 
> Under the new system, you'll also be paid for ghost borrows that are read less than 10% through.
> 
> ...


All of this. So refreshing to see some sanity amid the FUD.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think that's true for people who start a first book. I think those numbers shift once you get into sequels. There's not much sense of starting and abandoning book two if you've already started and abandoned book one.


Exactly, and that's how I figured my math for my series. My math may not work for someone who has standalone books. Plus, book one of my series is perma-free, so already, I have a funnel into the series from that. People know what they're getting by that time in regards to my writing. My prequel is also in KU, and that math would be trickier because I don't know if people found it first, then moved onto the perma-free, or went back and read it. (it used to be my perma-free, but No Good Deed is working better for that.)


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


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## Anna Drake (Sep 22, 2014)

I think it will be unfortunate if beginning writers are wiped out of the mix by this new formula. From what some are writing it sounds like the only way to be discovered is to already be winner.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Anna Drake said:


> I think it will be unfortunate if beginning writers are wiped out of the mix by this new formula. From what some are writing it sounds like the only way to be discovered is to already be winner.


KU has always helped new authors by increasing their visibility, and that won't change. Borrowers are far more likely to take a chance on a new author than purchasers (or at least that's the received wisdom).

The difference is that the new system will reward authors who write engaging, page-turning work, and it may be that experienced writers who have hit their stride and know what their readers want will do better. But this is an opportunity for all of us to up our game, and write stories that keep readers absorbed.


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## R. M. Webb (Jul 24, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> KU has always helped new authors by increasing their visibility, and that won't change. Borrowers are far more likely to take a chance on a new author than purchasers (or at least that's the received wisdom).
> 
> The difference is that the new system will reward authors who write engaging, page-turning work, and it may be that experienced writers who have hit their stride and know what their readers want will do better. But this is an opportunity for all of us to up our game, and write stories that keep readers absorbed.


This. Exactly this.

What I wouldn't do to be able to know where in my books each reader stopped reading... Just imagine what could be learned and addressed with that information!

(I'm certain we won't get that info, but wow! I sure wish e would!)


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think I must be missing something (and it's quite possible because I just woke up, so bear with me) but that doesn't make sense to me unless your books are much shorter than I realized. If you break it down in a simple way:
> 1. Say you had 100 total borrows at $1.34 in May. That would be $134.
> 2. Now say you had those same 100 borrows and they were read 100% (that will be fluid, but we will ignore it for now). If you had a roughly standard 250-page book my calculation is that you would make $250 on $.01 a page for the same 100 borrows.
> Was I wrong about the length of your books or am I missing something because I'm technically still asleep?


My six average 303 pages each. You're correct, but missed what I meant, which is my fault. Figuring what the 1950 borrows I had in May at $1.34, yields $2660 in revenue. Divide that by the total number of pages for all six books, I arrived at .43 cents per page to reach that same goal. My sell through numbers are very consistent week to week and month to month. In fact over both the first and second books lifetime, they're within 2% of total sales, so read through to the end will be constistant, as well.

If the announced payout is above .5 cents per page, I'll be happy. If it's above .8, I'll be ecstatic. My books are probably in the top 20% in terms of page length in KU, so I'm really hoping the payout approaches $.01 per page.

The only thing I don't like about this new system is not knowing the number of borrows. I've made no secret that if my borrow volume went higher than 50% of total sales for a month and payout dropped below $1 per borrow for that same month, I'd go wide. Not knowing the number of borrows is going to make me pull my hair out.

Wait... What? 

I think David's analogy of a meritocracy is spot on and something that any good writer would want to see. There will be losers, the first and biggest will be those who have been "gaming" the system, by breaking up a novel into twenty or thirty 10 page shorts.


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

Quiet said:


> When I signed up to KU, I checked out series before I read the first book. If I abandoned the first book, I just returned all the books and tried something else. It was easier than going back looking for the follow up books later. Also, I worried the books would disappear from KU before I could check them out later. But it did create a situation where I borrowed a lot of books from KU that I never read.
> 
> I did this to the Atlantis series from AG Riddle and several other series just recently. I also recently cancelled my KU subscription. I might sign up again later if a wider variety of books show up in the program and I find myself with more time to read than I've had lately.
> 
> In KU, I think a huge number of books aren't getting read but are having their ranks bumped by the algos for the borrows. Eventually, I think Amazon will find a way to change that so that books that aren't being read won't see so much benefit from borrows. That's just my own speculation of course.


Were you borrowing entire series and reading 10 percent of each book in the series and then letting them sit?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I think your math is off by a few decimal points, Wayne.


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

Quiet said:


> I borrowed whole series but abandoned most unread if I didn't like the first book. Sometimes I would skim the opening of the next book to see if I should reconsider before returning. I also borrowed a couple of series twice thinking I gave up too soon, but then returned them all again! I just kept thinking what did it hurt, I wasn't paying for the individual borrows.


I understand, and it didn't hurt anything, but borrows -- even in sequels -- didn't show up on reports until they were read past 10 percent and people are using those figures to determine possible borrows now. Anything abandoned before 20 percent never showed up. I abandoned a huge number of books before 10 percent so they never showed up on reports.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

> I think people are underestimating the read-through percentage in general. I think we'll be surprised when we see how often our books are abandoned.


I figure the read through will be a huge emotional hit for all of us. (This is if they include borrows at all so we'd be able to figure it out.)

When I don't read through a book, it's almost always because I abandon it early. It's either two chapters or nothing at all. Does that match other people's experiences?


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Monique said:


> I think your math is off by a few decimal points, Wayne.


I was thinking the same thing. It looked like forty-three cents a page, instead of what I think he meant, at point zero 
four three cents/page.


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

MaryMcDonald said:


> I was thinking the same thing. It looked like forty-three cents a page, instead of what I think he meant, at point zero
> four three cents/page.


That's why I was confused. I'm pretty slow in the morning, though, so I figured it could just be me.


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## Lisa Blackwood (Feb 1, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think that's true for people who start a first book. I think those numbers shift once you get into sequels. There's not much sense of starting and abandoning book two if you've already started and abandoned book one.


Agree. I abandon more books than I finish....until I find an author/series I like, and then I read everything they have. (Well mostly--sometimes even my favorite authors might write something I just don't like. It happens.)

What I would really, really, really love is for Amazon to not slump fantasy/futuristic/ghost (or what have you) together in the same list. While I do read all those genre by times, it doesn't mean I feel like scrolling through 150 shifter books (nothing wrong with shifter books) when I'm it the mood for some Aliens.  Because in my world--fantasy romance, paranormal romance and sci-fi romance are not the same thing. I don't seem to have as much trouble with my non-romance book searches, of which I read many if not more. Does amazon give them more categories or something? Just curious.

Now I've learned to just do the searches from my computer and send my picks to the kindle. Way, way better searching ability than doing it from the kindle.

Anyways, back to the topic of the thread. I'm curious what my pages read stats will be like.


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## L.B (Apr 15, 2015)

Lisa_Blackwood said:


> Agree. I abandon more books than I finish....until I find an author/series I like, and then I read everything they have. (Well mostly--sometimes even my favorite authors might write something I just don't like. It happens.)
> 
> What I would really, really, really love is for Amazon to not slump fantasy/futuristic/ghost (or what have you) together in the same list. While I do read all those genre by times, it doesn't mean I feel like scrolling through 150 shifter books (nothing wrong with shifter books) when I'm it the mood for some Aliens.  Because in my world--fantasy romance, paranormal romance and sci-fi romance are not the same thing. I don't seem to have as much trouble with my non-romance book searches, of which I read many if not more. Does amazon give them more categories or something? Just curious.
> 
> ...


I think the shifter/erotic books have broken the whole kindle store. Type in 'SciFi comedy' and you get pages of alien romance. I can't find anything anymore.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Barnaby Yard said:


> I think the shifter/erotic books have broken the whole kindle store. Type in 'SciFi comedy' and you get pages of alien romance. I can't find anything anymore.


As someone who writes erotica, I always feel a touch of bitter resentment when I see someone's erotica in the wrong category, or worse, TOPPING the wrong category. Some days it feels like Amazon punishes me for playing by the rules and categorizing my smut as smut. /tangent


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Clarification: Wayne wrote it correctly. He said 0.43 cents. If he meant 43 cents, that 0.43 would have been written as $0.43. 

As to the 'Meritocracy', isn't that what sales are in general? Isn't all of KDP a meritocracy, where a minority of writers earn the majority of the money? Isn't that capitalism? Seems to me Amazon is just trying to make KU work the same way as sales.

As to the read-to-completion rate, I'm not worried about that. If the per-page-rate results in a payment for a fully read book that is close to what I would get from a sale for that book, it will likely offset the loss of revenue due to borrows that did not result in full reads. This may not be the case for everyone, but I was losing about $1.40 per borrow compared to a sale. Even though not every borrow is a lost sale, I still think I'll end up ahead in KU 2.0.


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

I like the idea of the pay per page, but the downside is that you won't know if one person has read the whole book, or four people have each read 25%.   (or 100 people read 1%)


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I created a small calculator on my monthly spreadsheet using data from last month to calculate what May's payout per page would be, totaling the (number of pages for each book times the number of borrows), divided by (the total number of borrows for each book times 1.34).
> 
> Four of my books are very close to the same page count. On average, throwing out my shortest and longest books, they payout would need to be about .43 cents per page to break even.


Wayne do you mean 43 cents or point 43 cents as in slightly less than a half a cent a page?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

It's just confusing to see .43 cents. I would expect the standard $0.0043. But if we're all on the same page and he means just under half a cent per, it don't make no nevermind.


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

Monique said:


> It's just confusing to see .43 cents. I would expect the standard $0.0043. But if we're all on the same page and he means just under half a cent per, it don't make no nevermind.


I was reading it as 43 cents a page, too, lol.


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

Dragovian said:


> As someone who writes erotica, I always feel a touch of bitter resentment when I see someone's erotica in the wrong category, or worse, TOPPING the wrong category. Some days it feels like Amazon punishes me for playing by the rules and categorizing my smut as smut. /tangent


I agree that erotica is getting into the wrong categories, especially if you search for 'a book for boys' or 'a book for girls' . I wouldn't let children search for books because of the 'smut' that turns up


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## LizB (Oct 25, 2013)

I agree with what people have predicted in the other thread: The first few months will have AWESOME payouts. Then it'll go down again. That's why I'm trying to get some books released in August.


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

LizB said:


> I agree with what people have predicted in the other thread: The first few months will have AWESOME payouts. Then it'll go down again. That's why I'm trying to get some books released in August.


I disagree. If you look at the first few months of KU, volume shot up at an exorbitant level and payouts dropped very quickly and then stabilized at a specific level (the $1.32-$1.39 window). Amazon already knows their level. I don't look for big fluctuations unless there is a mass migration of users into KU.


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## joyceharmon (May 21, 2012)

Lisa_Blackwood said:


> Anyways, back to the topic of the thread. I'm curious what my pages read stats will be like.


I'm curious as to how Amazon will report this on our author dashboards! Will they simply give us a pages-read count per book, or pages read and also number of borrows per book? When a person is in the act of reading our book, will we be able to watch our page counts tick up?


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## Overrated (Mar 20, 2015)

While I can't help but look at this as a writer, I also look at it as a reader.

I'm in KU. I HAVE to be - I looked at what I was spending on my WTH book purchases.

I don't put down books. It's astounding to me that so many people do. I finish the books I get. I'm really picky before I hit the borrow/buy button. It may take me a day or two, but I don't abandon books.

However, it seems by all the research, I am the oddity here.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

joyceharmon said:


> I'm curious as to how Amazon will report this on our author dashboards! Will they simply give us a pages-read count per book, or pages read and also number of borrows per book? When a person is in the act of reading our book, will we be able to watch our page counts tick up?


I believe they will report pages read by book and by marketplace, so you'll know how many pages of book 3 were read in Germany each day, for instance. But it won't be possible to tell whether 100 pages is one person reading 100 pages or 100 people reading 1 page apiece. We won't get the number of borrows any more, just pages read.

And if I've got that wrong, I'm sure someone will correct me.


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## L.B (Apr 15, 2015)

Dragovian said:


> As someone who writes erotica, I always feel a touch of bitter resentment when I see someone's erotica in the wrong category, or worse, TOPPING the wrong category. Some days it feels like Amazon punishes me for playing by the rules and categorizing my smut as smut. /tangent


I can imagine it's frustrating. I don't know why Amazon doesn't clamp down on it.


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

I don't see why Amazon doesn't hire five sets of human eyes to look at all new releases just to see if they're categorized right and free of stuff they don't want to deal with. It would only take ten minutes a book and it seems like it would save them in the long run.


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## LizB (Oct 25, 2013)

Amanda, how would that take ten minutes per book? I don't understand how that would be implemented.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

OK, this got me to do my own KU math.

If I take my biggest selling short right now, which is 25 pages, I can look at old plan and new plan totals.

Old Plan: 48 borrows X 1.35 = $64.80
New Plan: 48 borrows X 25 pages = 1200 pages X .o1 (Took penny a page)= $12

Now the new plan would count the pages for partial reads, which is an unknown factor to me right now. But then, I'm not sure that the unknown factor can make up for the over $50 loss I'm going to get hit with for the new plan. 

That's for my best seller. Really not looking forward to this change. The math speaks for my opinion. The only way to survive would be to take shorts and box them into box sets and sell them that way I'd imagine. The whole serial thing really does get loyal followers that wait for each release. So, wondering if this will kill the whole serial business plan that has been so popular in the past.

Not to mention the side note that I was happy to actually start making money off my writing. *Kicks a can*


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

LizB said:


> Amanda, how would that take ten minutes per book? I don't understand how that would be implemented.


I mean to have physical eyes just look at the blurb and a few pages of content and then look at the categories. A lot of people are purposely miscategorizung books and anyone looking at the first page or two would be able to catch that. Bots can't always catch it. Real people would be able to catch a book that is classified as romance and yet opens with a guy railing his babysitter on page two. Don't get me wrong, I love erotica. I also think it should be categorized correctly.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

lyndabelle said:


> OK, this got me to do my own KU math.
> 
> If I take my biggest selling short right now, which is 25 pages, I can look at old plan and new plan totals.
> 
> ...


Your math and my math look similar. I have tequila and I'm willing to share.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

lyndabelle said:


> Old Plan: 48 borrows X 1.35 = $64.80
> New Plan: 48 borrows X 25 pages = 1200 pages X .o1 (Took penny a page)= $12


This is always the trouble with drastic changes like this. A tweak here and there is no bother, but something radical always results in a few big losers.

My numbers are at the other end of the spectrum. My longest book will probably weigh in at 500 pages, with Amazon counting. I'll use the same number of borrows, for comparison.

Old Plan: 48 borrows x $1.35 = $64.80
New Plan: 48 borrows x 500 pages = $240 (assuming 100% read)
New Plan: 48 borrows x 500 pages = $96.00 (assuming a more realistic 40% read - it's a stupidly long book)

But it's all guesswork at the moment. We'll start to see the actual pages read in a few days, but we won't know the payout until mid-August.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I mean to have physical eyes just look at the blurb and a few pages of content and then look at the categories. A lot of people are purposely miscategorizung books and anyone looking at the first page or two would be able to catch that. Bots can't always catch it. Real people would be able to catch a book that is classified as romance and yet opens with a guy railing his babysitter on page two. Don't get me wrong, I love erotica. I also think it should be categorized correctly.


I am inclined to agree with you completely. I love erotica too, but I don't go looking for it in romance. I always have another thought too. If one is putting erotica in romance, then I figure they don't know much about writing or romance or erotica and it won't be good. I mean "Leslie takes on all comers at the pool" is pretty self explanatory.
Put her where she belongs.


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## Kenson (Dec 8, 2014)

S.W. Vaughn said:


> I'm just going to expect that Amazon will send me a bill for the pages that people didn't read. Then, no matter what the payout ends up being, I will not be disappointed.


^^^ This is definitely the glass half full view of life.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Speaker-To-Animals said:


> There's other things to be taken into account though. Contrary to what some people say, the same amount of effort and difficulty does not go into twelve 5k short stories, two 30k novellas, and one 60k novel. On average, the longer the work the more complicated plot you need, the characters need to be more two dimensional. Longer works are more difficult to edit. And you'll have the specter of not keeping the readers attention and having them drop the book. Not to mention the specter of the book not keeping the writer's attention and her dropping the book!


I don't write shorts, so this isn't personal, but there are lots of costs associated with shorts that you don't get with novellas or novels. You need more covers. You need more blurbs. You spend more time formatting, uploading, and promoting.

There is no reason to fuel the shorts vs. novels war. Most shorts are short for a good reason. Erotica works well in short form because the people reading it want to get to the, erm, end. And people are willing to pay more for erotica because it has a specific purpose and they are motivated.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Monique said:


> I think your math is off by a few decimal points, Wayne.


No, I didn't factor in the first and fifth books. The first is about half the average length of the other four and the fifth is about 50% longer. I only calculated the four books that are roughly the same length. I think I did use total borrow and revenue in my last post though and that's misleading.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Dragovian said:


> Your math and my math look similar. I have tequila and I'm willing to share.


I have some bad history with tequila Dragovian. But I'll raise a glass of my favorite port on July 1 with you. Think I'm going to need it especially at the end of the month. Promo costs are going to be a lot harder to recoop now too. *Gets the cyber bar ready for everyone out there wanting to join us*

**Has a lightbulb go on**
Just realized that we are really going to see how people's reading habits have changed. People are more likely to finish a short than a long novel since it's easier to do. Plus, once you've got them several shorts into the series, they're hooked. TV shows do this. I'm writing novels and shorts, and I can see the difference in the story arcs. But shorts act like TV episodes, with cliffhangers to read the next installment. You can do that with a novel at the end of chapters, but they've already got the rest of the book in hand. I mean reading a page turner novel is different than a serial. You have to sometimes wait for the serial to come out. But once it is finished and put together, the serial should come together like a novel.

Wool is written in parts. 5 in all. And it works well in a novel. By the time you reach Julie, the main character you stay with in the third part of the Wool series, you're hooked. You can't stop. So, writing any story that way will still have benefits. At least I know my readers are more likely to finish 30 pages than 500 pages. And they'll want more.

Plus, I wonder if people will complain about the serials not finishing when they hear about authors being paid by pages read. When you got paid by the word, you wanted to make it last as long as possible with lots of length. Adjectives may become important again. ;-)


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## Mark Tyson (Sep 22, 2014)

Maybe it's my lack of tech savvy but I still don't see how Amazon is going to count the pages someone reads? What if someone just thumbs through the book or skims through it? Does it register if a kindle page is open for a certain amount of time before flipping to the next page or can you just race through it and it counts all pages opened? How is this attainable? I can see a circle of authors borrowing each others books and slowly thumbing through them all for each other. or a bevy of dummy accounts thumbing through books. Is there an Amazon satellite watching me read!!!!!?


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Mark Tyson said:


> Maybe it's my lack of tech savvy but I still don't see how Amazon is going to count the pages someone reads? What if someone just thumbs through the book or skims through it? Does it register if a kindle page is open for a certain amount of time before flipping to the next page or can you just race through it and it counts all pages opened? How is this attainable? I can see a circle of authors borrowing each others books and slowly thumbing through them all for each other. or a bevy of dummy accounts thumbing through books. Is there an Amazon satellite watching me read!!!!!?


Mark,
Do you have a kindle?


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## Mark Tyson (Sep 22, 2014)

cinisajoy said:


> Mark,
> Do you have a kindle?


No, and that may be why I'm confused lol. I do have the kindle app on my PC and my iPhone. That's where I read kindle stuff mostly. I need to get a kindle.


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2015)

If authors don't make money with the new model, they will pull their books from KU.
If they pull their books from KU, the lending library will be much smaller.
If consumers have to buy the books they want because there lending library doesn't have what they want, they'll cancel KU.
If enough people cancel KU, they'll nix the program or make it more appealing to authors to re-enroll.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> If authors don't make money with the new model, they will pull their books from KU.
> If they pull their books from KU, the lending library will be much smaller.
> If consumers have to buy the books they want because there lending library doesn't have what they want, they'll cancel KU.
> If enough people cancel KU, they'll nix the program or make it more appealing to authors to re-enroll.


Shhhh. No logic while the sky is falling.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Mark Tyson said:


> No, and that may be why I'm confused lol. I do have the kindle app on my PC and my iPhone. That's where I read kindle stuff mostly. I need to get a kindle.


Ok. On a kindle, you have to either push a button or touch the side of the screen. 
Looking at a kindle touch, at the bottom it tells me on one side either location, page number if available, time in chapter or time in book. 
If I turn on the wifi, I can sync between devices. So Amazon knows not only where I am at in a book, but also how fast I read. 
Matter of fact, Amazon remembers where I am on every book. 
Funny thing, when I had KU, I borrowed a book, read and returned it. I dropped KU after my free trial. Later, I found the same book on sale. I grabbed it. When it downloaded, it showed fully read.

Also thanks. 2 of my babies needed their feeding tubes.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> If authors don't make money with the new model, they will pull their books from KU.
> If they pull their books from KU, the lending library will be much smaller.
> If consumers have to buy the books they want because there lending library doesn't have what they want, they'll cancel KU.
> If enough people cancel KU, they'll nix the program or make it more appealing to authors to re-enroll.


You really think 200,000+ authors will pull out of KU?


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

cinisajoy said:


> You really think 200,000+ authors will pull out of KU?


There'll be 200,000 new ones right behind them, eager to sign up.


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## Diane Patterson (Jun 17, 2012)

David Wisehart said:


> Mary, you only know the borrows that have at least a 10% read-through.
> 
> Under the new system, you'll also be paid for ghost borrows that are read less than 10% through.


Can you explain this? I haven't heard anyone talk about "ghost borrows" for the new system. Do you mean she's going to get 20 cents (if one of her books is 200 pages and the payout's 1 cent per word) for a book that someone gave up on early?


