# Amazon KNEW that KU 2.0 was BAD NEWS...and here's proof...



## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

I did my time in the corporate world before going full-time as an author.

And one very clear-cut way that most public companies deal with releasing bad news is to try and somehow bury it.  The timing of delivery of bad news is meant to have as little impact as possible, so its typically done before a holiday, etc.

So let's examine the evidence about whether Amazon actually considers KU 2.0 to be a piece of good news.  They first mentioned the change in payment in the MIDDLE of an email, buried beneath positive statistics about the program.

Believe me, if the change in KU model was a positive piece of news, Amazon would have led with its implementation, rather than burying it in the middle of a lengthy email treatise that included lots of other information.

Next, they clearly delivered the bad news in stages, which I also would argue was a planned delivery mechanism.  Amazon knew that to hit authors with the 2 billion pages read figure at the same time as the initial change announcement, would be too much negativity to be digested at once.

So Amazon padded the blow.  They let the first bad piece of news hit, and then they released the next bad piece of news (which was the 2 billion pages read figure) right before 4th of July.  This was clearly an intentional bit of PR management on Amazon's part.  Again, if these things were GOOD NEWS as many have claimed--then why would Amazon want to release it right before a busy holiday weekend?

The obvious answer is, they wouldn't.  Amazon knew that this change would be poorly received, as by and large it has been.  They carefully cultivated the roll-out (although they still blew it in my opinion) and they tried to minimize publicity and damage by doing it at a time when many would be on vacation, busy with holidays and otherwise not paying as much attention.

This is a very typical corporate maneuver.

CLIFFS: KU 2.0 was bad news and rolled out right before 4th of July weekend.  Had it been the great news some claim it to be, Amazon would've trumpeted its arrival from the rooftops and made sure to put it front and center, rather than burying it in long emails and delaying its full implications as long as humanly possible.


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## Charmaine (Jul 20, 2012)

Well, you do make a good point. 
I think it's because KU2 hurts more than it benefits.
The way KU1 was structured makes me believe that many of the participants were short form writers. 
And even if the old system was overcompensating short form writers, this is still a smack in the face to their income.


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## dianasg (Jan 8, 2010)

I think Amazon knew what we all know: that this change would be a nice surprise for some and very devastating for others. That it was a redistribution of the pot, in many ways.  They couched their message accordingly. 

But in the end, and with respect, what does it matter? What does it change? Of course Amazon uses corporate PR double speak. We know they're rarely transparent. And we know they weren't going to come out and say "Gosh, we're really sorry to all of our short form authors, but we're cutting your pay." 

Whether the change is good or bad depends on who you ask... And I don't really understand the need to proclaim KU 2.0 as either one or the other.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Amazon is currently taking in over 30 billion in revenue per quarter, with expenses being roughly equal to revenue. The borrow payouts are about 30 million per quarter. So this is 1/1000th of Amazon's outgoing expenditures.

I think the 1/1000th bit is a better explanation for why they didn't make a big deal of it.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Dsg said:


> But in the end, and with respect, what does it matter? What does it change?


Well, there are a lot of people trying to argue that this change of payment in KU 2.0 is REALLY A GREAT THING FOR AUTHORS!!! YAY!!! They say that people who think otherwise are chicken littles, etc. etc.

My point is, let's look at how the company who created the change viewed it internally. Clearly, they knew it was bad news. That's why they buried it.

You don't bury a great change that's a wonderful boon for authors, you pronounce it from the rooftops.

Knowing that Amazon itself views this change as a negative thing is important for strategizing around the future. Its part of why I pulled out, although I would have regardless. But realizing that Amazon sees this as a negative maneuver sheds a different light on it then if they truly thought they were benefiting authors, etc.

All of that rhetoric was spin, imo.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

I'm not sure Amazon cares what self published authors think.... No matter what Amazon does, there will be a large chunk of self published authors that worship at their altar and give them exclusivity with a big smile. Amazon could charge authors $.005 a page for books that it moved, and there would still be a group of people that praise the move as innovative. Amazon is strictly worried about KU grabbing exclusivity, and they made a decision. They decided that KU2 would keep enough short story authors and attract enough new novel writers that they would come out ahead. I don't know if they're right or wrong.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

MichaelWallace said:


> Amazon is currently taking in over 30 billion in revenue per quarter, with expenses being roughly equal to revenue. The borrow payouts are about 30 million per quarter. So this is 1/1000th of Amazon's outgoing expenditures.
> 
> I think the 1/1000th bit is a better explanation for why they didn't make a big deal of it.


Nope, if its good news and something to be crowed, a company crows. The simplest explanation about burying good news is that the news wasn't good.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

gorvnice said:


> Nope, if its good news and something to be crowed, a company crows. The simplest explanation about burying good news is that the news wasn't good.


Or unimportant.

Another possibility is to consider human psychology. Studies have shown that people remember their investment losses more than their gains. With a change like this, some people are going to gain and others lose. The ones who are losing will be much more aggravated than the ones who are gaining will be happy.


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

I think your definition of proof is different than mine. Ignoring that, though, the pool of money is higher than it was last month. If people are losing money, it has to be going somewhere. Now, just because people aren't here dancing on the graves of others that doesn't mean it hasn't been a positive change for others. I'm not talking about really big sellers, either. I've seen quite a few smaller authors talking about positive changes to their bottom line in various private groups. They're scared to come here and say it because people will jump all over them. I don't blame them. Move away from that, though. Six months ago (or however long ago it was) Amazon pointed authors in the direction of longer works. Why? They were herding people to the area they knew they were going. Everyone knew this was going to happen eventually. It was only a matter of time. Now, could Amazon have given more notice? An argument can be made on both sides. Amazon knew there were going to be losers in this scenario. A longer rollout means more time for abuse. They opted to rip the bandage off. Now, their example was stupid. Their example was stupid when they announced KU in the first place, though, so I'm not surprised. They should have used a penny as the example. That was moronic on their part. I genuinely feel sorry for those who were making a living on KU alone. I do. This is a fluid business, though. No one is forced into Select.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

You mean rather like Walmart closing 5 stores.  That made huge news even though there were other Walmarts in those areas.


