# Page reads not updating?



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

Just peeked at my dashboard. It's almost 2 AM where I'm at, so very early in the reporting period, but I'm seeing a big zero for page reads so far today (July 1st), where ordinarily I'd have a few thousand by now. It's just kind of weird. Anyone else?


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Nothing is updating very much. I'm running the monthly promo and have had zero clicks registered on the affiliate tags. We usually get thousands, so that's definitely broken. Not sales that much either, but that's fairly common for when the month ticks over.

ETA. normally my dashboard freezes for about 12 hours when we're at the 1st of the month and the US is still thinking about whether they want to join us.


----------



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

I have a few sales and pre-orders that've trickled in since midnight, but borrows are a goose egg. Bizarre. Makes you wonder if Amazon didn't just tweak something...


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

3rotic said:


> I have a few sales and pre-orders that've trickled in since midnight, but borrows are a goose egg. Bizarre. Makes you wonder if Amazon didn't just tweak something...


They did. This is the first new month tick-over with the new dashboard. I noticed it re-set at GMT rather than US time.


----------



## Mike_Kraus (May 16, 2017)

I've been tracking this for a little while; there's something wrong with the dashboard as of 7 PM CST on the 30th (when the next day's data starts to accumulate). Amazon is returning null data for the new month along with random errors here and there. If you're seeing 0 page reads that is not (necessarily) accurate and there is something going wrong.


----------



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

OK, so it seems I'm not the only one with some wonkiness. I guess I won't start to panic (yet).


----------



## AriadneBeckett (Jun 29, 2017)

I haven't ticked over to the new month yet. But my reads/sales haven't budged since earlier today, which just doesn't happen.


----------



## hopecartercan (Jun 19, 2015)

It's been 2.5 hours since I hit midnight where I live. I have 0 pages read on my dashboard. I'd normally have 1K-2K by now.


----------



## EmparentingMom (Jun 20, 2011)

Are sales freezing as well or just page reads?


----------



## hopecartercan (Jun 19, 2015)

Mike_Kraus said:


> I've been tracking this for a little while; there's something wrong with the dashboard as of 7 PM CST on the 30th (when the next day's data starts to accumulate). Amazon is returning null data for the new month along with random errors here and there. If you're seeing 0 page reads that is not (necessarily) accurate and there is something going wrong.


Thx for posting. I hope it's all resolved quickly.


----------



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

hopecartercan said:


> It's been 2.5 hours since I hit midnight where I live. I have 0 pages read on my dashboard. I'd normally have 1K-2K by now.


 Same here. It kind of freaked me out, but it seems there's something going on system wide. I think a few sales have come in since midnight, along with a pre-order or two, but page reads are still zero.


----------



## Mike_Kraus (May 16, 2017)

My sales are normally in the 1-2 range for this time of night, and they are currently, so that seems normal. My page reads, when midnight ticks over, are always in the 8k-12k range. For them to be zero and for Amazon's internals to be spitting out errors means something's wonky. Somebody probably forgot to fix the new dashboard to account for month rollovers.


----------



## barryjhutchison (Feb 21, 2016)

It's not just you, and from what I can gather, not just KDP. My Amazon associates dashboard is showing 0 clicks or earnings for the past 30 days (at least). I know that's not the case.

I'm also seeing 0 page reads, where it would normally be 3-5k by now. Something is definitely afoot...


----------



## Mike_Kraus (May 16, 2017)

Update: The MTD dashboard is now working (it was, up until the last 15ish minutes, giving weird errors). It is, however, also showing 0 page reads as well, as are the excel spreadsheet reports. Right now the only thing not working are the page reads, so my guess is the system behind that broke. Hopefully it gets fixed soon.


----------



## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

I just checked in on my dashboard and then ducked in over here to check I wasn't the only one seeing 0 page reads for 1 July. I'm guessing this thread will get a lot bigger if the problem isn't fixed by the time the US wakes up!

ETA I don't seem to have any .com sales yet for 1 July, but that's not abnormal. I generally find they're still showing up on the day before until about now. Aus sales are showing up for 1 July.


----------



## Timid Extrovert (Mar 4, 2017)

Thank goodness I'm not the only one! Lol. I've been checking my dashboard for the last couple hours, and I have both pre-orders and regular sales, but zero pages read when I normally should have at least a few thousand. Thank you so much for reassuring me I'm not the only one experiencing this. I was totally freaking out!!


----------



## AriadneBeckett (Jun 29, 2017)

TwistedTales said:


> Well, it is 1 July. Maybe this is KU 3.0 - no page reads count now.
> 
> Just kidding.
> 
> For June 30, my sales were the lowest since the start of 2017


I've only been at this for a little over a month - but my reads and sales were the lowest since I began. I was freaking out about it, but I'm also 99% sure reporting just froze earler in the day.


----------



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

Past 4 AM over here and still no sales or page reads.

I'm just going to back away from the KDP site now and check back in 12 hours lol


----------



## Austin_Briggs (Aug 21, 2011)

hopecartercan said:


> It's been 2.5 hours since I hit midnight where I live. I have 0 pages read on my dashboard. I'd normally have 1K-2K by now.


It's exactly the same for me. This is clearly wrong - I'm just never at 0 at this time, apart from today.


----------



## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

I knew there'd be a thread already started about this! Glad to see it's not just me. It's very weird to wake up and find nothing at all on the dashboard! Sales are showing up now but still no pages read.


----------



## SunshineOnMe (Jan 11, 2014)

up for a glass of water and just checked. No page reads for me either.


----------



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

I haven't had any page reads for several days, but have seen a slight spike in ranking on at least one of my books (I know other things can change the ranking). Have you checked your rankings?


----------



## Darren Writes (Nov 30, 2014)

3rotic said:


> Just peeked at my dashboard. It's almost 2 AM where I'm at, so very early in the reporting period, but I'm seeing a big zero for page reads so far today (July 1st), where ordinarily I'd have a few thousand by now. It's just kind of weird. Anyone else?


Amazon Associates are also not updating their report, and isn't showing any sales this whole year (but the reports for last year are working normally). Yesterday the were showing for this year, now not. So could be part of a bigger problem. My KU page reads also aren't showing.


----------



## k1234 (Dec 22, 2014)

My rankings on most books have increased overnight despite having zero page reads on my dashboard and two sales. Yesterday I had about 10k page reads by this time. I was starting to wonder if at midnight everyone decided that my books are crap and the communally threw their kindles out the window lol. Time to grab screenshots ppl.


----------



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

Well, I didn't last long. Just peeked. Sales are showing up, but page reads are still nil. My ranks on a couple of books are fabulous--have even gotten better in the night--so I'm pretty confident they're still being read. The page reads just aren't coming up. And it's 7 AM! This time yesterday I had over 10K, which is the norm.

Just waiting for the email to come through any minute... "Hey, we're done counting page reads. We've decided to start paying you guys in _exposure_!"


----------



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

Yeah, no pages read here either.

Bah, humbug.


----------



## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Zero page reads shown...but ranks improving.


----------



## MissingAlaska (Apr 28, 2014)

I'll add another data point. Zero pages read.


----------



## Christine Kersey (Feb 13, 2011)

I actually show 1 page read (at this time of day I usually have tens of thousands). Anyway, hopefully Amazon will fix this asap.


----------



## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Must be a system wide failure. Usually by 0800 EDT I have about 35K-50K page reads. Currently showing zero on all fourteen books. Sales are a little below what they normally are this early, but it's also Saturday, so about where they should be.

Phoenix pointed this out in her thread warning that July would be wonky.


----------



## Desmond X. Torres (Mar 16, 2013)

Well, FWIW just about 9:00 am EST and no page reads either.


----------



## Rick Partlow (Sep 6, 2016)

No page reads for my stuff either, and I usually have at least 15K by now.


----------



## Lady Runa (May 27, 2012)

Likewise. My page reads are exactly 2. Normally, about this time it should be several thousand. Very weird.


----------



## Megan Crewe (Oct 8, 2015)

Same here: normal sales and pre-orders, but zero pages read when I usually have at least 1K when I first check in the morning.


----------



## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

I haven't seen any page reads added since early yesterday evening, in fact...


----------



## hopecartercan (Jun 19, 2015)

Lorri Moulton said:


> No wonder people worry about July 1st. I've been seeing it on the Kboards, but now it makes sense!


I thought we were safe since Amazon hadn't made any major announcements. But now...


----------



## Holly A Hook (Sep 19, 2010)

The same is happening with me here.  Page reads were slow yesterday and nonexistent today (as in, 0) when I usually have 3-5K by now.  It's 10:30 AM now and not a single read has registered.  A few sales are coming in, but they're slow as expected for a holiday weekend.

It screams "glitch" to me.


----------



## jcalloway (Jan 10, 2014)

I'm not worried, but the million-dollar question: is this a general glitch, or is this a glitch relating to an unannounced change in KU? 

We've all been waiting for something new, and it's about that time of year for them to roll out an 'update.'

Maybe they're implementing the "count only the pages of the listed book, discount all bonus content" thing that I've seen a few people here and elsewhere mention over the last few weeks.


----------



## old account (Sep 4, 2013)

I do not accept the new TOS for this site, nor do I convey any rights to the new site owner Vertical Scope.


----------



## LittleFox (Jan 3, 2015)

I'm with everyone else - zero page reads, with far lower than usual page reads yesterday. My sales are also far lower than usual for yesterday and today (they dropped off a cliff rather than a general summer slow down). It's also taking much longer than usual for the money to come through on Book Report for the sales I do have.


----------



## Chrissy (Mar 31, 2014)

hopecartercan said:


> I thought we were safe *since Amazon hadn't made any major announcements*. But now...


It's easier customer service wise if Amazon doesn't announce the changes they make. 

I wonder if the cosmetic changes they made in June included some "under-the-hood" changes we're just starting to see.