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Diane Patterson said:


> Can you explain this? I haven't heard anyone talk about "ghost borrows" for the new system. Do you mean she's going to get 20 cents (if one of her books is 200 pages and the payout's 1 cent per word) for a book that someone gave up on early?


I think all authors would love 1 cent a word.

And at Mark, 
if you like to read, I think you would love a kindle. The ereaders not the fire.


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## Diane Patterson (Jun 17, 2012)

I was trying to come up with simple numbers to talk about these ghost borrows.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Diane Patterson said:


> I was trying to come up with simple numbers to talk about these ghost borrows.


Well for ranking, there might still be ghosts if someone borrows 5 books and only opens one immediately. 
Now there won't be the 10% but yes 10% of a 200 page book will be 20 cents at a penny a page.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Dragovian said:


> Shhhh. No logic while the sky is falling.


OMG! After my big cry, I needed a little laugh. I joke not. There are tears being shed over this issue. I've been reading over some people's solutions, and I might have thought of one. I was thinking of staying all in, but then I realized, that I have no erotic shorts in the wilds yet. I think it's time to set some free while keeping others in KU. I have a new short coming out, like in review right now. So, I don't have to hit the enroll in KU button now. Good thing I've been on this thread. I've got a new series to release out that I'll leave out of KU, and see how it does on other distributors. I've got three series in KU right now, and I can finish those out. But leave out some.

Anybody considering lowering the price of a short to $0.99 to get sales up? Not sure since the pretty standard price for erotic shorts right now is 2.99. That might hold at a price point through all of this. But I'm guessing, there will be a lot LESS erotic shorts in KU in the future.


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## Diane Patterson (Jun 17, 2012)

Just mostly wondering how ghost borrows are different/better under this system.


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

Ghost borrows refers to the ranking increase. People get credit for someone borrowing their book right away in the rankings. The borrow only showed up on the dashboard when it was read past 10 percent. So, if someone read ten pages and hated the book and deleted it you never got paid for the borrow (but you did get the rank increase). Under the new system you will get paid for the ten pages read. On the flip side, if someone reads 11 percent of your book and quits instead of $1.34 (or whatever the borrow amount) you will get credit for the pages read. If the pool is $.01 a page and they read forty pages you will get 40 cents. The ranking increase, or ghost borrow, will remain the same even if they only read one page.


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2015)

cinisajoy said:


> You really think 200,000+ authors will pull out of KU?


I think IF these authors are NOT making money when they otherwise COULD be that yes, they will pull out. Those that don't probably aren't really invested in their craft to begin with and probably not part of the selection of books that people join KU to get access to. If all the legit indies pull out because they aren't getting paid, yes, that will eventually hurt the KU program overall.


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2015)

Cherise Kelley said:


> There'll be 200,000 new ones right behind them, eager to sign up.


Let me get this straight. You think the "new" 200,000 authors will only sign up if the other 200,000 drop out? Because I'm pretty sure Amazon would rather have 400,000 authors in KU, not 200,000 replacing the 200,000 that dropped out.

If authors are worried about not getting paid because people didn't read their books...then they should write books people want to read.

If people think they should get paid the same for 10 pages as someone does for 100...maybe Amazon isn't the ones being unfair here?

My opinion is this. Maybe what they are doing will suck and hurt peoples income. Maybe it won't. If it hurts my income, I'll do things another way. If it doesn't hurt my income, I'll keep doing what I do.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

lyndabelle said:


> OMG! After my big cry, I needed a little laugh. I joke not. There are tears being shed over this issue. I've been reading over some people's solutions, and I might have thought of one. I was thinking of staying all in, but then I realized, that I have no erotic shorts in the wilds yet. I think it's time to set some free while keeping others in KU. I have a new short coming out, like in review right now. So, I don't have to hit the enroll in KU button now. Good thing I've been on this thread. I've got a new series to release out that I'll leave out of KU, and see how it does on other distributors. I've got three series in KU right now, and I can finish those out. But leave out some.
> 
> Anybody considering lowering the price of a short to $0.99 to get sales up? Not sure since the pretty standard price for erotic shorts right now is 2.99. That might hold at a price point through all of this. But I'm guessing, there will be a lot LESS erotic shorts in KU in the future.


Fewer erotic shorts in the system means more potential readers for those of us who stay in. Demand isn't going down just because the supply drops. And sure, there will always be new writers coming into the system, but the new rules make it a lot less attractive now.

I for one am not going to drop my selling price. Bad enough we're (probably) taking a hit on borrows, but if you drop your price you're going to need to boost your sales x6. I do agree with you that this is a good time to test going wide, since making up for the loss of borrows that pay 20-30 cents is a lot easier than making up the loss of borrows paying over $1.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

cinisajoy said:


> You really think 200,000+ authors will pull out of KU?


Yeah, that's the flaw in that logic.

Even if all the authors who are active pull out, there will still be a ton of abandoned books stuck in KU forever because no one is ticking the unenroll box, supplemented by all the newbies who don't even know they _can_ sell elsewhere.

Ours is not a business that runs on logic. There are too many invisible rules and hidden variables to even pretend.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

So, people bet their livelihoods on a system that they knew was showing them unfair favoritism, one that they knew had to change sooner or later, and with a company that has shown in the past that they have no problem pulling the rug out from under people.

Forgive me if I don't shed a tear.  Harsh? Perhaps. But everyone needs to be smarter if they want to succeed in business.


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## Mark Tyson (Sep 22, 2014)

cinisajoy said:


> I think all authors would love 1 cent a word.
> 
> And at Mark,
> if you like to read, I think you would love a kindle. The ereaders not the fire.


Is the fire just like a tablet or something? I assume the ereaders are just for books, right? I have been thinking very seriously about getting one soon.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

I was in KDPS for the first 2 years of my career, and I credit the added visibility and discoverability of KDPS, with its borrows and free days, as part of the reason I have a career so I see KU and KDPS as a way to gain an audience for your work if you are a new author.

However, once you have an audience, meaning you sell enough to pay bills or make a living, it's probably best to pull out of KDPS and go wide so you can reach an even bigger audience and no longer rely solely on Amazon. Why? I think at the point where you are getting big enough to have success and have an audience eager to read your next book, you probably can find an even bigger audience off Amazon and thus not be at the mercy of the whims of Amazon and its KU policies, payments and processes. It's like insurance against the slings and arrows. Although the 90-day exclusivity period is short, it can really hurt your income when Amazon tweaks its policies and processes and algorithms, if you are on the pointy end of the stick. Being wide means you don't have to worry about Amazon's whims as much.

It takes a while to gain traction on the other retailers, but Apple is getting serious about selling books and Google is this big mass of potential, if only people there could smarten up and figure out how to sell books. Kobo is big outside of the US. I went wide at the end of February and put the first book in my romance series permafree. In March, April and May my sales on other retailers surpassed those on Amazon, doubling and tripling sales there.

I _really_ dislike the whole "get paid per page read and wait to find out how much Amazon decides to pay" idea. In what other industry do people purchase a commodity and the creator gets paid based on how much of it they consume? None that I know...

I'm selling well with a 70 - 85% read through in my series books so I think I'm pleasing my readers or they wouldn't be buying the next and next books in my series. I always care about quality so I don't need a program like KU to give me incentive to do better. My desire for success as a romance series author takes care of that. Amazon created a monster with its original KU program and is now trying to find a way to kill the monster. I'm getting out my popcorn so I can watch from the sidelines, and thank my lucky stars that I am not going to be affected by this new program. I was in this position in July 2014 and it was not a happy camper period for me as I watched my income fall by 60% after KU came into being and Amazon tweaked its algorithms. I feel for all the authors who will now be hurt by this new change.

The easy response is "business is business" and "you should have known this would happen" etc. but real people are affected.


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## David Wisehart (Mar 2, 2010)

Diane Patterson said:


> I haven't heard anyone talk about "ghost borrows" for the new system.


When someone borrows your book, the book's rank gets an immediate bump, which you might notice if you follow your rank closely. But the borrow might never show up on the report because of the 10% requirement.

You can't see the ghost borrow directly, only infer its existence because of its effect on something else.

In the new system, there will be no ghost borrows.

Or maybe every borrow will be a ghost, if borrow numbers aren't reported.


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## LadyStarlight (Nov 14, 2014)

Sela said:


> I was in KDPS for the first 2 years of my career, and I credit the added visibility and discoverability of KDPS, with its borrows and free days, as part of the reason I have a career so I see KU and KDPS as a way to gain an audience for your work if you are a new author.
> 
> However, once you have an audience, meaning you sell enough to pay bills or make a living, it's probably best to pull out of KDPS and go wide so you can reach an even bigger audience and no longer rely solely on Amazon. Why? I think at the point where you are getting big enough to have success and have an audience eager to read your next book, you probably can find an even bigger audience off Amazon and thus not be at the mercy of the whims of Amazon and its KU policies, payments and processes. It's like insurance against the slings and arrows. Although the 90-day exclusivity period is short, it can really hurt your income when Amazon tweaks its policies and processes and algorithms, if you are on the pointy end of the stick. Being wide means you don't have to worry about Amazon's whims as much.
> 
> ...


We so need a like button!


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

Sela said:


> I was in KDPS for the first 2 years of my career, and I credit the added visibility and discoverability of KDPS, with its borrows and free days, as part of the reason I have a career so I see KU and KDPS as a way to gain an audience for your work if you are a new author.
> 
> However, once you have an audience, meaning you sell enough to pay bills or make a living, it's probably best to pull out of KDPS and go wide so you can reach an even bigger audience and no longer rely solely on Amazon. Why? I think at the point where you are getting big enough to have success and have an audience eager to read your next book, you probably can find an even bigger audience off Amazon and thus not be at the mercy of the whims of Amazon and its KU policies, payments and processes. It's like insurance against the slings and arrows. Although the 90-day exclusivity period is short, it can really hurt your income when Amazon tweaks its policies and processes and algorithms, if you are on the pointy end of the stick. Being wide means you don't have to worry about Amazon's whims as much.
> 
> ...


I don't think that's necessarily true. Rosalind James sells huge and she says pulling out of Select was a mistake for her. I think everyone is different. Personally, I think I could make a killing in the new version of KU and I'm not going anywhere. I'm massively excited. If the time comes to go wide I have two huge libraries to do it with. I know it will take time and am prepared for fallout. However, there is no way I'm risking my income right now. None. I want to see if there's a gravy train for me to ride. If I do poorly in the new KU I'm sure I will change my mind. I think both of my brands are built for this, though, and I'm geeked.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I don't think that's necessarily true. Rosalind James sells huge and she says pulling out of Select was a mistake for her. I think everyone is different. Personally, I think I could make a killing in the new version of KU and I'm not going anywhere. I'm massively excited. If the time comes to go wide I have two huge libraries to do it with. I know it will take time and am prepared for fallout. However, there is no way I'm risking my income right now. None. I want to see if there's a gravy train for me to ride. If I do poorly in the new KU I'm sure I will change my mind. I think both of my brands are built for this, though, and I'm geeked.


No doubt some will do very well in the new KU just as some did really well in the old. Some will do well under both regimes. Obviously, Amazon is hoping to reward authors with high read through aka customer engagement and hopes to mute success of the scammers. Perhaps Amazon also hopes to draw back in some of us who have left, but only an end to exclusivity would make KU appealing to me at this point.

The problem I see is that if you cultivate an audience in KU, and rely on them for the bulk of your income, you are cultivating a particular kind of reader, who is a "all you can eat" reader. I think it's better -- in the long term -- to cultivate readers who are willing to pay full price for a book. I mean, come on... indies are already a great bargain...

Amazon is using our work to draw in readers, collect their credit card info and fees, and then sell them a whole lot of other non-book stuff. I think authors are getting a raw deal, frankly, considering how lucrative indies are.

YMMV.


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

Sela said:


> No doubt some will do very well in the new KU just as some did really well in the old. Some will do well under both regimes. Obviously, Amazon is hoping to reward authors with high read through aka customer engagement and hopes to mute success of the scammers. Perhaps Amazon also hopes to draw back in some of us who have left, but only the change in exclusivity would make KU appealing to me at this point.
> 
> The problem I see is that if you cultivate an audience in KU, and rely on them for the bulk of your income, you are cultivating a particular kind of reader, who is a "all you can eat" reader. I think it's better -- in the long term -- to cultivate readers who are willing to pay full price for a book.
> 
> ...


That's assuming only KU readers, though. My sales have grown as well as borrows thanks to increased visibility. Sure, my borrows are about 1,000 a day and my sales are less at 700, but I have many readers outside of KU. Also, I think a lot of readers in KU are like me. I don't read only authors in KU. I buy a ton, too. I have readers who borrowed my books and turned around and bought them (for both names). KU gives readers the ability to take a chance on authors they probably wouldn't have bought without minimal risk. Even figuring in my All-Star bonuses, KU only accounts for half of my income. Now, if things go how I think they might, I think my KU income could eclipse my regular income under the new program. It's all a guessing game until August 15.


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## Sonya Bateman (Feb 3, 2013)

Kenson said:


> ^^^ This is definitely the glass half full view of life.


Eternally, unreasonably optimistic... that'd be me.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> I think all authors would love 1 cent a word.


I would probably pull out if it was that low. No reason to give Amazon exclusivity if they're paying me less than I could sell it for.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Mark Tyson said:


> Is the fire just like a tablet or something? I assume the ereaders are just for books, right? I have been thinking very seriously about getting one soon.


Right, the Fire is a tablet. The Ereaders (Kindles--the new Fires are no longer Kindle Fires as of last year, they're Amazon Fires) are eInk.

As to the question on whether Amazon knows whether someone skips ahead to page 250 or reads to 250, I'm not sure how they'll handle that. They do track one's average reading speed for the function that predicts how long it will take one to finish the book--one of the options for display), so perhaps they're going to use that.

Betsy


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

> Let me get this straight. You think the "new" 200,000 authors will only sign up if the other 200,000 drop out? Because I'm pretty sure Amazon would rather have 400,000 authors in KU, not 200,000 replacing the 200,000 that dropped out.


I suspect if 200,000 authors of "The Man of the House Bangs the Brat" (25 pages) were to pull out of the program and quit writing altogether, Amazon would pop a bottle of champagne. I got my start in short smut, but erotica writers have to create a huge amount of extra work for Amazon policing the constant boundary pushing and working the system. I know how lucrative it is, but at some point you wonder if storefronts are going to decide it's just not worth the trouble.


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I don't think that's necessarily true. Rosalind James sells huge and she says pulling out of Select was a mistake for her. I think everyone is different.


I was wondering about that. I'm not surprised she said she feels it was a mistake.

Some authors pull out of Select because they listen to other authors telling them to pull out of Select. I'm trusting my instinct, not what other authors tell me to do.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Speaker-To-Animals said:


> I suspect if 200,000 authors of "The Man of the House Bangs the Brat" (25 pages) were to pull out of the program and quit writing altogether, Amazon would pop a bottle of champagne. I got my start in short smut, but erotica writers have to create a huge amount of extra work for Amazon policing the constant boundary pushing and working the system. I know how lucrative it is, but at some point you wonder if storefronts are going to decide it's just not worth the trouble.


I doubt that. If they wanted to get rid of it, they could. But they can see the numbers, and know how much money they're making off of these kinds of books. Authors wouldn't be pushing the limits if this kind of stuff wasn't selling well.


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

swolf said:


> I doubt that. If they wanted to get rid of it, they could. But they can see the numbers, and know how much money they're making off of these kinds of books. Authors wouldn't be pushing the limits if this kind of stuff wasn't selling well.


I don't think they want to get rid of it either. They want to sell it, they just don't want some people (the judgmental sort) to realize their selling it. It's a lucrative market but people cry and whine about how filthy sex is so they also don't want it front and center. It's a double-edged sword for them.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I don't think they want to get rid of it either. They want to sell it, they just don't want some people (the judgmental sort) to realize their selling it. It's a lucrative market but people cry and whine about how filthy sex is so they also don't want it front and center. It's a double-edged sword for them.


Which they really could solve pretty easily with some sort of safe search/AV thingy, but they don't.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> As to the question on whether Amazon knows whether someone skips ahead to page 250 or reads to 250, I'm not sure how they'll handle that. They do track one's average reading speed for the function that predicts how long it will take one to finish the book--one of the options for display), so perhaps they're going to use that.
> 
> Betsy


Amazon had to be able to count actual page reads as opposed to Table of Contents jumps as non-fiction books, short story and other bundles, and poet books, are often read non-sequentially, or just one bit of them is read. If you are researching the poetry of Browning you don't need to read all those ones by Frost in _The Compendium of Poets called Robert_. If I open my eInk after reading on my Android app I am sometimes asked if I want to go back 100 pages because the Android app was me checking something earlier in the book. You are not only asked if you want to skip forward.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

swolf said:


> I would probably pull out if it was that low. No reason to give Amazon exclusivity if they're paying me less than I could sell it for.


How many WORDS are in your books? 
That would be an average of $3 a page.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

> The problem I see is that if you cultivate an audience in KU, and rely on them for the bulk of your income, you are cultivating a particular kind of reader, who is a "all you can eat" reader.


This assumes that all KU members are the same type of reader, which they are not. Many or people who love to read but cannot afford to feed their passion, even at indie prices. Others use KU to be able to sample new authors without the financial risk. Others still go on to buy their favorite books so that they can reread them at their leisure without having them take a spot in the KU queue of ten.

It drives me nuts when authors tell people they should go wide so that you don't have "all your eggs in one basket." That decision is SO much more complicated. I pulled everything out of KU and immediately started hemorrhaging $15k per month that I could not afford! In addition, my mailing list signup rate dropped by 50%. The end result was that I lost over $30k, and pissed off a few hundred readers who did discover me on Apple and Google, and then could not continue the series unless they were willing to buy them from Amazon. I had to write a lot of apology emails.

That entire fiasco occurred because I let the wild panic that surround the first few months of the first version of Kindle Unlimited scare me into going wide. I STRONGLY advise others to ignore the panic and the hasty advice offered in the first "panic threads" that always appear and wait to see what happens. Think for yourself, use the data that YOU see, and do not trust that others are correctly interpreting the data that THEY see. Because no one here is going to bail you out when you make a mistake that costs you thousands.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> How many WORDS are in your books?
> That would be an average of $3 a page.


My apologies. I read that as 1 cent a page. Sorry.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

swolf said:


> My apologies. I read that as 1 cent a page. Sorry.


I figured you had. You are like several others I know. Likely to get the shaft when the new payout arrives.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> I figured you had. You are like several others I know. Likely to get the shaft when the new payout arrives.


I don't see it as getting the shaft. I modified my length to take advantage of the rules that were in place, and I'll be looking at how I need to change again to work within the new rules.


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> This assumes that all KU members are the same type of reader, which they are not. Many or people who love to read but cannot afford to feed their passion, even at indie prices. Others use KU to be able to sample new authors without the financial risk. Others still go on to buy their favorite books so that they can reread them at their leisure without having them take a spot in the KU queue of ten.
> 
> It drives me nuts when authors tell people they should go wide so that you don't have "all your eggs in one basket." That decision is SO much more complicated. I pulled everything out of KU and immediately started hemorrhaging $15k per month that I could not afford! In addition, my mailing list signup rate dropped by 50%. The end result was that I lost over $30k, and p*ssed off a few hundred readers who did discover me on Apple and Google, and then could not continue the series unless they were willing to buy them from Amazon. I had to write a lot of apology emails.
> 
> That entire fiasco occurred because I let the wild panic that surround the first few months of the first version of Kindle Unlimited scare me into going wide. I STRONGLY advise others to ignore the panic and the hasty advice offered in the first "panic threads" that always appear and wait to see what happens. Think for yourself, use the data that YOU see, and do not trust that others are correctly interpreting the data that THEY see. Because no one here is going to bail you out when you make a mistake that costs you thousands.


I'm sorry you let the panic get to you, and I hate to see that happen to an author. I do wish more authors would think for themselves.

We each have our own histories, our own goals, and our own financial situations. I wish more authors would respect that.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

swolf said:


> I don't see it as getting the shaft. I modified my length to take advantage of the rules that were in place, and I'll be looking at how I need to change again to work within the new rules.


Pming you.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

David Wisehart said:


> When someone borrows your book, the book's rank gets an immediate bump, which you might notice if you follow your rank closely. But the borrow might never show up on the report because of the 10% requirement.
> 
> You can't see the ghost borrow directly, only infer its existence because of its effect on something else.
> 
> *In the new system, there will be no ghost borrows.*


(Emphasis mine) I keep seeing this, and yet I think it is inaccurate. Why wouldn't there be ghost borrows in the new system?

The new ghost borrow happens when they borrow your book and never open it.


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

Cherise Kelley said:


> (Emphasis mine) I keep seeing this, and yet I think it is inaccurate. Why wouldn't there be ghost borrows in the new system?
> 
> The new ghost borrow happens when they borrow your book and never open it.


I agree there will still be ghost borrows in the sense that some people may never open the book. That should be a small number, though. It's far more likely people will open it, read a page or two, and then decide they hate it. You would get paid for two pages in that scenario so it won't be a ghost borrow.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

I think the nature of KU kinda decreases the chances of a subscriber downloading a book and never reading it. You get 10 at a time and I imagine many KU users regularly rotate through titles. I borrow around 15 titles a month, so there's regularl turnover on my KU account. There's no good reason to borrow a title and just have it sit there.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Jim Johnson said:


> I think the nature of KU kinda decreases the chances of a subscriber downloading a book and never reading it. You get 10 at a time and I imagine many KU users regularly rotate through titles. I borrow around 15 titles a month, so there's regularl turnover on my KU account. There's no good reason to borrow a title and just have it sit there.


In months I'm in KU I use the 10 downloads as an on-device wish list. When I cancelled most of the ten were returned unopened. I did hear tell that Amazon Publishing authors get paid on the download and never had a 10% wait. No idea what they got paid as they're not allowed to divulge that.