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think your definition of proof is different than mine. Ignoring that, though, the pool of money is higher than it was last month. If people are losing money, it has to be going somewhere. Now, just because people aren't here dancing on the graves of others that doesn't mean it hasn't been a positive change for others. I'm not talking about really big sellers, either. I've seen quite a few smaller authors talking about positive changes to their bottom line in various private groups. They're scared to come here and say it because people will jump all over them. I don't blame them. Move away from that, though. Six months ago (or however long ago it was) Amazon pointed authors in the direction of longer works. Why? They were herding people to the area they knew they were going. Everyone knew this was going to happen eventually. It was only a matter of time. Now, could Amazon have given more notice? An argument can be made on both sides. Amazon knew there were going to be losers in this scenario. A longer rollout means more time for abuse. They opted to rip the bandage off. Now, their example was stupid. Their example was stupid when they announced KU in the first place, though, so I'm not surprised. They should have used a penny as the example. That was moronic on their part. I genuinely feel sorry for those who were making a living on KU alone. I do. This is a fluid business, though. No one is forced into Select.


I don't deny that there are winners in this new model.

My point was that Amazon itself did not view this new model as a piece of good news, overall, which was why it made a very concerted effort to bury said news right before a very big holiday weekend. Its a standard corporate tactic that doesn't happen unless the news is grim.


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## dianasg (Jan 8, 2010)

Yeah, while I get where you're coming from, these seem like leaps in logic and heavy-handed assumptions. Amazon could think this is great news and still realize that it's going to piss some people off. That alone could account for their delivery of the message. Or like Michael said, maybe they just thought it wasn't terribly important. 

KU isn't my thing, and won't be for a long long time. Probably ever. But looking on from the sidelines of this whole thing, it's no wonder that those who stand to benefit from KU 2.0 are keeping quiet. One, it's rude to jump for joy when so many fellow authors are taking a hit. Two, jealousy is a powerful thing and no one wants their career sabotaged or their work attacked (things KB has been known to facilitate). And three, the vehement response and outright vitriol someone like Hugh Howey has received, just for pointing out the positives of KU 2.0, is pretty intense. 

So again, KU is not all "good" or all "bad." It's pointless to try to argue this point, and is a terrible way to make a business decision. KU might very well be terrible for an author. Or maybe it's great for them. But rely on the numbers to tell you that, not the supposed tone and PR strategies behind Amazon's communications and announcements.


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

gorvnice said:


> I don't deny that there are winners in this new model.
> 
> My point was that Amazon itself did not view this new model as a piece of good news, overall, which was why it made a very concerted effort to bury said news right before a very big holiday weekend. Its a standard corporate tactic that doesn't happen unless the news is grim.


I don't think Amazon viewed this news as anything other than a necessity. Change is always hardest for the losers in any equation. I don't think Amazon looks at the change as anything other than a shifting for authors. Random people do not care. It's news to us because we care. It's not big news to anyone else. It's not even a blip to anyone else.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

As Amanda notes, they DID send out that email some months ago that said, "Readers want novels! Novels get borrowed more!" That was a signal, too. A signal that short-form writers ignored, perfectly reasonably, since they made most by going all-in with KU 1.0 as long as it continued. But a signal that perhaps should have been a sign that Amazon was going to make this correction.

They do what works best for readers, because that's what'll make them the most money. I too spent 30 years in the corporate world. They do what they think will be most profitable long-term. (They do famously think long-term rather than short-term. So I'm sure they have an endgame, and I could speculate on it, but for me, this is another adaptation. This one happens to be a positive one for me, whereas 1.0 was most decidedly negative. I'm not happy that others are hurt, just as I assume others weren't happy that I was hurt in the past. But it is what it is. Companies do stuff--witness Scribd, same deal--you can't have an unlimited subscription service with voracious readers where you'll be paying out 10x what you're taking in. And we have to react. And there's never enough notice, so we have to scramble.)


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Dsg said:


> But looking on from the sidelines of this whole thing, it's no wonder that those who stand to benefit from KU 2.0 are keeping quiet. One, it's rude to jump for joy when so many fellow authors are taking a hit. Two, jealousy is a powerful thing and no one wants their career sabotaged or their work attacked (things KB has been known to facilitate). And three, the vehement response and outright vitriol someone like Hugh Howey has received, just for pointing out the positives of KU 2.0, is pretty intense.


In addition to what you mentioned, here's where I'm at as someone with longer works that seem to be benefiting from the change.

1. The money increase is modest and won't change my strategy between what I take into KU and what I don't. Meanwhile, some people are really hurting. I don't like that at all.
2. It's going to change again. Probably soon. Probably often. Adjust your strategies and keep writing the kind of stories that appeal to you. It will help even out the highs and lows.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I don't think they see it as news. The audience for the message isn't their customers, it's one of their many suppliers. It's just not that important to them. Maybe they buried the lead and did it before holiday. But I think the real answer is that they don't care what we think of it, so how/when they delivered the message was largely irrelevant.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

No.  It won't be long vs short.  It will be on pages.
Every author, long, short or in between that has 100 pages read will make 50 cents.  If they have 1000 pages read, they will all make $5.
10,000 pages will be $50.
Individual book length now means nothing.    It comes down to how many pages are being read per book.

So let's use Fantastic short story author vs Fantastic novel writer.
For simple math 50 and 500 pages.
Let's say FSS has 10,000 readers and FNW has 1,000 readers.  
Per book FSS gets .25 cents and FNW gets $2.50.  
If we do a little quick math,
.25 times 10,000 is exactly the same as $2.50 times 1,000.
So it won't necessarily hurt one group over the other.

Oh don't get me wrong,  it will hurt the FSS because of the changing payments. 
Now for someone that has not been in KU before, it won't hurt them because they didn't make a living under the old system.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2015)

I agree totally with the OP, except I don't think they cared too much (although always try to keep the sacrificial lamb from bleating alarm to the flock if you can).