----------



## LittleFox (Jan 3, 2015)

I think we can safely say that free downloads aren't being reported accurately either. I have 230 reported downloads on Infernal Bonds, and its rank is currently #782 free.


----------



## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

No page reads on my dashboard either and I usually have up to 10K by now so I imagine they are rolling out something new or there is a system wide glitch.


----------



## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


----------



## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Yesterday's sales were very good, the second best day in June except for the day of my new release. But both sales and page reads froze around 10 pm EDT, though the money updated. This morning I have 0 pages and 9 sales, only one of those on the book on promo. Nothing has updated in the past three hours. Most of my books have plummeted in rank since yesterday.


----------



## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Yup. Yesterday was my best number of page reads in 90 days; today it's zero. 
Sales & freebies are updating though, it seems. 
Welcome to KDP 3.0??!!


----------



## AriadneBeckett (Jun 29, 2017)

So does one contact amazon about this? Or let them sort it out?


----------



## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

Just email them. If they get 20 or 50 emails from authors they will get on it immediately and fix it. Be proactive and email them. Let them know that other authors are reporting it as well. This way they know its wide.


----------



## hopecartercan (Jun 19, 2015)

Cherise said:


> Sent email to [email protected]:
> 
> Kindle Unlimited Page Reads not showing on KDP dashboard
> 
> ...


Thx Cherise. I wasn't sure of exactly what to say cause I'm kinda new to this. I'm emailing them right now.


----------



## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


----------



## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

PhoenixS said:


> Of course, I really do think *this time* they're likely uploading new code or doing something under the hood that forced a reporting shutdown, and not doing something intentionally that would impact page reads so profoundly.


In which case a little note at the top of the dashboard wouldn't have gone amiss.


----------



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

Lydniz said:


> In which case a little note at the top of the dashboard wouldn't have gone amiss.


Seriously. That would be the right (and smart) thing to do.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

When a glitch of this sort affects everyone, it's safe to assume it'll get resolved. It might take 24 hours. It might take a week.


----------



## SunshineOnMe (Jan 11, 2014)

I deal with anxiety and this is a good shake to the panic part of me.  I know that by going select I'm playing Amazon's game. And they can do whatever. It's scary, but the weekend is here, and I'll try to chill out.


----------



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

PhoenixS said:


> Ah, such optimism!
> 
> We tried that with the sudden hits to page reads in many accounts back in Sept, and got this unvarying message:
> _"The business team audited our systems using the specific information you shared regarding pages read and sales and did not find any systematic issues impacting your results."_
> ...


Maybe they are sorting out the previous glitch with the page flip fiasco and the pages not being read if the reader returns to the beginning of the book without logging out.  Eternal optimist . Everyone think positive. Positive thoughts can change the world - or might even change Amazon page reads


----------



## Hope (Nov 28, 2014)

0 page reads, 2 sales so far. I hope everyone at Amazon hasn't taken off for a long 4 day holiday weekend.


----------



## hopecartercan (Jun 19, 2015)

katygirl said:


> 0 page reads, 2 sales so far. I hope everyone at Amazon hasn't taken off for a long 4 day holiday weekend.


Yeah... Tell me about it. My 4th isn't gonna be very happy if they don't fix this right away.


----------



## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Acheknia said:


> I have a ranking on a new book that's had no sales or reads, I'm thinking that maybe it's a borrow with no reads yet but it's not even showing as a borrow.
> Is there another way to get a ranking with no sales, reads or borrows?


Other than increases in rank, there's no way to know about a borrow. Page reads don't contribute to rankings.


----------



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

Everyone take a deep, cleansing breath. It's happening to everyone. I'm sure Amazon is aware of the situation. Inundating them with messages isn't going to help them go faster. There are two options:
1. It's a glitch.
2. They're changing something.
If it's number one, they'll fix it. Probably not to everyone's liking, but they'll fix it.
If it's number two, the world is surely coming to an end and the zombie invasion is right around the corner.
I tend to land on number two because of the date alone. We won't know until things start reporting again, though. We can't change anything and updating our dashboards every two seconds isn't going to make things go faster. I've opted to cope by cleaning the house, catching up on laundry, starting Lost over from the beginning and eating Middle Eastern food (my favorite).
We'll know more when we know more. Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but until I know more I'm going with the happy assumption that they're finally going after book stuffers and they're uploading a new bot/filter.
We will have to wait and see.


----------



## wingsandwords (Nov 1, 2016)

I want to be the cool as a cucumber person who sips tea and is like "ah, yes, everything will be fine. Breathe. All will be well, Milo Thatch."

But I'm not that person. I just got back from a significant emotional trip, so I was already on edge trying to wrangle those emotions back under control, and now THIS. 

So, yeah, little bit of panicking going on over here. I have 1 page read. 1. I should have over 40k by this point in the day.


----------



## barryjhutchison (Feb 21, 2016)

Acheknia said:


> Thank you, on the Reports-Historical, there's a darker colour for borrows, I didn't think reads affected rank.
> I noticed the rank on that book a couple of days ago but I can't find a reason for having a rank on it.


I think those borrows are KOLL borrows, not KU borrows. I'm sure someone smarter than me will know the difference, but they're definitely different.


----------



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

Acheknia said:


> Thank you, on the Reports-Historical, there's a darker colour for borrows, I didn't think reads affected rank.
> I noticed the rank on that book a couple of days ago but I can't find a reason for having a rank on it.


I haven't seen the darker colour for borrows for some time, and when I hover over it there are no borrows showing, but I've had an improvement in ranking and yet there doesn't appear to have been any sales. Not sure how this works


----------



## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Everyone take a deep, cleansing breath. It's happening to everyone. I'm sure Amazon is aware of the situation. Inundating them with messages isn't going to help them go faster. There are two options:
> 1. It's a glitch.
> 2. They're changing something.
> If it's number one, they'll fix it. Probably not to everyone's liking, but they'll fix it.
> ...


Total thread derail but what is your fav Middle Eastern food?

Also, yeah to what you posted. The July 1st date makes me suspect it's a new program they're rolling out. Maybe page reads will only update once a day. Who can say? Either way, nothing I can do so I'm outlining my new book.


----------



## Patrick Urban (Oct 22, 2016)

wingsandwords said:


> I want to be the cool as a cucumber person who sips tea and is like "ah, yes, everything will be fine. Breathe. All will be well, Milo Thatch."


Well, you've kept your head enough to throw out a Disney Atlantis reference  which shows the spirit is still in proper working order even if the mind feels a bit off kilter.


----------



## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


----------



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

sela said:


> Total thread derail but what is your fav Middle Eastern food?


While I like a number of things and would like to douse everything I eat in garlic sauce, ghallaya/ghallaba is my absolute favorite. I love tomatoes in a stir fry. I also love kebabs, fattoush and shawarma, though. We have this new delivery service that happens to deliver Middle Eastern in my neighborhood. I just discovered them yesterday. I swear I'm going to wear them out.


----------



## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Atlantisatheart said:


> I have to wonder if what happened to some on the 19th and 20th of June was a soft roll out for what's happening now.


Since June 19 was my best day since March, I have to say that today is nothing like that.


----------



## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


----------



## Longtime Lurker (Sep 14, 2016)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> While I like a number of things and would like to douse everything I eat in garlic sauce, ghallaya/ghallaba is my absolute favorite. I love tomatoes in a stir fry. I also love kebabs, fattoush and shawarma, though. We have this new delivery service that happens to deliver Middle Eastern in my neighborhood. I just discovered them yesterday. I swear I'm going to wear them out.


No love for tabboula? Super hungry now...


----------



## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Acheknia said:


> Thank you, on the Reports-Historical, there's a darker colour for borrows, I didn't think reads affected rank.
> I noticed the rank on that book a couple of days ago but I can't find a reason for having a rank on it.


That borrows section didn't populate between the rollout of KU 2 and June 30, 2017. During that time, we were paid per page view and borrows didn't affect pay, only ranking. We called them 'ghost borrows'.

God knows what will happen going forward.

Amanda is right, of course. We all need to just chill until we know. Probably that won't be until after the 4th of July holiday. Sorry for jumping the gun and posting my email to Jeff. Erasing that now.


----------



## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

I dream that we will return to the golden pay per borrow days, but not all that hopeful. I am more convinced that the sky is actually falling.

ACTUALLY FALLING.

Sigh.


----------



## Lady Runa (May 27, 2012)

It's changing, sort of: a few hours ago I had 2 page reads, now I have 3. That's instead of 10K+


----------



## Austin_Briggs (Aug 21, 2011)

Lady Runa said:


> It's changing, sort of: a few hours ago I had 2 page reads, now I have 3. That's instead of 10K+


Lucky you! 

I'm still sitting on my zero reads.


----------



## hopecartercan (Jun 19, 2015)

TwistedTales said:


> I left KU six months ago, but have been getting page reads almost every day. Haven't had any today, but over the past few months I've started to have some zero days so that's not surprising.
> 
> What is odd is yesterday I only got US sales. Today I only have international sales. Has anyone else got any sales for the US today? I don't remember the last time I didn't have any US sales. They happen every day and always by now, so what gives?


 I have gotten US only sales today


----------



## Lady Runa (May 27, 2012)

TwistedTales said:


> I left KU six months ago, but have been getting page reads almost every day. Haven't had any today, but over the past few months I've started to have some zero days so that's not surprising.
> 
> What is odd is yesterday I only got US sales. Today I only have international sales. Has anyone else got any sales for the US today? I don't remember the last time I didn't have any US sales. They happen every day and always by now, so what gives?


I can see US sales today and international sales yesterday.


----------



## Catherine Lea (Jul 16, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Everyone take a deep, cleansing breath. It's happening to everyone. I'm sure Amazon is aware of the situation. Inundating them with messages isn't going to help them go faster. There are two options:
> 1. It's a glitch.
> 2. They're changing something.
> If it's number one, they'll fix it. Probably not to everyone's liking, but they'll fix it.
> ...