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

I've not paid much attention to all the hoopla, so pardon me if this topic was covered elsewhere.

Has Amazon published the exact definition of "what is a page?"

I make an average of $6.90 per sale of most of my novels. Most are 90K words or more. I've seen some estimates that put my books in the 300 page range, but I can't find anywhere "official" that explains the formula. As a matter of fact, according to Amazon's help screen, I have to enroll a book in KU to find out exactly what the page count is. Now that's one roll of the dice this old boy ain't taking.

That definition might make a big difference.

If 30K words does equal 100 pages, then they will have to pay $.023 per page for me to break even. I know there's the potential of additional readers, but I will also lose those readers who believe they can't buy from Amazon for their iPad or KOBO or whatever. Or they simply don't want to shop elsewhere.

If Amazon is trying to pull in folks like me, that payout is going to have to be pretty good for me to take the plunge.

Not sure that means squat to anyone but me, but this is all strictly math from where I'm sitting. Problem is, we don't know the variables in the equation.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

swolf said:


> I don't see it as getting the shaft. I modified my length to take advantage of the rules that were in place, and I'll be looking at how I need to change again to work within the new rules.


Out of all of us here writing erotica I have the most confidence that you will be able to roll with this and come out ahead.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Joe,
Not yet that I have seen.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Jim Johnson said:


> I think the nature of KU kinda decreases the chances of a subscriber downloading a book and never reading it. You get 10 at a time and I imagine many KU users regularly rotate through titles. I borrow around 15 titles a month, so there's regularl turnover on my KU account. There's no good reason to borrow a title and just have it sit there.


I'll often keep a few reference/nonfiction titles in my list for a while. I'll grab them so I don't forget about them and then just shuffle through the other six or so slots for my fiction reading.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Joe_Nobody said:


> I've not paid much attention to all the hoopla, so pardon me if this topic was covered elsewhere.
> 
> Has Amazon published the exact definition of "what is a page?"
> 
> ...


Several of my books are also in the 90k range and are already in KU, so when the new page count turns up, hopefully on July 1st, I can let you know what it says for those books.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> It drives me nuts when authors tell people they should go wide so that you don't have "all your eggs in one basket." That decision is SO much more complicated. I pulled everything out of KU and immediately started hemorrhaging $15k per month that I could not afford! In addition, my mailing list signup rate dropped by 50%. The end result was that I lost over $30k, and p*ssed off a few hundred readers who did discover me on Apple and Google, and then could not continue the series unless they were willing to buy them from Amazon. I had to write a lot of apology emails.
> 
> That entire fiasco occurred because I let the wild panic that surround the first few months of the first version of Kindle Unlimited scare me into going wide. I STRONGLY advise others to ignore the panic and the hasty advice offered in the first "panic threads" that always appear and wait to see what happens. Think for yourself, use the data that YOU see, and do not trust that others are correctly interpreting the data that THEY see. Because no one here is going to bail you out when you make a mistake that costs you thousands.


That's unfortunate. I think authors considering going wide should plan ahead for the temporary loss of visibility on Amazon using paid advertising, such as Bookbub. Once you have your books on other retailers, a Bookbub will help gain a readership on those other markets. If you just up and leave Amazon KDPS without any planning to help gain traction on other retailers, you could indeed lose income since being in KU artificially inflates your visibility. You lose that once you are no longer exclusive and so it really helps to have a Bookbub or series of smaller promos planned for the month you go wide.

I still hold that going wide is the best strategy for most authors in the longer term, while in the short term it may be to use KDPS/KU for visibility when you are new. There are millions and millions of iBook apps on iPhones, iPads and MacBooks and potentially millions of readers. There are potentially millions of readers via Google. Getting visible to those readers takes some time and money but it is worth it in the long run. Sure, you may do really well in KU for a time and it may start your career and get you an audience. Once you have it on Amazon, why ignore the potential audience on Apple devices and iTunes, which have the potential to rival Amazon?

Going wide reduces your risk, and you are no longer at the mercy and whim of Amazon in terms of payouts and policies around borrows, etc. Yes, by all means, use the benefits of Amazon exclusivity for what its worth -- helping new authors get their first book sales. It's much easier to sell on Amazon than the other retailers, because Amazon does it so well. However, once you have success, capitalize on it and expand even more. Amazon may want to corner the market on indie books, but they won't succeed except for a short term.

I suspect that KU was a mistake and they are now realizing it and are trying to salvage it. It will be seen whether this new payout scheme will do so.


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## L.B (Apr 15, 2015)

Cherise Kelley said:


> (Emphasis mine) I keep seeing this, and yet I think it is inaccurate. Why wouldn't there be ghost borrows in the new system?
> 
> The new ghost borrow happens when they borrow your book and never open it.


How will you know they've borrowed it if they don't open it?


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Barnaby Yard said:


> How will you know they've borrowed it if they don't open it?


Your ranking will go up immediately.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Mercia McMahon said:


> Amazon had to be able to count actual page reads as opposed to Table of Contents jumps as non-fiction books, short story and other bundles, and poet books, are often read non-sequentially, or just one bit of them is read. If you are researching the poetry of Browning you don't need to read all those ones by Frost in _The Compendium of Poets called Robert_. If I open my eInk after reading on my Android app I am sometimes asked if I want to go back 100 pages because the Android app was me checking something earlier in the book. You are not only asked if you want to skip forward.


Sorry, didn't mean to imply that they did. That's actually somewhat new--newer than the time to finish the book thingy. It used to be that Amazon asked if you wanted to go to the "furthest" page read. Last year, I think, is when they changed it to "most recent page read" in one of the updates.

Betsy


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## lostagain (Feb 17, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I agree there will still be ghost borrows in the sense that some people may never open the book. That should be a small number, though. It's far more likely people will open it, read a page or two, and then decide they hate it. You would get paid for two pages in that scenario so it won't be a ghost borrow.


If people are like me, it won't be small. I will binge download (well within the constraint of 10, lol), and then when I download something I want read at the moment I'll clear off something. Earlier tonight I got rid of 3 I decided I could live without ever opening.


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## lostagain (Feb 17, 2014)

Sela said:


> That's unfortunate. I think authors considering going wide should plan ahead for the temporary loss of visibility on Amazon using paid advertising, such as Bookbub. Once you have your books on other retailers, a Bookbub will help gain a readership on those other markets. If you just up and leave Amazon KDPS without any planning to help gain traction on other retailers, you could indeed lose income since being in KU artificially inflates your visibility. You lose that once you are no longer exclusive and so it really helps to have a Bookbub or series of smaller promos planned for the month you go wide.
> 
> I still hold that going wide is the best strategy for most authors in the longer term, while in the short term it may be to use KDPS/KU for visibility when you are new. There are millions and millions of iBook apps on iPhones, iPads and MacBooks and potentially millions of readers. There are potentially millions of readers via Google. Getting visible to those readers takes some time and money but it is worth it in the long run. Sure, you may do really well in KU for a time and it may start your career and get you an audience. Once you have it on Amazon, why ignore the potential audience on Apple devices and iTunes, which have the potential to rival Amazon?
> 
> ...


You make it sound like getting a bookbub is easy. It's not. It's also not that easy to gain traction on other vendors even over time. I and others I know have had a bookbub, done well vendor wide for a brief stint only to have those venues sink right back down within weeks. I won't stop trying venue wide with a portion of my publications, but I'm not going to jump the KU ship until I'm sure it's sunk.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

VioletVaughn said:


> If people are like me, it won't be small. I will binge download (well within the constraint of 10, lol), and then when I download something I want read at the moment I'll clear off something. Earlier tonight I got rid of 3 I decided I could live without ever opening.


That's what I do....sometimes I put the ones I've removed on my KU wish list.

Betsy


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Barnaby Yard said:


> How will you know they've borrowed it if they don't open it?


As Cin says, your only indication is a change in sales rank. That's why they're called ghost borrows. They kind of don't exist. I suspect Amazon will get rid of their effect on rank soon.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

VioletVaughn said:


> You make it sound like getting a bookbub is easy. It's not. It's also not that easy to gain traction on other vendors even over time. I and others I know have had a bookbub, done well vendor wide for a brief stint only to have those venues sink right back down within weeks. I won't stop trying venue wide with a portion of my publications, but I'm not going to jump the KU ship until I'm sure it's sunk.


This was my experience, exactly. I had a Bookbub ad in Feb for my prequel. Had plenty of downloads across all sites as the book was perma-free then. All my books were out of KU and available everywhere. I had a nice spike at BN and Apple, a little one at GP and Kobo. The spike died a month out. I was getting maybe one sale a day combined, on all those vendors despite thousands of downloads.

I re-arranged things and made NGD my perma-free and applied for a Bookbub ad. It ran May 19th. This time, the rest of the books were in KU and I'm still riding a nice wave of sales/borrows. Income has more than tripled what I did the previous time when I had the books on all the other sites.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

David S. said:


> My guess is two-thirds of a cent per page, and a page being 300-350 words.


I was thinking much the same, but with a page being between 250-300 words. That's what my books seem to average out to, anyway.


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## JRHolmes (Mar 6, 2014)

Joe:

Actually there is a definition of what the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC v1.0) represents (https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A156OS90J7RDN), but it doesn't just give a word count/page definition.


> When we make this change on July 1, 2015, you'll be able to see your book's KENPC listed on the "Promote and Advertise" page in your Bookshelf,


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

JRHolmes said:


> Joe:
> 
> Actually there is a definition of what the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC v1.0) represents (https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A156OS90J7RDN), but it doesn't just give a word count/page definition.


Unfortunately, the definition is fairly useless to us, since we don't know what "font, line height, line spacing, etc." they're using. They might as well have said "we're standardizing it using magic." We'd know just as much.


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

Hey Dragovian,

And the only books that have the "Promote and Advertise" option on your bookshelf are those already enrolled in KU.

I hope they change that. No way I am going to put a novel into KU just to see that count. I hope Amazon is bright enough to realize that from a business perspective, that just doesn't work.


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## L.B (Apr 15, 2015)

cinisajoy said:


> Your ranking will go up immediately.


What if you sell ten though? Your ranking will go up, but it won't inform you as to how many borrows.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

Very few indie authors are able to get $9.99 for an ebook, I think the chances of you receiving the same $6.90 payment for a KU borrow are Slim to none and Slim's out of town. 

KU costs $10/month. Amazon is not going to pay out more than $10 to the average reader.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Speaker-To-Animals said:


> Very few indie authors are able to get $9.99 for an ebook, I think the chances of you receiving the same $6.90 payment for a KU borrow are Slim to none and Slim's out of town.
> 
> KU costs $10/month. Amazon is not going to pay out more than $10 to the average reader.


Sorry, but the evidence disagrees with you. Currently, if a reader borrows ten of my 25-page books, which they could easily burn through in a day or two, Amazon pays me $13.50 for that reader. Think of how many short stories that reader can get through in a month. There's a potential for Amazon paying out WAY more than the $10 that reader paid.

In the new model, the royalties are shifting from borrows to pages read. But Amazon is still going to be paying out the same amount of money (or more), and if borrows remain around the same, that money has to go somewhere.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

VioletVaughn said:


> I won't stop trying venue wide with a portion of my publications, but I'm not going to jump the KU ship until I'm sure it's sunk.


The "KU ship is sinking" is nothing more than speculation, right now.

I agree with you, Violet.

I'm placing my upcoming novel on all venues. However, I'm placing my serial on KU. The series I have planned after my serial starts, I may go wide and I may not. I'll see.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

What about the "look inside" feature, seriously, people do get paid as soon as someone has read as far as the free sample is anyway. Hence I never thought the ten percent are such a deal maker because most likely people have read the sample once they decide to borrow. Or at least a lot have (I always read those)


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

swolf said:


> Sorry, but the evidence disagrees with you. Currently, if a reader borrows ten of my 25-page books, which they could easily burn through in a day or two, Amazon pays me $13.50 for that reader. Think of how many short stories that reader can get through in a month. There's a potential for Amazon paying out WAY more than the $10 that reader paid.
> 
> In the new model, the royalties are shifting from borrows to pages read. But Amazon is still going to be paying out the same amount of money (or more), and if borrows remain around the same, that money has to go somewhere.


My greatest fear is Amazon were going to lead with a payment close to .10cents per page as in their example broadcast, but the general consensus of authors that it will be .01 cent per page will dramatically decrease what they were going to give us. All because folks think 200 pages is worth 2 dollars. 2.99 for a novel is cheap.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> My greatest fear is Amazon were going to lead with a payment close to .10cents per page as in their example broadcast, but the general consensus of authors that it will be .01 cent per page will dramatically decrease what they were going to give us. All because folks think 200 pages is worth 2 dollars. 2.99 for a novel is cheap.


Shane,

If they downgrade authors, I believe that most authors will "unclick" that renew button.

To Amazon: Pay us a decent payout per page, or most of us that are giving you another shot will bail out of KU like our "hair's on fire and our a***s are catchin'", to quote Charlie Daniels.

I'm giving it a partial try right now. _Keep_ the payments decent, and I may go all in. Maybe.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

swolf said:


> In the new model, the royalties are shifting from borrows to pages read. But Amazon is still going to be paying out the same amount of money (or more), and if borrows remain around the same, that money has to go somewhere.


Ah, but we don't know that. Amazon has been throwing some extra amount of money into the KU pot every month to make the borrow numbers come out to what they want them to be and keep them fairly stable around $1.35. We have absolutely no idea what they want those numbers to be in the new system, and we don't have access to their internal data to get a feel for the proportion of readers borrowing our shorts versus longer novels. It may well be that they can cut the pot in half by shafting shorts writers while still significantly increasing the payout to those producing longer works.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

T. M. Bilderback said:


> Shane,
> 
> If they downgrade authors, I believe that most authors will "unclick" that renew button.
> 
> ...


Authors have not been up in arms about this change. At least not on my radar.

According to the "new KU payout & program change mega thread" 73.5% support the change (317 votes) and 26.5% don't support it (114 votes).

According to the "Predict the KU payout per page" thread 39.6% predict 1 cent (80votes)

Amazingly, the second highest is under 1 cent at 27.7% and 56 votes.

66 people voted 2 cents or more.

The message being sent to amazon is that people are happy with the KU readjustment and happy with 1 cent per page.

In my opinion, the flat rate was better for all authors. The variables at play with the change will take a machine gun fire effect. People won't know much about what they have until after it's all over. And in the frenzy Amazon will screw the bottom line.

An individual title borrowed and read to 10 percent, no longer has a minimum value.

And I'm not going to blame Amazon for that. I blame the authors who were too stupid to know what they had before they ruined it for everyone.


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## Indiecognito (May 19, 2014)

I do wish that people would stop predicting a cent a borrow, if only because Amazon is clever; they'll see all the predictions, that no one is violently objecting, and know that they can settle there.

1 cent a page isn't much, particularly if you're not getting 100% read-through. 

I write novels and serials and have good sell-through rates. I'm bundling for this change, so will be releasing some 400-page tomes. I love the idea of getting 4 bucks a read for those, but I think that realistically, in order for authors to come close to their historic earnings, the rate will have to be a good 2 cents a page (at least).

When KU began, I was happy about it. The last year was better for me financially than my wildest writer-dreams would ever have dictated. 

But unless the payout is enough to keep me on par with what I've been making, I'll be aggressively pulling my 40 books out and going after other vendors. Simple math. 
And it's highly unlikely that 1 cent will be enough--for me or most.

Authors may not seem up in arms, but the fact is that massive pull-outs will demonstrate their frustration far more than words will.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

KelliWolfe said:


> Ah, but we don't know that. Amazon has been throwing some extra amount of money into the KU pot every month to make the borrow numbers come out to what they want them to be and keep them fairly stable around $1.35. We have absolutely no idea what they want those numbers to be in the new system, and we don't have access to their internal data to get a feel for the proportion of readers borrowing our shorts versus longer novels. It may well be that they can cut the pot in half by shafting shorts writers while still significantly increasing the payout to those producing longer works.


In the email that Amazon sent out announcing this change, they stated that the fund would be $11 million for both July and August. That's higher than it's been so far.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I'm not being snarky here, just stupid. Can someone please explain to me the perceived advantage of bundling your shorts to take advantage of KU? I don't see how bundling them will make you more money. In fact, it seems like it will muddy the waters even further in trying to determine if readers are finishing your stories.

Like I said, I'm probably stupid here. I just want to understand.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

Indiecognito said:


> Authors may not seem up in arms, but the fact is that massive pull-outs will demonstrate their frustration far more than words will.


That's true, but I'd feel a bit better if folks here weren't so unequivocally in favor for this motion. There needs to be finesse. We need to be convinced this is better than the previous model. Not open arms accepting it without even seeing how much money July yields for us.

But that's me. I made more than 50k in the last six months from KU. All I did was write a few serials. Anyone could have done it. But other authors in their support of change, will potentially extinguish the type of success I had for many newcomers looking for exactly that.

Yeah, the novelists already winning will dip their beaks into successful KU short fiction authors and take their spoils, but I think apart from the obvious few most will lose out on this.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> I'm not being snarky here, just stupid. Can someone please explain to me the perceived advantage of bundling your shorts to take advantage of KU? I don't see how bundling them will make you more money. In fact, it seems like it will muddy the waters even further in trying to determine if readers are finishing your stories.
> 
> Like I said, I'm probably stupid here. I just want to understand.


I assume it's so you can charge 2.99 or more rather than just .99 cents. Wouldn't make a difference except amazon pay royalties at 70 percent for works starting at 2.99.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Wow! I don't see how anyone can honestly say that the old flat rate system was *better for all authors*.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

ShaneJeffery said:


> I assume it's so you can charge 2.99 or more rather than just .99 cents. Wouldn't make a difference except amazon pay royalties at 70 percent for works starting at 2.99.


I would assume it's to remove a barrier for potential read through. A person might be more likely to keep reading the serial if the next installment is right there and they don't have to go borrow it. Like binge watching on Netflix.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

Monique said:


> I would assume it's to remove a barrier for potential read through. A person might be more likely to keep reading the serial if the next installment is right there and they don't have to go borrow it. Like binge watching on Netflix.


I agree with that as a motivation. But of course, if we're bundling installments, we're not going to charge .99 cents for them are we.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> Wow! I don't see how anyone can honestly say that the old flat rate system was *better for all authors*.


You knew pretty much what you were going to get, for ten percent read, per title.

Now you know nothing.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

ShaneJeffery said:


> I agree with that as a motivation. But of course, if we're bundling installments, we're not going to charge .99 cents for them are we.


No, but pricing isn't relevant to KU.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Okay, so if I'm understanding this correctly, it's authors who were essentially releasing novels as serials, (either written that way or not) in order to take advantage of the system. Is that right? I'm not blaming anyone for doing so. Heck, I had released the first installment of a serial style novel as well. (Oh well.) However, crying foul because Amazon is fixing their (IMO poorly conceived) system to prevent such (and other) methods of gaming (for lack of a better term) the system just seems like sour grapes.

The only people that I think are truly getting the shaft here are the authors of children's books, and I truly hope that Amazon has something up their sleeve to prevent this, because getting children to read on Kindles should be important to Amazon's future.


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## lostagain (Feb 17, 2014)

DashaGLogan said:


> What about the "look inside" feature, seriously, people do get paid as soon as someone has read as far as the free sample is anyway. Hence I never thought the ten percent are such a deal maker because most likely people have read the sample once they decide to borrow. Or at least a lot have (I always read those)


I never do. It's "free" so why bother?


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Actually, I know plenty. I know I'm going to get considerably more than $1.30ish for my $3.99 novel. Do I know the exact amount? Of course not. I won't know until the 15th of each following month. The same was true under the old system.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Rykymus said:


> I'm not being snarky here, just stupid. Can someone please explain to me the perceived advantage of bundling your shorts to take advantage of KU? I don't see how bundling them will make you more money. In fact, it seems like it will muddy the waters even further in trying to determine if readers are finishing your stories.
> 
> Like I said, I'm probably stupid here. I just want to understand.


The most important aspect is that the impediment to bundling has been removed. I won't be losing money if I place a bundle in KU. It gives the readers more choices, and there may be some who don't want to fill up their borrow slots with shorts. Plus, it's possible that you might get paid for a double read if a reader borrows a short, likes it, then borrows a collection that it's in.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

Monique said:


> No, but pricing isn't relevant to KU.


It is actually. For short story / serial authors.

All titles prior to the change had a potential of earning $1.30 + per borrow

If you cut the title's value to .50 cents or less then it becomes a revenue stream that is more reliant on sales as well to sustain itself.

I mean, if an author who has 10,000 borrows per month and makes $13,000 net from borrows gets the news, then sells the same next month at a rate of .50 cents or less as opposed to $1.30, it's going to affect them. As in the same work for 13k suddenly only earns 5k

Imagine if you're earning less than 13k. Imagine how much you get then.

Borrows aren't providing a high enough royalty anymore. So you shoot for the 2.99 sales. You have to. And maybe you lean on KU to get started with the new system, but seriously, 50 cent short stories is the tough meat to chew through.

You can't slash someone's bottom line by more than 50 percent and have them not do anything to fight the decrease.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> Actually, I know plenty. I know I'm going to get considerably more than $1.30ish for my $3.99 novel. Do I know the exact amount? Of course not. I won't know until the 15th of each following month. The same was true under the old system.


For ten percent you're getting more than $1.30?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

This doesn't make sense to me. If you could have charged $2.99 for a sale before the change, why weren't you? You can't just raise your price to make up for lost borrow money. If that were the case, why wasn't it the case before? Why would someone throw away royalty $ for sales under the old KU? It's not logical.

Yes, titles that fail to earn the $1.30 from borrows that they used to will be losing that extra income. But simply raising the price doesn't seem like a viable way to "fight". If the book can sell at $2.99 why wasn't it before?