Amazon makes decisions for its business. It doesn't care about the tiny market representing book sales/borrows. It cares even less for the authors who live off its market share. You do business with Amazon, you either accept its callous disregard and risk to your livelihood on a behemoth that will change direction and flatten you in a second without blinking, or you take a business approach and use those aspects of Amazon that suits your own business model and remain independent and reasonably immune to their changes.

I went wide earlier in the year because I was concerned about my reliance on Amazon. I'm still reliant on them, but as my wide sales grow (slowly) and my non-dependence on Amazon develops, then I will eventually be following my own business model and Amazon, whilst remaining part of it, will not affect it's growth and direction. Carry out due diligence on your own business, and don't blame anyone else if you end up just sitting there taking the cheques as they reduce in size or disappear altogether.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

gorvnice said:


> I don't deny that there are winners in this new model.
> 
> My point was that Amazon itself did not view this new model as a piece of good news, overall, which was why it made a very concerted effort to bury said news right before a very big holiday weekend. Its a standard corporate tactic that doesn't happen unless the news is grim.


I think that you're reading too much into the tea leaves. This program wasn't unequivocally bad. In fact, for a lot of writers, it was a very good thing indeed. I would imagine that Amanda is just one of them, but there are no doubt a ton of others who are benefitting from this program. Probably more writers are benefiting from the program then getting hurt by it.

Personally, I hate KU, period. I wish it would die in a fire. But you can't deny that people are doing well under it. Good for them.

IMHO, Amazon destroyed a lot of writers when it rolled out KU 1.0, so it should have been "ashamed" of that rollout, but it didn't seem that they were. So, if they weren't ashamed of KU 1.0, why would they be ashamed of this new version?


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## JeanneM (Mar 21, 2011)

The bottom line is this. Authors of longer works felt they should make more money...and upon reflection...they are absolutely right in asking for more. But instead of reaching in their pockets to give them more, Amazon decided to take it out of the pockets of shorter form writers, thereby causing a rift among writers as well as causing loss of income for many.

This is nothing more than income redistribution so that Amazon could keep the longer form authors happy, which they need to do, but not have to actually pony up the money themselves. And it stinks...on ice.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

Monique said:


> I don't think they see it as news. The audience for the message isn't their customers, it's one of their many suppliers. It's just not that important to them. Maybe they buried the lead and did it before holiday. But I think the real answer is that they don't care what we think of it, so how/when they delivered the message was largely irrelevant.


This x1000.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

gorvnice said:


> I don't deny that there are winners in this new model.
> 
> My point was that Amazon itself did not view this new model as a piece of good news, overall, which was why it made a very concerted effort to bury said news right before a very big holiday weekend. Its a standard corporate tactic that doesn't happen unless the news is grim.


I'm not sure how they "buried" the news. I received my email from them in the middle of June. I don't consider that to be _right before_ the holiday. Unless the email I received was different from yours, I don't see how the news was buried in the email, either. They announced the amount of the pool, and then went on to discuss the new payment model. If they were trying to bury it, they did a really poor job.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

I think this would hold more weight if Amazon didn't needlessly obfuscate everything on our side already. They would have done the same thing if they were giving us a box full of gold bars. They just plain don't like us knowing things.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

They don't want their competitors knowing things.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2015)

Good job on the "gotcha" headline.  "Proof" means facts.  You haven't given us facts.  You've given us speculation to add to the numerous speculations we've already read.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

KU is a program for readers. The changes impact suppliers. Amazon made mistakes with the compensation model in KU 1.0. To trumpet the fixes would be to admit how wrong they were in designing the program. I think you're reading too much into this. In this case, the tea leaves are... tea leaves. That's just my opinion, of course (and FWIW, I also came from the business world).


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## Rayven T. Hill (Jul 24, 2013)

cinisajoy said:


> They don't want their competitors knowing things.


I think you've hit it correctly.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

vlmain said:


> I'm not sure how they "buried" the news. I received my email from them in the middle of June. I don't consider that to be _right before_ the holiday. Unless the email I received was different from yours, I don't see how the news was buried in the email, either. They announced the amount of the pool, and then went on to discuss the new payment model. If they were trying to bury it, they did a really poor job.


They announced this news in stages, clearly. Again, if it was GOOD news for authors on the whole (as many are claiming), then Amazon would've come out with the information all at once.

They knew the 2 billion pages read figure back when they gave an example of 100 million pages read. But that first example was a stalling tactic.

Amazon needed to set the stage in regards to the dismal per page payout. If they'd come out with a penny a page or less in that first email, all hell would've broken loose. It would have been way too much bad information all at once.

Instead, they primed authors for the change, primed them for a loss, and then tried to spin it as a gain.

I agree that for a small subset of bestselling novelists--this will be a good thing. But for a large portion of authors, its a wash. And the lack of hard data and obscuring of units borrowed is another major negative for authors in the program.

Again, whether or not Amazon did this to benefit their business (I'm sure they did), or whether it helps some authors (I have no doubt it does), my point of this post is in detailing that Amazon clearly saw this new program as a net negative for authors. They did all of the classic big corporate spin, buried the biggest piece of news (the huge number of pages read and dismal per page payout) before a holiday, and then tried to crow about how good this is for authors.

Most authors know this is a bad thing. That's why, even for those who are winning in the near term, they're losing important data, and all indicators point to the payout continuing to drop as the months go on.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Jolie du Pre said:


> Good job on the "gotcha" headline. "Proof" means facts. You haven't given us facts. You've given us speculation to add to the numerous speculations we've already read.


Evidence can be circumstantial as well. I find it hard to believe that a wonderful and positive change that benefits most authors is led out right before July 4th. Do you believe Amazon wasn't aware of the 2 billion pages read figure until then?


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Saul Tanpepper said:


> KU is a program for readers. The changes impact suppliers. Amazon made mistakes with the compensation model in KU 1.0. To trumpet the fixes would be to admit how wrong they were in designing the program. I think you're reading too much into this. In this case, the tea leaves are... tea leaves. That's just my opinion, of course (and FWIW, I also came from the business world).


