# KU April payout .00457 - son of a...



## TimWLong (Dec 3, 2013)

My first month with a 1 million page reads and of course it's one of the worst KU payouts yet. Ouch!


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Wow ... first month they've gone below .0046 ... sigh.


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## Hope (Nov 28, 2014)




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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

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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. 

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## Beth_Hammond (Oct 30, 2015)

TonyGonline said:


> I'm rubbish at maths, so I've got to ask, because I'm working this out to around 200 pages to make a cent  That can't be right...right?


That's 0.91 cents made per 200 pages read.


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## NAK Baldron (Aug 20, 2016)

TonyGonline said:


> I'm rubbish at maths, so I've got to ask, because I'm working this out to around 200 pages to make a cent  That can't be right...right?


to make $1 USD, you'd need 219 page reads at the given rate.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TonyGonline said:


> I'm rubbish at maths, so I've got to ask, because I'm working this out to around 200 pages to make a cent  That can't be right...right?


hehe. it requires 2 page reads to make a 1c. .0045 x 2 = .01

300 page book = $1.35 payout.

Ka-Ching!

In a few months bezos might be able to get the payout for a full novel under 99c


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## NAK Baldron (Aug 20, 2016)

TimWLong said:


> My first month with a 1 million page reads and of course it's one of the worst KU payouts yet. Ouch!


That's rough, but on the bright side congratulations on the 1 million page reads!


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Interesting that the KU pool for March was $17.7M and the one for April is $17.8M. Not a huge change. I haven't been tracking consistently, so am not sure what the changes were from Jan or Feb.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Well, that blows. It was my third best page reads month. I can't wait to be in the position to pull some stuff out of KU...sigh.


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## KevinMcLaughlin (Nov 11, 2010)

JaclynDolamore said:


> Well, that blows. It was my third best page reads month. I can't wait to be in the position to pull some stuff out of KU...sigh.


At the rate the other vendors are shrinking, I don't know that any of us will be in the postition to do that anytime soon. Sadly.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Another great reason to move at least some of your books wide.

_edited to conform to forum decorum -- and to prove we got the joke -- Ann_


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

The thing is ... I made a LOT in KU in April. I made more in page reads than sales in every single market, and I did well overall. It's my best month without a BookBub. I guess I don't care that much how much the payout is; I care about the final deposit in my bank account


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## S.B. Williams (Jul 24, 2012)

C. Gockel said:


> The thing is ... I made a LOT in KU in April. I made more in page reads than sales in every single market, and I did well overall. It's my best month without a BookBub. I guess I don't care that much how much the payout is; I care about the final deposit in my bank account


I don't care too much either. Every month that page reads pay my mortgage I'm fine with it. I still make a lot more on sales than page reads even with all my titles in KU.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

C. Gockel said:


> I guess I don't care that much how much the payout is;


Hold on to that happy thought and don't do the math. If you do, you'll be hopping mad at how much less you're being paid per page since Amazon first switched to paying by the number of pages read instead of paying by the number of books borrowed.



> I care about the final deposit in my bank account


In that case, would you be interested to know that you would've been paid 51% more if you were paid at the same rate per KENP in April as when Amazon switched over its payment strategy nearly two years ago? In other words, for every $1,000 earned in pages read in April, KDP Select publishers used to get paid $1,510.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Gator said:


> Hold on to that happy thought and don't do the math. If you do, you'll be hopping mad at how much less you're being paid per page since Amazon first switched to paying by the number of pages read instead of paying by the number of books borrowed.
> 
> In that case, would you be interested to know that you would've been paid 51% more if you were paid at the same rate per KENP in April as when Amazon switched over its payment strategy nearly two years ago? In other words, for every $1,000 earned in pages read in April, KDP Select publishers used to get paid $1,510.


Huh? As I recall, they paid, what? .55 cents? that first month (July?). Now it's .46. That's not great news, but it's not a 50%+ reduction. It's about a 16% reduction.

It also depends how many people put books into Select. And if you check that, you'll see that more people have done that. Sucks, but there you go.

I don't get getting "mad" about publishing stuff. What good does it do? You have two choices: participate or don't. No amount of being "hopping mad" ever helped anybody in a business decision. It just clouds your rational judgment.

If being in Select makes me more money, I'm in. If it doesn't, I'm out. I write long (500-700 KENPC), so KU2 has been very good for me. If you write short and think you'd sell wide, or if Select simply doesn't work for you, I'd consider getting out of it. That's what I did when they rewarded the super-short books. I got out until they changed the terms. And getting mad didn't help me then, either. Just like it didn't when ACX changed their terms, or any other of a seemingly infinite number of changes happened in this business.

Nobody owes me a living, let alone big bucks. Adapt or die. (or: adapt or stop publishing.)


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## ........ (May 4, 2013)

Gator said:


> Hold on to that happy thought and don't do the math. If you do, you'll be hopping mad at how much less you're being paid per page since Amazon first switched to paying by the number of pages read instead of paying by the number of books borrowed.
> 
> In that case, would you be interested to know that you would've been paid 51% more if you were paid at the same rate per KENP in April as when Amazon switched over its payment strategy nearly two years ago? In other words, for every $1,000 earned in pages read in April, KDP Select publishers used to get paid $1,510.


You've nailed it. We're being progressively squeezed, Amazon playing their optimization game: how little can we pay but still have writers signing up to KDP Select and exclusivity?

Does anyone believe that KU subscriber numbers didn't rise last month? Yet the total pool of money barely moved. We see a drop in the page rate because page reads went up but the money didn't (not much).

We're frantically competing against each other for a fixed pool of money. It is the very definition of a zero-sum game: I make more money, you must make less money.

I really do understand the "well, it pays the mortgage" position but will it next month or six months from now? Every time we publish books and put them into KDP Select we improve Amazon's offer while simultaneously decreasing the page read figure due to the volume of content. Without Amazon flooding in more money each month, we get the result we see today: the page rate goes down.

I also understand that for many people, they've never been "wide". They see the horror stories, the people going wide and coming back. When staying in Amazon means a living wage and going wide doesn't, I get why people stick to it and are afraid to try anything else.

But if you're not making a living wage via Amazon royalties, consider going wide. Spread your books across all platforms and see what happens. Write a series for KU and another for wide.

The more people who go wide, and the more BIG authors who go wide, the easier it becomes to break the exclusivity that KDP demands.

Personally, I'm getting tired of the treadmill. I'm wide and in KU. I can see how Amazon fluctuates. It's hard to run a business when earnings are up to an opaque system which, as we know, has some serious reporting issues.

I can see in my own figures that sales are dropping while page reads are rising. The number of KU subscribers is rising, I believe. We're all feeding this system that is progressively squeezing our royalties month after month.


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## ShadyWolfBoy (Sep 23, 2015)

Now, I'm not liking the continual negatives on this chart and it's edging back to where I have to change the estimate I include in my own monthly spreadsheet.

That said, half a percent decrease month over month is not the sky falling in. Last month's 7.5% decrease was worthy of complaint, this month isn't a concern unless it doesn't bounce back in May.

(And hey, if you're doing well in Japan, that 4.0% increase might be handy for you!)


*Store**Currency**Rate**Change from Prior*Amazon Kindle US StoreUSD0.0045742-0.6%Amazon Kindle UK StoreGBP0.0034149-0.6%Amazon Kindle DE StoreEUR0.0031216-0.6%Amazon Kindle FR StoreEUR0.0045421-0.6%Amazon Kindle Japan StoreJPY0.5376883 4.0%Amazon Kindle CA StoreCAD0.0044977-0.6%Amazon Kindle IT StoreEUR0.0045421-0.6%Amazon Kindle ES StoreEUR0.0045421-0.6%Amazon Kindle IN StoreINR0.0889741-0.6%Amazon Kindle AU StoreAUD0.0039286-0.6%Amazon Kindle BR StoreBRL0.0110631-0.6%Amazon Kindle MX StoreMXN0.0761274 -0.6%


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> Hold on to that happy thought and don't do the math. If you do, you'll be hopping mad at how much less you're being paid per page since Amazon first switched to paying by the number of pages read instead of paying by the number of books borrowed.
> 
> In that case, would you be interested to know that you would've been paid 51% more if you were paid at the same rate per KENP in April as when Amazon switched over its payment strategy nearly two years ago? In other words, for every $1,000 earned in pages read in April, KDP Select publishers used to get paid $1,510.


Would have made less under that system. Books in my KU trilogy have KDP page counts of over 550 - 650. I've priced them competitively at $2.99 each, but did do a free run on Book 1. I made silly money from the borrows / page reads during that free run. If my book had been wide during that free run I would have earned zilch from the freebies, and my rank would have fallen more.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> I don't get getting "mad" about publishing stuff. What good does it do? You have two choices: participate or don't. No amount of being "hopping mad" ever helped anybody in a business decision. It just clouds your rational judgment.