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

Monique said:


> This doesn't make sense to me. If you could have charged $2.99 for a sale before the change, why weren't you? You can't just raise your price to make up for lost borrow money. If that were the case, why wasn't it the case before? Why would someone throw away royalty $ for sales under the old KU? It's not logical.
> 
> Yes, titles that fail to earn the $1.30 from borrows that they used to will be losing that extra income. But simply raising the price doesn't seem like a viable way to "fight". If the book can sell at $2.99 why wasn't it before?


Easy. You can't charge 2.99 for 50 pages.

But maybe you can charge 2.99 for 100 pages.

Two 50 page books before equaled 2.60 borrow royalty

Now they'll equal the same together as individually. 1 dollar?

Made sense to separate before. Now makes sense to combine and charge more.


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## Indiecognito (May 19, 2014)

swolf said:


> The most important aspect is that the impediment to bundling has been removed. I won't be losing money if I place a bundle in KU. It gives the readers more choices, and there may be some who don't want to fill up their borrow slots with shorts. Plus, it's possible that you might get paid for a double read if a reader borrows a short, likes it, then borrows a collection that it's in.


This^. 

It's about not losing money. I bundled before but left them out of KU; now putting them in loses me nothing and grants me more visibility AND more money.


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## D. Zollicoffer (May 14, 2014)

I charge $2.99 for my 50 page Children's Books. They're chapter books with no pictures, and people are willing to pay for them. Parents often email me and say, "Your books are the perfect length for bedtime."

Also I've seen some erotica going for that price. People will pay in certain genres. Personally, I think most indie books are underpriced. Maybe it's because I'm always buying $60 games and $3 comic books with only 29 pages lol


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

D. Zollicoffer said:


> I charge $2.99 for my 50 page Children's Books. They're chapter books with no pictures, and people are willing to pay for them. Parents often email me and say, "Your books are the perfect length for bedtime."
> 
> Also I've seen some erotica going for that price. People will pay in certain genres. Personally, I think most indie books are underpriced. Maybe it's because I'm always buying $60 games and $3 comic books with only 29 pages lol


I come from Australia, and 3 dollars buys nothing. No difference between 1 dollar and 3. If I'm on the road, I have to pay 10 dollars for a crap sandwich. It's all change.

But in the US world, totally different. Price actually affects what a lot people would read. And how they review.


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## D. Zollicoffer (May 14, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> I come from Australia, and 3 dollars buys nothing. No difference between 1 dollar and 3. If I'm on the road, I have to pay 10 dollars for a crap sandwich. It's all change.
> 
> But in the US world, totally different. Price actually affects what a lot people would read. And how they review.


Yeah I get that. I'll charge less for my adult serial (20k words each). I'll price it at $1.99.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

D. Zollicoffer said:


> Yeah I get that. I'll charge less for my adult serial (20k words each). I'll price it at $1.99.


Don't do that. Go to 2.99. 1.99 pays way worse.


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## D. Zollicoffer (May 14, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> Don't do that. Go to 2.99. 1.99 pays way worse.


30% I know, that's one of the reasons I keep my children's books at $2.99. I still don't understand why Amazon pays less under a certain price. Plus delivery fees. No one else does that.

It should be 60-70% no matter what. I actually left one of my books at 30% before, a bundle priced at $4.99, and Amazon was happy to take my money. Why would anyone leave that checked on purpose on a book higher than $3? Seems like they're just trying to squeeze more money out of us.

Their system is archaic.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

D. Zollicoffer said:


> 30% I know, that's one of the reasons I keep my children's books at $2.99. I still don't understand why Amazon pays less under a certain price. Plus delivery fees. No one else does that.
> 
> It should be 60-70% no matter what. I actually left one of my books at 30% before, a bundle priced at $4.99, and Amazon was happy to take my money. Why would anyone leave that checked on purpose on a book higher than $3? Seems like they're just trying to squeeze more money out of us.
> 
> Their system is archaic.


Yeah, you understand it. I know it hurts customers, but you HAVE to price at 2.99 if the choice is between 1.99 and anything else. Even if it's between .99 cents and 2.99, you could be better off at 2.99 even if the story is only 5k. If they had the same royalty rate regardless of price, like the other stores, it would be different.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

So, the solution to KU 2.0 is for everyone to raise the price of their works to a minimum of $2.99? And writers of shorts will have to bundle in order to make customers feel they're getting their money's worth?


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

> Sorry, but the evidence disagrees with you. Currently, if a reader borrows ten of my 25-page books, which they could easily burn through in a day or two, Amazon pays me $13.50 for that reader. Think of how many short stories that reader can get through in a month. There's a potential for Amazon paying out WAY more than the $10 that reader paid.


Exactly. That's the problem. That's why they're changing the system.



> In the new model, the royalties are shifting from borrows to pages read. But Amazon is still going to be paying out the same amount of money (or more), and if borrows remain around the same, that money has to go somewhere.


Yes, it shifts the money from short story writers (ok let's be honest--from short erotica writers) to novelists, but the key is that readers of novels don't consume 10 novels in a day or two. They consume a few a month. There's a real world limit on how much someone will read, just like the really fat guy is still only going to eat so much at the all you can eat buffet.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Speaker-To-Animals said:


> Exactly. That's the problem. That's why they're changing the system.
> 
> Yes, it shifts the money from short story writers (ok let's be honest--from short erotica writers) to novelists, but the key is that readers of novels don't consume 10 novels in a day or two. They consume a few a month. There's a real world limit on how much someone will read, just like the really fat guy is still only going to eat so much at the all you can eat buffet.


I know some really skinny guys that eat more than the fat guys.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> So, no. Those of us looking at the math are not saying a penny a page is what it SHOULD be; we're saying the math says that's where it is more likely to wind up given the history. Not that it may not be more the first couple of months to entice more folk in, but that's where the end-game appears likely headed. Unless something changes radically.


Every month, Amazon artifically inflate the KU pot to what they want. Beforehand we had the measuring stick of 1.30 per borrow.

People stood up and said, I won't take less than a dollar. Some Novelists wouldn't accept the rate as it was.

But this new KU system is so complex, and so variable, that everyone will be scratching their heads as to whether they should be making this or that and all it's going to come down to is the bottom line - except did they get more borrows last month than this month - OH but we don't count borrows anymore -

It's just one big major stuff around. So much uncertainty. And Amazon will take advantage.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

ShaneJeffery said:


> Every month, Amazon artifically inflate the KU pot to what they want. Beforehand we had the measuring stick of 1.30 per borrow.
> 
> People stood up and said, I won't take less than a dollar. Some Novelists wouldn't accept the rate as it was.
> 
> ...


Did you know on May 1 how many borrows you would have for the month of May?
Now if and when I ever do get my cookbook published, looking at November at the moment. I will put it in Select. Taking a guess at the borrow payout, I would estimate that I will get a half cent per page. Hey if I am off and it is a penny or more a page, that is gravy.
The way I look at selling e-books is until you are established, there is no way to even guess how many you will sell in any given month.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2015)

cinisajoy said:


> Did you know on May 1 how many borrows you would have for the month of May?
> Now if and when I ever do get my cookbook published, looking at November at the moment. I will put it in Select. Taking a guess at the borrow payout, I would estimate that I will get a half cent per page. Hey if I am off and it is a penny or more a page, that is gravy.
> The way I look at selling e-books is until you are established, there is no way to even guess how many you will sell in any given month.


At the start of May, no I did not know how many borrows I had. But at the end of May I did.

And at the end of July I will not know how many borrows I had that month.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Speaker-To-Animals said:


> Exactly. That's the problem. That's why they're changing the system.
> 
> Yes, it shifts the money from short story writers (ok let's be honest--from short erotica writers) to novelists, but the key is that readers of novels don't consume 10 novels in a day or two. They consume a few a month. There's a real world limit on how much someone will read, just like the really fat guy is still only going to eat so much at the all you can eat buffet.


And that's my point. The 'overpayment', if you will, will shift from short books to those authors being read. So Amazon overpaying for a reader spending $10 a month will shift to readers reading the most amount of pages. Whether those pages are two long novels or forty short stories won't matter.

Amazon isn't doing this to save money. If they were, they'd be lowering the pool. They're doing this to make it more fair to authors who write longer books. Amazon has demonstrated they're perfectly willing to pay more than $10 in royalties for a reader only spending $10 a month. All that's changing is who is going to get that money.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

swolf said:


> Amazon isn't doing this to save money. If they were, they'd be lowering the pool. They're doing this to make it more fair to authors who write longer books. Amazon has demonstrated they're perfectly willing to pay more than $10 in royalties for a reader only spending $10 a month. All that's changing is who is going to get that money.


I really don't think they're doing this to be fair to authors. That's a side effect. I think the impetus was to shift the bulk available titles toward longer form. Probably some reader feedback suggested that they wanted more novels and those were getting harder to find in KU. *shrug* Just a guess, but I doubt they did it to be fair to authors.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Monique said:


> I really don't think they're doing this to be fair to authors. That's a side effect. I think the impetus was to shift the bulk available titles toward longer form. Probably some reader feedback suggested that they wanted more novels and those were getting harder to find in KU. *shrug* Just a guess, but I doubt they did it to be fair to authors.


Pretty much the same thing. Longer form authors felt they weren't being treated fairly, so they stayed out of KU. So we're only talking semantics, about whether being fair to longer authors is a goal, or a means to goal.


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## Tricia O&#039; (Feb 19, 2013)

Joe_Nobody said:


> Has Amazon published the exact definition of "what is a page?"


From amazon regarding what is a page and if a reader skips chapters:

"Yes, our technical team will be able to calculate the chapters that were read by a customer and also the ones that are skipped.

To determine a book's page count in a way that works across genres and devices, we've developed the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC) and not just the words.

We calculate KENPC based on standard settings (e.g. font, line height, line spacing, etc.), and we'll use KENPC to measure the number of pages customers read in your book, starting with the Start Reading Location (SRL) to the end of your book. This standardized approach allows us to identify pages in a way that works across genres and devices."

After this change, you'll be able to see your book's KENPC listed on the "Promote and Advertise" page in your Bookshelf. Because it's based on default settings, KENPC may vary from page counts listed on your Amazon detail page.


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## TuckerAuthor (Jan 31, 2014)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Let's look at the math in the announcement from the reverse angle.&#8230;
> 
> Plus, the All-Star books are popular, so average read-through is probably going to be better than 40% (especially on deep serials), which drives down the average even further for everything outside of the 1M All-Star borrows.


Which means that A LOT of the 10%-triggered borrows previously have been of the ultra-short variety (i.e. the people scamming the system). I'm not even talking about erotica shorts. I doubt many people downloaded those by mistake. I'm talking about the blog post/Wikipedia articles turned into "books" and uploaded by the hundreds, if not thousands, and enrolled in Select. Say just 10% of the borrows for May were these types of books. For that pot of $10 million, that's $1 million redistributed to people actually writing stories (long or short) that got read. I'm betting it will be even more than that. This is what Amazon is trying to clean up in my opinion.


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

ShaneJeffery said:


> Authors have not been up in arms about this change. At least not on my radar.
> 
> According to the "new KU payout & program change mega thread" 73.5% support the change (317 votes) and 26.5% don't support it (114 votes).
> 
> ...


I'm willing to bet a vintage Millenium Falcon the new payout system will mean more money for me. We won't know for six weeks, but my math indicates I could see a substantial jump. Everyone has to do what is right for them. I believe this will work out well for me so I am happy.


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## LadyStarlight (Nov 14, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I'm willing to bet a vintage Millenium Falcon the new payout system will mean more money for me. We won't know for six weeks, but my math indicates I could see a substantial jump. Everyone has to do what is right for them. I believe this will work out well for me so I am happy.


Go get it girl! You deserve it with your incredible work ethic!

Meanwhile, I'll be eating out of dumpsters behind the local McDonald's.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

TuckerAuthor said:


> Which means that A LOT of the 10%-triggered borrows previously have been of the ultra-short variety (i.e. the people scamming the system). I'm not even talking about erotica shorts. I doubt many people downloaded those by mistake. I'm talking about the blog post/Wikipedia articles turned into "books" and uploaded by the hundreds, if not thousands, and enrolled in Select. Say just 10% of the borrows for May were these types of books. For that pot of $10 million, that's $1 million redistributed to people actually writing stories (long or short) that got read. I'm betting it will be even more than that. This is what Amazon is trying to clean up in my opinion.


Exactly. It's really bad news for those who prefer to write short works and will now earn a lot less money for them, but at least they've had a year of doing well before Amazon shut things down. And it was always anomalous to make $1.35 from a book that would only bring in 35c if sold. When the scammers move in in droves, it's obvious that something is wrong.

I really like the idea of payment by pages read, and not just because I'm likely to do better from it. My books are 2-3 times average length, but that doesn't mean I'll make 2-3 times as much as other people. Very long books mean more opportunity for readers to get distracted by something newer and shinier. No, the real advantage of the new system, in my view, is that payment will now be determined by _readers_, not authors. We can write what we want, of whatever length, bundled or not, and as long as readers enjoy it, we'll get paid proportionately.

And I think Yoda will do very well, too. Everyone who writes full-length novels that have readers avidly turning the pages will do better under the new arrangement.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

When I first read the announcement signaling KU2, my first reaction was "Hey, this sounds like a good idea and a fairer way of paying writers." I also thought there would be more of a message sent back to writers from readers. Things like "Sorry, I got bored and stopped reading on page 68." Or "I was not engaged." Not exactly detailed but definitely a message of sorts and possibly useful.

Since that initial gut reaction, I've read approximately 50,000,000,000 words via blogs, lists, and the WC, and I still hold with my initial positive outlook. I write contemporary romance, some short, some long. So, according to all KU2 pundits, I'll win some and lose some. I'm good with that. 

But from here on, I think I'll take a break from reading about KU2, because frankly my head and the endless numbers are not compatible. The brain, she aches... Especially when embedded in almost every message, short or long, are the words, "We won't know until August 15th." 

This KU2 thing is a done deal. That train has left the station. Let the speculations continue, I'm swearing off reading any more in fairness to my numbers-damaged brain.


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

Tricia O' said:


> From amazon regarding what is a page and if a reader skips chapters:
> 
> "Yes, our technical team will be able to calculate the chapters that were read by a customer and also the ones that are skipped.
> 
> ...


Hey there...

Yes, ma'am, I read that... but what is the formula for KENPC? Can I take one of my books and know the KENPC number?

It's a business decision for authors, yet we're given nothing to base that decision on. We don't know the true number of pages currently being read. We don't know how to calculate KENPC. The only variable we are given is the size of the payout pool for 30 days, and historically, that hasn't been accurate as they add to the pool.

If Amazon is doing this to bring in more authors, and thus increase KU subscribers, this isn't the way to do it. I need hard facts. 
If Amazon is doing this to fix an inequity issue among current KU authors, that's cool, but I'll stay right where I'm at.
If Amazon is doing this to increase their profits, they could certainly do a better job of selling the entire program to authors. Really, for such a far-reaching change as this is, it's been an extremely weak effort.


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## Tricia O&#039; (Feb 19, 2013)

Joe_Nobody said:


> Hey there...
> 
> Yes, ma'am, I read that... but what is the formula for KENPC? Can I take one of my books and know the KENPC number?
> 
> ...


Oh, I completely understand and agree.

The best that I can offer is that I will have my newest book, One Tequila, live mid-July. I can borrow it immediately and click through to the end. If the reports update every six minutes and I have a singular borrow - I might be able to determine what they are putting a page at.

Yes, I know that is ridiculous and much of it depends on if I get no other borrows during the time that I am clicking through the book. The other variable is that if I click through too fast - they may deduce that as skipping a page and then that won't count either.

Which, in the big picture, you shouldn't have to do these things to figure out what a page is and what we'll be paid for a page.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

> Amazon isn't doing this to save money. If they were, they'd be lowering the pool. They're doing this to make it more fair to authors who write longer books. Amazon has demonstrated they're perfectly willing to pay more than $10 in royalties for a reader only spending $10 a month. All that's changing is who is going to get that money.


On an individual basis yes, but this should weight the program towards becoming profitable overall or at least break even in the long term. If you run the numbers, a glutenous shorts reader becomes an almost farcical economic strain on the system under the 10% rule.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Just a reminder, that although we will not know the actual payout rate with any certainty until August 15th, (and even then, it will only be the payout rate for July) we will know how they are calculating the number of pages in our works. Since they will be making that information available on our dashboards, it's just a little experimentation and calculation to figure out their formula to an acceptable degree of accuracy.

However, I still wouldn't worry about the details as much as I would worry about the overall effect on revenue. None of us can accurately predict our completion percentages, and that, more than any other factor, is going to dictate financial success or failure.

Which, of course, is the beauty of KU 2.0, as it encourages engaging stories that garner more page reads, rather than something made with only enough effort to get read to the 11% mark in order to get paid.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> Which, of course, is the beauty of KU 2.0, as it encourages engaging stories that garner more page reads, rather than something made with only enough effort to get read to the 11% mark in order to get paid.


It encourages it, but without some metric beyond pages read it doesn't give us any way to tell if we're achieving it. 20 pages read could mean one person loved my 20 page short, or it could mean 20 people opened it and "LOL NOPE"d out of the first page.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Speaker-To-Animals said:


> On an individual basis yes, but this should weight the program towards becoming profitable overall or at least break even in the long term. If you run the numbers, a glutenous shorts reader becomes an almost farcical economic strain on the system under the 10% rule.


It's obvious, at least at this point, that Amazon isn't looking to make a profit on KU. At least from subscribers. They're adding a ton of money over what the subscribers are paying. That was the case in the old system, and will be the case in the new system. They understand there's going to be readers out there who read more than the $10 they're paying in. It's obvious they're ok with that.


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## MikeDavidson (Oct 5, 2013)

LadyStarlight said:


> Go get it girl! You deserve it with your incredible work ethic!
> 
> Meanwhile, I'll be eating out of dumpsters behind the local McDonald's.


The rich will get richer and the poor get poorer. Unfortunately for me, Although I've done well, I've written mostly short nonfiction titles. Not everything is about fiction here. I agree that novels are better than shorts, but being primarily a nonfiction writer my readers prefer shorter nonfiction over longer nonfiction due to busy lifestyles. I've been doing this long before KU because my readers love them. I think amazon is doing this to reduce the scammers, which is good. But I cannot write long Nonfiction as it would be against what my readers want. End result? Depending on the payout I might have a full pull out of KU and I'm a KU allstar. However my fiction would remain in KU...

Also, how much do you want to bet that they'll reduce the allstar payout in years to come.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

TuckerAuthor said:


> Which means that A LOT of the 10%-triggered borrows previously have been of the ultra-short variety (i.e. the people scamming the system). I'm not even talking about erotica shorts. I doubt many people downloaded those by mistake. I'm talking about the blog post/Wikipedia articles turned into "books" and uploaded by the hundreds, if not thousands, and enrolled in Select. Say just 10% of the borrows for May were these types of books. For that pot of $10 million, that's $1 million redistributed to people actually writing stories (long or short) that got read. I'm betting it will be even more than that. This is what Amazon is trying to clean up in my opinion.


Yep. I'm ashamed to admit that I got tricked into downloading one on KU. I loved the TV show Manhattan, and a book was in KU saying it was giving info about the series, behind the scenes stuff, etc. I downloaded it and it was just a few pages of info cobbled together from internet articles. Definitely no insight to the show and how it was filmed, history of the Manhattan project, or anything. I wrote a one-star review--one of only two I ever left. I think the book was 20 something pages.


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## LadyStarlight (Nov 14, 2014)

MikeDavidson said:


> The rich will get richer and the poor get poorer. Unfortunately for me, Although I've done well, I've written mostly short nonfiction titles. Not everything is about fiction here. I agree that novels are better than shorts, but being primarily a nonfiction writer my readers prefer shorter nonfiction over longer nonfiction due to busy lifestyles. I've been doing this long before KU because my readers love them. I think amazon is doing this to reduce the scammers, which is good. But I cannot write long Nonfiction as it would be against what my readers want. End result? Depending on the payout I might have a full pull out of KU and I'm a KU allstar. However my fiction would remain in KU...
> 
> Also, how much do you want to bet that they'll reduce the allstar payout in years to come.


You must be writing in a nice little niche if you're an all-star with non-fiction! Grats!


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

swolf said:


> It's obvious, at least at this point, that Amazon isn't looking to make a profit on KU. At least from subscribers. They're adding a ton of money over what the subscribers are paying. That was the case in the old system, and will be the case in the new system. They understand there's going to be readers out there who read more than the $10 they're paying in. It's obvious they're ok with that.


Hi. KU is draw customers to the store. See while I am grabbing a book or 3, might as well see if they have the movie my daughter wanted to give her dad for father's day. I needed a bigger silicone baking/cutting mat. Check Amazon. Oddball batteries, yep. Bread keeper, yep. Dozen other things, yep.
So the profit comes from the physical.


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## MikeDavidson (Oct 5, 2013)

LadyStarlight said:


> You must be writing in a nice little niche if you're an all-star with non-fiction! Grats!


Thanks


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## Julianna (Jun 28, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> crying foul because Amazon is fixing their (IMO poorly conceived) system to prevent such (and other) methods of gaming (for lack of a better term) the system just seems like sour grapes.


Actually, it isn't sour grapes because according to Amazon, they created this new system in response to complaints received from other writers. Just be careful what you wish for...


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

Julianna said:


> Actually, it isn't sour grapes because according to Amazon, they created this new system in response to complaints received from other writers. Just be careful what you wish for...


Where did Amazon say they created it in response to complaints from other writers? I have no doubt writers were complaining, but I didn't see that in the missive they sent out.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Where did Amazon say they created it in response to complaints from other writers? I have no doubt writers were complaining, but I didn't see that in the missive they sent out.


My guess is CUSTOMERS were complaining about the plethora of super short and/or crappy books . . . . and the Zon realized it was _paying people_ to publish such junk. The new scheme is designed to discourage it.


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## Sonya Bateman (Feb 3, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Where did Amazon say they created it in response to complaints from other writers? I have no doubt writers were complaining, but I didn't see that in the missive they sent out.