Again, give me examples of a positive innovation being trumpeted in a fairly dead timeframe for news, in stages, with the final piece of news being delivered right on a major holiday. I doubt you can, but I'd be interested to hear it.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

I must have missed something. Where did the billion pages read figure come from? I have not received any further info from Amazon since the initial email in June.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

vlmain said:


> I must have missed something. Where did the billion pages read figure come from? I have not received any further info from Amazon since the initial email in June.


2 billion pages read was a figure delivered in an email you possibly missed, as they did it right before the July 4th weekend. It's how everyone now has a reasonable estimate of the dismal per page payout.

Case in point, by the way, of how and why Amazon chose to deliver negative news in stages.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2015)

gorvnice said:


> Evidence can be circumstantial as well. I find it hard to believe that a wonderful and positive change that benefits most authors is led out right before July 4th. Do you believe Amazon wasn't aware of the 2 billion pages read figure until then?


What I believe doesn't matter.

I need Amazon to #releasetherate. The rest is just talk.


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## Scott Bartlett (Apr 1, 2012)

I have a series of 5 sci fi novellas, all around 20,000 words each, planned for release toward the end of this month.

Does anyone have any thoughts on whether, given the KU changes, I should stick with my original plan of releasing them all via Select on the same day and then following up with an omnibus a month later?

Or should I scrap my plan to release the novellas individually altogether, and only release the omnibus (despite having commissioned covers for all 5 novellas)?

If this is too off-topic for this thread someone please let me know and I'll go start another.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Jolie du Pre said:


> What I believe doesn't matter.
> 
> I need Amazon to #releasetherate. The rest is just talk.


You asked for proof, stating that I had given none. And now I ask you and anyone else who cares to comment: What are the chances that Amazon didn't know the 2 billion pages read figure when they released their first announcement about KU 2.0?

In that email, they gave an example of 100 million pages read, even though they certainly had the real figure. So simple common sense would tell us that they held that back for some reason.

HINT: It wasn't because it was an amazing, exciting piece of happy news...


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Scott Bartlett said:


> I have a series of 5 sci fi novellas, all around 20,000 words each, planned for release toward the end of this month.
> 
> Does anyone have any thoughts on whether, given the KU changes, I should stick with my original plan of releasing them all via Select on the same day and then following up with an omnibus a month later?
> 
> ...


Hey, I don't mind a short hijack as long as it doesn't completely switch to this discussion. I think you need to do the math based on what your likely outcomes are from going exclusive vs what you can expect to make going wide. It's a math question, which you should have an idea of if you've done any similar releases in the past. And then it's about calculating a few different scenarios.

We're all making leaps based on our own best guesses for each of our own particular business models. Are you striving for visibility? Because certainly KU has that going for it. Have you gone wide previously? Do you think your genre would support purchasing said novellas at 2.99 price point?


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## Scott Bartlett (Apr 1, 2012)

gorvnice said:


> Hey, I don't mind a short hijack as long as it doesn't completely switch to this discussion. I think you need to do the math based on what your likely outcomes are from going exclusive vs what you can expect to make going wide. It's a math question, which you should have an idea of if you've done any similar releases in the past. And then it's about calculating a few different scenarios.
> 
> We're all making leaps based on our own best guesses for each of our own particular business models. Are you striving for visibility? Because certainly KU has that going for it. Have you gone wide previously? Do you think your genre would support purchasing said novellas at 2.99 price point?


Cool, I appreciate it. If the discussion goes off the rails I'll start another thread.

I've never done a similar release (I have very few titles available currently), and I've never gone wide, though I've been giving it serious consideration. The genre is sci fi and based on my research I don't think it will support 2.99 per novella. Visibility certainly couldn't hurt.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Scott Bartlett said:


> Cool, I appreciate it. If the discussion goes off the rails I'll start another thread.
> 
> I've never done a similar release (I have very few titles available currently), and I've never gone wide, though I've been giving it serious consideration. The genre is sci fi and based on my research I don't think it will support 2.99 per novella. Visibility certainly couldn't hurt.


Cautiously, despite my current hatred of it, I might consider KU in your position. Try and get some visibility and then hope to go wide with new releases perhaps...

I think KU is pretty terrible long-term, but the short-term benefits are undeniable.


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## Scott Bartlett (Apr 1, 2012)

gorvnice said:


> Cautiously, despite my current hatred of it, I might consider KU in your position. Try and get some visibility and then hope to go wide with new releases perhaps...
> 
> I think KU is pretty terrible long-term, but the short-term benefits are undeniable.


That makes me feel better about staying the course. Definitely plan to start going wide at some point in the next six months, just not sure when that will be. Thank you  [end hijack]


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

gorvnice said:


> You asked for proof, stating that I had given none. And now I ask you and anyone else who cares to comment: What are the chances that Amazon didn't know the 2 billion pages read figure when they released their first announcement about KU 2.0?
> 
> In that email, they gave an example of 100 million pages read, even though they certainly had the real figure. So simple common sense would tell us that they held that back for some reason.
> 
> HINT: It wasn't because it was an amazing, exciting piece of happy news...


Maybe it wasn't good news or bad news. From their perspective, it was just news. It doesn't change much for them. I'm sure they see it as a way of helping their bottom line. It's still merely news, and one a very small fraction of people care about. As suppliers, it falls into good and bad camps for us. It does not for them.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

I haven't yet seen the explanation of why KU is terrible long term. Bad for some people, yes. Good for others. That was true in v. 1.0 and v. 2.0, and if you take the program as a whole.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

MichaelWallace said:


> I haven't yet seen the explanation of why KU is terrible long term. Bad for some people, yes. Good for others. That was true in v. 1.0 and v. 2.0, and if you take the program as a whole.