Maybe we could spend the time writing. Just a suggestion.


----------



## Lady Runa (May 27, 2012)

Austin_Briggs said:


> > It's changing, sort of: a few hours ago I had 2 page reads, now I have 3. That's instead of 10K+
> 
> 
> Lucky you!
> ...


They've just been nullified! I had 3 reads a few minutes ago, now it's back to 0!

At least they're doing something


----------



## CallMeRed (May 12, 2016)

Catherine Lea said:


> Maybe we could spend the time writing. Just a suggestion.


That's what I've been doing. I'm supposed to be editing today, but dang it a new shiny idea was calling out to me SO LOUDLY, so put down 5k words on a new series.


----------



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

It's frustrating watching the rankings moving with no corresponding sales or page reads (or borrows that I don't know where to find).


----------



## wingsandwords (Nov 1, 2016)

Catherine Lea said:


> Maybe we could spend the time writing. Just a suggestion.


Whaaaaaaat? A bunch of authors kicked out of obsessively stalking their sales, and you think they should write? What are you smoking?

I kid, but in all actuality, I'm so keyed up about this that my mind is blanking when I try to turn to the solace of words. Luckily for me, this is not affecting my ability to create millions and millions of spreadsheets detailing writing schedules and estimated expense spendings for the next few months


----------



## Austin_Briggs (Aug 21, 2011)

Lady Runa said:


> They've just been nullified! I had 3 reads a few minutes ago, now it's back to 0!
> 
> At least they're doing something


That happened to me 2 or 3 days ago: all my reads for the day disappeared and appeared several times. Then they stabilized at the usual daily count. I guess they were testing on me whatever they are doing now.


----------



## Nicholas Erik (Sep 22, 2015)

I'm not bothered by this; Amazon is either performing maintenance on the backend (patching code, or they broke the system during a routine patch), or they're rolling out KU 2.5/3. Either way, I have no control over that. It'll get fixed; they don't pay us for July until September 29, so everything will shake out between now and then, anyway.

What _is_ concerning is how much I've relied on KU for income. Those #s have crept up over the last six months, and I've been structuring most of my advertising to maximize page reads/the rank boost from borrows etc. That's _clearly_ a house of cards. I'm sure the reads will update (whether that's today or within the next week, who knows), but seeing the sad revenue total in Book Report sans page reads is a wake-up call, for sure. It's been easy to deceive myself that KU2 is stable, given that things have been going well the past few months. But it's a castle built on quicksand.

Ah well. I'm thankful for the warning, even if it turns out to be a mere glitch. Gives me time to devise another strategy. Never a dull moment.

Nick


----------



## hopecartercan (Jun 19, 2015)

I've never considered going wide...not until now. I finally understand just how fragile KU2 is. Guess I was sleeping with a false sense of security


----------



## KJD1957 (Mar 29, 2017)

k1234 said:


> I was starting to wonder if at midnight everyone decided that my books are crap and the communally threw their kindles out the window lol. Time to grab screenshots ppl.


Me too. Scary, or what?


----------



## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Over on the KDP Community thread someone speculated KENP isn't updating right now because Amazon has finally figured out how to count pages correctly and is now implementing that system.


----------



## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

loraininflorida said:


> Over on the KDP Community thread someone speculated KENP isn't updating right now because Amazon has finally figured out how to count pages correctly and is now implementing that system.


It's good for people to be optimistic, even when they're delusional.


----------



## ......~...... (Jul 4, 2015)

TwistedTales said:


> I don't rely on the books to pay my bills so it's not about the money. This year I will have lost a lot of potential earnings by staying out KU. Based on my sales numbers and the fact they were always 50/50 with KU, it's in the tens of thousands. I don't care. I'm happier being out of KU than under that regime.


I think this is an important point. If you don't make much with KU or don't rely on that income if you do, it's easier to walk away. But if this is your only job, and you're actually making some money with KU, it's smarter to stay in and save some of that income so that when Amazon suddenly changes things, you'll have a nice little nest egg instead of nothing.


----------



## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

My graph shows zero page reads, but I just thought to open my month to date tab (since I use Book Report, I don't normally bother with the month to date tab) and I have about a thousand page reads distributed over about five books. Nothing close to normal, but it's a start. 

Anyone else seeing them?


----------



## Hope (Nov 28, 2014)

MaryMcDonald said:


> My graph shows zero page reads, but I just thought to open my month to date tab (since I use Book Report, I don't normally bother with the month to date tab) and I have about a thousand page reads distributed over about five books. Nothing close to normal, but it's a start.
> 
> Anyone else seeing them?


Yes, I've got 89 page reads on month to date.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Is the ranking algorithm functioning? I know I had a few sales earlier and my rank fell.


----------



## HeyImBen (Mar 7, 2013)

Yes, page reads are showing up in the month to date tab, though nothing on the graph.


----------



## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

I've got zero page reads today so far, too. I have a big launch on the 7th, so trying not to freak out... in the past, are any page reads from the "glitch period" just lost? Or reinstated later on?


----------



## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

I've got a few hundred page reads showing up up on the graph at last.


----------



## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

loraininflorida said:


> Over on the KDP Community thread someone speculated KENP isn't updating right now because* Amazon has finally figured out how to count pages correctly *and is now implementing that system.


We can but dream ...


----------



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

hopecartercan said:


> I've never considered going wide...not until now. I finally understand just how fragile KU2 is. Guess I was sleeping with a false sense of security


There may be good reasons for going wide, but this could just be a temporary glitch rather than a transition to a much worse system. I'm noticing other indications of backend issues. For example, right now I don't have an author rank. (I'm getting one of those "Apparently, you haven't sold any books on Amazon" messages.)


----------



## Austin_Briggs (Aug 21, 2011)

MaryMcDonald said:


> My graph shows zero page reads, but I just thought to open my month to date tab (since I use Book Report, I don't normally bother with the month to date tab) and I have about a thousand page reads distributed over about five books. Nothing close to normal, but it's a start.
> 
> Anyone else seeing them?


Yep, I'm now seeing some - about x10 times less than I usually had in June... then of course, readers may have gotten tired of me!


----------



## Some Random Guy (Jan 16, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> That makes sense, but this year I've made more profit being out of KU. The marketing tactics for wide are very different. They cost less and I charge more for the books. The nett effect has been higher margin. I probably still would have made more if I'd stayed in KU, but not twice as much once I took marketing costs into account. Bottom line is marketing wide is cheaper and I've gotten more bang for the buck.


That's been my experience as well. So far, I'm on track to make more $$ this year (wide + non-KU Zon) than last year, when all of my novels were in KU.


----------



## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

tknite said:


> My KU chart finally updated! Looks like we might be pulling out of the delay.


Ditto.


----------



## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

MaryMcDonald said:


> My graph shows zero page reads, but I just thought to open my month to date tab (since I use Book Report, I don't normally bother with the month to date tab) and I have about a thousand page reads distributed over about five books. Nothing close to normal, but it's a start.
> 
> Anyone else seeing them?


You're right. I do see several thousand page reads in KDP Month to Date. That's short of what it should be, by a long shot, but at least it's not zero.

Edited to add--I'm getting a few hundred page reads, but that doesn't match Month to Date. Things may be slowly recovering.


----------



## wingsandwords (Nov 1, 2016)

My dashboard general report page is now showing 2k page reads, and my month to date report page is showing 11k page reads.

All of this is to also say that generally, at this point in the day, I'm usually at 50-60k page reads.

However, these updates(jumping to 600, then 2k page reads), have happened in the past five minutes. It looks like things are starting to roll again.


----------



## Some Random Guy (Jan 16, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> It's does sound counter intuitive, but it does seem to work that way for some of us. I also managed to get a few Bookbub promos, made the USA Today list, and was contacted by an agent. All of these things I assumed were well beyond my reach and I don't think they would have happened had I been in KU.


Yep. Finally got my first BookBub after going wide, and it got me noticed by Tantor, who bought the audio rights to the first three books of one of my series. Doubt that would have happened had I stayed within the confines of the Zon ecosystem.


----------



## Scott Bartlett (Apr 1, 2012)

TwistedTales said:


> That makes sense, but this year I've made more profit being out of KU. The marketing tactics for wide are very different. They cost less and I charge more for the books. The nett effect has been higher margin. I probably still would have made more if I'd stayed in KU, but not twice as much once I took marketing costs into account. Bottom line is marketing wide is cheaper and I've gotten more bang for the buck.


Not sure if this is the thread to broach this subject, but as someone who's in KU yet is open to going wide, I'd be curious to hear what the wide marketing tactics look like.


----------



## ......~...... (Jul 4, 2015)

TwistedTales said:


> That makes sense, but this year I've made more profit being out of KU. The marketing tactics for wide are very different. They cost less and I charge more for the books. The nett effect has been higher margin. I probably still would have made more if I'd stayed in KU, but not twice as much once I took marketing costs into account. Bottom line is marketing wide is cheaper and I've gotten more bang for the buck.


That's good to know. Right now AMS ads are my main advertising expense. While I have a good ROI, I'd still like to spend less.



TwistedTales said:


> I also managed to get a few Bookbub promos, made the USA Today list, and was contacted by an agent. All of these things I assumed were well beyond my reach and I don't think they would have happened had I been in KU.


I know it's not a guarantee but my main reason to go wide would be to get a Bookbub. I might try it with my upcoming UF pen name if the page reads aren't up to par.


----------



## Austin_Briggs (Aug 21, 2011)

NeedWant said:


> I know it's not a guarantee but my main reason to go wide would be to get a Bookbub. I might try it with my upcoming UF pen name if the page reads aren't up to par.


It sounds sensible and I almost did the same, but then I got a BookBub while staying in KU. So it doesn't seem necessary to go wide to get accepted by them.


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Scott Bartlett said:


> Not sure if this is the thread to broach this subject, but as someone who's in KU yet is open to going wide, I'd be curious to hear what the wide marketing tactics look like.