Not that I'm arguing one way or the other, but in the email announcing Select changes from Amazon it says:

We're always looking at ways to make our programs even better, and we've received lots of great feedback on how to improve the way we pay KDP authors for books in Kindle Unlimited.* One particular piece of feedback we've heard consistently from authors is that paying the same for all books regardless of length may not provide a strong enough alignment between the interests of authors and readers. We agree. *With this in mind, we're pleased to announce that beginning on July 1, the KDP Select Global Fund will be paid out based on the number of pages KU and KOLL customers read.

[Bolding mine] So... according to them, the changes were made because of author feedback.


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

S.W. Vaughn said:


> Not that I'm arguing one way or the other, but in the email announcing Select changes from Amazon it says:
> 
> We're always looking at ways to make our programs even better, and we've received lots of great feedback on how to improve the way we pay KDP authors for books in Kindle Unlimited.* One particular piece of feedback we've heard consistently from authors is that paying the same for all books regardless of length may not provide a strong enough alignment between the interests of authors and readers. We agree. *With this in mind, we're pleased to announce that beginning on July 1, the KDP Select Global Fund will be paid out based on the number of pages KU and KOLL customers read.
> 
> [Bolding mine] So... according to them, the changes were made because of author feedback.


Fair point. However, Amazon wants to keep customers happy more than suppliers. I don't doubt authors were complaining left and right. I have a feeling some of the customer base was, too.


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## Sonya Bateman (Feb 3, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Fair point. However, Amazon wants to keep customers happy more than suppliers. I don't doubt authors were complaining left and right. I have a feeling some of the customer base was, too.


I hope so... it's nice to think that Amazon made these changes in response to customer complaints about overall quality of the material in KU (regardless of story length) and that this per-page system really will help well written stories (regardless of length) become more visible, while scraped / plagiarized / thrown-together scam bait sinks out of sight. My fingers are crossed for that, anyway.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

The later point is why I think this whole thing stinks likes yesterday's diapers. Because if customers were really the driving force for this change, Amazon would just say "Feedback from KU readers has been they'd like to see a better balance in work lengths. That paired with author feedback is why we are pleased to announce a new system for calculating Kindle Unlimited payouts . . ."   By wrapping this earth-shattering change in the flag of fairness . . .  they cleverly made so many of us "happy" for the change. I'm not talking about the Amanda Lees that are the >1% of the program, I'm talking about the authors with 500 or less borrows a month across all titles. That's who is now no longer going to get paid "fully" which is whatever Amazon wants when they are discovered and read a little bit at least, and when earnings drop, no not right away, but right before the Christmas holiday season, so no one will want to rock the boat, Amazon will be able to say "Well, you just weren't READ by the readers who borrowed you." There is nowhere for the pot to go but down. If they could keep paying $1.35 for every borrow, they would have. That was about a 30-35% SAVINGS on the $2 payout. And don't forget, we've all watched our KDP Dashboard be wonky all week, that's a hefty amount of backend development work they're changing back there as well.

Here's how I hypothesize that Amazon does not care about story length: the new redesign of .com pages make it HARDER to find page counts, and some ebooks still don't show them, despite having a sales rank and being out awhile. They actively promote curated content in the short reads categories. They do not impose a hard limit on any length or any price. They now promote series on the book pages, where's the help for stand alones? 

And readers, in droves, READ the shorter material.

I know we have readers here on Kboards, and they are wonderful readers who support Kboards authors like no others. But they are a slice of the readership that is out there and I would characterize them as super, interactive readers. But it's not accurate to paint every reader out there with the awesomeness brush the readers here at Kboards have. MOST readers do not review books, period. MOST readers do not even talk to people about what they're reading on their kindles. MOST readers do not join mailing lists, do not email authors, etc. And they read all kinds of things. Shorts. Longs. Serials. Series. Standalones. Etc. This place, great as it is, is very often an echo chamber on certain issues.

Here's a type of KU reader I am intimate with, and it's a very startling definition. This KU reader pays her $9.99 every month without a second thought. She pays it for the availability of borrowing books, and some months, borrows nothing. When she shops for a book to read, she often starts in the KU section on her Kindle Fire, but if there's nothing exciting, or the books she downloads to try don't keep her attention after a chapter or two, she just buys a book. Why? Because KU is not a cost-savings so much as it is a convenience, she views her membership as paying for the convenience of having readily downloadable content to read in case she doesn't have book money one month (ok, more because she spent most of her life living on shoestring budgets and now that she doesn't have to anymore, she still can't shake the possibility that it COULD happen). This particular type of KU reader flies in the face of just about every assumption people on this board has made about who uses KU. And I know this reader well, because it's me. And it also described more than a dozen of military wives I know on social media who are also using KU as an "it's there" service, but buys whatever darn book they want when they want it. I pay for cable, I hardly ever watch it. But it's there if I want to . . . that is my mentality towards KU.

As much as I love Amazon, for the opportunity, for the innovation, for the convenience, it is NOT a book store. It is the A-Z store. And book deal sites can tell you, because they see the affiliate reports every month, it's not the books that make the money, it's the everything else and kitchen sink. A book, paperback or ebook, is just consumable content to get a buyer in the store. That's it. Jeff Bezos hasn't even beaten around the bush about this, equating ebooks with other forms of consumable content like video games and tv shows. Amazon doesn't want readers reading the pages, Amazon wants the readers SHOPPING. That's why they love short stories and heavily promote them in special sections of the site and encourage those lunch break readers, those commuter train riders, those people looking for a quick fix of fiction, to read. Because as soon as they're done with one story, they have to come BACK to the Amazon store to get another. And oh, by the way, there's a sale on shoes on the front page . . . 

Just my opinion. We're fighting amongst ourselves here about who will get paid what, and I feel like we're missing the big picture. And that's why, though I know KU would be a tidy paycheck if I was to put my JAFF serials in there, I just won't take the short term win for the long term sacrifice. I used KU last year to relaunch my writing, and I don't ever think it's a program that should be gone, I just think worrying about "scamlets, scraped content" etc. is a waste of valuable writing time. I love Amanda Lee and everyone else making major bank with KU. Like hand me some pom-poms, I will start a cheer for you! 

But as a community, not everyone is an All-Star, very few are. And it concerns me that Amazon wants to pay per page, because it started with when they downloaded you, then became 10%. Now it's whatever is read, as Joe Nobody points out, as calculated by a robot. I leave books open on my Kindle all the time, I have kids. I also skim most narrative and read the dialogue. I really wonder how in the heck they're going to count my pages read for the books that I borrow. 

As they sing on the Amazon Prime NBC show I am in love with right now, SMASH, "they just keep moving the line."


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

I can see KU from two perspectives because I have two names. My second name is not an All-Star. I purposely kept my names separate because my stuff is quite different. My pen name is less than a year old. Sure, Amanda M. Lee is an All-Star. My other name isn't. I don't have the push behind it I get with Amanda M. Lee books. I believe my pen name is going to do better, too. I don't believe the shift will be pronounced, BUT conservatively I expect the pen name to bring in an additional $8,000 a month. This is a pen name I've worked hard on but is not established. Now, granted, for a new name I've got a lot of books, which helps. However, I can look at KU for that name and see a benefit. I was writing full novels under that, too. I have been spouting my opinion about the benefit of having full novels in KU for the beginning and people laughed at me. Do I think it's going to pay off? Yes. For both names. Now I must go back to writing. I have a pen name book to finish before Camp NaNo.


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

I also want to add that Amazon was trying to drive authors to longer works six months ago. The writing was on the wall. They told readers what lengths were selling best. That should have been a hint that they were planning something. I think they care about story length because a lot of readers care about story length. All readers? No. The money going into KU is nothing to Amazon. I actually don't look for them to drop the pool. As books and readers keep going in they will raise it. I do think we'll settle at a static amount for pages, but I don't think they're dropping the fund to save money. This is definitely a redistribution of the pot. I would never argue it's not. Amazon isn't going to drop the pot, though. They don't care about the money because KU is a funnel, not a profit program. Subscription services are the way of the world now and that's why they have a subscription service. Some people did manage to get All-Star bonuses with shorter material but the big bulk of KU All-Stars were longer works authors. That's because people wanted the novels. I'm not saying people don't like shorter stuff, too. They do. The most popular stuff in KU happened to be longer stuff, though. I was never someone who complained about shorter works authors getting the same amount of money in KU as I was. I was one of the few people that was happy with the payout because of the volume. The argument for $2 borrows was always ridiculous to me because of the increase in volume. In fact, I said that I wasn't going to focus on anything like that because I couldn't change it and I focused on writing instead. I'm not going to pretend now that I'm not hopeful that this change is going to benefit me, though. I was contacted by a lot of people in private messages about making money in KU and to every single one of them I recommended writing longer works. I was laughed at by many of them. I still stand by that argument. I am sorry for people who are getting the rug yanked out from under them. This happens all the time, though. It's been a year since it happened the last time. When it happened then I developed a pen name because I had an idea on how to capitalize on KU. It's a work in progress. I'm still working on it. This is one of those jobs where you have to adapt or die.


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## devalong (Aug 28, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I'm willing to bet a vintage Millenium Falcon the new payout system will mean more money for me.


OMG if Han takes you up on this bet please give me a ride :-D.


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## devalong (Aug 28, 2014)

Joe_Nobody said:


> Hey there...
> 
> Yes, ma'am, I read that... but what is the formula for KENPC? Can I take one of my books and know the KENPC number?
> 
> It's a business decision for authors, yet we're given nothing to base that decision on. We don't know the true number of pages currently being read. We don't know how to calculate KENPC. The only variable we are given is the size of the payout pool for 30 days, and historically, that hasn't been accurate as they add to the pool.


If they give borrows and pages read, I'll be pretty happy. With that I can get an idea where readers are DNF if they are. But they keep telling people they're going to take away borrows reporting and just give pages read, which to me is a cray cray way to run a business for the author in KU.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

I hate the precedent this sets for the sale of books. People are crowing about the new scheme because it will encourage good books and raise the quality of indie books.

This is the wrong discussion to be having and the wrong approach if we want to improve the quality of indie books. Besides, what other product is treated this way? Imagine if a television producer was only paid for the minutes of a television show viewers watched? Or a chef for the percentage of the food diners ate, or a designer for how often customers wore the clothes they designed, or Hoover for how often a customer used their new vacuum?

I can see it now...

_Sorry, Hoover Inc., but Mrs. Jones only vacuumed her carpet last month for 20 minutes and didn't use the detachable hose attachment once, therefore you only get paid 1/4 of the monthly Hoover fee... _

It's _ridiculous_.

The only reason Amazon can get away with this payment scheme is because indie authors feel they can't demand more.

Why should a member of KU get to read _my_ book and I get paid less than when it sells outside of KU? I don't read every print or ebook I buy on Amazon, but the publisher and author both get paid regardless.

Amazon pays the full share of the usual royalty to publishers whose books they include in KU without the publisher's consent.

Amazon treats indie authors who enrol in KDPS/KU as second class citizens and their books as if they were not a typical commodity for sale in a market. While it is voluntary, it devalues all indie books, IMO.

I write series novels. My read through is pretty high for the books in the 3 series I have published and my books are all 4+star rated. I make a very good living as a full-time author writing full length series novels. KU has no value to me. I don't need the KU payment scheme as any kind of incentive to improve my writing. That is job one for me and always has been, which is why I hire editors and beta readers and pay for professional covers, etc. Pleasing my readers is and always has been my main goal because they buy my books and keep me paying my mortgage.

I believe that I should get paid the price I set for my books. If readers don't like my books, they can return them. If they read the book and don't like it, they won't read through and buy the next one. They will give me a bad review and my rating will drop. I won't sell as much.

Just like EVERY OTHER PRODUCT FOR SALE.

Amazon screwed up when it designed KU 1.0. They gave authors and scammers an incentive to write short pieces and game the system to get the $1.35 borrow rate each time their 10 page short was read instead of the $0.35 they would have earned through a sale. Now Amazon is trying to discourage those scammers and the authors who published scraped material off the web but in my view, they are screwing over indie authors in general.

I just put all my books in Scribd and Oyster. Screw Amazon's KU.


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## Guest (Jun 29, 2015)

Even if those with short stories start making less money, here's the thing: They can either a) start writing longer books or b) write more short stories. I think it actually works out fairer this way, then say, someone who spends a year working on 1 book, get $2 for the borrow, while someone else writes 24 short stories in the same amount of time...especially if the reading majority want longer works. But I stand by initial assessment. If enough authors get screwed, they'll drop out of KU. And then they will either find a new way to make more, or if enough drop out, amazon will revise their system again to win them back. This is nothing new. The publishing industry is always changing. We flipped the tables on trad publishers and authors. They had to adjust then, like we have to adjust now. It's NOT the end of the world.


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## LadyStarlight (Nov 14, 2014)

Sela said:


> I hate the precedent this sets for the sale of books. People are crowing about the new scheme because it will encourage good books and raise the quality of indie books.
> 
> This is the wrong discussion to be having and the wrong approach if we want to improve the quality of indie books. Besides, what other product is treated this way? Imagine if a television producer was only paid for the minutes of a television show viewers watched? Or a chef for the percentage of the food diners ate, or a designer for how often customers wore the clothes they designed, or Hoover for how often a customer used their new vacuum?
> 
> ...


I love the fire in this post!


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Sorry, Sela, but you're just flat out wrong. Amazon isn't trying to screw anyone over. They're trying to fix a poorly conceived system into one that will serve the needs of everyone in the best way possible. Is it the best system, no. But it is Amazon's marketplace, and they have the right to run it however they want, just as you have the right not to participate in their marketplace. You demand that you should have the right to charge what you want for your books, yet you want to curtail Amazon's right to do virtually the same.

No one is taking advantage of me. I can withdraw anytime I like. But I sure as heck will not do so because of ramblings by people on these forums.


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## David Wisehart (Mar 2, 2010)

Sela said:


> ...what other product is treated this way? Imagine if a television producer was only paid for the minutes of a television show viewers watched?


YouTube ranks videos by watch time.

Rankings and watch times affect earnings for YouTubers.

So that's another example of creators being paid based on user engagement.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Rykymus said:


> Sorry, Sela, but you're just flat out wrong. Amazon isn't trying to screw anyone over. They're trying to fix a poorly conceived system into one that will serve the needs of everyone in the best way possible. Is it the best system, no. But it is Amazon's marketplace, and they have the right to run it however they want, just as you have the right not to participate in their marketplace. You demand that you should have the right to charge what you want for your books, yet you want to curtail Amazon's right to do virtually the same.
> 
> No one is taking advantage of me. I can withdraw anytime I like. But I sure as heck will not do so because of ramblings by people on these forums.


I agree. I don't think anyone should be comparing books to any other product on the market, it doesn't make sense. Besides, as far as the vacuum analogy is concerned, I bought my vacuum, I did not rent it. If I did, I would expect to pay for the number of days or hours I had it in my possession and I see no difference there with the rental of ebooks. I would also point out that all these people saying it is unfair and it won't work, don't seem to have a better idea to make things fairer.

I hope all you people threatening to leave do so quickly because that will mean more payouts for the rest of us.


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

Doglover said:


> I agree. I don't think anyone should be comparing books to any other product on the market, it doesn't make sense. Besides, as far as the vacuum analogy is concerned, I bought my vacuum, I did not rent it. If I did, I would expect to pay for the number of days or hours I had it in my possession and I see no difference there with the rental of ebooks. I would also point out that all these people saying it is unfair and it won't work, don't seem to have a better idea to make things fairer.
> 
> I hope all you people threatening to leave do so quickly because that will mean more payouts for the rest of us.


I agree. Renting is different. You used to rent videos and were forced to pay late fees and you had to return them. You rent movies On Demand and pay for a limited time (and there are different movie prices). You pay to rent steam cleaners, floor buffers, heavy equipment, etc. renting is very different than buying.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Doglover said:


> I hope all you people threatening to leave do so quickly because that will mean more payouts for the rest of us.


LOL. But for every author whisking all their short stories and novellas out of KU, there will be someone else putting their novels in. It all comes out in the wash.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Amazon sent a business to business email to authors/publishers, so they are not going to spin it as what the customer wants as that is a poor way to treat your suppliers, especially when one of your biggest named suppliers have been talking to the _New York Times_ on the subject. Authors are the target of the change as it is the KDP authors who determine what makes up 80% of the KU catalogue. Customers get what they want based on whether Amazon are enticing authors/publishers to place in KU the books that customers want to borrow in KU.

Short story writers are not so much disadvantaged by this change as having an anomalous advantage removed after a year of hay-making. The main disadvantage from 1st July for short story writers is the expense of covers for those who do not DIY. That can be worked around by doing what short story publishers have traditionally done - sell collections. Children's story books (and their illustrators) remain the biggest losers in this change.

My output is being upped long and short, as I don't have illustrations and do my own covers and photography, all this change means is that a page is a page. Publishing a short (my only publication since the B2B email was 8000 words of poetry) gets me paid for however many pages read and my Camp NaNoWriMo fantasy novel will also get paid for however many pages are read. The advantage the novel has boils down to the principle of least effort: a reader is more likely to keep reading pages of the book they are halfway through that to pick up another of my 7 page wonders. My two main books are in Scribd, though. That is to allow me to promote them via the get an extra month of free reading (and I get one as well), of which KU has no equivalent. New stuff I'm writing is likely to all go into Select at least initially, but some may go out to Scribd later to help those free trial promos.

As to the reasons people use KU I can add another. I hate clutter and I almost never re-read books. So part of my decision over whether to buy a book or read on subscription is that the library service does not clutter up my Kindle or My Content. Which helps KU authors as I am more likely to read something in a subscription service than download it as a freebie. Despite my dislike of clutter I do like to keep my KU download amount at 10 as a sort of on-device wish list.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Sela said:


> I believe that I should get paid the price I set for my books. If readers don't like my books, they can return them. If they read the book and don't like it, they won't read through and buy the next one. They will give me a bad review and my rating will drop. I won't sell as much.
> 
> Just like EVERY OTHER PRODUCT FOR SALE.


If Amazon was forcing everyone into KU, I'd agree with you. But it's an optional program, so the simple solution is to keep your books out of it if you feel that way.

But you have to agree there is an inherent unfairness to a system that pays authors the same amount of royalties for a 20-page book and a 500-page book. It's unlikely those two authors would have priced their books the same.



Sela said:


> Amazon screwed up when it designed KU 1.0. They gave authors and scammers an incentive to write short pieces and game the system to get the $1.35 borrow rate each time their 10 page short was read instead of the $0.35 they would have earned through a sale. Now Amazon is trying to discourage those scammers and the authors who published scraped material off the web but in my view, they are screwing over indie authors in general.


Not a fan of being lumped in with the scammers and accused of gaming the system. Amazon set the rules, and I responded to them. I didn't cheat in any way. I attempted to put out short, quality work, so that my readers would come back and borrow more. If my readers felt cheated, I saw no signs of it. As for long-form authors feeling cheated, they complained, and Amazon changed the rules. Now we have to figure out what works for each of us in this new scenario.


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## lostagain (Feb 17, 2014)

swolf said:


> If Amazon was forcing everyone into KU, I'd agree with you. But it's an optional program, so the simple solution is to keep your books out of it if you feel that way.
> 
> But you have to agree there is an inherent unfairness to a system that pays authors the same amount of royalties for a 20-page book and a 500-page book. It's unlikely those two authors would have priced their books the same.
> 
> Not a fan of being lumped in with the scammers and accused of gaming the system. Amazon set the rules, and I responded to them. I didn't cheat in any way. I attempted to put out short, quality work, so that my readers would come back and borrow more. If my readers felt cheated, I saw no signs of it. As for long-form authors feeling cheated, they complained, and Amazon changed the rules. Now we have to figure out what works for each of us in this new scenario.


Ditto.


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## wezelrox (Jul 16, 2012)

Hi - I signed up for a spot in July for a Bronze spot just to see how it works. Just wanted to make sure that I understand everything properly.

When I sign for a "MAILING LIST SIGNUP," who collects the emails?  I wasn't sure how this works so I think I put my own signup link where it says RAFFLECOPTER LINK.  

Or is the RAFFLECOPTER LINK supposed to be something else? i.e. What do I put there?

Sorry, I should have asked earlier but it only occurred to be now as I'm checking things out/


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

wezelrox said:


> Hi - I signed up for a spot in July for a Bronze spot just to see how it works. Just wanted to make sure that I understand everything properly.
> 
> When I sign for a "MAILING LIST SIGNUP," who collects the emails? I wasn't sure how this works so I think I put my own signup link where it says RAFFLECOPTER LINK.
> 
> ...


Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about. What is Rafflecopter? What has Rafflecopter or mailing lists to do with the changes to KU payouts? Am I being dimmer than usual?


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Doglover said:


> Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about. What is Rafflecopter? What has Rafflecopter or mailing lists to do with the changes to KU payouts? Am I being dimmer than usual?


I think the person posted in the wrong thread.  There is a thread about a $10 promo for the month of July and having used that promo before, I know that is how it works.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

MaryMcDonald said:


> I think the person posted in the wrong thread.  There is a thread about a $10 promo for the month of July and having used that promo before, I know that is how it works.


Ah, thank you. I thought senility was closer than I thought.


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## JeanneM (Mar 21, 2011)

I haven't followed the threads much lately because I've been busy, so played some catch up today and wish I hadn't.  When I saw on this thread that Amazon changed the KU payment structure because of author complaints, I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe that the writers of all types and lengths, who have spent years on this board encouraging, congratulating and supporting each other, would do this to other writers. Short stories are hard sells to begin with, and they are hard to write - despite what people who don't write them think.  Despite their pitiful .99 cent price tag, if I sell 2 in a month, I consider myself lucky. Out of KU that is about what? A buck twenty? In KU, not quite 3 bucks. And that is begrudged? 