For me, it's the exclusivity (and the pig in a poke payments and carrot and stick. Okay, it's a lot of things, but it's most exclusivity.) As much as they made stumble, we need the other retailers to survive. If enough content is exclusive to Amazon, it won't matter if they fix their search engines.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Monique said:


> For me, it's the exclusivity (and the pig in a poke payments and carrot and stick. Okay, it's a lot of things, but it's most exclusivity.) As much as they made stumble, we need the other retailers to survive. If enough content is exclusive to Amazon, it won't matter if they fix their search engines.


I agree with that. Hard to tell people to take one for the team, though when making individual decisions. Mainly, what we need is for the other retailers to step up. I spent a lot of time fighting and clawing on other markets and they're still only 10% of what I earn on Amazon.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> For me, it's the exclusivity (and the pig in a poke payments and carrot and stick. Okay, it's a lot of things, but it's most exclusivity.) As much as they made stumble, we need the other retailers to survive. If enough content is exclusive to Amazon, it won't matter if they fix their search engines.


Where do you plan on making all of this money? I was doing very well on B&N and Apple 4 or 5 months ago. Then it dropped off and has become a trickle. You may wish you had stayed the course. I put all my books in KU2 since I think we are going to do very well.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Yeah, I don't blame people for choosing to go with KU if it works for them. I hope they don't blame me when work the Illuminati to destroy it.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

L C Storm said:


> Where do you plan on making all of this money? I was doing very well on B&N and Apple 4 or 5 months ago. Then it dropped off and has become a trickle. You may wish you had stayed the course. I put all my books in KU2 since I think we are going to do very well.


I would LOVE to see your numbers, Franklin. Half of my income comes from non-Amazonian places.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

L C Storm said:


> Where do you plan on making all of this money? I was doing very well on B&N and Apple 4 or 5 months ago. Then it dropped off and has become a trickle. You may wish you had stayed the course. I put all my books in KU2 since I think we are going to do very well.


I just had my best month ever on Google last month, topping 10k for the first time. These streams are definitely not drying up for me.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> I would LOVE to see your numbers


I was make more out of D2D than Amazon 4 months ago. Then something happened and I started making more money from Amazon and B&N and Apple dropped off.

All anyone can do is roll your dice and see what happens.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> I just had my best month ever on Google last month, topping 10k for the first time. These streams are definitely not drying up for me.


The more people that leave KU the better. We will have less people to split the pot with.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> CLIFFS: KU 2.0 was bad news and rolled out right before 4th of July weekend. Had it been the great news some claim it to be, Amazon would've trumpeted its arrival from the rooftops and made sure to put it front and center, rather than burying it in long emails and delaying its full implications as long as humanly possible.


I rather doubt Amazon knows what will happen and will just roll with what happens. We would be wise to just wait it out too and see what the future brings.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Maybe it wasn't good news or bad news. From their perspective, it was just news. It doesn't change much for them. I'm sure they see it as a way of helping their bottom line. It's still merely news, and one a very small fraction of people care about. As suppliers, it falls into good and bad camps for us. It does not for them.


If it was neutral news, then I don't see why they held back so much pertinent information from us on the first email.

To me, the refusal to tell us the pages read coming in at such an astronomical number (2 billion) speaks volumes about their intent and what they thought was good, bad or in between. Amazon acts in a fairly calculated manner, even when they screw up.

The notion that the rollout was just them not caring is sort of defying rationality. of course they care. They just thought it was negative, which it was, and so they tried their best to blunt the force of it.

Again, I know it was good for some. Just not on the whole.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

MichaelWallace said:


> I haven't yet seen the explanation of why KU is terrible long term. Bad for some people, yes. Good for others. That was true in v. 1.0 and v. 2.0, and if you take the program as a whole.


I think KU is terrible long-term because of the dependence it creates on the program, and they are using it to slowly erode pricing and availability of data.

Each time they use KU to chip away at royalties, or they make data less accessible, we lose.

And long-term, that's exactly where the program is headed. To lower payouts and less available data with which to make sound business decisions.


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

gorvnice said:


> I think KU is terrible long-term because of the dependence it creates on the program, and they are using it to slowly erode pricing and availability of data.
> 
> Each time they use KU to chip away at royalties, or they make data less accessible, we lose.
> 
> And long-term, that's exactly where the program is headed. To lower payouts and less available data with which to make sound business decisions.


And yet no one says you have to be in KU. That's the beauty of it.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> And yet no one says you have to be in KU. That's the beauty of it.


Despite the fact that I pulled all my books out of KU, I guess it seems like I don't know that or something. LOL.
KU has a major impact on the entire marketplace, whether you're in it or not.

The way Amazon gobbles up marketshare impacts writers, and when they show themselves to not always play on the level with authors, it's worrisome. KU is a statement of intent, and I don't like what it states.

I did great while I was in it, and I pulled out of it because I understood quite well what these changes mean for me. Just because it's an optional program doesn't mean its not affecting my business.


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

gorvnice said:


> If it was neutral news, then I don't see why they held back so much pertinent information from us on the first email.
> 
> To me, the refusal to tell us the pages read coming in at such an astronomical number (2 billion) speaks volumes about their intent and what they thought was good, bad or in between. Amazon acts in a fairly calculated manner, even when they screw up.
> 
> ...


It speaks volumes to you. To me it's merely ... okay, that's a lot of reading. You can assign nefarious reasons to the announcement all you want. That's your right, and your belief. Amazon has almost always, from my recollection at least, doled out information in multiple emails. I honestly don't think they care about reactions, or tricking us. They announced the program and made a reminder announcement on the eve of implementation. That seems pretty standard to me.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> It speaks volumes to you. To me it's merely ... okay, that's a lot of reading. You can assign nefarious reasons to the announcement all you want. That's your right, and your belief. Amazon has almost always, from my recollection at least, doled out information in multiple emails. I honestly don't think they care about reactions, or tricking us. They announced the program and made a reminder announcement on the eve of implementation. That seems pretty standard to me.


So you think them leaving the 2 billion pages read out of the first email was a minor oversight and not calculated?