Mailing list, mailing list, mailing list.

Also https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,231169.0.html


----------



## ......~...... (Jul 4, 2015)

Austin_Briggs said:


> It sounds sensible and I almost did the same, but then I got a BookBub while staying in KU. So it doesn't seem necessary to go wide to get accepted by them.


Yeah, it's possible but more likely if you're wide (at least in the genre I write in). I still apply every month, though!


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

TwistedTales said:


> Although I don't own the various mediums...


That would worry me. Facebook already requires you to pay for your followers to see your updates, Twitter becomes more ineffective for this purpose the more people each person follows.


----------



## barryjhutchison (Feb 21, 2016)

Anyone else use the Chrome plugin KDPulse? We just ticked over to the 2nd in the UK here, and while the page reads in KDPulse has been at 0 all through the 1st until the last hour or so, it isn't even showing page reads as an option on the 2nd. It would usually report like this:

sales/pages/freebies (eg 20/5000/0)

Right now, though, it's showing:

sales//freebies (eg 20//0)

So looks like something might be going on beyond just a glitch.


----------



## Kay7979 (Aug 20, 2016)

My page reads finally showed up about an hour ago.


----------



## Beth_Hammond (Oct 30, 2015)

I still have nothing showing for page reads.


----------



## jcalloway (Jan 10, 2014)

No pages yet, either.


----------



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

I'm up to 87,000 page reads but I'm guessing things won't be back to normal until tomorrow morning at this rate.


----------



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

I'm only at about 6,000. I'd normally be sitting at 15,000+ by this point. Sigh.


----------



## lbpress21 (Jul 1, 2017)

Yeah, I don't think things are updating correctly either. I have one book I know that has had no sales or page reads before last night. This morning it moved into the rankings so it means that either it was bought or pages were read. I think pages read is the area it is in because my reports and Month to Date show nothing for sales for that book or for page reads.


----------



## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

I'm glad this thread was started because for the last several days, I thought maybe it was me/my books. Normally, my books get decent reads and I haven't had any today and meager reads the last several days. I'm slow to point the finger at Amazon but it might be worth considering that it's a technical issue if others seem to be going through the same experience.


----------



## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

3rotic said:


> I'm only at about 6,000. I'd normally be sitting at 15,000+ by this point. Sigh.


Yeah I'm in the same boat. There is 1/10th showing right now than what should be there. I hope this will be adjusted back to normal by tomorrow, otherwise I'm sure they will get lots of emails from authors over the coming days.


----------



## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


----------



## Mike_Kraus (May 16, 2017)

Another point to add to the "glitch, not the end of the world" column: total your MTD page reads. Mine are adding up to be WAY higher than the total showing on the dashboard. The dashboard and the MTD pull from two distinct data sources but reconcile by end of the month (or they have in the past anyway).


----------



## inconsequential (May 4, 2016)

I have zero all the way across the board.


----------



## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Pages reads are now showing...but they are less than half what I was expecting.


----------



## SunshineOnMe (Jan 11, 2014)

My MTD are 1/10 of normal.


----------



## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


----------



## lbpress21 (Jul 1, 2017)

I would assume that Zon is looking into this in some capacity. Has anyone contacted them or have they given any kind of official response yet?


----------



## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

SunshineOnMe said:


> My MTD are 1/10 of normal.


Yes. Me too. Praying it is not a repeat of the last fiasco & the numbers get righted. &#128531;&#128531;&#128545;


----------



## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

lbpress21 said:


> I would assume that Zon is looking into this in some capacity. Has anyone contacted them or have they given any kind of official response yet?


I contacted them. No response yet. I suspect all the suits are off until July 5.


----------



## StephenEngland (Nov 2, 2011)

Mine appear to be back up and running now as well.


----------



## old account (Sep 4, 2013)

I do not accept the new TOS for this site, nor do I convey any rights to the new site owner Vertical Scope.


----------



## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

Cherise said:


> I contacted them. No response yet. I suspect all the suits are off until July 5.


I contacted them first to say it was at zero, then again when it trickled in to say it was a bit off.

I'm sure it will get fixed.

Worst case scenario, they screw us over for thousands of pages in one 24hr period.

I'm sure that isn't much different than most days  Just we don't notice it and have no way of checking beyond comparing it to previous days.


----------



## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


----------



## Starstruck (Nov 1, 2013)

Mine are showing now, but only about half of what I would expect them to be.  =/  Hopefully things will catch up after the 4th.


----------



## RD (Dec 19, 2015)

I'm usually far past 3k KENP by now, I've got 140 KENP


----------



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

Just saw the note on the dashboard. At least they're aware of the problem.


----------



## LadyG (Sep 3, 2015)

Mine still shows zero, but I have a message at the top of the reports page that says "Kindle Edition Normalized Pages Read updates are currently delayed, and may not reflect the most up-to-date values. We are working on resolving this issue as quickly as possible."

Anybody else seeing that message?


----------



## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

LadyG said:


> Mine still shows zero, but I have a message at the top of the reports page that says "Kindle Edition Normalized Pages Read updates are currently delayed, and may not reflect the most up-to-date values. We are working on resolving this issue as quickly as possible."
> 
> Anybody else seeing that message?


Yes. I just checked and had the same message as well.


----------



## RD (Dec 19, 2015)

Anyone else have page reads but a relatively lower amount?


----------



## Rick Partlow (Sep 6, 2016)

RD said:


> Anyone else have page reads but a relatively lower amount?


Yes. I usually have between 25-30K by this time, but I only have 13K.


----------



## wingsandwords (Nov 1, 2016)

I'm showing a little under half of what I would have expected to get today. Considering page reads started showing up a little under halfway through the day...

I didn't say it here, I don't think, but I did say it to my friends. Amazon probably isn't going to retroactively add the pages we missed out on, but will 'fix' it going forward. This is what it's looking like for me.


----------



## Hope (Nov 28, 2014)

I just had another 189 page reads added on the monthly report, so it looks like they're still coming in.


----------



## RD (Dec 19, 2015)

Midnight seems to fix all the issues for me, sometimes I'll get a few or even several thousand pages just appear out of nowhere by then. Hoping that happens today.


----------



## hopecartercan (Jun 19, 2015)

It's past midnight now. I finished the day with 1/2 the number of page reads I was expecting.


----------



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

hopecartercan said:


> It's past midnight now. I finished the day with 1/2 the number of page reads I was expecting.


Same.


----------



## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Same here.


----------



## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

Reads are finally kicking in but still 25%-30% of what they were yesterday. I am in no way reassured. ZERO REASSURANCE PEOPLE.

Sidebar: I've been approached by tantor and I'm all in KU. Should I have said yes? I am not sure how profitable it is. Is it better than going through an agent?

Full disclosure: I've also never got a bookbub.


----------



## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

wingsandwords said:


> I'm showing a little under half of what I would have expected to get today. Considering page reads started showing up a little under halfway through the day...
> 
> I didn't say it here, I don't think, but I did say it to my friends. Amazon probably isn't going to retroactively add the pages we missed out on, but will 'fix' it going forward. This is what it's looking like for me.


Agreed. Still no page reads showing up for me either.


----------



## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

hopecartercan said:


> It's past midnight now. I finished the day with 1/2 the number of page reads I was expecting.


Same.


----------



## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

I begrudgingly have a few titles in KU and the reported reads are around 1/5 of what they should be but because this is Amazon we have no proof that we're owned anything beyond what they deem our reports should show. Ugh. KU really is the pits.


----------



## Author A.C. Salter (Mar 14, 2017)

I don't want to jinx it, but I believe mine has begun to balance out to where it usually is. I'm in the UK so might be ahead of the US by a few hours.

Hope it'll catch-up for everyone else 😀


----------



## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

I have the same message. I also have a giveaway matchbook for a book, the paperback of which hasn't sold for at least a week. What is that all about? Can I imagine that the sales figures are also delayed.


----------



## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

Things are kind of evening out for my page reads on the 1st, and page reads for the 2nd are updating fine. Page reads for the 1st are still low, about 60-75% of what was expected, but are still being updated.


----------



## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

3rotic said:


> Things are kind of evening out for my page reads on the 1st, and page reads for the 2nd are updating fine. Page reads for the 1st are still low, about 60-75% of what was expected, but are still being updated.


Yes, I'm also seeing page reads continuing to update for the 1st which would never normally happen at this point. I take that as an encouraging sign that Amazon is working to fix the missing pages (like others have expressed, I didn't have confidence that would necessarily happen, and was counting that half day of missing page reads as lost).


----------



## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

My only KU now is on Amazon Germany, and it's behind--but it often seems behind, sometimes as much as a whole day.


----------



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

PhoenixS said:


> You know I have ALL the respect for you, Amanda, right? Because I do. And I truly believe what's going on now is all due to jiggering on the backend and will be corrected.
> 
> BUT, I also want to point out, THIS is exactly how those of us hit back in September felt watching our sales charts, even though you were adamant such a thing couldn't be happening because it wasn't happening to you. We KNEW the numbers couldn't be right, that they didn't jive with past performance, that it wasn't just a gradual slowdown, but a full-on hit of the brakes.
> 
> ...


Trust is like innocence and virginity - when it's gone, it's gone for good .

I only had a few sales and page reads, I think my highest was about 5000 pages in one month. But since last year's debacle I can go over a week with nothing and it's very disheartening as the rankings sometimes go up. Just a few page reads gave me a lift to think someone was reading one of my books 

ETA: I'd just posted this when I found an email from an airport bookshop ordering 50 print copies of Something to Read on the Plane . The universe was listening


----------



## skywalker (Apr 21, 2017)

3rotic said:


> Just peeked at my dashboard. It's almost 2 AM where I'm at, so very early in the reporting period, but I'm seeing a big zero for page reads so far today (July 1st), where ordinarily I'd have a few thousand by now. It's just kind of weird. Anyone else?