How petty, selfish and small, not to mention, hurtful as well. Reminds me of crabs in a bucket. How sad.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

JeanneM said:


> I haven't followed the threads much lately because I've been busy, so played some catch up today and wish I hadn't. When I saw on this thread that Amazon changed the KU payment structure because of author complaints, I couldn't believe it.
> 
> I couldn't believe that the writers of all types and lengths, who have spent years on this board encouraging, congratulating and supporting each other, would do this to other writers. Short stories are hard sells to begin with, and they are hard to write - despite what people who don't write them think. Despite their pitiful .99 cent price tag, if I sell 2 in a month, I consider myself lucky. Out of KU that is about what? A buck twenty? In KU, not quite 3 bucks. And that is begrudged?
> 
> How petty, selfish and small, not to mention, hurtful as well. Reminds me of crabs in a bucket. How sad.


I started this thread last week, and I never mentioned anything about shorter works. My thoughts were how I was going to decide whether to stay in KU or not.

As far as how difficult short stories are to write, well, I guess that's subjective. I had mine already sitting on my computer, written for various writing challenges I've done over the years so I can't recall how long each individual story in the collection took to write. I know it wasn't more than a few hours for the initial writing and another hour or two (spread out over weeks or months) to go back and tweak things here or there. For example, one of the stories was written during a one hour writing challenge using a prompt. I think six of us participated online, then exchanged our stories afterward--unedited. Later, I went back and edited it, making better word choices, etc.

I know that none of the stories took longer than even a single chapter of my novels--which I also then go back and edit to improve word choices and such.

I will concede that having many short stories does involve more expense as far as covers go. However, getting back on topic, short stories can earn as much as a novel, you just have to write more short stories. Bundle them together then charge $2.99. Less expense for covers and a greater chance of readers continuing to read pages since they won't have to go back to Amazon and find the next story.


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## lostagain (Feb 17, 2014)

JeanneM said:


> I haven't followed the threads much lately because I've been busy, so played some catch up today and wish I hadn't. When I saw on this thread that Amazon changed the KU payment structure because of author complaints, I couldn't believe it.
> 
> I couldn't believe that the writers of all types and lengths, who have spent years on this board encouraging, congratulating and supporting each other, would do this to other writers. Short stories are hard sells to begin with, and they are hard to write - despite what people who don't write them think. Despite their pitiful .99 cent price tag, if I sell 2 in a month, I consider myself lucky. Out of KU that is about what? A buck twenty? In KU, not quite 3 bucks. And that is begrudged?
> 
> How petty, selfish and small, not to mention, hurtful as well. Reminds me of crabs in a bucket. How sad.


I'm curious why you think authors did this to each other. This was a business decision made by Amazon. Every single author can decide if they want to participate. Nobody is doing this to anybody.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Is this the right place to mention that KU isn't a sales venue? It's a lending library.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Jim Johnson said:


> Is this the right place to mention that KU isn't a sales venue? It's a lending library.


Only if you change your name to Mr. Spock as you are being logical.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

cinisajoy said:


> Only if you change your name to Mr. Spock as you are being logical.


Well, we can't have that, can we?


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

JeanneM said:


> I haven't followed the threads much lately because I've been busy, so played some catch up today and wish I hadn't. When I saw on this thread that Amazon changed the KU payment structure because of author complaints, I couldn't believe it.
> 
> I couldn't believe that the writers of all types and lengths, who have spent years on this board encouraging, congratulating and supporting each other, would do this to other writers. Short stories are hard sells to begin with, and they are hard to write - despite what people who don't write them think. Despite their pitiful .99 cent price tag, if I sell 2 in a month, I consider myself lucky. Out of KU that is about what? A buck twenty? In KU, not quite 3 bucks. And that is begrudged?
> 
> How petty, selfish and small, not to mention, hurtful as well. Reminds me of crabs in a bucket. How sad.


I think you are slightly confused. If you sell one of your .99 cents short stories, you get 35 cents in royalties. If you lend one via KU, you get $1.38. If you know anywhere that is paying $3 dollars a borrow and $1.20 for sales, please point me that way.

Authors have complained to Amazon that shorts get the same payout, $1.38, as a full length novel. This has encouraged certain elements to publish a few pages of stuff scraped off the internet and call it a book. Why should a serious writer of novels get the same payout as this sort of thing. I appreciate that short stories are not easy to write, but it is not those genuine stories this is aimed at; it is the scam and smut artists with no talent and no skill. Perhaps you should put your short stories into a collection. You are not losing out, only having to write more pages like novelists have been doing all along.

I can't understand why you had to come to this thread to learn about this, anyway. Amazon sent out emails to everyone.


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

Doglover said:


> I can't understand why you had to come to this thread to learn about this, anyway. Amazon sent out emails to everyone.


I didn't get one.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

JeanneM said:


> I haven't followed the threads much lately because I've been busy, so played some catch up today and wish I hadn't. When I saw on this thread that Amazon changed the KU payment structure because of author complaints, I couldn't believe it.
> 
> I couldn't believe that the writers of all types and lengths, who have spent years on this board encouraging, congratulating and supporting each other, would do this to other writers. Short stories are hard sells to begin with, and they are hard to write - despite what people who don't write them think. Despite their pitiful .99 cent price tag, if I sell 2 in a month, I consider myself lucky. Out of KU that is about what? A buck twenty? In KU, not quite 3 bucks. And that is begrudged?
> 
> How petty, selfish and small, not to mention, hurtful as well. Reminds me of crabs in a bucket. How sad.


This remark is rather surprising to me. First of all, I'm quite sure that Amazon isn't making this change because of author complaints, despite the fact that there have been many, from myself included. They're making this change to fight scammers, and to try and attract longer works into KU because they are losing customers due to a lack of longer works for them to read.

Second, when did this become a united indies fighting together? I got news for you, I'm going to do what's right for my business, and I'm not about to take a bullet for anyone else. When I complained to Amazon, it wasn't to punish other writers, it was because I was getting punished unfairly. And it was because Amazon asked me what I would like to see changed.

Finally, to me knowledge (which I admit is limited) shorter works don't generally pay as much as longer ones, and that trying to make a living writing shorts is generally more difficult than writing longer works.

Want to know my idea of sad? Writers of short works how got a gravy train of cash in a poorly designed and unfair system, crying foul when an attempt is made to create a fairer system to all. That's sad.


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## Sonya Bateman (Feb 3, 2013)

Oh, man... I feel like I'm stirring the pot here. That's not my intention, I swear! Sorry about your thread, Mary -- I'm sure this wasn't the direction you expected it to take.

Anyway, I think JeanneM's comment was in response to something I posted, which was from the email Amazon sent out. SevenDays, I'll go ahead and post the entire email here:



> Hello,
> 
> Today we have a few exciting announcements to share related to the KDP Select global fund. The first is that we're adding a bonus of $7.8 million to the May KDP Select global fund on top of the previously announced $3 million base fund, bringing the total fund to $10.8 million. We are also pleased to report that:
> 
> ...


Note the bolded part (which I pointed out earlier, which was what JeanneM was responding to). Amazon *is in fact saying* that the changes to KU are because of author feedback.

As I said, I'm not taking sides here. I've been writing mostly shorter stuff these days... a romance series with 35-40K installments (related standalones), some novellas, and a serial I just launched recently. I'm not upset by the changes to KU, because I do think it's a nice opportunity for those writing novels. I used to write novels but I got seriously burned in the process. I've just had an idea for a novel trilogy but wasn't sure if I was going to pursue it. I may now, but I'm still going to keep up with my serial (and keep it in Select).

Anyway -- sorry for the upheaval. Just reporting what Amazon did say when they announced the changes to the KU payout structure.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

swolf said:


> If Amazon was forcing everyone into KU, I'd agree with you. But it's an optional program, so the simple solution is to keep your books out of it if you feel that way.
> 
> But you have to agree there is an inherent unfairness to a system that pays authors the same amount of royalties for a 20-page book and a 500-page book. It's unlikely those two authors would have priced their books the same.
> 
> Not a fan of being lumped in with the scammers and accused of gaming the system. Amazon set the rules, and I responded to them. I didn't cheat in any way. I attempted to put out short, quality work, so that my readers would come back and borrow more. If my readers felt cheated, I saw no signs of it. As for long-form authors feeling cheated, they complained, and Amazon changed the rules. Now we have to figure out what works for each of us in this new scenario.


I don't see that KU 1.0 was fair. KU 1.0 led to a situation that was unfair, in that a borrow for a 400 page novel had the same revenue as a 20 page short story. Short story writers who usually charged 99c for a story were making money under KU 1.0 if they had borrows. Novelists like me were losing money. My books sell for $4.99 and so I was losing $2 each time my book was borrowed instead of purchased.

Sadly, while KU 2.0 does address this disparity, I don't think KU 2.0 is any fairer. I dislike the whole notion of paying authors for the portion of the book that is read. Period. I think authors are wrong to give this power to Amazon.

While it's true that KU is totally voluntary, people like me who were really negatively affected by the program because our books lost immediate rank, felt a need to go into KU to make up for that by KU's increased visibility. I went into KU because I felt I didn't have a choice, especially after how detrimental KU was to my books' visibility.

I also completely understand authors who turned to writing short works instead of longer. They were only responding to the market forces they encountered as any business person will if they want to succeed.

Scammers are a whole different kettle of fish and if I suggested that the two were synonymous, I apologize. I didn't mean to. Scammers who scraped the web for content and then published dreck in the hopes of the first few pages of content netting the 10% required to get borrow income are to be reviled, although they too are only responding to the market forces.

What Amazon inadvertently did was to encourage a whole lot of authors to start writing short form and a whole lot of other authors to pull their books out of KU. This led to both authors and apparently readers complaining about length.

I don't blame the authors who started writing shorts for doing so. Amazon created the system and authors were only responding to it. But it did lead to a mess, which Amazon is now trying to fix.

I don't like the fix either.


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## Guest (Jun 30, 2015)

Being better or worse is different than being fair or unfair.

For me, my opinion is that as far as authors go, in KU1 and KU2 everyone is being treated equally. In KU1 if you had a bunch of novels that you wanted to put into KU, but weren't happy with the 1.38 borrow price point, you could have simply cut the books up and republished them in installments. That way you could have sold short books and made the same money as other people writing short books. It was an option open to everyone, therefore, no author was better off than another because everyone was working inside the same system.

And in KU1, if you got someone to borrow and read to 10 percent, you were guaranteed around $1.30 +. Now to make $1.30, if the 1 cent per page prediction holds, you will have to write at least 130 pages, and then have the reader read all of those pages. 

So when you consider that you could have cut your 300 page novel into six installments and took borrows from them for $1.30 each totaling $7.80 I don't know why authors would be cheering when Amazon might now pay $3 for the novel but you don't have to chop it up.

Sounds like a pay decrease for everyone, and devalues ebooks. Assuming the one cent per page payout anyway.


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

ShaneJeffery said:


> So when you consider that you could have cut your 300 page novel into six installments and took borrows from them for $1.30 each totaling $7.80 I don't know why authors would be cheering when Amazon might now pay $3 for the novel but you don't have to chop it up.
> 
> Sounds like a pay decrease for everyone, and devalues ebooks. Assuming the one cent per page payout anyway.


I have a great deal of respect for you, but I don't even know what to say to this. I'm sorry, but chopping one's book up is a way to fleece readers and I don't think most authors want to do that. I never once complained about the payout for my novels. Not once. I was happy with the money I was bringing in. That being said, I'm excited about the possibilities for my books under the new system. I won't lie and say otherwise. It would be disingenuous. I would never consider chopping up books, though. To me, that's a shady practice and I try to put full stories out. I know some people like writing serials, and there's nothing here that will stop them from doing it. Chopping up a book and pretending it's a serial is not the same thing as writing a serial, though.
I don't see how this is devaluing ebooks. You set your price for a sale. KU isn't about sales. People are essentially renting your books. The value in your ebooks comes from the price you set for sales.
People laughed at me for putting my full novels in KU. It worked for me and I had no complaints. I definitely don't think I'm going to have complaints now. The writing was on the wall months ago, though. Amazon has been trying to steer people to longer works for a reason. Now, I think we can all agree making it harder for scammers to make a dime in KU is a good thing. Shorter works writers are seeing a redistribution of the pot, and it's going to be hard for them. I really feel for childrens' book authors and hope something will be figured out for them.
I don't see this as a decrease in pay, though, because I would never chop up a book. I think this will be an increase in pay for a lot of people. We will have to wait and see what happens. For now it is all conjecture.


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## Guest (Jun 30, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I have a great deal of respect for you, but I don't even know what to say to this. I'm sorry, but chopping one's book up is a way to fleece readers and I don't think most authors want to do that. I never once complained about the payout for my novels. Not once. I was happy with the money I was bringing in. That being said, I'm excited about the possibilities for my books under the new system. I won't lie and say otherwise. It would be disingenuous. I would never consider chopping up books, though. To me, that's a shady practice and I try to put full stories out. I know some people like writing serials, and there's nothing here that will stop them from doing it. Chopping up a book and pretending it's a serial is not the same thing as writing a serial, though.
> I don't see how this is devaluing ebooks. You set your price for a sale. KU isn't about sales. People are essentially renting your books. The value in your ebooks comes from the price you set for sales.
> People laughed at me for putting my full novels in KU. It worked for me and I had no complaints. I definitely don't think I'm going to have complaints now. The writing was on the wall months ago, though. Amazon has been trying to steer people to longer works for a reason. Now, I think we can all agree making it harder for scammers to make a dime in KU is a good thing. Shorter works writers are seeing a redistribution of the pot, and it's going to be hard for them. I really feel for childrens' book authors and hope something will be figured out for them.
> I don't see this as a decrease in pay, though, because I would never chop up a book. I think this will be an increase in pay for a lot of people. We will have to wait and see what happens. For now it is all conjecture.


Who said anything about pretending it's a serial?

You're not fleecing readers and you're not being shady by chopping up a book. You have the book in it's current state still available for whatever price you set, but leave it outside KU. If readers want to read the book in KU, they have to download it in parts. Now, I haven't done anything like this, but what I'm saying is that there was this option for authors in the old system. It wasn't against Amazon's TOS and as it was labelled correctly readers wouldn't be fooled. It was a way to get the same amount of money per borrow for a novelist as a short story writer would get. And my guess, and it's only a guess, is that if the novelist had followed this procedure then they are going to be making a lot less money with KU2.

But hey, I mean, who knows where anyone will be in 6 weeks time. It's totally up in the air.


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

ShaneJeffery said:


> Who said anything about pretending it's a serial?
> 
> You're not fleecing readers and you're not being shady by chopping up a book. You have the book in it's current state still available for whatever price you set, but leave it outside KU. If readers want to read the book in KU, they have to download it in parts. Now, I haven't done anything like this, but what I'm saying is that there was this option for authors in the old system. It wasn't against Amazon's TOS and as it was labelled correctly readers wouldn't be fooled. It was a way to get the same amount of money per borrow for a novelist as a short story writer would get. And my guess, and it's only a guess, is that if the novelist had followed this procedure then they are going to be making a lot less money with KU2.
> 
> But hey, I mean, who knows where anyone will be in 6 weeks time. It's totally up in the air.


Sorry. Chopping up a book is always going to be shady to me. That's not a book. That's an excerpt. All that would have done is forced Amazon's hand and they would've changed the system sooner. I'm someone who believes that a book is a book and should never be chopped up.


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## Guest (Jun 30, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Sorry. Chopping up a book is always going to be shady to me. That's not a book. That's an excerpt. All that would have done is forced Amazon's hand and they would've changed the system sooner. I'm someone who believes that a book is a book and should never be chopped up.


A book might be a book, and part of a book might be an excerpt, but now a borrow isn't a borrow.


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

ShaneJeffery said:


> A book might be a book, and part of a book might be an excerpt, but now a borrow isn't a borrow.


Was a borrow a borrow before? What about the people who read 9% and dumped it? That wasn't a borrow. At least now people will get paid for that. The system was always weighted. Now it is merely weighted differently. While I'm sure quite a few people abandon works in the first chapter I'm equally sure people read full books. This has to be a blow for shorter works authors. I get that. Had Amazon done it this way from the beginning things would be different. They didn't and this is our lot now. I am hopeful this will benefit a lot of people, and I'm including myself in that group. I do think a lot of people are probably going to modify their approach. That's what Amazon wants. It will remain to be seen what happens.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I have a great deal of respect for you, but I don't even know what to say to this. I'm sorry, but chopping one's book up is a way to fleece readers and I don't think most authors want to do that. I never once complained about the payout for my novels. Not once. I was happy with the money I was bringing in. That being said, I'm excited about the possibilities for my books under the new system. I won't lie and say otherwise. It would be disingenuous. I would never consider chopping up books, though. To me, that's a shady practice and I try to put full stories out. I know some people like writing serials, and there's nothing here that will stop them from doing it. Chopping up a book and pretending it's a serial is not the same thing as writing a serial, though.


Chopping books into pieces and putting them into KU was a way of maximizing income under a system that rewarded short works as much as long, and which ended up awarding the authors of short works more for a borrow than they would have received for a sale.

The simple thing for Amazon to do was to have paid authors the full revenue share for their books in KU for each borrow and read through to 10% or some other metric. Instead they created a monster.

Here's my thinking: Amazon knows _exactly_ how much of each of our books are read. Right now. They know what the average pages read is for each book. They could tell each author that right now. That information might let us decide whether to put a book into KU or not. It would also go a long way to improving quality since authors would know that most readers get bored at x point in the novel / story. They could revise and maybe put out a better more readable work.

Instead, Amazon keeps this information close to the vest. They already know how much this change will affect payouts.

We don't, so all we can do is guesstimate.

I predict that authors with serials, even those with high read through, will lose big under KU2 compared to what they earned under KU1. Even if they have a high read through, even 100%, they will lose money under KU2 compared to KU1 because of the loss of the flat payout per borrow.

I am really feeling sorry for the serial writers, especially the really big selling ones. It's going to hurt their pocketbook.


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## Guest (Jun 30, 2015)

Sela said:


> Chopping books into pieces and putting them into KU was a way of maximizing income under a system that rewarded short works as much as long, and which ended up awarding the authors of short works more for a borrow than they would have received for a sale.
> 
> The simple thing for Amazon to do was to have paid authors the full revenue share for their books in KU for each borrow and read through to 10% or some other metric. Instead they created a monster.
> 
> ...


Full revenue share? Does that mean what the book would have made from a sale? That wouldn't have worked because then everyone would just price at 9.99.

I'm one of the serial writers. And I was an All Star in May. For me it means I need to write more (a lot more), write longer works, and price at 2.99. And then of course I'll be lucky to earn half of what I earned before, even if I do really well.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> A book might be a book, and part of a book might be an excerpt, but now a borrow isn't a borrow.


Exactly. And I'm afraid that Amazon's long game is precisely to move all Indies to this system. It's the Spotify of eBooks. Do you think the Big 5 publishers would accept such terms? Not on your frickin life. Like Taylor Swift, who left, protesting the payout as being unfair.

I think this is the next disruption in the publishing world. Small indies with lower sales will feel they have no choice but to accept the KU terms and payout because they can't survive outside of Amazon. Large indies will reject KDPS terms and go wide, especially as Apple and Google get their acts together. This year, so far, I've made more off Apple than Amazon and my Google sales are increasing.

Last year, it was the other way around. Apple and Google Play are potentially HUGE markets for Indies. I hate to see Amazon luring indies away from going wide. Amazon sells really well - there can be no disputing that. They innovate and always improve their service to customers. But they do so by squeezing their suppliers. Indies are suppliers and we can expect to be squeezed along with every other supplier.

The question for the indie author is how can you protect yourself from being squeezed too hard?


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> Full revenue share? Does that mean what the book would have made from a sale? That wouldn't have worked because then everyone would just price at 9.99.
> 
> I'm one of the serial writers. And I was an All Star in May. For me it means I need to write more (a lot more), write longer works, and price at 2.99. And then of course I'll be lucky to earn half of what I earned before, even if I do really well.


Scribd pays full revenue share. Of course, Scribd does't sell nearly as well as Amazon, from what I have heard.

I don't like KU under _any_ terms and wouldn't go in unless Amazon removed the exclusivity clause. It may only be for 90 days but in the first 90 days after KU was rolled out in 2014, my Amazon income went from $14,000 a month to $8,500 a month, so believe me, I understand your pain and I wasn't even in KU at the time. Luckily, I went wide in 2015 and recovered that loss and more.


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## Guest (Jun 30, 2015)

Jim Johnson said:


> Is this the right place to mention that KU isn't a sales venue? It's a lending library.


Jim, I love you.  Will you marry me? Oh wait . . . I'm already married. But if I wasn't married?


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Jolie du Pre said:


> Jim, I love you.  Will you marry me? Oh wait . . . I'm already married. But if I wasn't married?


Sure; only if I wasn't already married too!   Is online besties a thing?


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## Guest (Jun 30, 2015)

If you're worried that people won't finish reading your book, isn't that the same as saying you need to work on writing better stories? Maybe KU isn't the problem here. You know. The whole "it's the Indian not the Arrow" thing. If you're writing stories people don't want to finish, then maybe...just maybe you don't deserve to get paid.
And it occurs to me that there is no difference between six, fifty page books and one three-hundred page book when it comes to this pages read thing. That is unless you have six bad stories shoved out there just to make a buck. But again, perhaps you're getting exactly what you deserve  - a penny.
Then again, I could be way off base. Maybe bad stories deserve the same money as those people actually want to read and finish once they start. Not being a writer, I don't know.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

I used what is probably a very silly metric to see if readers are reading my books. I searched out the phrase 'put it down' in the reviews for my perma-free, since that book leads into the rest of the series. Hey, quit laughing!  It's all I got to work with right now!   I found that the book had around 20% of the reviews saying that. I also searched out 'page turner'. That was about another 5%, so roughly 25% stated those things out of my reviews. 