Yeah, being mad at Amazon is foolish. If it makes you really uncomfortable to depend on one vendor, go wide.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Gator said:


> In that case, would you be interested to know that you would've been paid 51% more if you were paid at the same rate per KENP in April as when Amazon switched over its payment strategy nearly two years ago? In other words, for every $1,000 earned in pages read in April, KDP Select publishers used to get paid $1,510.


It depends 100% on how long your books are. I make about $2.20 for a full read (500 KENPC) vs. $2.70 for a sale at 3.99. Each read vs. sale is a loss (of about 20%), for sure, but less than 100% of the people who borrow would buy if they didn't have the option to borrow. Assuming less than 80% of those people would purchase, I'm still ahead using KU on Amazon alone. I need to do better using KU on Amazon alone vs. not using KU because I'm also losing revenue sources on other retailers.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

I wonder how many Amazon-buying readers subscribe to KU these days. I know we've seen data in the past about them spending more than non-subscribers on books (which potentially casts doubt on cannibalization of sales). They seem to be real powerusers, and I wonder what their share of the market is.

Partly I'm curious because at this point, _*most American households*_ subscribe to Amazon Prime. That's amazing! If KU membership is anywhere near that popular among frequent readers...gosh. Genre plays a role too, of course. What if it turns out half of the powerusers for your genre are KU members? What if it's 75%?

This horse is just as dead and badly beaten as piracy, of course. I just find it amazing that we're nearly three years into KU and still generating monthly threads of KU doomsayers fixated exclusively on their royalty per KENP, as if that one datum means _anything_ in isolation.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

Rosalind J said:


> I don't get getting "mad" about publishing stuff. What good does it do? You have two choices: participate or don't. No amount of being "hopping mad" ever helped anybody in a business decision. It just clouds your rational judgment.


(Long story, but I have a point, honest.) When I was a kid, my mom worked as a dog breeder full time and a self-employed court reporter's transcriber part time for the L.A. Superior Court and various attorneys in L.A. and the San Fernando Valley. After my dad died, my mom became the sole breadwinner. She scaled up her transcription work to 45 hrs./week to pay the bills and set aside money for emergencies.

Fast forward several years, and she's working more than 100 hrs./week and my twin sister and I are each spending about 10 hrs./week proofreading the transcripts to help out. My mom is struggling to pay the bills and there's no extra money for emergencies, let alone luxuries.

She was working so hard to support us, she didn't notice why it was getting so difficult to keep it up. It finally dawned on me one day.

"Now I know why you're working so hard for so many hours and not getting ahead!" I said.

"How's that?" she said while sitting at her IBM Selectric II, her fingers flying at 110 WPM on a deposition.

"Your paychecks aren't keeping up with candy bars!"

"Huh?" (I get that a lot.)

"When you started transcribing, they paid you 50 cents a page and a nickle per carbon copy. Candy bars were a dime each.

"Two years ago, you got a pay raise to 55 cents a page, and you are still paid only a nickel per copy. But candy bars now cost a quarter.

"If you were paid enough to keep up with the increasing prices of candy bars, you'd be making $1.25 per page, 12.5 cents per copy and working only about 40 hours a week. And you wouldn't need extra proofreaders to help you get your work done by the deadlines."

That was the era of hyperinflation. As a kid, I didn't know anything about inflation but I witnessed its effects on what I could buy, which got less and less each year.

My mom asked for a pay raise for transcribers that week. After all, the attorneys were already charging their clients more than triple what they'd charged clients when my mom started transcribing. The agency that collected the money from the attorneys and paid the transcribers told my mom they'd have to discuss it with their attorney clients first. That would take at least a month for a higher pay rate approval, but they were optimistic. (Actually, they were stringing her along to keep her and the other transcribers working for peanuts for as long as possible.) Two months later, they told my mom the attorneys couldn't afford a pay raise for the transcribers that year, but they probably could the following year. Probably. A month after that, my mom had a new job working 1/3 as many hours and earning nearly 50% more pay.

If my dad were alive, as a CPA he would have warned my mom far, far sooner than I did that her pay wasn't keeping up with inflation and she was killing herself trying to work harder to compensate for it.

Fast forward to today. Not only has Amazon reduced the payout rate per KENP since its inception, Amazon has inflated the number of words per KENP (which reduces the KENPC for an eBook) at least three times that I know of.

When my mom saw the light, inflation and unsufficient pay rates had reduced her earning power to 43% of what it had been when she started transcribing. The attorneys took no pity on her or the other transcribers (who slowly quit after my mom did, for the same reason). She got mad enough about her poor compensation to ask for a much-deserved pay raise and then go find another job when she didn't get that raise. Her anger made her take decisive and beneficial actions for her business. Your anger may cloud your rational judgment, but her anger didn't cloud hers.

Amazon has already reduced KU earnings to 66% of what they were by the time Amazon switched over to KENPs for compensation. (And payout rates had already dropped considerably since KDP Select started, as I mentioned in KBoards posts years ago.) We can expect Amazon to further erode KU earnings per unit of an author's hard work (i.e., hours to write and promote each novel) in the future and to take no pity on authors, either. Amazon loves to squeeze its suppliers.

When you're raking in the dough, a 34% reduction in payout per unit of work isn't hard to swallow. For those trying to support a family and who are barely earning enough to get by? Not so much. For them, putting in a bunch of extra work hours to compensate has a rigid, immobile ceiling: the number of hours in a day.



> Huh? As I recall, they paid, what? .55 cents? that first month (July?). Now it's .46. That's not great news, but it's not a 50%+ reduction. It's about a 16% reduction.


No, Amazon originally paid more for each KENP. I'll share the numbers when I get the time. Probably tomorrow.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

C. Gockel said:


> Would have made less under that system.


Sorry. I wasn't clear. I didn't mean your earnings under *that* system. I meant your KU earnings since the day Amazon announced the KDP Select Global Pool monthly payout amount and the total number of pages [KENP] read by KU subscribers and Amazon Prime readers during that month, which allowed us to calculate the payout rate per KENP.


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

I'll add this to my currently lengthy list of BS I'm dealing with at the moment.



Jim Johnson said:


> Interesting that the KU pool for March was $17.7M and the one for April is $17.8M. Not a huge change. I haven't been tracking consistently, so am not sure what the changes were from Jan or Feb.


I've been told numerous times that Amazon determines the rate, and going by that figure, the one you posted, is useless.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Gator said:


> When you're raking in the dough, a 34% reduction in payout per unit of work isn't hard to swallow. For those trying to support a family and who are barely earning enough to get by? Not so much. For them, putting in a bunch of extra work hours to compensate has a rigid, immobile ceiling: the number of hours in a day.


Look, I identify as a socialist and I've lived in poverty most of my adult life. I watched my mom die of cancer, also living in poverty. I get it. But the logic simply doesn't hold.

What's different about this work is that you're not actually constrained by the hours in the day. Sure, that's what lets you crank out work, but it's not your _real_ limitation. The real limitation is visibility. The real limitation is interest. Because trust me, if you put out a product that _everybody on the internet_ wanted to buy, you'd have it made in the shade.

And the thing is, it needn't take an entire life to create such a thing. For all you know, it could be one of the trunk stories you've been sitting on all this time, shamefaced and rueful.

To some extent, yes, the more time you devote to publishing, the better. But there are limits. There are points where you _can't_ get a good return on spending more time, and where you'd actually be better off spending money instead. There are points where no amount of time or money could make up for having the right kind of visibility. That's one of the critical things about KDPS/KU: it gives you visibility that you cannot earn any other way. I don't care how hard you work, how much money you spend, or how well you write: there are people who won't read your book unless it's in KU. Perhaps even more importantly, Amazon's going to treat your book differently, and Amazon can get you off food stamps with just one novel if it hits them the right way.

Writing and selling books for a living is totally different from drawing a wage. It can be good and bad. For most people, it kinda sucks, because they throw hour after hour into it and never draw a decent check. Financially, they'd be better off working a crappy service sector job (or getting another one, if they already are). But for the people who do well--many of whom are reaping the rewards of KDPS/KU--it allows them to earn money whether they're writing, sleeping, or sailing around the Galapagos with their custom-built catamarans and their enviable tans. Sure, they could earn _more_ money if they sat down and cranked out a few more books. It's just optional at this stage. They've transcended the bonds that hold mere wage-laborers. The same is true for a lot of folks in the midlist, albeit on a smaller scale.

$/KENP does not limit your earnings. Having 24 hours in the day doesn't limit your earnings. As long as Amazon keeps growing the pot, KENP could be paid out at $0.0001 and you could still take home seven figures a month from KU if your share of the pie is large enough. All you have to do is get more books in front of more readers, and KU is not an unsuccessful program by those lights.

Ask only whether KDPS/KU earns you more money than you'd earn by going wide. Banish $/KENP from your mind. $/KENP is the mind-killer.

Besides, wages still aren't keeping pace with inflation for most workers, and rents are skyrocketing. What're you gonna do? Resign yourself to a day job the rest of your life?


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Abalone said:


> I've been told numerous times that Amazon determines the rate, and going by that figure, the one you posted, is useless.