Yeah, it's kind of slow. One hour ago mine was 0 too, now it just changed to 72...


----------



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

PhoenixS said:


> You know I have ALL the respect for you, Amanda, right? Because I do. And I truly believe what's going on now is all due to jiggering on the backend and will be corrected.
> 
> BUT, I also want to point out, THIS is exactly how those of us hit back in September felt watching our sales charts, even though you were adamant such a thing couldn't be happening because it wasn't happening to you. We KNEW the numbers couldn't be right, that they didn't jive with past performance, that it wasn't just a gradual slowdown, but a full-on hit of the brakes.
> 
> ...


Except this isn't how it started in September. In September, people reported drastically lower page report, not non-existent page reports. Not everyone did either. Fifty percent of authors were baffled because they weren't seeing what others were seeing. It was business as usual. Yesterday, 100 percent of authors were seeing zero pages (or one or two). It was on the first of the month. It was on the first of July, no less. It was very obviously a glitch.


----------



## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


----------



## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


----------



## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Is anyone else having particular issues with a new release? I have page reads for everything except Fortune's Curse. Not a single page read since it came out on the 28th. It's not exactly burning up the charts & it's a holiday weekend...but it's very hard to believe it wouldn't have ANYTHING.


----------



## jcalloway (Jan 10, 2014)

JaclynDolamore said:


> Is anyone else having particular issues with a new release? I have page reads for everything except Fortune's Curse. Not a single page read since it came out on the 28th. It's not exactly burning up the charts & it's a holiday weekend...but it's very hard to believe it wouldn't have ANYTHING.


According to your product page, Fortune's Curse isn't available in KU.


----------



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

jcalloway said:


> According to your product page, Fortune's Curse isn't available in KU.


Good catch.


----------



## SunnySammy (May 8, 2017)

JaclynDolamore said:


> Is anyone else having particular issues with a new release? I have page reads for everything except Fortune's Curse. Not a single page read since it came out on the 28th. It's not exactly burning up the charts & it's a holiday weekend...but it's very hard to believe it wouldn't have ANYTHING.


I don't see it in KU either. I released this week and have a countdown deal running on an older book, Those are the only books that are showing page reads even though the rank on others has moved up.

Did you remember to tick the KU box?


----------



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

PhoenixS said:


> You're correct that there are differences, and I did say I believed this time is different. What I was trying to get at is that as reads were filtering in yesterday, we could look at our reports and know they were under-reporting. Those under-reports were just as obvious to us back in Sept for those that were hit as the under-reporting was obvious to you this time.
> 
> Hopefully things are still catching up. Our accounts are still at least 1/3 lower than expected for yesterday's numbers. Today's are about where I'd expect them to be early on a Sunday (US time). I'm anxious to see where the next couple of days' numbers end up.


My numbers from yesterday are still climbing, although my numbers for this morning (given it's so early) seem slightly high to me (nothing major but about 50K or so). Of course, Sundays are always my biggest days so it could simply be that. That being said, I've heard anecdotal reports about KENPC being adjusted on bonus books. Not all but some, as if a new filter or bot is winding its way through the system and is starting to identify where bonus books start and they're stopping counting of KENPC at that point. It's still anecdotal (one person is reporting dropping from 2,700 KENPC to 271 KENPC, which is roughly where the first book ends, and another is reporting dropping from 2,400 KENPC to 156 KENPC). Other people are reporting their bonus books still have the same amount of KENPC as before. I'm not sure what to think.


----------



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

SunnySammy said:


> Those are the only books that are showing page reads even though the rank on others has moved up.


I constantly have to remind myself that the ranking impact from KU comes from the borrow itself (which we don't see), not from the pages read, which we do. Even under normal circumstances, it's common to see a book jump in rank with no apparent activity, just as it's normal to see pages read coming in with no affect on rank (because the borrow could have happened days or even weeks before).

The message about delayed reporting is still up on my dashboard, so I assume Amazon is still working on fixing the problem.


----------



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

Amanda M. Lee said:


> My numbers from yesterday are still climbing, although my numbers for this morning (given it's so early) seem slightly high to me (nothing major but about 50K or so). Of course, Sundays are always my biggest days so it could simply be that. That being said, I've heard anecdotal reports about KENPC being adjusted on bonus books. Not all but some, as if a new filter or bot is winding its way through the system and is starting to identify where bonus books start and they're stopping counting of KENPC at that point. It's still anecdotal (one person is reporting dropping from 2,700 KENPC to 271 KENPC, which is roughly where the first book ends, and another is reporting dropping from 2,400 KENPC to 156 KENPC). Other people are reporting their bonus books still have the same amount of KENPC as before. I'm not sure what to think.


My ambition is to be able to get to the point as a writer where I can describe 50K pages read as "nothing major." You and others like you who are at that point may not realize how truly amazing it is to be doing that well. It takes a lot of talent and persistence to be that far ahead of the curve.

At the risk of asking a completely prawny question, what's a bonus book? I've heard the term in relationship to box sets, but I'm not sure what it means.

If Amazon is making an adjustment, that often causes other short-term problems, so that may be the cause.


----------



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

Bill Hiatt said:


> My ambition is to be able to get to the point as a writer where I can describe 50K pages read as "nothing major." You and others like you who are at that point may not realize how truly amazing it is to be doing that well. It takes a lot of talent and persistence to be that far ahead of the curve.
> 
> At the risk of asking a completely prawny question, what's a bonus book? I've heard the term in relationship to box sets, but I'm not sure what it means.
> 
> If Amazon is making an adjustment, that often causes other short-term problems, so that may be the cause.


A bonus book is when authors try to inflate their KENPC to get more of the KU pot. They take one book, make a cover for that, and then include sometimes as many as ten other books for free at the end of the first book. Then they take the second book, rearrange the order of the bonus books, and do the exact same thing until they go through all ten books. Basically they're publishing the exact same ten books, just in different configurations, under ten different covers. They get as close to the KENPC cap as possible and then try to entice readers to flip to the end, sometimes by including a new "bonus epilogue" for the first book at the very end. It's all a way to scam the KU system to get more of the pot. It's extremely prevalent in romance right now and is one of the reasons the per page payout is dropping.


----------



## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

jcalloway said:


> According to your product page, Fortune's Curse isn't available in KU.


Oh my god I'm an idiot. Some of the promos I ran during release were mainly for KU books and they're already over, excuse me while I take myself out back and shoot myself...


----------



## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

Well, still no US reads at all. (Or sales.) Canada and AU are reporting them.


----------



## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> My numbers from yesterday are still climbing, although my numbers for this morning (given it's so early) seem slightly high to me (nothing major but about 50K or so.


Same experience here. Yesterday is still rising, & today is way higher than I expected. Curious to see how it ends up.


----------



## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

JaclynDolamore said:


> Oh my god I'm an idiot. Some of the promos I ran during release were mainly for KU books and they're already over, excuse me while I take myself out back and shoot myself...


But on the bright side, at least this is one click to fix the problem, and doesn't involve Amazon customer support at all (always a bonus, in my view).


----------



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

ebbrown said:


> Same experience here. Yesterday is still rising, & today is way higher than I expected.


*Raises hand* That makes three of us.


----------



## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> A bonus book is when authors try to inflate their KENPC to get more of the KU pot. They take one book, make a cover for that, and then include sometimes as many as ten other books for free at the end of the first book.


I've seen more than thirty crammed in. If Amazon can stop the damage from this, I'll be cheering.


----------



## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

JaclynDolamore said:


> Oh my god I'm an idiot. Some of the promos I ran during release were mainly for KU books and they're already over, excuse me while I take myself out back and shoot myself...


Like Pauline said, at least you have an easy fix available. In my self-publishing career, I've goofed far worse, and I'm sure I'll keep screwing up in the future. It's still great fun to be able to put out books that people actually pay to read.


----------



## jcalloway (Jan 10, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> I've seen more than thirty crammed in. If Amazon can stop the damage from this, I'll be cheering.


Same. Especially after May's page rate. In one of the romance circles I frequent, there were some fairly blatant wink-wink, nudge-nudge, "I can't imagine why the page rate went down" comments in response to that rate. The crammers know they're party to dragging down the rate for everyone, and they just don't care.


----------



## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

My sales (I don't do Select) are pretty standard for the first two days of July, especially considering that these are the first two days of a four-day weekend for many people. On Friday, the car radio advised us to get out of town before 3pm or else wait till after 5 pm. In other words, we were advised that one way to beat the rush was to travel at rush hour!


----------



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

SevenDays said:


> *Raises hand* That makes three of us.


Yeah. I would say that my yesterday numbers are about 100K less than what I would expect but my today numbers are rising fast. I wonder if some of yesterday's numbers are filtering in to today's graph. It will be easier to gauge at the end of the day.


----------



## DogNamedNobody (Nov 29, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> A bonus book is when authors try to inflate their KENPC to get more of the KU pot. They take one book, make a cover for that, and then include sometimes as many as ten other books for free at the end of the first book. Then they take the second book, rearrange the order of the bonus books, and do the exact same thing until they go through all ten books. Basically they're publishing the exact same ten books, just in different configurations, under ten different covers. They get as close to the KENPC cap as possible and then try to entice readers to flip to the end, sometimes by including a new "bonus epilogue" for the first book at the very end. It's all a way to scam the KU system to get more of the pot. It's extremely prevalent in romance right now and is one of the reasons the per page payout is dropping.


Why doesn't Amazon go after scam authors who inflate KU pages? Wouldn't it be easy? Like looking for all books above a certain page threshold? Oh, I know why. It would take human intelligence ... like actually looking inside suspicious books.


----------



## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> But on the bright side, at least this is one click to fix the problem, and doesn't involve Amazon customer support at all (always a bonus, in my view).


True, true, there is a bright side. It's just aggravating because it WAS such a simple fix. I was really busy this week so I just didn't download my own book on KU when it came out like I usually do. But, it's true. Still better a simple thing than, say, Amazon sending out the wrong preorder file...