Having no idea if that was good or not, I looked at reviews from four other books in my genre, all having close to, or more reviews than my book, and they are all bestsellers. I was happily surprised to see that the percentage of all of them was lower than mine. This probably means absolutely nothing, but it gives me some confidence that people are finishing the book because only a small percentage of readers ever review. I'd do the download to sell through rate of the next book, but I had a Bookbub ad in May and I have no way of knowing how many people are actually going to try to read the book. It had a crazy number of downloads, but as the days tick by, I'm sure it moves farther and farther down the TBR pile as new freebies are stacked on top.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

MaryMcDonald said:


> I used what is probably a very silly metric to see if readers are reading my books. I searched out the phrase 'put it down' in the reviews for my perma-free, since that book leads into the rest of the series. Hey, quit laughing! It's all I got to work with right now!  I found that the book had around 20% of the reviews saying that. I also searched out 'page turner'. That was about another 5%, so roughly 25% stated those things out of my reviews.
> 
> Having no idea if that was good or not, I looked at reviews from four other books in my genre, all having close to, or more reviews than my book, and they are all bestsellers. I was happily surprised to see that the percentage of all of them was lower than mine. This probably means absolutely nothing, but it gives me some confidence that people are finishing the book because only a small percentage of readers ever review. I'd do the download to sell through rate of the next book, but I had a Bookbub ad in May and I have no way of knowing how many people are actually going to try to read the book. It had a crazy number of downloads, but as the days tick by, I'm sure it moves farther and farther down the TBR pile as new freebies are stacked on top.


I actually think that's a pretty clever way to try to get some feel for what readers are doing! Kudos.


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## Mike Dennis (Apr 26, 2010)

MikeDavidson said:


> The rich will get richer and the poor get poorer.





David Wisehart said:


> Under the new zero-sum meritocracy, there will be a minority of winners and a majority of losers.
> 
> The money that would have gone to the losers will now go to the winners.


This is just another of Amazon's many ways of funneling more money to the top of the pyramid. Those fortunate few who happen to reside there will get richer at the expense of those who scuffle around the base, eking out individual sales and borrows.

It's beginning to resemble the NY Big 5 in that respect, where the big front list authors get all the promotional gravy and the sales that accrue to it, while the midlisters are left to fend for themselves during their 6-week stay in the stores, where their books generally sink without a trace.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Mike Dennis said:


> This is just another of Amazon's many ways of funneling more money to the top of the pyramid. Those fortunate few who happen to reside there will get richer at the expense of those who scuffle around the base, eking out individual sales and borrows.
> 
> It's beginning to resemble the NY Big 5 in that respect, where the big front list authors get all the promotional gravy and the sales that accrue to it, while the midlisters are left to fend for themselves during their 6-week stay in the stores, where their books generally sink without a trace.


You could be right, but I think it's too soon to make that judgement.

One thing is that is different from Big 5 publishing is that there is nothing stopping any of us from writing a great book and publishing it on Amazon. Right there, that gives you a chance, which is more of a chance than most of us got trying to publish traditionally. What I love now is that there are books that are published on Amazon that shoot to the top with no help from anyone. Once they are there--yes, Amazon seems to support them. I don't know any of that first hand, unfortunately, but maybe someday, I will. Authors right here on Kboards have started at the bottom and found an audience and are now some of the top authors on Amazon and in Select. Sure, I'm envious, but they managed to find their readers or some influential readers found them early on, and that jump-started their sales. There's nothing unfair about that. Hitting publish is the starting line and that's were we all began. Some had more than one book in the race from day one, and that helped, I'm sure, but again, that is not Amazon being unfair.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Mike Dennis said:


> This is just another of Amazon's many ways of funneling more money to the top of the pyramid. Those fortunate few who happen to reside there will get richer at the expense of those who scuffle around the base, eking out individual sales and borrows.
> 
> It's beginning to resemble the NY Big 5 in that respect, where the big front list authors get all the promotional gravy and the sales that accrue to it, while the midlisters are left to fend for themselves during their 6-week stay in the stores, where their books generally sink without a trace.


I have a slight disagreement with your statement. I can think of at least 4 authors that 4 years ago made virtually nothing or nothing with their writing. They all put their books on Amazon. None of them got preferential treatment. Now, everyone of them is making 6 to 7 figures a year. I think it might even be 8 figures on a couple of them. 
Key point, they worked their butts off, gave their paying customers what they wanted, then got offered deals.
The big point being they found a way to get readers hooked on their drug. Amazon just made a great dealer because they knew people wanted books.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Mike Dennis said:


> This is just another of Amazon's many ways of funneling more money to the top of the pyramid.


They are a retailer and they are giving their customers what they think their customers are most likely to enjoy (i.e., bestsellers, aka what a lot of other customers have enjoyed). Amazon's duty is to its shareholders, not to our businesses. It is frustrating at times for customers, e.g., on a Kindle eInk the only way to sort the browse of the store is by popularity, so it can involve a lot of paging through books you have previously decided you don't want to read.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

Firstly, thank you for all the insights and estimates. I'm going to share some stuff which is 'love it or hate it, but don't ignore it'. I'd be remiss in not pointing out some things that many authors on this thread are not factoring in.

Secondly, please do read EVERY SINGLE POST by Sela and Mary MacDonald. Sela because she has the ultra-critical perspective of someone who's selling in all markets and UNDERSTANDS that depending on one company is madness. Mary MacDonald because she is basically saying something very important with her analysis

i.e. Peter Drucker: What gets measured gets managed.

Lord Kelvin: I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.

Fundamentally, what is measured is changing massively. In a way that is very negative for ALL AUTHORS.

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

Thirdly, here are some Realities I'd like to point out. You can bookmark these and revisit in 12 months and then re-assess. 

A) Above all else - Amazon is now separating 'Purchases' from 'Consumption'.
Amazon is taking credit for Purchases.
But it is only crediting authors with Consumption.

It's a MASSIVE change. If you take away one thing from this thread I'd request you to consider this point to be the one to take - You only get value for ACTUAL CONSUMPTION while SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOU gets the value for PURCHASES.

Thanks to the author who pointed this out. This is the CRUX of it all.

Let's say you sell milk.

Supermarket X tells you - Hey, we have a super new way of paying you. We still charge our users the same amount (our subscription service rate for all the milk you can drink). 

Earlier we paid you every time someone drank 10% of a jar/bottle/jug of milk.

Now we'll pay you based on exactly how much of the milk they drink.

Your choices are

1) Thank Supermarket X because now those annoying Dairy Quick people won't make the same amount for their 330 ml MilkToGo bottles as you do with your 2 Gallon Jars. Never mind that now Super market X only has to pay you based on %age of milk drunk.

2) Decide that now is a good time to try out Supermarket 'Pay you at 10%' and Supermarket 'We're Growing Faster' and Supermarket Not-Exciting-Any-More

*****

B) VALUE cannot be destroyed. So your work still has VALUE to readers. However, you will now be paid in a different currency - Actual Consumption. Something completely disproportionate to how readers value books.

When a user gets a free book from an unlimited subscription that has some VALUE. Due to decades/centuries of conditioning, we know that's somewhere between $5 and $20.

Readers jump at $1 and $2 books because they still feel in their heads and hearts that they are getting $10 worth of value for $2.

Please Note: A lifetime of conditioning can't be destroyed in 5 to 8 years. Your book might get read just 5% through (15 pages) and you might make just 7.5 cents. However, for the reader, who used to pay $10 for a physical book, it's STILL $10 WORTH OF VALUE. Where does the remaining $9.92 of Value go?
Even if you value your book at just $3, there's $2.92 of 'PURCHASED VALUE" that you aren't getting.

So Amazon STILL GETS that value perception of readers getting books (which they value at between $5 and $20 each). However, you only get value when they read it, and you only get value proportionate to the percentage of what they read.

50% of businesses would go bankrupt, if they only got paid for actual consumption. Perhaps more. That brings us to C) What happens in books.

*******

C) Books

Various surveys on paper books say -

Less than 20% of readers finish the first chapter of a book.
Less than 10% of readers finish an entire book.

The estimates by authors of

what %age of their borrows will still be sales - are way too optimistic. There will be some exceptions. However, for most authors it'll be a shock. A shock that Amazon will hide/buttress the first 3 to 6 months. After that - who knows.

the amount paid per page figure is really hard to predict. The half a cent per page estimate by some authors is a good guess. However, there's one factor that authors are forgetting.

****

D) If you take away borrows and use pages instead

Authors who don't realize that 
A very low percentage of books are finished. Perhaps just 10%.
A low percentage of books are even partially finished.

Will never realize just how many borrows there are.

IN other words, Amazon could be creating 10 times as many borrows and pages read might go up just 2 times.

VALUE to Readers = 10 times.
Value Perception of Amazon's Service = 10 times.
Value Transferred to Authors = 2 times.

80% of the Value created is attributed to Kindle Unlimited.

* It's similar to

People buying a smartphone for $500 and then saying - SMartphone company is marvellous. Look at all these apps I can get for free and $1.
ALL the VALUE gets attributed to Smartphone Makers, not to the app creators.

THAT is what this move is about. All the VALUE gets attributed to the ecosystem/service/company and a small fraction to the authors.

*****

E) Basically, fundamentally this is about THREE things


a) Amazon gets VALUE from PURCHASES, while Authors only get VALUE from CONSUMPTION. In a market like books where CONSUMPTION might be just 20% or less, this is an amazing move from Amazon's perspective.

b) ELIMINATING metric of borrows. If you can't measure it, then how can you make decisions like

- whether to go wide or not.
- whether you're being paid fairly as membership in KU increases.

Remember, with pages read you have absolutely nothing you can actually measure.

Let's go back to the supermarket example.

If Supermarket X was telling you -

1,000 gallons of your 2 liter milk sold each day in our Drink Milk Like a Calf subscription service were drunk 10% or more.
You get paid $1.32 per bottle.

And now it starts telling you -

470 gallons of milk drunk each day from your bottles.
That's 4.7% of total milk drunk
You get paid 4.7% of some fund. Which is completely detached from bottles sold, how much Supermarket X makes - so you're 2 levels away from The Truth.

i) you don't know bottles sold
ii) you don't know total bottles sold
ii) you don't know anything that you can actually measure and leverage as useful data.

All the time - Supermarket X is paid based on their subscription service in a very predictable and very measurable way, and they have all the data on bottles sold and total bottles sold. They get more and more data and control and predictability while you get less and less.

c) Controlling the Kindle Unlimited Monster. In particular, controlling how much Amazon has to pay out.

10 times more readers in KU = 10 times more borrows (a guess, but not a bad one).
= 10 times more payouts.

However, if Amazon knows that paying via pages read works out cheaper, then obviously that works better.
Paying via reads is almost guaranteed to cost less because newer readers read less and less. Power Readers join first. Now we'll have the reader equivalents of people who pay Netflix $7.99 a month and watch just 2 movies a month. that value - separated from authors (well, it already is, but now it's separated even more).

***********

F) This is a way to kill serials, or at least slow them down.

Serials break the matrix. Completely. They shatter it.

****

G) For all intents and purposes, Amazon could

INcrease readership 10 times
INcrease the money it gets and the PERCEIVED VALUE it gets by 8 to 10 times.
INcrease pool of money only 2 to 3 times

And do this without ANYONE knowing it's been done.

Authors would have NO WAY of knowing with any certainty what's going on. Even now - do authors know how much Kindle Unlimited makes? We're already at one level of obfuscation (authors not knowing revenue their books are generating for KU). Now we're going to a 2nd level of obfuscation (where authors don't even know how many borrows there were).

At least Oyster will have to share this information publicly when/if it goes public. Amazon can hide it FOREVER under its 'Kindle & Devices' bucket.

H) Amazon thinks algorithms and obfuscation are cure-alls.

Any issue - it can solve via algorithm changes.
Any thing it doesn't like - it can hide and not share.

So, when a problem arose in KU, instead of figuring out the REAL issue (gaming of the system) it decided to use algorithms, a new way of measuring things, and hiding borrows data as the solution. Instead of giving authors MORE insight and transparency, there's way less.

******

I'll end with what Sela wrote:

***  I still hold that going wide is the best strategy for most authors in the longer term, while in the short term it may be to use KDPS/KU for visibility when you are new. There are millions and millions of iBook apps on iPhones, iPads and MacBooks and potentially millions of readers. ***

The Actual figures are much bigger


Apple adds 100 million+ devices every quarter. 400 million+ a year.
Android adds 100 million+ devices every quarter. 400 million+ a year.
Unofficial Android adds 50 million or more devices every quarter. 200 million+ a year.

Amazon only adds 5 to 10 million devices every quarter. That's 20 to 40 million a year, and that might be way too optimistic.
Even Windows Phone adds more devices than that. And it's a distant third in phones.

There are 1 billion+ smartphone sales every year.
Amazon sells 50,000 to 100,000 Kindle Fire phones every year.

90% of those people don't know what Kindle is. 75% of those people are in countries where ebooks haven't really started.
A few billion people, and their chances of picking Kindle are less than 25%.

That means 75% of 2 to 3 billion people, over the next 10-20 years will choose something other than Kindle/Amazon.
Even if just 20% of them read books, that's

20% of 75% of 2 billion.

Around 300 million people.
And remember, when it comes to books for career, cooking, education, school, college - the figure of 20% is rather conservative. It's not just people who like reading books who read books. 

Amazon is driving a stagecoach while Apple and Google are running bullet trains.

When indie authors start realizing this, and start leaving Amazon, it weakens

- Exclusivity that Amazon has (indie author books not available anywhere)
- Cheaper Books (indie books are the cheapest)
- Free Books (very few readers care about free classics, most that are into free books want NEW free books and only indie authors do that)
- Prime Kindle Lending Library
- Kindle Unlimited
- More books than any store
- Sales and revenues of Kindle devices and Kindle tablets

This, in turn, gets authors to leave Amazon even more.

A vicious negative cycle. Or a vicious positive cycle if you consider that the ideal situation for authors is competition between retailers.
Apple saying - What? Amazon will only pay you for pages read, we'll pay you for every book where readers get beyond 5%. 

Please Note: Apple was the FIRST to introduce 70% cut for books for indie authors. Amazon used to only give 35%. It MATCHED Apple - for years it had been giving only 35%.

Fundamentally, it's game over.
We've already crossed the inflection point. Amazon has lost the battle for the future of books. It needed Kindle Fire Phone to sell 100 million phones a quarter.

Amazon wanted to

Have its cake (Big 5 Publishers selling $5 to $15 books in all the bestseller lists)
Eat its cake (Indie Authors to supply free books and cheap books for bargain seekers)
Gift its cake to its niece (Indie Author exclusivity for Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Lending Library)
Sell its cake (Books as loss leaders to get people into its ecosystem and to buy other things)
Freeze its cake for later (control the entire ecosystem by selling books, selling ads, selling store placement, selling Createspace type services)

In all that it lost sight of

- what's best for readers (being shown the best books that are ALSO the best value for money)
- what's best for authors (equal opportunity while balancing the need for a sustainable system)

There's just ONE cake. Every company that has forgotten this rule has been left with ZERO cake.

We've crossed the inflection point and now Amazon won't have its 5 IMAGINARY CAKES much longer. At most 3 years. 5 if Amazon can pull off its great Kindle Unlimited 2.0 magic trick - look, all these BOOK PURCHASES don't matter, let's count PAGE CONSUMPTION instead.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Wow. What I just read in what had to be the longest post ever is the biggest garbage dump I have ever seen. There are so many holes in your logic I don't know where to begin. Let's take the most glaring one to start. How does a reader, who supposedly gave up after reading only 5% of a book, perceive that they got a $10 value?

The rest of the holes are just as glaring.

And right off the bat, you quote as sages of wisdom the two posters that I would probably be least likely to take advice from.

My advice to any newbs reading all these rambling posts about the dangers of KU, the evils of Amazon, and how KU 2.0 is the slippery slope that will lead to the destruction of all we hold dear, is simply this; Ignore it. Write. Write well. Write what people want to read. Write a lot of it. Experiment. Find your own way. 

Oh, and take a good look at the people are are spouting off their words of wisdom most vehemently. There levels of success will tell you lot.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

Your post keeps conflating purchases with pagereads, and they have nothing to do with one another.

* This is EXACTLY what the aim is.

I'm not conflating purchases with pagereads.

The whole aim is to make you think that the RIGHT metric to measure in is

Page Reads

While the actual real metric is

PURCHASES

******

Perhaps you should consider how you value services you use that are unlimited.

Do you measure Netflix by 'minutes of movie watched'?

Do you pay the grocery store only for 'strips of bacon eaten'? % age of the ice cream tin you ate?

Consider that for all services you use, and then it'll be clear exactly what Amazon is doing.

*****

Anyways, you just have to wait a year or two. Then it'll be abundantly clear what the aim of all this is.

Last thing to consider -

It's better to side with a company that is making $3 billion to $6 billion a month in profits (Apple) and can afford to keep its bookstore at zero profit and a fair system.

than to depend on a company that makes losses every month and will suffer greatly if it somehow loses one or more of the various income streams it's getting from ebooks.

Best to hedge your bets.
Also, if you don't understand why a system where a percentage of Big 5 Publisher books' sales are allocated to ebook stores as 'shelf space' is worse for you than Apple and Google stores where this paid promotion for Big 5 Publishers doesn't exist. Then little I can say.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

This is awesome. I've never seen so much ADS all in one place. It's ... beautiful.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Apple, a company whose interface only shows you what they want you to buy? Apple, a company that wants to force you into buying one of their computers in order to upload your book to sell on their site? Really.

Your words prove how little you understand the market. You keep using measures from the readers perspective, and not from the publisher's. Our concerns do not lie with the perceptions of KU members, our concerns are with our businesses, and if KU is helping us achieve our individual goals.

My predictions? In a few years, KU will win the subscription market, because of the changes they are making with KU 2.0, and because they will continue to make changes that will benefit all 3 elements; reader, writer, and vendor. And Apple, Google, and all the others will continue to lag.

Everyone needs to stop looking at the changes in KU 2.0 from the perspective of "how much will I be making", and start looking at the changes from the perspective of "how will this change the KU marketplace, and how can I make it work to my advantage." Only then can you tell if you should stay or if you should go.

It isn't just about the math, people. If you think it is, you need to get out now, because you don't stand a chance.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

@ ireaderreview.
The biggest problem with your logic is it is not an either/or situation.    If you are in KU, you can get both borrows and purchases.  Not all Amazon book customers subscribe to KU.
The problem/bonanza strictly comes from  the borrow half.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

1) I'm not condescending to you. I'm having a normal conversation.

Please don't misconstrue things. Just because we have differing views of reality doesn't mean we have to attack each other, or assume that stating a different opinion is being condescending.

You, in fact, wrote a one line answer, without much context: Your post keeps conflating purchases with pagereads, and they have nothing to do with one another.

Which doesn't give me much to work on.

2) Don't know about Google for sure, however, Apple understand the real game being played and is heavily featuring indies. They are now saying that 60% or 70% of romance sales in their Romance store are from indies. That wouldn't happen if they were taking promotional money.

I'll give you a very simple reason why Apple isn't taking promo money and is focusing on indie authors and giving them curated placement:

They make their money on devices. In Services, they focus on giving their users what they want.

For the entire app store they are around break even.

They do make money from movies. Don't know about music.

With books they have two options

1) Make money from books and let the status quo stay.

2) Do break-even with books and sell more devices and weaken Amazon further.

*****
Amazon doesn't matter very much because it has assets of $55 billion and liabilities of $40 billion approximately. Net assets of less than $20 billion.

Apple and Microsoft are in the $100 billion to $200 billion range (Apple is $192 billion). And Apple is adding $40 to $60 billion a year, and Microsoft is adding $25 to $30 billion a  year.

However, they do want to prevent Amazon from cornering a digital market. They are in a position of strength because they don't need to make money from books.

*****
Do keep in mind that Apple was the last company to tie-up with the NSA, and only after Steve Jobs left. I am no Apple fan. However, they march to a very different beat. There's very very little chance they'll prostitute their store for placement money. They'd much rather have a store full of the books readers actually want and make a ton of money on devices.
Same reason they don't track you to death.

***

Please don't get offended. The whole point of this conversation is that people see things from different perspectives. And can converse without ASSUMING that a differing viewpoint means someone is being negative or condescending. I appreciate people being so loyal to Amazon. I really do.

Just hoping that at some point authors realize the risks of putting all their eggs in one basket.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

Rykmus

Apple is very useful because it provides a foil to Amazon.

Same with Kobo.
Same with Nook.

*****
It's better to be the one companies are fighting over, than to be the ones fighting over a company's attention.

*****

Thank you everyone for the responses. I love that people feel so strongly about this. It's a very important change.

It'll be beautiful to see this market evolve. We've had a few years of relatively less progress. However, things are going to change very drastically.

The absolute best thing that could happen for readers is 

A) Oyster, Amazon, Scribd, other subscription services each have only 30% or less market share each.

B) Apple, Amazon, Google, non-Google Android, Kobo, Nook each have only 30% or less market share each.

Then we'll see

A) Stores offer authors 90% cut of sales.

B) Stores that use paid placement from Big 5 Publishers get to below 20% market share each.

*******

Fundamentally, the absolute best thing for indie authors and for the entire ecosystem is for Amazon to go from a dominant #1 to a weak #2 or Weak #3. I'd love to hear if you think a dominant Amazon is better for authors in general, and indie authors in particular.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I fully understand the risk of putting all my eggs in one basket, and I am fine with it. Why? Because that basket earns me half a million and rising per year. That basket has grown my organic mailing list to 15,000 names in less than 4 years. And you know why? Because I write books that my readers want to read, and I write them well. I don't market. I don't play games, I don't worry about all the little bull-hockey that everyone here thinks matters. Because I know what matters most. Writing good books.

You can all go round and round for weeks on end, but it will always come down to just that one factor. Yet in all these threads with dozens of pages of woe is me for the last two weeks, I can count on one hand the number of times that someone has said 'just write good books.'