You mean the size of the pool is pointless, because Amazon determines the rate of $/KENP? Because that's backwards. They announce the size of the pool, we do the maths and arrive at $/KENP, and then we freak out over a tempest in a teapot, pretending as if that number means anything on its own.

Jim's total numbers mean more than $/KENP. That's what tells us whether the size of the pie is continuing to grow, and by how much. Unless I missed something, it hasn't stopped growing yet. If you're doing your job well, the same should be true of your readership, and that's gonna turn a profit for you even if your royalty per page plummets.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Abalone said:


> I'll add this to my currently lengthy list of BS I'm dealing with at the moment.
> 
> I've been told numerous times that Amazon determines the rate, and going by that figure, the one you posted, is useless.


As Dolphin noted, the figure is what Amazon states every month in their KDP newsletter. I haven't been diligent in keeping them all, but I have a few saved in my mailbox:

Oct 2015: $12.4M
Jan 2016: $15M
Aug 2016: $15.8M
Mar 2017: $17.7M
Apr 2017: $17.8M

Take that for what you will, but looks like steadyish growth.

I've never been confident that the pool relates directly to the number of subscribers, though. $17.8M divided by the $9.99 KU subscription cost would be something like 1.8 million subscribers, and that feels low to me, even though I have nothing but my gut to base that on.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> When you're raking in the dough, a 34% reduction in payout per unit of work isn't hard to swallow. For those trying to support a family and who are barely earning enough to get by? Not so much. For them, putting in a bunch of extra work hours to compensate has a rigid, immobile ceiling: the number of hours in a day.


I'm not "raking" in the dough. I'm making a middle class income--less than $100,000 a year. It has gone up every year since I've started, and the amount of effort I've been able to put into it has gone down since I've had to homeschool my son.

Since KU, what I've been able to earn on an individual trilogy has gone up. I earned about $60 a month when I had two books available for I Bring the Fire. When I had two books available for the Archangel Project I was earning $600 a month. (Three books now, and it has jumped quite a bit!)

KU has been a huge boon to authors, and it still is. I'd recommend anyone just starting out, trying a new genre, or trying a new pen name to go in with KU.


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

Rosalind J said:


> If being in Select makes me more money, I'm in. If it doesn't, I'm out. I write long (500-700 KENPC), so KU2 has been very good for me. If you write short and think you'd sell wide, or if Select simply doesn't work for you, I'd consider getting out of it. That's what I did when they rewarded the super-short books. I got out until they changed the terms. And getting mad didn't help me then, either. Just like it didn't when ACX changed their terms, or any other of a seemingly infinite number of changes happened in this business.


To me it's also just a question of math. I tried two fairly long experiments (several months each) and made peanuts on all the other channels. Even now, one month of KU is more than a year with everyone else. When I was wide, over 90% of my income came from Amazon. Now less than 50% comes from Amazon sales, a little more than 50% from KU. It's doubtful I could get my wide income up to 50% of the total.

Of course, that isn't true for everyone; some people do very well wide. That's why I always advocate that authors experiment. This is not a one-size-fits-all kind of situation.

Venting can be a healthy release, but as you and others have suggested, it isn't going to change the situation. Vent first, then reach for the calculator, and as C. Gockel suggests, figure out whether what you actually take to the bank is going up or down and whether now is the time to go wide. We can't control what Amazon does. All we can control is what we do. It's less stressful in the long run to manage those things you can control than to fret over those things you can't.


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## AndrewSeiple (Jan 3, 2016)

Yeah, KU's shrunk a good ways since I got in. Makes sense, it's a good program, and you've got a lot more people tossing their hat in the ring with it. But it's still two to three fifths of my royalty income each month.

I don't have the time or expertise to handle the marketing required to go wide, and nowhere near the visibility yet to half-ass it. I also don't see Amazon losing market share in the near future, unless someone manages a huge upset. So for now, KU's my game and I'll stay in there.

YMMV, of course. Know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em...


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Dolphin said:


> Look, I identify as a socialist and I've lived in poverty most of my adult life. I watched my mom die of cancer, also living in poverty. I get it. But the logic simply doesn't hold.
> 
> What's different about this work is that you're not actually constrained by the hours in the day. Sure, that's what lets you crank out work, but it's not your _real_ limitation. The real limitation is visibility. The real limitation is interest. Because trust me, if you put out a product that _everybody on the internet_ wanted to buy, you'd have it made in the shade.
> 
> ...


This. You don't have an employer. You don't earn a wage. Some people's hourly "pay" for this job is pennies or negative. Others earn hundreds or thousands per hour. There's no "fairness" to it other than whether you are satisfying readers, and nothing and nobody in the wide world, including Amazon, owes you a dime for your hard work.

I'm in Select because it's much easier and cheaper, and I make more money in it. That's it.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

There are many more factors than the simple payout number--visibility advantage, Amazon tools, types of genres favoring KU, etc--, but the whole question of "Select or not" can be boiled down to this: do you, with your particular book set, make more in KU, or out and wide?

But even that has some caveats, if, for example, you have to put in extra time to manage all those other vendors. So, it's a complexified situation.

It's like the question of how wealthy you are. Your income isn't the only factor. Where you live, how much you spend, how you spend, how you save and invest, etc. all feed into it.


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## Huldra (Nov 7, 2013)

.


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## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

Huldra said:


> I see a lot of mental gymnastics in this thread to justify the fact that KU pays less and less for the same product.


I'm also seeing a lot of people imply that vendors other than Amazon know how to sell books.

Listen, KU could be better. I was bummed by this month's payout, and I understand there are risks in sticking to one vendor. I wish I didn't have to. Paying my rent and feeding my kids while relying on just one vendor feels icky and precarious. I wish that I could sell books elsewhere; say, on Nook. And I wish that the pinheads at Barnes and Noble weren't so incompetent as to send a buttload of false payment notifications to me at the end of every month. I totally see where Gator is coming from, and agree for the most part.

But in this game, Amazon is the only vendor who really knows how to move books. The others are trash. Full stop.


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

Did some digging and got these for this year. 


April 2017 - $0.004576
March 2017 - $0.004608
February 2017 - $0.00497
January 2017 - $0.004754


December 2016 - $0.005240
November 2016 - $0.00537 
October 2016 - $0.005189 
September 2016 - $0.004973
August 2016 - $0.004575
July 2016 - $0.004810
June 2016 - $0.004925
May 2016 - $0.004687
April 2016 - $0.004956
March 2016 - $0.004780
February 2016 - $0.004788
January 2016 - $0.004114


December 2015 - $0.004607
November 2015 - $0.004919
October 2015 - $0.004814
September 2015 - $0.005072
August 2015 - $0.005140
July 2015 - $0.005781


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

Abalone said:


> April 2017 - $0.004576
> 
> *August 2016 - $0.004575
> January 2016 - $0.004114*


Thanks for posting this. I found it weird that people went into "the sky is falling" and "it's the lowest it's ever been" mode when I clearly remembered we've had it worse!


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## S.B. Williams (Jul 24, 2012)

Abalone said:


> Did some digging and got these for this year.
> 
> December 2016 - $0.005240
> November 2016 - $0.00537
> ...


I knew there was a month when the payout dipped all the way to $0.0041 but I couldn't remember exactly when. I've been using that number in my estimate spreadsheet ever since to calculate my KU incoming payment, updating it only when the reports are released on the 15th each month. So each month since when I've done the recalculations, it's been a higher number than I estimated.

I have traditionally published books that are wide and I've tried wide with some of my Indie books but returned to Select because the earnings have been consistently better.


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## KylieG (Oct 30, 2015)

I had always put books in select for the first 3 months and then went wide afterwards, but a few months ago I accidentally left that box unchecked and boy did my Amazon sales shoot through the roof. I write short erotica so my situation may be different than most, but if I'm selling a 10,000 word book for $2.07 after Amazon's cut, I need to have about ten borrows to replace that sale.  I've been losing about 70 borrows and picking up about 30-35 extra readers. We're not talking big sales here, but for me it makes a big difference.


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## JsFan (Dec 22, 2014)

Sometimes it pays to be a giraffe. I think it is best not to let oneself forget that there is a tomorrow just because KU/KS pays today what other vendors don't. When (if) the other vendors are done away with and Amazon has no competition, insignificant as it may seem today, it might be too late. 

I understand the need to pay bills, though. I'll probably put my first series in KU for that very reason, but with a heavy heart. I'm not the fastest writer in the world; it might be a year or more before I have product to sell wide. I get scared when I consider the tiny payouts, the lack of data on marketing efforts, the legitimate reviews allegedly deleted, the alleged glitches in the page-read system ... The most I can do is to spend only what I must and save as much as possible. But then I think about the inflation that grows faster than bank interest rates. Oh, dear.

To be emotional is to be human. Many a good decision was made because someone got angry, sad, inspired, delighted. There's a good example in this thread. To insist on approaching the business only rationally is to deny humanity, and I doubt that it's possible to only be rational. Once, I had a boss who always insisted on being rational and not emotional, but he came across as being paralysed by a fear of emotion. That's not rational.