----------



## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


----------



## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

Reads for today seem low for me so far, especially for a weekend. Yesterdays reads are 70k lower than Thursdays which is defo not Kosher. Nope. Nope nope nope.

I hope this is resolved soon and not another attempt to foil scammers by punishing the rest of us.

But also, boo on the scammers.


----------



## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> A bonus book is when authors try to inflate their KENPC to get more of the KU pot. They take one book, make a cover for that, and then include sometimes as many as ten other books for free at the end of the first book. Then they take the second book, rearrange the order of the bonus books, and do the exact same thing until they go through all ten books. Basically they're publishing the exact same ten books, just in different configurations, under ten different covers. They get as close to the KENPC cap as possible and then try to entice readers to flip to the end, sometimes by including a new "bonus epilogue" for the first book at the very end. It's all a way to scam the KU system to get more of the pot. It's extremely prevalent in romance right now and is one of the reasons the per page payout is dropping.


Well now the people with 1700-2000 page novellas are over the line, but I think including excerpts or one (or even two) bonus books is acceptable and within the TOS. I have done it (though I did stop a while back actually- other than excerpts). I was doing it *for the readers* but when I got a mixed reaction I stopped. It did increase reads somewhat but it wasn't worth it to hurt my brand after a while. But that was because people were READING both books (or the book and a free short story), not because of trickery to get them to click to the back.

The big all star bonuses are now going SOLEY to the people churning out these bizarre 2000 page books. Some of them even use click farms, adding insult to injury. Those two problems are the reason that KU has become less profitable in the past six months.

But what can we do? They'll all be gone eventually and we'll all still be here. We = 'real writers' (people who care about the reader and the craft). I'm not going to run around reporting anyone. It's bad juju.

Still, it does chafe my ass.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

SuzyQ said:


> The big all star bonuses are now going SOLEY to the people churning out these bizarre 2000 page books.


No legitimate authors are earning big all-star bonuses? Not one?


----------



## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

Anarchist said:


> No legitimate authors are earning big all-star bonuses? Not one?


Shoot, sorry I can't state that with 100% accuracy. I do know more than one author who was top ten that didn't get a big bonus (the ten or twenty-five K). From what I understand they are next to impossible to get without the scammy scams.


----------



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

SuzyQ said:


> Shoot, sorry I can't state that with 100% accuracy. I do know more than one author who was top ten that didn't get a big bonus (the ten or twenty-five K). From what I understand they are next to impossible to get without the scammy scams.


I don't do bonus books -- and never would -- and I always get at least one bonus a month, sometimes as many as five. Hugh Howey and Bella Forest clearly get the top ones every month and they don't stuff to screw over everyone else (which is all bonus books are, an attempt to screw over others). I know quite a few others who gets bonuses without being unethical.
So, no, the bonuses don't all go to unethical stuffers.


----------



## ......~...... (Jul 4, 2015)

I'm not a fan of bonus books as a reader and I don't use them as a writer either. 

I've seen a lot of romance authors make use of them by adding an extra book or two at the end. The ones I've seen are pretty high in rank and they clearly state in the blurb that there are extra books inside. From the TOC, it doesn't look like they're using shady linking tactics either.

Lumping these authors in with scammers and calling them unethical is not helpful. While I'm personally not a fan of what they're doing, that doesn't make what they're doing wrong. If you want someone to blame, blame Amazon. They created the system that makes this possible and they're the ones that refuse to have a clear TOS for authors to refer to.


----------



## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Any tactic that breaks the TOS and gets you $$$ you shouldn't otherwise have if you followed the TOS is scummy and scammy.

That means including a dozen extra books with an incentive to click to the back in order to get fraudulent page reads.

I thought Amazon got rid of this last year but I guess not. Scammers are inventive and find every possible loophole and crack in the system to make money they don't deserve.

Authors should only be paid for the pages that are actually read. This means Amazon should stop page-flip since it is possible for an entire book to be read in this mode and the author not get paid for any of it. At the same time, Amazon should stop those authors who are book stuffing with incentives to click to the last page to get to a special epilogue to the main story because they are being paid for page reads that did not happen. 

What Amazon should really do is create a system where an actual page read is actually counted and actually reported. Instead of the system they do have...


----------



## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> My numbers from yesterday are still climbing, although my numbers for this morning (given it's so early) seem slightly high to me (nothing major but about 50K or so). Of course, Sundays are always my biggest days so it could simply be that. That being said, I've heard anecdotal reports about KENPC being adjusted on bonus books. Not all but some, as if a new filter or bot is winding its way through the system and is starting to identify where bonus books start and they're stopping counting of KENPC at that point. It's still anecdotal (one person is reporting dropping from 2,700 KENPC to 271 KENPC, which is roughly where the first book ends, and another is reporting dropping from 2,400 KENPC to 156 KENPC). Other people are reporting their bonus books still have the same amount of KENPC as before. I'm not sure what to think.


I can tell you that my KENPC number for June 1st are still not what they should be and that was even after alerting Amazon to it. They are still about 30k less than they should be. I don't expect them to update June 1st any further.


----------



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

hunterone said:


> I can tell you that my KENPC number for June 1st are still not what they should be and that was even after alerting Amazon to it. They are still about 30k less than they should be. I don't expect them to update June 1st any further.


Mine are still going up. I know because they jumped 3K in the past ten minutes. At this point I am about roughly 50K from where I would expect to be for this time of year, given my releases, on a Saturday.


----------



## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> A bonus book is when authors try to inflate their KENPC to get more of the KU pot. They take one book, make a cover for that, and then include sometimes as many as ten other books for free at the end of the first book. Then they take the second book, rearrange the order of the bonus books, and do the exact same thing until they go through all ten books. Basically they're publishing the exact same ten books, just in different configurations, under ten different covers. They get as close to the KENPC cap as possible and then try to entice readers to flip to the end, sometimes by including a new "bonus epilogue" for the first book at the very end. It's all a way to scam the KU system to get more of the pot. It's extremely prevalent in romance right now and is one of the reasons the per page payout is dropping.





ebbrown said:


> Same experience here. Yesterday is still rising, & today is way higher than I expected. Curious to see how it ends up.


Today is on par for a normal day. Thank God.

Yesterdays ( June 1st ) rose a bit but still is lower than what it should have been at. I will just take the hit and move on. I can't be done to argue it out with support.


----------



## ......~...... (Jul 4, 2015)

sela said:


> Authors should only be paid for the pages that are actually read. This means Amazon should stop page-flip since it is possible for an entire book to be read in this mode and the author not get paid for any of it.
> 
> What Amazon should really do is create a system where an actual page read is actually counted and actually reported. Instead of the system they do have...


Yeah, instead of focusing their efforts on actually figuring out how to count a page read, they instead introduced a feature that makes it possible not to count pages read. Now that's what I would call unethical and scammy.


----------



## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


----------



## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I don't do bonus books -- and never would -- and I always get at least one bonus a month, sometimes as many as five. Hugh Howey and Bella Forest clearly get the top ones every month and they don't stuff to screw over everyone else (which is all bonus books are, an attempt to screw over others). I know quite a few others who gets bonuses without being unethical.
> So, no, the bonuses don't all go to unethical stuffers.


I get a bonus every month too. I was talking about the 10,000 and 25,000 bonuses, which usually go to top ten authors. That is not happening lately, or at least not across the board.

Also, don't agree that including bonus material unethical. Lots of trad pub books include bonus content.


----------



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

SuzyQ said:


> I get a bonus every month too. I was talking about the 10,000 and 25,000 bonuses, which usually go to top ten authors. That is not happening lately, or at least not across the board.
> 
> Also, don't agree that including bonus material unethical. Lots of trad pub books include bonus content.


The 25K ones go to the top ten. The 10K ones go to 11-20. I mostly get the 10K one but sometimes the 25K one and sometimes the 5K (depending what is being released) and I don't stuff.


----------



## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> The 25K ones go to the top ten. The 10K ones go to 11-20. I mostly get the 10K one but sometimes the 25K one and sometimes the 5K (depending what is being released) and I don't stuff.


I meant authors with book in the actual top ten, not the top ten most read authors with loads of books. Usually a top ten kindle book will get you the 25k and that SEEMS to be no longer true.

It's reassuring to hear you are still getting the 10k.


----------



## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

For more than a week I haven't seen sales register on the bar graph unless I disable the "Free units ordered" on the list below the graph. I disable that and it's all good. It used to be the bar graph showed both free and paid, then, for whatever AMZ reason, it stopped. If I don't disable free, I don't see paid as a bar. 

Weird--and probably has nothing to do with the troubles reported on this thread re sales. Just thought I'd mention it . . .


----------



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

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I don't do bonus books -- and never would -- and I always get at least one bonus a month, sometimes as many as five. Hugh Howey and Bella Forest clearly get the top ones every month and they don't stuff to screw over everyone else (which is all bonus books are, an attempt to screw over others). I know quite a few others who gets bonuses without being unethical.
> So, no, the bonuses don't all go to unethical stuffers.


It's good to know that you don't have to be a scammer to be successful.


----------



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

sela said:


> What Amazon should really do is create a system where an actual page read is actually counted and actually reported. Instead of the system they do have...


Amen!

The way KU 2.0 was described, that's what Amazon led us to believe would happen. I'd heard different opinions, though, as to whether or not it's practical, covering the gamut from "it would be easy," to "no, it's impossible." Sigh!


----------



## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

EC Sheedy said:


> For more than a week I haven't seen sales register on the bar graph unless I disable the "Free units ordered" on the list below the graph. I disable that and it's all good. It used to be the bar graph showed both free and paid, then, for whatever AMZ reason, it stopped. If I don't disable free, I don't see paid as a bar.
> 
> Weird--and probably has nothing to do with the troubles reported on this thread re sales. Just thought I'd mention it . . .