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## Jerry Patterson (Nov 20, 2013)

L C Storm said:


> I rather doubt Amazon knows what will happen and will just roll with what happens. We would be wise to just wait it out too and see what the future brings.


I disagree. Amazon doesn't know exactly what the numbers will be for July but they can come up with a pretty close estimate. They don't have to roll with what happens this month and in the future. All of us writing for Amazon do whether we are in KU or not. The OP is only saying that Amazon knew that this wasn't going to be seen as good news. It's a fact that they did bury their example in the June email and came out with the really bad news(1/2 cent per page payout) before a major U.S. holiday. It's also a fact that their example of 100 million pages read was 5% of reality(the truth). Some people can say this was "chance". Really? The bottom line to me was we were given the facts in a "soft and sleazy" manner.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Jamie Warren said:


> I disagree. Amazon doesn't know exactly what the numbers will be for July but they can come up with a pretty close estimate. They don't have to roll with what happens this month and in the future. All of us writing for Amazon do whether we are in KU or not. The OP is only saying that Amazon knew that this wasn't going to be seen as good news. It's a fact that they did bury their example in the June email and came out with the really bad news(1/2 cent per page payout) before a major U.S. holiday. It's also a fact that their example of 100 million pages read was 5% of reality(the truth). Some people can say this was "chance". Really? The bottom line to me was we were given the facts in a "soft and sleazy" manner.


Amazing. So few people see the obviousness of this.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> So you think them leaving the 2 billion pages read out of the first email was a minor oversight and not calculated?


That sounds like the Amazon we know and love.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> It's a fact that they did bury their example in the June email and came out with the really bad news(1/2 cent per page payout) before a major U.S. holiday.


We don't know what the payout will be. They can easily add extra money and raise it to 1 cent.


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

gorvnice said:


> So you think them leaving the 2 billion pages read out of the first email was a minor oversight and not calculated?


I don't think it was either. I think press releases are put together by people who don't live in the glass corporate offices. They get a stack of information and draft the press release. Someone signs off on it. Done. I don't think Amazon looks at this as something negative. I'm not even sure if they look on it as something positive. While some authors are feeling gutted, as if their whole world is crumbling, this is a minuscule change in a huge operation when you look at it from Amazon's point of view. This is like changing the supplier of bread at a huge restaurant chain. It's big for the previous supplier (in a bad way) and great to the new supplier. It doesn't change much for the restaurant chain, though.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Okay, maybe I'm confused. What email did they fail to include the 1.9M number in?


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

L C Storm said:


> We don't know what the payout will be. They can easily add extra money and raise it to 1 cent.


They would likely need to double the pot to do so. And perhaps they will double the pot, or come close enough to one cent to make some authors happy.

However, the lack of transparency in the data and the payout is troubling. KU is not the whole ball of wax, but its a significant revenue stream for many. Being in it or not being in it tremendously affects ranking for starters.

When I pulled my books out, each one of them dropped by about forty or fifty percent in the rankings within a day...


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Gorvnice is completely right about way corporations try to bury the bad-news lede and crow on about anything mildly favorable ad nauseum. Same reason politicians can talk at length without answering a question when they want to be evasive, but take photographers with them when they visit a soup kitchen for 10 minutes. It's just how PR works.

Whether or not that's what happened _here_, I don't know. There are interesting parallels. I tend to think they didn't offer the number earlier because they didn't think they needed to, and they got so many emails from writers about their ridiculous dime a page example they thought it prudent to drop those expectations. But it could have been a strategic withdrawal rather than a stupid one, I have no idea and could believe either at this point.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Monique said:


> Okay, maybe I'm confused. What email did they fail to include the 1.9M number in?


The first email in June came with an example of 100 million pages read with which to do the possible KU voodoo math. We all knew that example was dead wrong back then because it was using 10 cents a page, etc.

Obviously Amazon knew it and could have provided the real number.

A few days ago, they sent an email that stated the 2 billion pages read number, just before 4th of July.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Isn't the 1.9M pages read the number for June? Wasn't the earlier email in the middle of June before they could know what the number of pages for June would be?

I'm not saying their example wasn't silly and misleading, but I understand why they didn't use the 1.9M number. And, fwiw, their announcement for the first verison of KU implied a vastly higher payout than was given.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I don't think it was either. I think press releases are put together by people who don't live in the glass corporate offices. They get a stack of information and draft the press release. Someone signs off on it. Done. I don't think Amazon looks at this as something negative. I'm not even sure if they look on it as something positive. While some authors are feeling gutted, as if their whole world is crumbling, this is a minuscule change in a huge operation when you look at it from Amazon's point of view. This is like changing the supplier of bread at a huge restaurant chain. It's big for the previous supplier (in a bad way) and great to the new supplier. It doesn't change much for the restaurant chain, though.


You make a case for a plausible alternate scenario. However, if they didn't care at all then including the 2 billion pages read (a figure they certainly were aware of) would have been quite simple and natural to do. Maybe they drafted an incompetent memo that went out.

My hunch is that they put a lot more thought into it then you're giving them credit for.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Monique said:


> Isn't the 1.9M pages read the number for June? Wasn't the earlier email in the middle of June before they could know what the number of pages for June would be?
> 
> I'm not saying their example wasn't silly and misleading, but I understand why they didn't use the 1.9M number. And, fwiw, their announcement for the first verison of KU implied a vastly higher payout than was given.


It was 1.9 billion pages read in June. But you think they didn't have a May number to feed us? Come on, now. 

Edit: Amazon knew this data well in advance which is how they formed the program in the first place. So they had the monthly page reads, probably lots of them, and could have easily shared one with us, or a likely average, etc. I'm quite certain it would've been significantly higher than 100 million.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

gorvnice said:


> It was 1.9 billion pages read in June. But you think they didn't have a May number to feed us? Come on, now.


Oh, I'm sure they did. But I'm also saying that your point about that number isn't valid and that this is par for the course for Amazon and not a sign of anything in particular with this version of KU.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Monique said:


> Oh, I'm sure they did. But I'm also saying that your point about that number isn't valid and that this is par for the course for Amazon and not a sign of anything in particular with this version of KU.