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

KevinMcLaughlin said:


> At the rate the other vendors are shrinking, I don't know that any of us will be in the postition to do that anytime soon. Sadly.


That hasn't been my experience. My income from Draft2Digital has indeed dropped a bit, but as a share of the Amazon.com Kindle income, there's been an increase, from 20 percent to 25 percent.


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## Huldra (Nov 7, 2013)

.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Bill Hiatt said:


> It's less stressful in the long run to manage those things you can control than to fret over those things you can't.


Life gets so much better after making that commitment.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

JsFan said:


> Sometimes it pays to be a giraffe. I think it is best not to let oneself forget that there is a tomorrow just because KU/KS pays today what other vendors don't. When (if) the other vendors are done away with and Amazon has no competition, insignificant as it may seem today, it might be too late.
> 
> I understand the need to pay bills, though. I'll probably put my first series in KU for that very reason, but with a heavy heart. I'm not the fastest writer in the world; it might be a year or more before I have product to sell wide. I get scared when I consider the tiny payouts, the lack of data on marketing efforts, the legitimate reviews allegedly deleted, the alleged glitches in the page-read system ... The most I can do is to spend only what I must and save as much as possible. But then I think about the inflation that grows faster than bank interest rates. Oh, dear.
> 
> To be emotional is to be human. Many a good decision was made because someone got angry, sad, inspired, delighted. There's a good example in this thread. To insist on approaching the business only rationally is to deny humanity, and I doubt that it's possible to only be rational. Once, I had a boss who always insisted on being rational and not emotional, but he came across as being paralysed by a fear of emotion. That's not rational.


Hey, I'm emotional as heck. I write emotional romance. Go ahead and feel all the feelings. Talk them over. Vent. Then make a decision that takes everything into account, including what your gut tells you, because we can't always put a name to our very real reasons until after the fact. For example, I realized when I went wide for seven months that one reason I hadn't before, even when there was no KU, was that I suspected being wide and complicating my life would increase my anxiety levels. (I was right.) And that would make it harder for me to write feel-good books. That is one of the reasons I went back into Select--a rational reason based on my knowledge of my emotional state.

People have different emotions about the same external thing, and their rational decisions and reactions to their lll same stimulus can be different. Nothing wrong with that. What I'm saying is that getting mad at Amazon or any other vendor for x or y thing, saying, "It's not fair that they pay so much more for 10k erotica or books split into pieces" (ku1), isn't all that helpful. It's helpful if it spurs you to examine whether they are still the best business partner for you, why or why not. Perhaps in your situation, it's better to make lots of money now so that whatever happens in the future, you are protected. Perhaps that makes you more anxious, and you would rather take a pay cut now and build towards what you hope is a steadier future wide. This will depend on your age, health, day job if any, financial position ... so many things.

Emotions are part of a rational decision. But some of them need to be set aside or you won't behave rationally. I was ticked about the whole flat-rate-no-matter-how-short thing. Now I'm ticked about the boxed-set shenanigans and the amount they're pulling from the pool. But my feelings of "unfair!" are ones I set aside. Not helpful to my decisions, except that I'd bet Amazon cuts the max page count again and bans boxed sets from Select. Which is one reason on the "stay" part of my ledger, even though there will always be gray and black hats.


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

Huldra said:


> I see a lot of mental gymnastics in this thread to justify the fact that KU pays less and less for the same product.


It would certainly be nice if it didn't, but more and more books keep going into the program. I'm guessing the amount of product increases faster than the payout fund. With more books chasing relatively fewer dollars (even though the absolute amount of money keeps increasing), the payment rate will tend downward.

Of course, we don't know how much Amazon is making on KU. Maybe they should be increasing the pot faster. Maybe they're breaking even or even using KU as a loss leader. Absent any data, we just can't tell.

What does seem clear is that this kind of subscription model is difficult to sustain. People used to point to Oyster and Scribd as models Amazon should follow. Then Oyster went out of business, and Scribd had to slash its romance catalog to keep going.

Regardless of the payout, though, what we have to look at is whether we're making more in KU than we are likely to going wide. (Yes, I know I'm repeating myself.) Though I'm not quite in the full-stop mode of another poster, I think a good case can be made that the other vendors need to step up more. Kobo's advertising options do seem to produce results, but they also require an author to work with Kobo directly instead of going through an aggregator, which would be inconvenient for some. With Kobo there's also the problem that books get pushed so far downstream to its retail partners that if one ever wanted to go into Select in the future, getting completely out of the Kobo ecosystem wouldn't be easy. As far as I can tell, the other major vendors don't even have much in the way of advertising for indie authors. Barnes and Noble is pretty much on bankruptcy watch, Google won't take new indie accounts (though one can still use an aggregator), and Apple used to push at least top indies, but I haven't heard much about that in a long time. For all of Amazon's problems, it seems a little more willing to create a positive environment for indies.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

notjohn said:


> That hasn't been my experience. My income from Draft2Digital has indeed dropped a bit, but as a share of the Amazon.com Kindle income, there's been an increase, from 20 percent to 25 percent.


...so you're saying that your income as a whole has fallen, led by declining Amazon sales? And that's a good thing?

Maybe pulling your books from wide distribution and giving KDPS a shot will help revive things. It's worth a try.


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## ........ (May 4, 2013)

It is true that basic inflation is eating away at our earnings.

Take that September 2015 rate of $0.005072. Using the previous five years of inflation (6.5%), to make the same amount in 2020 you need to paid 0.0054741 per page. If you're not, you're poorer in real terms.

Just looking at 2015-2017, there is an inflation rate of 3.2%. 500,000 page in Sept 2015 paid you $2570. You need to be getting 0.00530448
per page today or you're going backwards in real dollar terms. 500,000 page reads today earns you $2285.

You're down in nominal terms and in real dollars.

If Amazon holds the per page rate to that 0.0045-0.005 range then over five years we'll all be approximately 6% worse off in real terms. The same reads will make less money.

The ten-year inflation rate looking back? 17.9%. Amazon keeps KU going and that per page rate doesn't jump up by at least 17.9% compared to today, then we're poorer. 

We simply can't look at the current figures and say they look about the same as the past so it's all good. $0.00457 two years ago doesn't buy now what it could back then. It has been eaten away by inflation of 3.2%. 

In real dollars we're all 3.2% worse off in just two years.

To put it another way: if you made $50K in page reads two years ago and you've made $50K in page reads now, you're worse off by $1583 per year. You're poorer by $1583 because Amazon isn't keeping up with inflation.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Steady growth in payout isn't matching the steady growth rate in books in KU - which is why the payout keeps decreasing even though they're throwing more money into it.

I'm a novella-writer. 45 cents for a book I get $2 on a sale is modern math suicide. KU is definitely not for me and the decreasing payouts (from already deplorable levels) aren't creating an enticing environment for me to join.

But... that's just me. I know, there's a ton of super-happy authors in KU that are super-billionaires off it. Not this novella writer. For me, coming out of KU has made me much more money than giving away my work at an egregiously steep discount.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Huldra said:


> I see a lot of mental gymnastics in this thread to justify the fact that KU pays less and less for the same product.


Until the page read payout is 30c, then you'll see everyone go nuts and the attitude towards KU will shift radically.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

Huldra said:


> I see a lot of mental gymnastics in this thread to justify the fact that KU pays less and less for the same product.


Genuinely curious about why it bothers you how others chose to run their business? Everybody has a slightly different business plan and some people sell better in KU while others sell better wide. There's no need to be snipy because someone makes a business decision that is different from yours. If another author is satisfied with the income they are making from KU, I wouldn't dream of pointing the finger and saying they should be wide.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

AliceW said:


> Genuinely curious about why it bothers you how others chose to run their business? Everybody has a slightly different business plan and some people sell better in KU while others sell better wide. There's no need to be snipy because someone makes a business decision that is different from yours. If another author is satisfied with the income they are making from KU, I wouldn't dream of pointing the finger and saying they should be wide.


I don't think those anti-KU hold that view. I think most anti-KU folks would actually endorse being in KU for many writers in certain circumstances.

The issue most people have with KU is two fold:

1) it's an attempt to monopolize the ebook industry
2) it's focus is on commodifying the ebook industry (ie. driving the market value of a full-length novel down to $2.40 or thereabouts).

The fact that "some" authors can survive in that model off high volume doesn't mean it's therefore good for the industry. But until they start putting the screws to even the high volume authors, consensus will not materialize on this point.

And the rebuttal, which is almost always used, of "it is what it is, I go where I make the most money" ... while that's fine, doesn't negate the toxic effect of KU on the market. You can both participate in KU and acknowledge that it's not good for authors.

It really comes down to the same logic as outsourcing. Lots of folks say "hey, if someone is willing to work for $1 in China, good for them. Stop your whining and work for a $1 also, or shut the f up."

If that's the ideological world people want to accept, that's fine. But it's certainly not wrong for people to say they don't agree with that. Nor is it wrong for them to point out that as outsourcing grows eventually you'll be working for a $1 whether you like it or not. Or in the book world, eventually you'll be selling full-length novels for 99c whether you like it or not.