What might be happening is that both bars are still there, but you gave away lots of free books. When that happens, the scale changes dramatically, and the paid bar is almost impossible to see. This happens to me every time I do a giveaway, and every time I refresh the page, it reverts to showing the free books again. I find it very annoying.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

SuzyQ said:


> I meant authors with book in the actual top ten, not the top ten most read authors with loads of books. Usually a top ten kindle book will get you the 25k and that SEEMS to be no longer true.
> 
> It's reassuring to hear you are still getting the 10k.


That's not really how it works. You can have a much lower ranking and get more pages. The romance authors at .99 have a sales to borrows ratio that skews towards sales. Plus, people with more books or series sellthrough will get more pages.

But it is true that bonus thresholds are going up, both for single titles and author bonuses. It used to be 3-4 million pages was enough for the 1k author bonus big now it's more like 5-6, and the but bonuses are all a notch lower (i.e. what usually gets the 10k now gets the 5k) than what I'd expect (I've talked to many authors who regularly get 5/10/25k about this and looked at my own bonuses as well).


----------



## AriadneBeckett (Jun 29, 2017)

My mouth waters when you talk about bonuses ;P One day, perhaps! 

For now, my page reads seem to be roughly within normal expectations today. Still a bit low for a Sunday, but I could be having a slightly low Sunday and wouldn't assume amazon fault for it.


----------



## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

Crystal_ said:


> That's not really how it works. You can have a much lower ranking and get more pages. The romance authors at .99 have a sales to borrows ratio that skews towards sales. Plus, people with more books or series sellthrough will get more pages.
> 
> But it is true that bonus thresholds are going up, both for single titles and author bonuses. It used to be 3-4 million pages was enough for the 1k author bonus big now it's more like 5-6, and the but bonuses are all a notch lower (i.e. what usually gets the 10k now gets the 5k) than what I'd expect (I've talked to many authors who regularly get 5/10/25k about this and looked at my own bonuses as well).


Ah, yes my working theory was based on experience not on actual hard science. I do know about the series and bigger catalogues getting bonuses (if people read them obviously). That's how I get them. 

The threshold is way up, for sure. I should have just said that. I think its partially from more competition but also due to the 2000 page gorilla- I mean novella - in the room (there was one in the top twenty last time I looked- cant imagine how big THAT payday might be). And top ten or twenty did used to mean a 25kor 10k bonus, with or without a reasonable amount of bonus materials. But there was zero science in that estimation, just some fancy friends.


----------



## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Mine trickled in so I was grateful to see that today. Hopefully tomorrow things improve. Amazon's message is still showing on my dashboard.


----------



## wingsandwords (Nov 1, 2016)

Comparing the 30th and the 2nd(the 30th being a 'good' day and the 2nd being a 'great' day), and then looking at the 1st, I'm still missing about 10k page reads.

HOWEVER. If I add the 1st and 2nd together, then average the two, I end up with the 30th, 1st, and 2nd being suspiciously close to identical. 

Either they inflated the numbers for the 2nd to make up for the 1st, or they're still holding onto the numbers for the 1st. 

My money is that they're still holding onto page reads for the 1st, because just judging by where I am at 3 AM EST, I'm looking at having another great day.

Does that mean I think we'll get those page reads they're holding onto? Ehhhh. I'm a pessimist that loves to be proved wrong.


----------



## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

wingsandwords said:


> Does that mean I think we'll get those page reads they're holding onto? Ehhhh. I'm a pessimist that loves to be proved wrong.


Same here. I'll believe it when I see it, for sure.


----------



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

wingsandwords said:


> Comparing the 30th and the 2nd(the 30th being a 'good' day and the 2nd being a 'great' day), and then looking at the 1st, I'm still missing about 10k page reads.
> 
> HOWEVER. If I add the 1st and 2nd together, then average the two, I end up with the 30th, 1st, and 2nd being suspiciously close to identical.
> 
> ...


Just out of curiosity, what would be the benefit to Amazon of holding out on page reads? The pot still says exactly the same so they don't save money. Even if they did, though, the amount we're talking about would be the equivalent of a penny considering Amazons budget. So why would they hold out on page reads? And, if you believe they're doing that, why would you want to stay with the program?


----------



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

Well, Saturday numbers wound up being about normal, and then yesterday was my highest pages-read day ever.


----------



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

I have mentioned previously that we should be using 'word count' , but only for the actual story. Readers would (hopefully) get used to judging the length of a book by word count. Amazon could then pay by X numbers of words read, and font size, number of pages etc would be irrelevant. There could easily be a place to insert the word count when the book is uploaded  .

Stands back and awaits torrent of reasons why this wouldn't work


----------



## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

SevenDays said:


> Well, Saturday numbers wound up being about normal, and then yesterday was my highest pages-read day ever.


Yup, me too. In fact, yesterday ended up the highest KU numbers I've ever had in one day, about 15K more than a normal day. Since the 30th my numbers are overall significantly increased. I'm hoping it's a new norm, that would sure make me happy.


----------



## Chrissy (Mar 31, 2014)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> I have mentioned previously that we should be using 'word count' , but only for the actual story. Readers would (hopefully) get used to judging the length of a book by word count. Amazon could then pay by X numbers of words read, and font size, number of pages etc would be irrelevant. There could easily be a place to insert the word count when the book is uploaded .
> 
> Stands back and awaits torrent of reasons why this wouldn't work


I think using word count is a lot easier for everyone to understand and agree upon.

However...

I think Amazon decided not to go with word count because it would be a PR disaster.

Just image what a per word rate would be, when the rate per an Amazon defined page [Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP)] is around 4/10 of 1 cent.


----------



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

Chrissy said:


> I think using word count is a lot easier for everyone to understand and agree upon.
> 
> However...
> 
> ...


It could be based on a per 100 words or 300 words, which is about an average print book page. It would then be easy for writers to work out how much they would earn if a reader read the whole book. No front or back matter or bonus books would count . They could then easily compare earnings from a sale and a full read .


----------



## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Just out of curiosity, what would be the benefit to Amazon of holding out on page reads? The pot still says exactly the same so they don't save money. Even if they did, though, the amount we're talking about would be the equivalent of a penny considering Amazons budget. So why would they hold out on page reads? And, if you believe they're doing that, why would you want to stay with the program?


This. I love to complain as much as anyone, but overall, KU has been extremely good to me. The glitch over the weekend seems to have sorted itself out, and my page reads were significantly better than average for both days.


----------



## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

My Author Rank is gone. Is that part of this glitch, too? If so, why isn't it resolved?


----------



## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

My Sunday was normalish as well, but not amazing for a weekend. But Saturday is a very obvious dip in reads even though my sales were the highest for the week. Not amused.


----------



## Tulonsae (Apr 12, 2015)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


----------



## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

ebbrown said:


> Yup, me too. In fact, yesterday ended up the highest KU numbers I've ever had in one day, about 15K more than a normal day. Since the 30th my numbers are overall significantly increased. I'm hoping it's a new norm, that would sure make me happy.


yeah they were probably high to make up for the crap they put us through on June 1st. Mine never did recover on June 1st. I ended up with 2/3 of what i usually got. But the next day was above average. So maybe they shifted it over to there.


----------



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

Tulonsae said:


> Children's picture books and other types of books with illustrations. Of course, they could do something to compensate for that (like count the picture as a page worth of words or something). But I believe this was one of the reasons given in discussions before.


Yes, children's books would suffer. Some of my children's books have 40 illustrations, but I've found that print versions seem to sell better. My hope is that after reading the e-version parents will go on to buy the print version


----------



## Lummox JR (Jul 1, 2012)

The dashboard message about the updating problem went away, but are the numbers still weird for anyone else? Yesterday, after a week of low performance, my page reads shot up to an all-time high even before the updating problem. Today they've been low again, just like they were in the previous week. I know the weekend plays by different rules and Sunday is the busiest day, but these numbers don't make a bit of sense.


----------



## wingsandwords (Nov 1, 2016)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Just out of curiosity, what would be the benefit to Amazon of holding out on page reads? The pot still says exactly the same so they don't save money. Even if they did, though, the amount we're talking about would be the equivalent of a penny considering Amazons budget. So why would they hold out on page reads? And, if you believe they're doing that, why would you want to stay with the program?


You make some good points. I don't actually think that Amazon would hold out on page reads for any particularly malicious reason, but rather coming from the stand point of someone who has worked in the upper echelons of customer service for a different giant company, I've seen on the inside where most of the decisions trend towards "patch the problem so it doesn't happen again, then forget about it." Now, that patch may have inadvertently identified missing reads on its own, which would translate to the trickle in that we've all been seeing, but I don't think an actual person is looking into it anymore to make sure that everything is as it should be.

Like I said, I'm a pessimist who loves to be proved wrong. Absolutely loves it. I will not get defensive if I'm proven wrong on such things, but will openly rejoice and respond to an "I told you so!" with a resounding "yes, you did, you beautiful bastard!"

As to why I'm staying in the program, KU accounts for almost 70% of my income. That's a little terrifying to me, but right now I don't have the backlist to support going wide. And honestly, I've only been in the program since January, so I've had all of one 'mishap' in KU, and that was this one. I'm willing to forgive one mishap, especially considering it was a very small one. I'd like to think that the kinks are beginning to be worked out with KU, since it's been running for a little while now. If we start to see actual problems occurring again, although in a new fashion(ala the page flip fiasco), where it's clear that Amazon doesn't have a handle on the situation...well, I already have back up plans in the works, they're just going to take a little time to put in motion.


----------



## calpub (Nov 10, 2013)

Lummox JR said:


> The dashboard message about the updating problem went away, but are the numbers still weird for anyone else? Yesterday, after a week of low performance, my page reads shot up to an all-time high even before the updating problem. Today they've been low again, just like they were in the previous week. I know the weekend plays by different rules and Sunday is the busiest day, but these numbers don't make a bit of sense.