I don't see how it changes anything. They knew what the numbers were likely to be, since they have plenty of data from previous months to work from. They knew close to, if not almost exactly, what the page reads was going to come out to.


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## Jerry Patterson (Nov 20, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I don't think it was either. I think press releases are put together by people who don't live in the glass corporate offices. They get a stack of information and draft the press release. Someone signs off on it. Done. I don't think Amazon looks at this as something negative. I'm not even sure if they look on it as something positive. While some authors are feeling gutted, as if their whole world is crumbling, this is a minuscule change in a huge operation when you look at it from Amazon's point of view. This is like changing the supplier of bread at a huge restaurant chain. It's big for the previous supplier (in a bad way) and great to the new supplier. It doesn't change much for the restaurant chain, though.


This is the response Amazon was hoping for. Oh, that is if they cared.


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## Marilyn Peake (Aug 8, 2011)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I don't think Amazon viewed this news as anything other than a necessity. Change is always hardest for the losers in any equation. I don't think Amazon looks at the change as anything other than a shifting for authors. Random people do not care. It's news to us because we care. It's not big news to anyone else. It's not even a blip to anyone else.


I agree 100%. My sales were devastated by the first version of KU. And I mean completely devastated - going from steady sales to zero sales. It was both upsetting and demoralizing. Then a lot of writers here on KBoards cracked the code for sales when they realized that series of books or shorter works sold lots of copies in KU. I was working on a series and plan to start publishing those works beginning in September, but I have to admit I'm also looking forward to taking longer amounts of time to write novels after that. I'm not sure I'll make any money in KU-Version 2 either; but, since the bottom dropped out of my sales upon the introduction of KU, I won't personally miss it. I feel very badly for those who were succeeding with it, especially knowing how that feels after having had success snatched away from me with the earlier version of KU. Let's hope KU-2 works out in the long run.


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## Kenson (Dec 8, 2014)

gorvnice said:


> You don't bury a great change that's a wonderful boon for authors, you pronounce it from the rooftops.


Is there such a thing as a standard author? I don't think so.

What is changing here? The payout pot will be the same at $11 million. So the only thing that will change is how that pot is distributed. Some authors will win - others will lose. This may not be a boon for authors but neither is it the end of the world.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Or you could just have assumed that they'd set the per-page rate to pay a reasonable borrow amount to novels. I didn't pay all that much attention to the example, which clearly seemed to be using deliberately improbable numbers to make for easy math. I looked at it and said, what are they trying to do here? Clearly, get novels back in, because many readers must want novels and have expressed some unhappiness because there weren't enough novels to make the subscription worthwhile. (Which is the only plausible reason I can think of for the change in the first place. Well, that and the obvious Reason #2: that the program was as unsustainable as Scribd, if you end up paying out $100 to authors in royalties for every $10/month subscriber's erotica/short erom habit.)

So--what will the payout be? I figured the royalty per page read would be enough to give a writer of a good-sized novel a very good alternative to a sale. I figured it'd be about what the royalty on a $3.99 sale would be, at max. I figured it would be about $2.50-$3.00. And if a good-sized book were 350-375 pages (counted the old way), that'd be maybe .7 cents a page max. Which was what I posted in one of the original threads here about the subject, because that was what made sense. They weren't going to pay novelists $4.00/book. And they weren't going to pay them $2.00/book. They kinda had to pay them at least $2.50 per book. And that's about what they're doing.  

So it sorta didn't matter what examples they used. It seemed pretty obvious that they'd be compensating per-page at a rate to get novelists to see the program as a viable alternative. Which I think they have, assuming that somewhere in the neighborhood of .5 cents/page (with the new more generous page counts) turns out to be the reality.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I have a question. 

What is the point? Wow, big shocker, Amazon did something many interpret as sleazy. As if Amazon is the only corporation that spins things for best light. Of course they knew that thousands of authors that were making bank on a flat-rate payout system were going to be pissed, and were going to be vocal about it. And damned right they knew that those that would benefit would likely be quiet so as not to offend those that were not happy. (If it hadn't been for that anonymous poll, anyone reading these boards would never know that 70% favored KU 2.0 over 1.0) I would be shocked if ANY corporation did not spin things to their favor under such circumstances.

Their market, their rules. Your books, your choices. Want to set the rules? Make your own marketplace. On what planet is this ever any different?


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Rykymus said:


> I have a question.
> 
> What is the point? Wow, big shocker, Amazon did something many interpret as sleazy. As if Amazon is the only corporation that spins things for best light. Of course they knew that thousands of authors that were making bank on a flat-rate payout system were going to be p*ssed, and were going to be vocal about it. And damned right they knew that those that would benefit would likely be quiet so as not to offend those that were not happy. (If it hadn't been for that anonymous poll, anyone reading these boards would never know that 70% favored KU 2.0 over 1.0) I would be shocked if ANY corporation did not spin things to their favor under such circumstances.
> 
> Their market, their rules. Your books, your choices. Want to set the rules? Make your own marketplace. On what planet is this ever any different?


Why do people continuously act as though we're asking for legislation against Amazon? We're simply having a discussion. I understand some people have some kind of love affair with Amazon, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us can't discuss them in a negative light.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

It's not a love affair. I just don't see what this discussion solves. If anything, the OP left out the most important words in the thread title. "For Some." By leaving those words out, it infers that it is bad for everyone, which of course, it is not.

That being said, I think subscription models overall are bad news. Sooner or later, either the customer, the supplier, or both, will get screwed.

My advice? Do what you must to achieve your long term goals, and use or dismiss KU in any version as it suits your needs. But don't ever expect any vendor to do what is in your best interests, or to tell you the truth. That would be like trusting a politician.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Rykymus said:


> It's not a love affair. I just don't see what this discussion solves. If anything, the OP left out the most important words in the thread title. "For Some." By leaving those words out, it infers that it is bad for everyone, which of course, it is not.
> 
> That being said, I think subscription models overall are bad news. Sooner or later, either the customer, the supplier, or both, will get screwed.
> 
> My advice? Do what you must to achieve your long term goals, and use or dismiss KU in any version as it suits your needs. But don't ever expect any vendor to do what is in your best interests, or to tell you the truth. That would be like trusting a politician.