I'd turn your question back to you and say why are people who are pro-KU so adamant on espousing that a monopolistic, black-box (ie. faith based), subscription based, price depreciating model for ebooks is good?

It's not good. The only context in which it's good is when people say "um, well, I make more money and have more readers with it, so that's that."

So until that stops being true (and it will), the divide in opinion will continue.


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## Salome Golding (Apr 17, 2017)

Gator said:


> Fast forward to today. Not only has Amazon reduced the payout rate per KENP since its inception, *Amazon has inflated the number of words per KENP (which reduces the KENPC for an eBook) at least three times that I know of.*


That part in bold doesn't affect earnings at all, since what you are earning is a *fraction* of a fixed pool, based on the fraction that your pages read are of the pages read from the books in the entire pool.

As long as the number of pages per KENP is applied to all authors in KU, Amazon changing that number does not matter. Say KENP was 10 words, and 10,000 words (1,000 KENP) was read from your books in KU, while 10,000,000 words (1,000,000 KENP) were read in KU in aggregate that month. That would mean that you would earn 1,000/1,000,000 = 0.1% of the KU pool for that month. If they increased a KENP to 20 words, then if you again had 10,000 words read, your KENP read would reduce to 500. However, the KENP read in the entire pool would also decrease to 500,000, so you would still be entitled to 500/500,000, i.e. 0.1% of the KU monthly pool.


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## Huldra (Nov 7, 2013)

.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Laran Mithras said:


> Steady growth in payout isn't matching the steady growth rate in books in KU - which is why the payout keeps decreasing even though they're throwing more money into it.


It's KENP read, not books in KU. E.g. more people are making more use of the program. E.g. it's becoming more and more powerful as a visibility platform. Unless all that difference is just more and more scammers. Believe what you will.



Seneca42 said:


> 1) it's an attempt to monopolize the ebook industry
> 2) it's focus is on commodifying the ebook industry (ie. driving the market value of a full-length novel down to $2.40 or thereabouts).


Right, because 1) competitors like B&N, Apple, Kobo, and Google have been such great, consistent business partners; and 2) we need to make sure fewer people can afford to read.

Pull the other one, it's got bells on.


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

I personally think KU is brilliant for jump starting a new author/pen name's career. It lowers the risk threshold for a potential reader. Though it can be very lucrative for some indies. I can think of maybe three people here who are on Amazon's top 100 authors.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

I can always count on getting a chuckle on or about the 15th, if the payout went down, just by visiting KBoards. Y'all, it went down 3/1000ths of a cent. On the average 300 page novel, you're out less than a penny over the previous month. They sky isn't falling and the Zon ain't the debil. Over the last year, the payout has been pretty consistent.


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## KylieG (Oct 30, 2015)

Accidentally leaving that KU box unchecked a couple of months ago was the best mistake I ever made.  I truly believe now that KU reads were merely cannibalizing my sales. I used to put my books in KU for the first three months and then take them out after the first 3 months.  In February, my last month doing this, I made $359 on Amazon.  In March I made $800, April I made $783, and this month I'm already over $600.  Now, I realize that this isn't J.K. Rowling type money and I'm probably a bit atypical because I write short erotica where people are willing to pay $2.99 for 10,000 words.  However, the accidental move out of KU started paying off for me immediately.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> I personally think KU is brilliant for jump starting a new author/pen name's career. It lowers the risk threshold for a potential reader. Though it can be very lucrative for some indies. I can think of maybe three people here who are on Amazon's top 100 authors.


Yep. There are probably a lot more who _aren't_ here.



> I can always count on getting a chuckle on or about the 15th, if the payout went down, just by visiting KBoards. Y'all, it went down 3/1000ths of a cent. On the average 300 page novel, you're out less than a penny over the previous month. They sky isn't falling and the Zon ain't the debil. Over the last year, the payout has been pretty consistent.


Thanks Wayne!


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Dolphin said:


> Right, because 1) competitors like B&N, Apple, Kobo, and Google have been such great, consistent business partners; and 2) we need to make sure fewer people can afford to read.
> 
> Pull the other one, it's got bells on.


And that's fine. You want a monopoly and you want books priced at 99c, then we're well on our way to that.

Don't accuse others of being nuts for not wanting that though.


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## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> And that's fine. You want a monopoly and you want books priced at 99c, then we're well on our way to that.
> 
> Don't accuse others of being nuts for not wanting that though.


Actually, I'm a little annoyed that Amazon won't let me give some of my books away and insists on making me charge my customers $.99 (I know I could get free by going wide and all that nonsense, but I love KU). I'd personally prefer more control over pricing, but it's Amazon's sandbox, so they get to set the rules.
They are customer-centric, not author-centric, and I'm fine with that. It's capitalism, and they're very good at it.
They're using me to provided entertainment for their customers, and I'm using them to sell more books than I can sell any other way. The only reason I'm exclusive to them is that they provide better incentives for me to be than anyone else provides for me to go wide.
They constantly test the waters to see how low they can pay their suppliers and still provide the products their customers want at an attractive price. The minute they stop being competitive in selling books, some other company will come along and jump on that opening in the market. Retail online outlets don't have that high of a barrier to new entries, so the risk that Amazon will become the only market is low. 
The real threat to current book prices is that almost anyone can write a book, so the barrier to entry for a new authors is also very low. And lots of new authors are taking advantage, like me.
I price the first books in my series at $.99 to gain readers, and some of those readers may not buy higher priced books by more established authors as a consequence. Some readers will continue to pay more for their favorite authors though because they like those stories more. It's capitalism, and the prices will fluctuate until supply and demand balance. Amazon isn't lowering ebook prices, the free market is.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> ...and the Zon ain't the debil.


You're right...it's the mighty Beelzebezos...


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

C. Gockel said:


> Yep. There are probably a lot more who _aren't_ here.
> 
> Thanks Wayne!


Of course. I'm sure there are more top 100 authors here or really high grossing/ranked authors who've yet to come out of the proverbial closet with their identity. I definitely understand the want of wanting to stay out of the limelight or wanting to keep their pen/author name private for any reason at all.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

........ said:


> It is true that basic inflation is eating away at our earnings.
> 
> Take that September 2015 rate of $0.005072. Using the previous five years of inflation (6.5%), to make the same amount in 2020 you need to paid 0.0054741 per page. If you're not, you're poorer in real terms.
> 
> ...


Of course, you're presumably poorer by 3.2% per year, compounded, on any book you're selling, too, whether it's wide or on Amazon, unless you're raising your book prices by 3.2% per year. I haven't seen book prices keep pace with inflation either. So that dog doesn't fight, as far as I can see.

Some folks also mention how Amazon supposedly lowered everybody's KENPC. They didn't. They lowered SOME people's KENPC, particularly those who had used formatting tweaks to raise their KENPC. Those of us who didn't do that had lost money to others during the previous months before Amazon leveled the playing field. The KENPC still don't appear to be completely uniform, but they are much more so.

I've been in this business now for four and a half years. That isn't a whole long time, but it's a while. I will tell you that every year, many things happen to change this industry. Vendors change their terms, advertisers change their policies (e.g., BookBub making it harder for Select books to be accepted), other authors enter the market, reader taste changes, tradpub (including Amazon Publishing) introduces changes, other formats gain in importance, offer hybrid possibilities, or open to indies (audio, translations) . . . on and on. You don't get to choose whether the industry changes or whether it changes in your favor. Your choice is in how you react. The beauty of being indie or hybrid is that you can be nimble and adapt to the changes.

A lot of it boils down to: write better books, present them better, promote them better, if you want to keep up. Competition increases all the time. I see people here quite a bit bemoaning their lower sales. I know why they're lagging, because I saw what they were doing three or four years ago and they're still doing the same things. They haven't raised their standards on writing, covers, and blurbs to keep up with the competition. Six years ago, maybe you could put out a somewhat shoddy product in terms of editing, blurb, cover, etc. You could go homemade and still sell. That's a whole lot tougher, because the savvy folks have upped their game.

Personally, I've written in five series in those four and a half years, in three or four subgenres. I've taken risks and pushed the boundaries of what I do in order to become a better writer. I've held my nose and jumped deep into the investment pool with those new opportunities (audio, translations). Not every risk has paid off, but I've learned a lot from all of them, so I'm a better author and publisher now.

I'm not one of the top indies or hybrids, and I doubt I ever will be, because I can see what those top people are doing that I can't or won't do. That's OK. I do just fine, and I get to do what I enjoy and write what I like. If getting to the top were super important to me, I'd have to change some things, and even then, who knows whether I'd succeed? Those authors could just be better at satisfying a larger readership than I am.

You have to be a shark. That doesn't mean eat other fish. It means you have to keep swimming or you die.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I can always count on getting a chuckle on or about the 15th, if the payout went down, just by visiting KBoards. Y'all, it went down 3/1000ths of a cent. On the average 300 page novel, you're out less than a penny over the previous month. They sky isn't falling and the Zon ain't the debil. Over the last year, the payout has been pretty consistent.