And you all wonder why Amazon felt the need to implement a consumption based payment system.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

ireaderreview said:


> Just hoping that at some point authors realize the risks of putting all their eggs in one basket.


If putting all your eggs in one basket earns you and your family more money every year, and gains you a wider readership, while simplifying your life and leaving you more time to write, then you are a fool not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Especially since you own your eggs. And as soon as a better basket comes along, you can pluck them out and put them in that new basket.

Spreading your eggs around, just for the sake of spreading your eggs around, without weighing costs, risks, and rewards, is foolish. It's a symptom of ADS.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Two things: 

Being critical of Amazon is not the same as having ADS. 

Second, I love Amazon for being so good at what they do. They sell books really well. When I started out, I published three Paranormal Romance novels that sold middling well. I paid my mortgage off sales after the third book was released. I was happy that my books were being read and read on a consistent basis, and I knew it was all due to Amazon being so good at putting my books in front of readers who were looking for a book like mine. Then my fourth book was released and it took off, having whatever magic a book has to have -- an amalgam of luck and timing and content. Amazon helped it through its algorithms, promotional emails, etc. You see, Amazon WANTS to sell your books to readers who want to buy it. They want to make money. Your books are an avenue into the pocketbooks of those readers, who go on to buy a lot of other stuff besides books. Amazon knows that if it does its job really well, matching up customers and products, it will make money in the long run. 

I respect Amazon and am glad it existed when the time came for me to self-publish. 

However, I didn't do well under the subscription program KU 1.0. I lost income. When I went wide, with the help of some promotion, I am now doing better than when I was exclusive to Amazon. 

I think new authors can benefit from Amazon exclusivity and the free promos and countdown deals and added visibility. I count Amazon as one of the primary reasons I am now making more money than I ever imagined. However, competition is good for a market and for prices and for consumers. Apple is growing and doing better and better as a book seller. Their recent promotion of my book made me more money than any promo I ran on KDPS. I think they are potentially a really healthy competitor for Amazon and will keep it on its toes.

I still don't like KU 1.0 or KU 2.0. I don't like turning books into content that is paid by whatever proportion of the content that is read. It's not that I'm afraid that my books aren't good enough. My books have been top 15 in the Kindle Store and to 5 in my Romance categories. It's a move that I think is dangerous in the long run because of the way it compensates authors. 

It may be inevitable -- time will tell -- but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't fight it.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

1) What is ADS?

2) You write: 


If putting all your eggs in one basket earns you and your family more money every year, and gains you a wider readership, while simplifying your life and leaving you more time to write, then you are a fool not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Especially since you own your eggs. And as soon as a better basket comes along, you can pluck them out and put them in that new basket.

Spreading your eggs around, just for the sake of spreading your eggs around, without weighing costs, risks, and rewards, is foolish. It's a symptom of ADS.


****
You're making assumptions.

For clarity, let me state what I'm suggesting

1) It's not a good idea to put your eggs in one basket.

2) Based on the actions Amazon is taking, it's worth taking a look around.

That's all. Everything you've written in your latest post, is an extrapolation and assumptions.

I would appreciate an actual discussing with LOGIC and FACTS. ADS? 

*****

It's great to value the company that is making you money now.
It's even better to realize that the company making you money in the future might be some other company.

*****

Also, you're a successful author. It's much less of an issue for you. Established authors don't lose much. It's the authors building a brand who lose a lot if 

THE VALUE PERCEPTION of books get distorted and/or all the VALUE starts getting assigned to the bookstore.

So, I have a simple question -

Would this system have been great for Hugh Howey BEFORE he became a famous author?


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Actually, given what took off for Hugh was a series of shorter works (at first anyway, I think Wool gets longer as it goes, hehe)... this system might have been even better...

I agree with Ryk. Write good books. Stay nimble and pay attention to what is working for for you right now. We've got freedom to change things up if things stop working well, Hug is right. Good books packaged well will always be the foundation of any successful career though. That is unlikely to change.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

Thanks for the information Annie B. This was good to know: Actually, given what took off for Hugh was a series of shorter works (at first anyway, I think Wool gets longer as it goes, hehe)... this system might have been even better...


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I don't think it's Hugh making assumptions. You ask for facts, yet you present only opinion. You also now assert that you were only suggesting that people look around, when before you were stating categorically that people should not keep all there eggs in one basket.

If everyone continues to write good books they will continue to sell, regardless of the changes in the system. The only ones that will lose are those who cannot write good books.

Except the illustrated children's book authors. KU 2.0 sucks for them, and that is an amazingly stupid move on Amazon's part. (Of course, KU 1.0 wasn't that good for them either, which makes it even more surprising that Amazon only made it worse for them.)


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> If everyone continues to write good books they will continue to sell, regardless of the changes in the system. The only ones that will lose are those who cannot write good books.


I think that is plain wrong. _Good_ is subjective. Selling books is not simply a matter to writing something "good" and that's that.

There are great books that don't sell, because there is only a small or no market for them or they don't have any promotion behind them, or a bad cover or inept product page.

There are great books that sell a huge amount but no one reads them. People buy the book because it is the "it" book of the moment. Think Pickety's _Capital_. I bought it along with millions of other readers, but never got past 10%. I read the entire _Das Kapital_, however, only because it was required reading in a politics class I took in university. 

There are poorly written books that sell poorly.

There are poorly written books (typos, bad grammar, hackneyed plots, stereotyped characters, etc) that sell like hotcakes because they have that _je ne sais quoi_ that no one can explain.

There are good books that sell well with promotion behind them.

There are good books that sell well with no promotion behind them.

The statement "keep writing good books and they will continue to sell" is trite.

Writing a good book is not good enough in most or all cases.

Amazon's KU 2.0 is clearly an attempt to address complaints, either from its financial overlords about $$ or readers about not finding enough of what they want due to scamlets or too many short works or from authors about inequities in the payment system. Or some combination of the above.

Paying based on pages read is a whole new system of compensation and I don't think people recognize the potential it poses because they are anxious about keeping whatever added / artificial visibility they had through KU and are hoping to keep making money. The prospects of leaving Amazon exclusivity is scary.

They don't apparently care for anything beyond their own pocketbook. The economic theorists might say that is copacetic and the way the market works, invisible hand and all that rot, but I say that those who ignore the larger picture when making business decisions might just get slapped by that huge invisible hand. Markets are not perfect and the market can crash and take a whole lot of people along with it if people act without any thought to the larger system and what each decision means for the whole.

So, long winded as usual but it's the whole pay per page read that I dislike. Amazon has all the information about your books and how many people look at your product page, how many click the preview, how long they stay, what percentage buy, how far they read, where they stop, etc. If Amazon really cared about quality, they would give authors that information so we could learn where people stop reading and maybe up our game based on knowledge. Instead, I suspect it is using this knowledge to find a way around KU 1.0's tendency to encourage short works and scam artists.

Amazon does nothing that isn't in Amazon's best interest. How many people are in KU? What is the income from KU? How much of that goes to compensate authors?

That is important information that we suppliers don't know and so we can't know how fair or unfair the system is and how hard and fast we are getting screwed.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Sela, I think it's rather obvious that by "good books" I mean "books that sell and get read." Your (once again) long-winded explanation pointing out the variation in readers taste is just an end run around my point. Many of the authors you used as examples where ones that I undoubtedly would have put down early on. Not because they couldn't write, but because they didn't entertain me. "Well written" doesn't always equate to "entertaining." And in the end, that's what a book is supposed to do.

"If you write what your audience wants to read, you will sell."

Is that any clearer?


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## Someone (Dec 30, 2011)

Actually with KU 2.0, you can't apply market and/or price theory principles as you have and come to the conclusion that the winners will be the ones who supply a "good product". You can't because KU 2.0 has completely disregarded price theory. 
Yeah..

Argument >>>
I am sure we can all agree that in the KU book market, books are the products/widgets that are in supply and demand within the market. I'm sure we can also agree that, in a free market, price is only determined by how a product fares in the supply and demand equation. I'm sure we can also agree that a "good product" in the market is a product in demand. I'm sure we can also agree that consumer time spent on or with the widget is not a variable in market theory. Time factors into market theory only when suppliers have time issues in meeting demand. Again, as long as demand is being met, time is irrelevant to price theory. If one can't agree to all of these, they are rejecting price theory.  

Well shorts were moving just fine in KU 1.0; they were in high demand. Children's books moved solely by demand as did poetry books. High demand products are, by definition, products the market has determined to be the "good products" or in the book market, the "good books". The market's determination of a product being good or bad should be the only thing that influences price and that is exactly what happened in KU 1.0. In KU 1.0 no other variable besides the most downloads determined the winner. Time spent with widgets was irrelevant in the KU 1.0market, just like it is in all free markets. The only thing that determined success was how a book fared in the supply and demand equation. 

But then along comes KU 2.0...

In KU 2.0 there is an irrelevant-in-price-theory pricing variable on the supply side that has been inserted solely to manipulate supply. Variables that artificially alter either side of the supply and demand equation act to take product determination away from the market and place it in the hands of the marketplace.  Because of this variable, it is no longer the supply and demand within a market that is determining what is a good product; it is the marketplace. With supply side pricing being manipulated, KU subscribers are no longer the sole determiners of which product rises and which product fails. 

So, unfortunately it isn't authors who are disregarding the idea of writing good books for KU 2.0; it's Amazon. They decided to cater to a variable that doesn't exist in price theory - consumer time spent with their widgets after the widget was out of the market - and, by doing that, they discounted the "write good books and you'll do just fine" principle. So sorry, the idea of "write good books and you'll be just fine" is a now flawed argument. Sadly now the way to win is to write books that cater to  those who are able to manipulate the supply and demand equation determinations. And by Amazon manipulating price theory in the KU book market, that determination isn't going to be made by KU readers anymore; it's going to be made by the marketplace known as Amazon. 

So, when it comes to which books to write for the KU market, that decision is no longer about writing books that readers want; it's about writing books that Amazon wants. And that's not ADS talking; that's Price Theory talking.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> Sela, I think it's rather obvious that by "good books" I mean "books that sell and get read." Your (once again) long-winded explanation pointing out the variation in readers taste is just an end run around my point. Many of the authors you used as examples where ones that I undoubtedly would have put down early on. Not because they couldn't write, but because they didn't entertain me. "Well written" doesn't always equate to "entertaining." And in the end, that's what a book is supposed to do.
> 
> "If you write what your audience wants to read, you will sell."
> 
> Is that any clearer?


Well, thank you. Now you've clarified what you really meant. I prefer that to vague claims about "good". There are a lot of unstated assumptions in your posts that could be misleading to people.

Write what keeps people turning pages.

Even that is too simplistic since a page turner without promotion of any kind or a bad cover or inept product description may not sell at all.

Simplistic platitudes about writing good books are worthless, when it comes to each of us deciding what to write and how to publish.


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

It seems, Rykymus, that you too are presenting opinions as facts. I mean, sure, good books should indeed sell, if your definition of a good book is one that sells and gets read. But ultimately that's a meaningless tautology.

I don't think there's any way for you to back up the statement that good books, whatever the subjective definition excluding the ones_ that include sales in the wording_, always sell.


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

It all comes down to money for me. Period. Are all my eggs in one basket? Yup. That basket holds a lot of money. The question for me is: Can going wide make up for the huge chunk of change I would miss out on in Select right now? I don't think it could. Now, if the time comes and I have to go wide or I decide it is time, I have two huge libraries I can access. Being in Select gives me the time to keep adding to that huge library (and buy my dream house outright in a few months). Why would I possibly leave?


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

Thank you. For putting it succinctly and coherently where I couldn't.

THIS: In KU 2.0 there is an irrelevant-in-price-theory pricing variable on the supply side that has been inserted to solely to manipulate supply. Variables that artificially alter either side of the supply and demand equation act to take product determination away from the market and place it in the hands of the marketplace.  Because of this variable, it is no longer the supply and demand within a market that is determining what is a good product; it is the marketplace. With supply side pricing being manipulated, no longer are KU subscribers being the sole determiners of which product rises and which product fails. 

So, unfortunately it isn't authors who are disregarding the idea of writing good books for KU 2.0; it's Amazon. They decided to cater to a variable that doesn't exist in price theory - consumer time spent with their widgets after the widget was out of the market - and, by doing that, they discounted the "write good books and you'll do just fine" principle

*****

A hundred times this: THIS: In KU 2.0 there is an irrelevant-in-price-theory pricing variable on the supply side that has been inserted to solely to manipulate supply. Variables that artificially alter either side of the supply and demand equation act to take product determination away from the market and place it in the hands of the marketplace.


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## Someone (Dec 30, 2011)

Yoda,
100% my honest opinion - you shouldn't leave. No way, no how. You shouldn't leave because, IMO, you are the prototype of what Amazon wants in KU. Amazon is showing us via supply side price manipulation that your books/your kind of catalog is exactly what they want in the program. I'd be lying to you if I said anything different.
Go rock on girl


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I'm going to try one more time to make my point understandable.

If you make great pizza, with the definition of great being "pizza that a large portion of the pizza loving public loves to eat", you will sell a lot of pizzas. If you sell it by the slice, or by the entire pie, you will sell a lot of pizzas. Will you sell fewer total pizzas if you sell them by the slice? Perhaps. But still, if a lot of people love your pizza, you're gonna sell a lot of pizzas.

My point is that they one and only thing that you have complete control over is the quality of your pizza. Make great pizza.

Proof of my point is that I have never done any marketing, other than a couple of free runs on my first book, a simple facebook page and a website. No ads, no tweets, no other promos of any kind. Instead, all my efforts have been in writing books and publishing them regularly.

Not everyone can make great pizza. But you can't sell a lot of pizza if your pizza sucks.

Wait... I forgot about Dominos, and Little Cesear's. Damn, now I have to think of a new analogy.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> It all comes down to money for me. Period. Are all my eggs in one basket? Yup. That basket holds a lot of money. The question for me is: Can going wide make up for the huge chunk of change I would miss out on in Select right now? I don't think it could. Now, if the time comes and I have to go wide or I decide it is time, I have two huge libraries I can access. Being in Select gives me the time to keep adding to that huge library (and buy my dream house outright in a few months). Why would I possibly leave?


It doesn't make sense for you to pull out of KDPS now given how you are doing so well there. Just like it doesn't make sense for me to pull my books from Apple and other retailers and go exclusive. My only reason for going wide is that selling well on multiple retailers insulates you from the whims of any one retailer. Amazon can change its algorithms and TOS and make or break a genre or author and if it did, I'd still sell on Apple and Barnes and Noble and Kobo.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> I'm going to try one more time to make my point understandable.
> 
> If you make great pizza, with the definition of great being "pizza that a large portion of the pizza loving public loves to eat", you will sell a lot of pizzas. If you sell it by the slice, or by the entire pie, you will sell a lot of pizzas. Will you sell fewer total pizzas if you sell them by the slice? Perhaps. But still, if a lot of people love your pizza, you're gonna sell a lot of pizzas.
> 
> ...


I think your view on marketing is unhelpful to the average author. You may make half a million without a shred of promotion but I suspect you are an outlier and so your example is not one most of us should emulate.

I have a paranormal romance series that was languishing in the ranks, and was selling maybe $800 - $1000 a month. I started to advertise the boxed set on Facebook, spent $1000 and sold $5,000 worth of extra books in a month. I advertised my other series and went from earning $7,000+ a month on it to making $15,000+.

All the books in my two series started to sell and had better rank. Why? There are a whole lot of people who were looking for books like mine but if they don't know my books exist, they won't be able to buy them.

Indies have to focus on writing the next book, of course, but if advertising can get you a whole new audience, why not? Most businesses market. Indies have to treat publishing like a business and marketing is part of business.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Sorry, I still disagree, Sela. (Respectfully, of course.) I still think it's about making a better pizza, and not about the marketing of said pizza. If your pizza is good, but just 'okay' good, then you'll always have to spend time and energy marketing that pizza. (Hey, what do you know? My analogy works after all.) But make that pizza amazing, and it sells itself. Hence the expression, 'sells itself.'

When I first came to these boards 4 years ago, 75% of the discussion was about how to make a good product. Now, 90% of the threads are about how to market. A bit telling, I'd say.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> Sorry, I still disagree, Sela. (Respectfully, of course.) I still think it's about making a better pizza, and not about the marketing of said pizza. If your pizza is good, but just 'okay' good, then you'll always have to spend time and energy marketing that pizza. (Hey, what do you know? My analogy works after all.) But make that pizza amazing, and it sells itself. Hence the expression, 'sells itself.'
> 
> When I first came to these boards 4 years ago, 75% of the discussion was about how to make a good product. Now, 90% of the threads are about how to market. A bit telling, I'd say.


Romance is very competitive and so you can be forgotten quickly unless you have frequent releases and do a lot of promotion. Sorry, but SF and romance are two different solitudes and have different realities. Very few romance authors hit the USA Today or NYT without benefit of promotion and marketing. Very few hit the top 100 in the Kindle store without marketing of some degree.

To suggest that all you need is a "good book" is hubris. Sorry. Have to call it as I see it.


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## L.B (Apr 15, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> Sorry, I still disagree, Sela. (Respectfully, of course.) I still think it's about making a better pizza, and not about the marketing of said pizza. If your pizza is good, but just 'okay' good, then you'll always have to spend time and energy marketing that pizza. (Hey, what do you know? My analogy works after all.) But make that pizza amazing, and it sells itself. Hence the expression, 'sells itself.'
> 
> When I first came to these boards 4 years ago, 75% of the discussion was about how to make a good product. Now, 90% of the threads are about how to market. A bit telling, I'd say.


Great point Rykymus.

As a newbie, I've been a bit surprised how much the focus is slanted towards marketing rather than writing on here. Obviously you need to do both to an extent, but the main driver of success well always be lots of really good books.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> When I first came to these boards 4 years ago, 75% of the discussion was about how to make a good product. Now, 90% of the threads are about how to market. A bit telling, I'd say.


Well, that might be because when you started here 4 years ago, self publishing was just taking off and concerns were all about how to make a good product because it was a steep learning curve. There have been droves of books written and courses produced and threads written about how to write well. Once you have written a million or so words, then you start to think about taking your business to the next level and that means reaching more people. Marketing helps. So maybe authors have moved on and are now focusing on the business side of things.

To suggest that people who engage in marketing are somehow less concerned with the quality of their product is pretty insulting. I'm always concerned with the quality of my product and have been improving my game every year, but my game is not just writing. As an indie author, I have to take care of business and I know that the market is so much bigger than the slice I've reached using Amazon alone.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Hubris? Seriously? You think that advising people that writing a good book should always be the most important element for success as a self-published author is hubris?  Wow. That says a lot.

Pretty sure there are a lot of very successful romance authors that just write good books and release frequently, and manage to achieve success without much marketing.

Once again, if the pizza is great, people don't forget you.

See it how you want. I'm done caring about this one.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Rykymus said:


> Once again, if the pizza is great, people don't forget you.


According to this analogy, the bestselling pizza chains in the world correspond directly with the people making the highest quality pizza. That is obviously not true. The best pizza is made by little shops that nobody living ten miles away has ever heard of.

I don't understand why you would assume that marketing means that no attention has been paid to quality. That doesn't follow.


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## TuckerAuthor (Jan 31, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> Not everyone can make great pizza. But you can't sell a lot of pizza if your pizza sucks.
> 
> Wait... I forgot about Dominos, and Little Cesear's. Damn, now I have to think of a new analogy.


Price is a factor which can lead to sales. "Only a Dollar" stores don't do well because they carry quality products. They buy cheap and sell cheap. It's all about volume. The same can be said for those who've been churning out the shorts as fast as they possibly could this past year or so. Yes, some people write fast and well, and good for them, but many churned out stuff just to fill their dashboard and take advantage of the system. This whole thing is a lot like the "free" crash that happened when Amazon changed the ranking system to not include free downloads as sales. Lots of people cried, "Foul!" then too.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

As a romance author who releases something weekly and has a pretty big mailing list, I can say that I can hit the top 200 in the overall store on an almost weekly basis with almost no marketing. This has only been achievable for me by having a big mailing list, and I created that big mailing list through lots of marketing.

Just writing and publishing is not enough anymore if you do want to hit USA Today or NYT in romance. Why? Because everyone else around you is building their lists, BookBubing, and paying for marketing.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I would bet money I know the answer to this one, but here goes.
At Amanda and Rykymus,  do you write what Amazon wants or what your readers want?

If I was a betting person, my money would be on the readers.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Well, let's all be grateful that, unlike traditionally published authors, we're not working with a contract that gives the _pizza delivery boy_ most of the money.


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

cinisajoy said:


> I would bet money I know the answer to this one, but here goes.
> At Amanda and Rykymus, do you write what Amazon wants or what your readers want?
> 
> If I was a betting person, my money would be on the readers.


I would say I started writing what I read and built it from there. I don't write to market and I never will. I also didn't start chopping up stories or decreasing word counts with KU 1.0. In fact, my length has been increasing. I did introduce 25,000-word shorts for my most popular series for KU 1.0 but they've proven to be popular and I'm keeping them because that gives me new releases in that series eight months of the year and that's my bread and butter and the exposure keeps me front and center.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Hugh Howey said:


> This is awesome. I've never seen so much ADS all in one place. It's ... beautiful.


I'm trying to understand how my original post where I just posted how I was going to figure it out, turned into this.  I just thought my way of figuring might help someone else to decide right now, when we have very little info by which to make a decision.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

KMatthew said:


> As a romance author who releases something weekly and has a pretty big mailing list, I can say that I can hit the top 200 in the overall store on an almost weekly basis with almost no marketing. This has only been achievable for me by having a big mailing list, and I created that big mailing list through lots of marketing.
> 
> Just writing and publishing is not enough anymore if you do want to hit USA Today or NYT in romance. Why? Because everyone else around you is building their lists, BookBubing, and paying for marketing.


Your mailing list IS marketing.

Nice to hear from you again


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