Yes! My page reads are almost non-existent today. I thought it was just me.


----------



## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

Arches said:


> What might be happening is that both bars are still there, but you gave away lots of free books. When that happens, the scale changes dramatically, and the paid bar is almost impossible to see. This happens to me every time I do a giveaway, and every time I refresh the page, it reverts to showing the free books again. I find it very annoying.


Well, duh . . . Why didn't I think of that. 

I do so love airing my idiocy and lack of attention in public. It has a way of re-calibrating my ego.


----------



## GoingAnon (Jan 16, 2014)

SuzyQ said:


> My Sunday was normalish as well, but not amazing for a weekend. But Saturday is a very obvious dip in reads even though my sales were the highest for the week. Not amused.





Tulonsae said:


> Same here. Lots of sales on Saturday (which is always my biggest day, plus I'm doing a free promo on a series starter), but the reads are not even close to where they should've been. Not amused either.


----------



## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> That being said, I've heard anecdotal reports about KENPC being adjusted on bonus books. Not all but some, as if a new filter or bot is winding its way through the system and is starting to identify where bonus books start and they're stopping counting of KENPC at that point. It's still anecdotal (one person is reporting dropping from 2,700 KENPC to 271 KENPC, which is roughly where the first book ends, and another is reporting dropping from 2,400 KENPC to 156 KENPC). Other people are reporting their bonus books still have the same amount of KENPC as before. I'm not sure what to think.


Have you heard any more on this? I'd imagine that if KENPC's were dropping like flies on bonus books that would have its own thread by now. Were those just flukes?


----------



## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

EC Sheedy said:


> Well, duh . . . Why didn't I think of that.
> 
> I do so love airing my idiocy and lack of attention in public. It has a way of re-calibrating my ego.


Don't beat yourself up too much. Amazon has a way of making everything unbelievably complicated.


----------



## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Going Incognito said:


> Have you heard any more on this? I'd imagine that if KENPC's were dropping like flies on bonus books that would have its own thread by now. Were those just flukes?


Likely those to whom it's happening are not desirous of advertising their status as suspected system-gamers.

I'm not saying all necessarily are, but some are definitely abusing the system, and would avoid raising their heads in hostile waters, to mix some metaphors.


----------



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

Going Incognito said:


> Have you heard any more on this? I'd imagine that if KENPC's were dropping like flies on bonus books that would have its own thread by now. Were those just flukes?


I'm still just hearing anecdotal stuff. Some people say nothing has changed. Others claim that more than 50 percent of their KENPC has been yanked ... all on stuff with bonus books. I have no idea what's going on, whether it's a fluke or something that's slowly winding its way through the system. People are posting screen shots of their dashboards in some groups and those dashboards show huge drops because of the loss in pages from bonus books. I honestly don't know what to think.


----------



## SunnySammy (May 8, 2017)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I'm still just hearing anecdotal stuff. Some people say nothing has changed. Others claim that more than 50 percent of their KENPC has been yanked ... all on stuff with bonus books. I have no idea what's going on, whether it's a fluke or something that's slowly winding its way through the system. People are posting screen shots of their dashboards in some groups and those dashboards show huge drops because of the loss in pages from bonus books. I honestly don't know what to think.


I don't do bonus books often but the one I did add a couple of short stories to the end seems to have dropped about 100 KENP. I say seems, I can't quite remember the exact number it was to start with.

Do people have every KENP documented? Is this something I should be doing?

I have a vague recollection of the book in question being around 430 KENP and now it's 337 KENP. The two short stories (which are clearly stated in the blurb are 5500 and 7000 words so 100 KENP seems a bit low if they've axed both completely? Maybe they're just adding a limit to bonus stories?


----------



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

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> I have mentioned previously that we should be using 'word count' , but only for the actual story. Readers would (hopefully) get used to judging the length of a book by word count. Amazon could then pay by X numbers of words read, and font size, number of pages etc would be irrelevant. There could easily be a place to insert the word count when the book is uploaded .
> 
> Stands back and awaits torrent of reasons why this wouldn't work


I got blasted on the KDP forums for saying something very similar a while ago. However, it's really the only system that makes sense. That doesn't mean we have to be paid by the word. We could be paid by a hypothetical page, much as we are now. However, the page would be calculated based on number of words. Judging the length of something by any criterion other than, well, the length, is just silly.

I've heard the argument that people would pad their word counts by saying things in the more lengthy way, but I think that would be counterproductive. More readers would become bored, not finish, etc. In the long run, that approach wouldn't game the system very effectively. Anyway, the actual length has to enter into the current calculations somehow, so that problem really isn't new.

I've also heard the argument that such a system would penalize books with more sophisticated vocabulary. Character count might be an even more exact way to establish KENP.


----------



## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Bill Hiatt said:


> I've also heard the argument that such a system would penalize books with more sophisticated vocabulary. Character count might be an even more exact way to establish KENP.


I was under the impression that character count is the current basis for KENPC, albeit with some adjustments. I don't think there's any easy way to define it.


----------



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

Bill Hiatt said:


> I got blasted on the KDP forums for saying something very similar a while ago. However, it's really the only system that makes sense. That doesn't mean we have to be paid by the word. We could be paid by a hypothetical page, much as we are now. However, the page would be calculated based on number of words. Judging the length of something by any criterion other than, well, the length, is just silly.
> 
> I've heard the argument that people would pad their word counts by saying things in the more lengthy way, but I think that would be counterproductive. More readers would become bored, not finish, etc. In the long run, that approach wouldn't game the system very effectively. Anyway, the actual length has to enter into the current calculations somehow, so that problem really isn't new.
> 
> I've also heard the argument that such a system would penalize books with more sophisticated vocabulary. Character count might be an even more exact way to establish KENP.


Payment could be per 300 words, which is about an average paperback page. 
If writers were padding their words they would also have been padding for page count.
Children's books with the lower word count would suffer, as they do now, but there doesn't seem to be a fair way around that problem that couldn't end up being exploited.


----------



## Lummox JR (Jul 1, 2012)

Hey, all. Something appears to still be very wrong with KENP reads. I've got zero today and I had another ultra-low day yesterday, after spiking to an all-time high Sunday. Whatever's been happening, I think it's still going on.


----------



## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Lummox JR said:


> Hey, all. Something appears to still be very wrong with KENP reads. I've got zero today and I had another ultra-low day yesterday, after spiking to an all-time high Sunday. Whatever's been happening, I think it's still going on.


Sunday was high for me too, but I think that was just a post-glitch catchup. Yesterday was lower and today is lower still but - holiday! Weird things happen when America takes a day off. And next week we have Prime Day. It'll be a while before we have a good picture of the New Normal.


----------



## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> I have mentioned previously that we should be using 'word count' , but only for the actual story. Readers would (hopefully) get used to judging the length of a book by word count. Amazon could then pay by X numbers of words read, and font size, number of pages etc would be irrelevant. There could easily be a place to insert the word count when the book is uploaded .
> 
> Stands back and awaits torrent of reasons why this wouldn't work


This would work well for authors of children's books. When the average word is one syllable and five characters, you get a lot of words on a page. For someone who writes to adults and uses more complex language, it wouldn't be nearly as good.

When KU2 first came out, you could figure the number of pages by counting characters plus spaces. Then they tweaked it and all the page counts went down, so who knows how they figure it now. Phase of the moon when you publish?


----------



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

brkingsolver said:


> This would work well for authors of children's books. When the average word is one syllable and five characters, you get a lot of words on a page. For someone who writes to adults and uses more complex language, it wouldn't be nearly as good.
> 
> When KU2 first came out, you could figure the number of pages by counting characters plus spaces. Then they tweaked it and all the page counts went down, so who knows how they figure it now. Phase of the moon when you publish?


I'm not sure I follow you about the syllables and characters. My intention was that they count the number of actual words and pay per 300 words, the approx number of words per page on a print paperback book. My longest book, a novel, is 120 000 words. My shortest children's book is approx 4700 words. The author would enter the number of words when they upload their book and would not be allowed to include front and back matter etc (spot checks could be done if it can't be automated).


----------



## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> I'm not sure I follow you about the syllables and characters. My intention was that they count the number of actual words and pay per 300 words, the approx number of words per page on a print paperback book. My longest book, a novel, is 120 000 words. My shortest children's book is approx 4700 words. The author would enter the number of words when they upload their book and would not be allowed to include front and back matter etc (spot checks could be done if it can't be automated).


Short words: and the cat dog see Jane run

Long words: multisyllable extraordinary explanatory ludicrous

A book written for middle grade is going to use simpler language and shorter words. I'm not saying that authors who write for that audience should be paid less, but a 60,000 word novel using short words is going to have fewer pages than a novel using more complex language with the same number of words. So, when you switch from number of pages to number of words, one author benefits, the other howls.

Basically, no matter how they figure it, someone benefits and someone else gets mad. I don't have any answers, Jan. I just wish they'd give us something consistent instead of a moving target.


----------



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

brkingsolver said:


> Short words: and the cat dog see Jane run
> 
> Long words: multisyllable extraordinary explanatory ludicrous
> 
> ...


I get that syllables would be different, but they are all words irregardless of characters, language and syllables and 60 000 words, whether they are long or short, is still 60 000 words. The number of pages is irrelevant as it would be the number of words that would be counted. You would be paid 5 cents per 300 words instead of 5 cents per page.


----------



## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> Short words: and the cat dog see Jane run
> 
> Long words: multisyllable extraordinary explanatory ludicrous
> 
> ...


A "word" is always 5 characters, irrespective of spaces. KENPC, however, does not relate directly to word count.


----------



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

David VanDyke said:


> A "word" is always 5 characters, irrespective of spaces. KENPC, however, does not relate directly to word count.


Would there be any reason why they couldn't count the actual words if we record them when we upload the books?


----------



## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

No reason I can think of--but word count is only one part of how they calculate KENPC.


----------