Wayne, stop being logical and go catch a fish or something. If folks didn't have Zon to complain about, they'd have to look for something else.


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

Send me some red snapper, Wayne.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

Rosalind J said:


> You have to be a shark. That doesn't mean eat other fish. It means you have to keep swimming or you die.


This needs to be a meme or on coffee cups


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## TimWLong (Dec 3, 2013)

I'm the OP. My intent was to whine that I had one of my biggest page reads months to date and the KU payout was lower than expected. I'm not jumping ship anytime soon. A million+ page reads added over $5K to my income for April. I'm hoping to hit 2M next month with a quick release. yeah the rate fluctuates, wah. It's still half of my writing income every month.


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

Rosalind J said:


> Some folks also mention how Amazon supposedly lowered everybody's KENPC. They didn't. They lowered SOME people's KENPC, particularly those who had used formatting tweaks to raise their KENPC. Those of us who didn't do that had lost money to others during the previous months before Amazon leveled the playing field. The KENPC still don't appear to be completely uniform, but they are much more so.


People want to conveniently forget that part. They complain that Amazon took something away from them (when they were really getting extra page reads for an extended period of time) and rewarded others, but in reality, those who used things like Vellum weren't inflating KENPC from the start so they didn't get rewarded with the shift -- things pretty much stayed the same for them. They simply didn't go down because they weren't inflating in the first place.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> People want to conveniently forget that part. They complain that Amazon took something away from them (when they were really getting extra page reads for an extended period of time) and rewarded others, but in reality, those who used things like Vellum weren't inflating KENPC from the start so they didn't get rewarded with the shift -- things pretty much stayed the same for them. They simply didn't go down because they weren't inflating in the first place.


You guys are implying some sort of malicious intent to those of us who just happened to use D2D or Calibre to format.

It's not fair that Vellum uses were being stiffed pages and it's not fair that my KENPCs suddenly dropped 10-20% across the board. There's really no way to make the KENPC system fair. It's naturally going to favor someone. (We don't know how it's calculated so it's hard to say. But I do know I get more pages than a friend who writes the same page count, even though we both use Vellum. Probably because my writing style is short sentences and tons of paragraphs. Probably half my paragraphs are a single line).

The change in page calculation was more than a year ago. I'm not still holding a grudge, but I don't compare pre Feb 2016 borrow numbers to post Feb 2016 borrow numbers without considering the loss in page count.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> And that's fine. You want a monopoly and you want books priced at 99c, then we're well on our way to that.
> 
> Don't accuse others of being nuts for not wanting that though.


You're not going to stave off a monopoly. It already exists, and nobody has any interest in competing with it, or breaking it up. Nobody is making any earnest effort to do that. Nobody is doing anything to offer authors a better deal than what they get from Amazon.

Books could be priced at $0.01 apiece and if authors are still finding a way to earn a good living from their writing, then it will be great news. The market values literature by facilitating lives of dignity for authors. Nothing else matters. The price per unit does not matter. Our goal should be for it to be as low as possible without injuring the livelihoods of authors, so that all humans may read.

Anyone who truly values the literary arts should be happier making $0.01 each off 1,000,000 sales than $5 each off of 2,000. Any business person should find the same result, content with the knowledge that they're creating a million prospective customers instead of a couple thousand. This will never be a luxury market. It never _should_ be a luxury market. Literacy is too important to be restricted to the few.

You'll never be able to convince me that today, May 18, 2017, there's any semblance of ebook competition to Amazon, or that the value of literature dwells in its price per unit. All of that is wrong. It _is_ nuts.


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## Guest (May 18, 2017)

Dolphin said:


> You're not going to stave off a monopoly. It already exists, and nobody has any interest in competing with it, or breaking it up. Nobody is making any earnest effort to do that. Nobody is doing anything to offer authors a better deal than what they get from Amazon.
> 
> Books could be priced at $0.01 apiece and if authors are still finding a way to earn a good living from their writing, then it will be great news. The market values literature by facilitating lives of dignity for authors. Nothing else matters. The price per unit does not matter. Our goal should be for it to be as low as possible without injuring the livelihoods of authors, so that all humans may read.
> 
> ...


Bravo.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Crystal_ said:


> You guys are implying some sort of malicious intent to those of us who just happened to use D2D or Calibre to format.
> 
> It's not fair that Vellum uses were being stiffed pages and it's not fair that my KENPCs suddenly dropped 10-20% across the board. There's really no way to make the KENPC system fair. It's naturally going to favor someone. (We don't know how it's calculated so it's hard to say. But I do know I get more pages than a friend who writes the same page count, even though we both use Vellum. Probably because my writing style is short sentences and tons of paragraphs. Probably half my paragraphs are a single line).
> 
> The change in page calculation was more than a year ago. I'm not still holding a grudge, but I don't compare pre Feb 2016 borrow numbers to post Feb 2016 borrow numbers without considering the loss in page count.


No. I wasn't. I'm saying that "fairness" is not achievable and does not matter. One of the beauties of being nearly 60 is that you get real clear-eyed about the number of things that aren't fair. All we can do is choose our own best path, one that meets our own ethical guidelines, based on the choices available to us. When those choices change, we may have to choose a new path.

Life tends to be equal-opportunity that way, though. Everybody's path changes under them. Everybody has sucky stuff happen. Much of it isn't fair. Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. All you can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and move forward on your path as best you can.


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## AlecHutson (Sep 26, 2016)

Rosalind J said:


> You have to be a shark. That doesn't mean eat other fish. It means you have to keep swimming or you die.


Wow. That's genius, Rosalind. I'm not a romance reader, but that makes me want me go read your books to see if they're filled with more pearls like that


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## horrordude1973 (Sep 20, 2014)

Rosalind J said:


> No. I wasn't. I'm saying that "fairness" is not achievable and does not matter. One of the beauties of being nearly 60 is that you get real clear-eyed about the number of things that aren't fair. All we can do is choose our own best path, one that meets our own ethical guidelines, based on the choices available to us. When those choices change, we may have to choose a new path.
> 
> Life tends to be equal-opportunity that way, though. Everybody's path changes under them. Everybody has sucky stuff happen. Much of it isn't fair. Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. All you can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and move forward on your path as best you can.


I rarely comment on here and I'll likely regret this one, but here it goes. I've had my own issues with amazon lately due to content and other things going on with my books. Against my better judgement I'm keeping my books on Amazon, but pulling out of KU while trying to make a push selling "uncut" versions of my work on my website. So far seeing some movement but I realize this is going to be a long game. But yeah, for a long time KU worked well for me but lately it hasn't so much so time to try something new. Competitors to Zon aren't an option so trying to self distribute. Maybe its a terrible idea or maybe I'm onto something. I'll know in a few months.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

horrordude1973 said:


> I rarely comment on here and I'll likely regret this one, but here it goes. I've had my own issues with amazon lately due to content and other things going on with my books. Against my better judgement I'm keeping my books on Amazon, but pulling out of KU while trying to make a push selling "uncut" versions of my work on my website. So far seeing some movement but I realize this is going to be a long game. But yeah, for a long time KU worked well for me but lately it hasn't so much so time to try something new. Competitors to Zon aren't an option so trying to self distribute. Maybe its a terrible idea or maybe I'm onto something. I'll know in a few months.


The problem will always be attracting new readers who don't know about your work. Amazon's still really, really good at that compared to competing retailers or going it alone. I wish you luck, but I wouldn't hold my breath. You're essentially choosing to directly compete with Amazon in a market where B&N, Apple, and Google have all made little headway.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I can always count on getting a chuckle on or about the 15th, if the payout went down, just by visiting KBoards. Y'all, it went down 3/1000ths of a cent. On the average 300 page novel, you're out less than a penny over the previous month. They sky isn't falling and the Zon ain't the debil. Over the last year, the payout has been pretty consistent.


Thank you, Wayne. Exactly.


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## Guest (May 19, 2017)

horrordude1973 said:


> I rarely comment on here and I'll likely regret this one, but here it goes. I've had my own issues with amazon lately due to content and other things going on with my books. Against my better judgement I'm keeping my books on Amazon, but pulling out of KU while trying to make a push selling "uncut" versions of my work on my website. So far seeing some movement but I realize this is going to be a long game. But yeah, for a long time KU worked well for me but lately it hasn't so much so time to try something new. Competitors to Zon aren't an option so trying to self distribute. Maybe its a terrible idea or maybe I'm onto something. I'll know in a few months.


Are Amazon cracking down on violence and gore?


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## horrordude1973 (Sep 20, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> Are Amazon cracking down on violence and gore?


On a few of us they have. And in January they did a "sweep" of a ton of indie horror films from their amazon prime video. I know those are 2 separate things. I'm just being extra cautious not to get my account terminated. If that means going it on my own and making a little less, and selling "radio friendly versions" on amazon then thats what I have to do


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> 1) it's an attempt to monopolize the ebook industry


Well, that's likely true, but Kobo just started a subscription service, and there are actually other places to sell books. The problem is, those other places don't seem interested in helping us sell books. Amazon at least throws out things that can help us, like consistent author pages, series pages, a boost in rankings from being in KU, and other things. What does any of those others do? Half the time, you can't even find your own books if you search for them.



> 2) it's focus is on commodifying the ebook industry (ie. driving the market value of a full-length novel down to $2.40 or thereabouts).


Still better than what trad pub authors get, no?

Look, I have my issues with Amazon. Goodness knows, I get kicked in the teeth every so often here. I'm a little prawn and I never seem to be able to get ahead of whatever the latest "improvements" they make. I just get started making more money, and wham. Something changes and down it all goes again. But I'm still making more money than I would without them (so far, I'm trying the waters with stuff outside of KU as it expires, and I might be seeing signs of progress).

There's no point in getting upset over a fraction of a half penny. I know it's a bigger amount if you're getting a lot of page reads, but last month was my best ever, and I'll lose money too. But, it's as useless as worrying about whether the algos change and your book disappears. Or that so many scammers still get away with cheating their way to the big bucks. There's nothing any of us can do about it. I don't think for a minute that Amazon isn't aware of how they affect us when they tweak things, or when someone games the system, or whatever. It's just not a worry until the media makes a stink of it, or it affects the bottom line.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

she-la-ti-da said:


> Well, that's likely true, but Kobo just started a subscription service, and there are actually other places to sell books.


just to clarify, there's no requirement to be exclusive for kobo subscription service.

Amazon is the only one trying to block authors from selling on other platforms by cutting off their access to KU if they want to be wide.

I agree with your other sentiments. I'm not saying people should worry or get upset by the realities of KU... but nothing wrong with also acknowledging the nature of it, which is that: 1) it's an attempt at monopoly and 2) it's a commodification model.


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## Sapphire (Apr 24, 2012)

Rosalind J said:


> No. I wasn't. I'm saying that "fairness" is not achievable and does not matter. One of the beauties of being nearly 60 is that you get real clear-eyed about the number of things that aren't fair. All we can do is choose our own best path, one that meets our own ethical guidelines, based on the choices available to us. When those choices change, we may have to choose a new path.
> 
> *Life tends to be equal-opportunity that way, though. Everybody's path changes under them. Everybody has sucky stuff happen. Much of it isn't fair. Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. All you can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and move forward on your path as best you can.*


(Bold is mine.)
Your second paragraph beautifully condenses my own life philosophy into a single paragraph. Perhaps you're right about us reaching this perspective after the passage of a certain number of years. Each morning I can decide to be happy and face life with a positive mind, or not. It's all up to me.


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## ........ (May 4, 2013)

Rosalind J said:


> Of course, you're presumably poorer by 3.2% per year, compounded, on any book you're selling, too, whether it's wide or on Amazon, unless you're raising your book prices by 3.2% per year. I haven't seen book prices keep pace with inflation either. So that dog doesn't fight, as far as I can see.


Well yes, if you aren't raising your prices over time, your real dollar earnings are being eaten away by inflation. The key issue here is that my prices are my choice. If I want to stick at $2.99 or $3.99 or whatever for years then that's up to me. My business, my choice.

But the per page rate is up to Amazon entirely. And if 70% of your money comes via KU then you're having your earnings eaten away by inflation and there is nothing you can do about it, except leave KU.



Rosalind J said:


> A lot of it boils down to: write better books, present them better, promote them better, if you want to keep up. Competition increases all the time. I see people here quite a bit bemoaning their lower sales. I know why they're lagging, because I saw what they were doing three or four years ago and they're still doing the same things. They haven't raised their standards on writing, covers, and blurbs to keep up with the competition. Six years ago, maybe you could put out a somewhat shoddy product in terms of editing, blurb, cover, etc. You could go homemade and still sell. That's a whole lot tougher, because the savvy folks have upped their game.
> 
> Personally, I've written in five series in those four and a half years, in three or four subgenres. I've taken risks and pushed the boundaries of what I do in order to become a better writer. I've held my nose and jumped deep into the investment pool with those new opportunities (audio, translations). Not every risk has paid off, but I've learned a lot from all of them, so I'm a better author and publisher now.
> 
> ...


I don't disagree that you have to work hard, try new things, adapt, etc.

But I do disagree with the "just work harder" ethos on the topic of inflation eating away at earnings. We need to talk about how a non-inflating page rate makes KU a worse deal over time. Even over two years the real dollar earnings from KU have dropped significantly.

When people discuss go wide vs. go KU exclusive, the fact that the page rate hasn't kept up with inflation should be discussed.

We need to be able to discuss these things without being told (in other words) to adapt, change, work hard and so on. It stifles any discussion of the realities of money and financial health.

Otherwise at which point can we say that KU is now a very bad deal, financially? When real dollar earnings have been eaten away by 10%? Or 50%?

Bezos has famously said "your margin is my opportunity" and that applies to us too.

If your books customarily make $10K in the first year of release like clockwork then every year KU doesn't keep up with inflation you are poorer in real terms.

Six books a year might be a living wage but then it's seven then eight. Run faster to keep in place.

Work harder, adapt and so on is all good but it's not really relevant to discussing the financials behind KU. It is a hard fact that you earn less in real dollars year on year because of the non-inflating figure. People barely talk about it.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

The right price on a book is the one where you make the highest profit. 

The right decision (KU or wide) is the one that makes you the most profit short and long term and also meets your other needs (which can include things like: I want to set my own prices; I want to raise my prices 5% a year to keep up with inflation (not really something I see happening with ebook prices); I want to follow a path that I think is more sustainable for the industry, etc.). 

I write at the same pace as always (about 4 books a year). I've made more money year over year, not less, in both nominal and real (adjusted for inflation) dollars. So for ME, the right path is pretty clear. For somebody else, their right path will be different. If it works for somebody to raise their prices each year, more power to them. Really. People can and do have very different opinions on pricing strategy. Personally, I observe, test, and adjust, and I'd recommend that to others.  

I believe the Author Earnings Report has said that, on average, the $3.99 price point is the most profitable. (That doesn't take into account things like an individual author's popularity or genre differences.) I believe that is the same most-profitable price point as it has been the past couple years. 

Actually, inflation rates over the past 4 years have been:
0.6%
0.7%
2.1%
2.2%


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

........ said:


> Bezos has famously said "your margin is my opportunity" and that applies to us too.


Exactly. Or to put it another way:



Rosalind J said:


> The right price on a book is the one where you make the highest profit.


I don't know why this is so hard to accept. Most authors who raise the prices on their books to $9.99 aren't going to beat inflation, they're going to destroy their careers (exceptions to the rule like Joe Nobody and EAW notwithstanding--do you if $9.99 is, indeed, your most profitable price point).

I don't know why this is so hard.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Actually, "your margin is my opportunity" means the opposite of what I think the poster intended. It means that by slashing margins to the bone--i.e., cutting prices--you undercut your competitors and take market share--and eventually, you profit. Market share has always been Bezos's primary goal, from what I know.

Thus, somebody saying, "I'm going to price what my books are worth" who prices at, say, $6.99 in a genre where most books are $3.99 may well hand an opportunity to their $3.99 competitors, as a reader may squint at $6.99 and say, "yeah...nah." 

This does not go for very well known and popular authors, who have differentiated their offerings. If it isn't just an "x-type fun read" but instead "y's new book!!!", $6.99 can be just fine.


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## ........ (May 4, 2013)

Rosalind J said:


> The right price on a book is the one where you make the highest profit.
> 
> The right decision (KU or wide) is the one that makes you the most profit short and long term and also meets your other needs (which can include things like: I want to set my own prices; I want to raise my prices 5% a year to keep up with inflation (not really something I see happening with ebook prices); I want to follow a path that I think is more sustainable for the industry, etc.).
> 
> ...


I don't disagree that you should price to make the most profit. But you don't have control over the KU page rate. You can't price that. You can only be in or out.

So then it comes down to how to decide whether to be in or out. This is why you discuss inflation and earnings being eaten away in real dollars.

All the advice about work hard, work smart, keep swimming and so on - that's all great and I absolutely agree. But it doesn't have anything really to do with discussing inflation eating real earnings away.

So long as the KU page rate fails to keep up with inflation, your effort and work earns less in real dollars than it otherwise would have. Even if your earnings are going up in nominal and real terms, those books are still earning less than they would have because the page rate hasn't kept up with inflation.

It's just another dimension to discuss when deciding wide vs. exclusive. $0.0046 two years ago isn't the same as $0.0046 today. In two years it'll be worth even less and six years down the line from there the loss in real dollars will be quite large.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

If ebook prices kept pace with inflation, I might agree with you.  As they don't appear to do that, whether KU does or doesn't becomes a non-issue.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Rosalind J said:


> If ebook prices kept pace with inflation, I might agree with you.  As they don't appear to do that, whether KU does or doesn't becomes a non-issue.


Right. $/KENP doesn't track inflation, book prices don't track inflation, and wages don't track inflation. We're all going to die in penury.

If you're reaching a different conclusion, then something's amiss here. Maybe it's that inflation isn't so bad that it's going to wring the economic life out of us. Maybe we're going to do something _crazy_ like pick up more page reads and book sales. The future is full of unfathomable wonders.


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## ........ (May 4, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I can always count on getting a chuckle on or about the 15th, if the payout went down, just by visiting KBoards. Y'all, it went down 3/1000ths of a cent. On the average 300 page novel, you're out less than a penny over the previous month. They sky isn't falling and the Zon ain't the debil. Over the last year, the payout has been pretty consistent.


This graph isn't adjusted for inflation. Dec 2015 - April 2017 for example is 3.8%. The same page reads in December 2015 now make you 3.8% less in April 2017, not just because the page rate dropped in nominal terms but also in real terms.

US inflation has been lackluster the past decade - just 17.9%.

The 1997-2007 inflation rate was 29.2%. If KU runs for a decade and pays $0.0046 at the start and $0.0046 at the end, that's a 29.2% pay cut.

A graph not adjusted for inflation would be nice and smooth but would hide the real financial loss.

Adjust for inflation, indexed to the first month of KU and the page rates start looking worse and worse.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> This graph isn't adjusted for inflation. Dec 2015 - April 2017 for example is 3.8%. The same page reads in December 2015 now make you 3.8% less in April 2017, not just because the page rate dropped in nominal terms but also in real terms.


Yeah, but I've been getting more page reads overall that has more than made up for the price per page reading rising.


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## ........ (May 4, 2013)

C. Gockel said:


> Yeah, but I've been getting more page reads overall that has more than made up for the price per page reading rising.


From a fixed pool however - a zero sum game. Your page reads rising means a lower rate across the pool for everyone else.

Imagine in a single month a bunch of best-selling authors all drop incredible books. They see huge page read numbers. It might be enough to change a $0.0046 to $0.0042.

Their earnings have only gone up because everyone else in the pool went down. This is the heart of why the scammers were hurting everyone in KU.

It's great if every book you release gets more page reads than the last (and outstrips inflation overall in earnings) but because it is from a fixed pool it means the loss is pushed on to everyone else in the pool.

It all comes back to inflation in the end - if that page rate doesn't keep up, we're poorer than we would have been otherwise. Maybe over the next decade up to 30% poorer (depending on how inflation goes).


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## Vidya (Feb 14, 2012)

Rosalind J said:


> Actually, "your margin is my opportunity" means the opposite of what I think the poster intended. It means that by slashing margins to the bone--i.e., cutting prices--you undercut your competitors and take market share--and eventually, you profit. Market share has always been Bezos's primary goal, from what I know.
> 
> Thus, somebody saying, "I'm going to price what my books are worth" who prices at, say, $6.99 in a genre where most books are $3.99 may well hand an opportunity to their $3.99 competitors, as a reader may squint at $6.99 and say, "yeah...nah."
> 
> This does not go for very well known and popular authors, who have differentiated their offerings. If it isn't just an "x-type fun read" but instead "y's new book!!!", $6.99 can be just fine.


Rosalind, while that makes sense, I think it applies only to new releases. One of Sophie Kinsella's older books had a Bookbub yesterday and was selling for $1.99. Not in India actually; I didn't see the discount on my end.

But anyway, I checked out her books and I see her older ones all seem to be selling for between 3 to 4 dollars while her new ones for 7 to 8. actually her Amazon page seems to show only one book selling for that higher price.

not sure anything can be extrapolated from that. No doubt her books have been around for years and most were published before ebooks became popular. So her fans probably have most of her books in print and may not be buying the ebook version, though I would think a true fan would want their fave authors on their Kindle.

Even so, you'd think by now there would be a whole new generation of readers who would also enjoy her books. Yet her older books that could still be discovered by new readers are selling for the same price as most self-pubbed books.

she's not my fave author but having tried out many rom coms, chick lits, and cozy mysteries, I can say that I find her funnier and better written than a lot of the light fiction that's out there.

Maybe if there's anything to be extrapolated from this, it's that backlists simply can't be priced the same as newer releases and hope to sell the same. Even when you have a name, even when your writing is superior to a lot of others in your genre, even when you originally had and still have trad pub pushing you.

No matter how good you are, the volume of offerings out there does matter. Had she been one of the few writing chick lit, I expect her backlist could have been priced higher. But readers today can get that kind of light romance/chick lit type book so easily from a host of indie authors. So it doesn't matter that she's better. She still "suffers" from competition from those who aren't as good as her.

And that competition extends to KU too. Of course Kinsella isn't in KU, but you know what I mean. Even if you're better, you can't price higher indefinitely and sell the same. At some point, you have to lower your prices in order to sell.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Vidya said:


> Rosalind, while that makes sense, I think it applies only to new releases. One of Sophie Kinsella's older books had a Bookbub yesterday and was selling for $1.99. Not in India actually; I didn't see the discount on my end.
> 
> But anyway, I checked out her books and I see her older ones all seem to be selling for between 3 to 4 dollars while her new ones for 7 to 8. actually her Amazon page seems to show only one book selling for that higher price.
> 
> ...


I did say "y's new book."

In the US, Sophie Kinsella's books are all $7.99 and up, except for the one that's on sale now. I would imagine you're seeing some kind of special Indian pricing her publisher did.

New releases will almost always sell better than backlist, of course. Many authors and publishers price new releases at a premium and then drop to a standard backlist price after the paperback comes out (for tradpubs). High-ranking indie authors in my genre, however, tend to have most of their work priced the same (usually $4.99-5.99), possibly figuring that that's a reasonable price already. That doesn't mean they don't do occasional price promotions to juice things, although some authors don't do that at all.


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## Vidya (Feb 14, 2012)

Rosalind J said:


> In the US, Sophie Kinsella's books are all $7.99 and up, except for the one that's on sale now. I would imagine you're seeing some kind of special Indian pricing her publisher did.


Oh, thanks for the clarification. That must be it. I was wondering how come such a big name had to price the same as indie prawns. Especially given all we're told about how the trad pubs price ebooks much higher.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> just to clarify, there's no requirement to be exclusive for kobo subscription service.
> 
> Amazon is the only one trying to block authors from selling on other platforms by cutting off their access to KU if they want to be wide.
> 
> I agree with your other sentiments. I'm not saying people should worry or get upset by the realities of KU... but nothing wrong with also acknowledging the nature of it, which is that: 1) it's an attempt at monopoly and 2) it's a commodification model.


That may be so, but you're also stuck on Kobo for six whole months if you sign up with that service. And you can't unpublished your books, either, during that six month period. They're very inflexible about this, too - I politely asked if I could unpublish my first legal thriller early because I was interested in KU, and that book has failed to sell a single copy on Kobo. The short answer was "no."

I find that requirement more draconian than the exclusive requirement, myself.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

anniejocoby said:


> That may be so, but you're also stuck on Kobo for six whole months if you sign up with that service. And you can't unpublished your books, either, during that six month period. They're very inflexible about this, too - I politely asked if I could unpublish my first legal thriller early because I was interested in KU, and that book has failed to sell a single copy on Kobo. The short answer was "no."
> 
> I find that requirement more draconian than the exclusive requirement, myself.


Gosh, that's funny. Amazon will strip your KDPS at the drop of a hat, but Kobo punishes you by refusing to allow you to unpublish, come hell or high water. Seems like they know the score, doesn't it?


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

What's with all this talk about inflation? The chart was the per page payout. If you want to beat that inflation rate, grab more of that pie for yourself and out-earn it. If you have a job, you get a raise. Does the owner of the business you work for get a raise? No. His only way of increasing his personal income is to increase productivity, and the employees annual raises eat into his profit. If you're a business owner, by default, you must grow your business. Guess what. You're a business owner. Inflation will not keep pace with my steadily rising income, because I don't waste time on trivial crap, or get-rich-quick schemes. I just keep chugging away, doing the same thing that got me to where I am. It's all I've ever done and it's all I know.

Write more books.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> What's with all this talk about inflation?


Agreed. Plus, discussing inflation in the context of an author deciding what to do with their books is mostly a red herring. I shouldn't care much about what has happened to payout relative to inflation historically. I should focus on whether being in KU makes sense for me for the upcoming three months. By the time inflation-related decisions could have a major impact on income, Amazon undoubtedly will have changed things substantially enough that looking at the historical payout graphed against inflation won't be relevant.

If we want to have an academic discussion about the the last decade of ebook payouts, sure inflation enters into it. But academic discussions certainly aren't any way to run a business. There are SO many things authors focus on which don't contribute to growing their business. Worrying about inflation relative to KU page reads fits that bill.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> What's with all this talk about inflation?


Good question.

My reaction to the inflation talk...


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

Markus Croft said:


> Thank you for sharing this. That's especially good to know considering Mark Lefebvre was on a podcast recently and was indefinite with the topic of authors leaving if the program doesn't work for them. He made it sound like authors just needed to go through proper channels and communicate and if it wasn't working for them.


Yeah, not so much. Or maybe I just got a cranky rep, LOL.


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