Some people just like discussing. I had a 40 minute discussion today about Greece's vote, though I've never even stepped foot in Greece. Let us procrastinate, dang it!


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Rosalind James said:


> Or you could just have assumed that they'd set the per-page rate to pay a reasonable borrow amount to novels. I didn't pay all that much attention to the example, which clearly seemed to be using deliberately improbable numbers to make for easy math. I looked at it and said, what are they trying to do here? Clearly, get novels back in, because many readers must want novels and have expressed some unhappiness because there weren't enough novels to make the subscription worthwhile. (Which is the only plausible reason I can think of for the change in the first place. Well, that and the obvious Reason #2: that the program was as unsustainable as Scribd, if you end up paying out $100 to authors in royalties for every $10/month subscriber's erotica/short erom habit.)
> 
> So--what will the payout be? I figured the royalty per page read would be enough to give a writer of a good-sized novel a very good alternative to a sale. I figured it'd be about what the royalty on a $3.99 sale would be, at max. I figured it would be about $2.50-$3.00. And if a good-sized book were 350-375 pages (counted the old way), that'd be maybe .7 cents a page max. Which was what I posted in one of the original threads here about the subject, because that was what made sense. They weren't going to pay novelists $4.00/book. And they weren't going to pay them $2.00/book. They kinda had to pay them at least $2.50 per book. And that's about what they're doing.
> 
> So it sorta didn't matter what examples they used. It seemed pretty obvious that they'd be compensating per-page at a rate to get novelists to see the program as a viable alternative. Which I think they have, assuming that somewhere in the neighborhood of .5 cents/page (with the new more generous page counts) turns out to be the reality.


There's a few different pieces here and we're somewhat talking past each other, I think.

The first piece, in my mind, is that Amazon always knew about how many pages were being read. It's how they created this model in the first place. It's how they were able to estimate what the pot was likely to be in the future, even though we hadn't arrived there yet. They ESTIMATED the likely pot without telling any of us the pages read.

Certainly they could have estimated the pages read as well. They had the past figures, for sure. And they used those past figures to calculate the program and what it was likely to create for a reasonable payout.

If we agree they essentially knew the numbers in advance, then the question is: why did they withhold a very important piece of the equation until just before a major holiday?

My common sense tells me they did it intentionally, because it was BAD NEWS.

Perhaps not bad news to every author. Perhaps it was only terrible news for 10 percent, slightly bad news for 30 percent, a wash for another 40 percent, and wonderful news for the top 20 percent (the novelists with good read through). Those are made up figures, but I'm acknowledging that there are some for whom this is a positive development...

My overall point is that Amazon themselves did not think it an overall positive development, and so they rolled it out systematically, allowing the pain to be felt more gradually, and blunting the worst of it by putting the news out there when lots of other things would be taking place as a distraction (holiday weekend, etc).


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Could certainly be!


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Rykymus said:


> I have a question.
> 
> What is the point? Wow, big shocker, Amazon did something many interpret as sleazy. As if Amazon is the only corporation that spins things for best light. Of course they knew that thousands of authors that were making bank on a flat-rate payout system were going to be p*ssed, and were going to be vocal about it. And damned right they knew that those that would benefit would likely be quiet so as not to offend those that were not happy. (If it hadn't been for that anonymous poll, anyone reading these boards would never know that 70% favored KU 2.0 over 1.0) I would be shocked if ANY corporation did not spin things to their favor under such circumstances.
> 
> Their market, their rules. Your books, your choices. Want to set the rules? Make your own marketplace. On what planet is this ever any different?


Hey Ryk (can I call you Ryk?), glad to have you back in the discussion.

My point is not that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to make the rules. My point is that we should be trying to accurately interpret their messaging and not buying into it hook line and sinker.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Rykymus said:


> I just don't see what this discussion solves.


This is clearly the disconnect. I don't engage on message boards to solve my problems.

I engage to think things through and pressure test ideas. After that, sometimes after a very spirited discussion such as what you and I would likely have, I might come to some conclusions.

And then I might start working on problem solving or strategizing.

I can't tell you how many threads I've started where people ask me how I intend to solve a certain problem I've brought up, as if only by positing a solution is the question reasonable.

However, not every problem has a solution in the near term. Some issues need to be mulled over, some issues can't be solved.

But very rarely am I sorry I considered a problem in my business at a deeper level.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I don't think anyone here is buying into anything Amazon says hook line and sinker. Nobody here is that dumb.

But Amazon _should _be allowed to make the rules. It is _their _marketplace. Just like I make the rules about how and what I write.

If anything, we should be heralding every stupid thing they do, as it helps the competition to gain ground, and, if they are paying attention, avoid making the same mistakes.

And of course you can call me Ryk.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

gorvnice said:


> This is clearly the disconnect. I don't engage on message boards to solve my problems.
> 
> I engage to think things through and pressure test ideas. After that, sometimes after a very spirited discussion such as what you and I would likely have, I might come to some conclusions.
> 
> ...


Now THAT makes sense. Thanks.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Rykymus said:


> I don't think anyone here is buying into anything Amazon says hook line and sinker. Nobody here is that dumb.
> 
> But Amazon _should _be allowed to make the rules. It is _their _marketplace. Just like I make the rules about how and what I write.
> 
> ...


Haha, thanks Ryk! You can call me Gorv if you like. 

I don't ever claim that Amazon should or should not do what it likes. I was questioning the popular notion that Amazon considers KU 2.0 to be a positive change to the KU environment, and that they did it to make the system better or more fair for authors.

I think Amazon internally decided this needed to be done for a variety of reasons, and I believe they knew it was a piece of bad news that was overall not good for authors (although it benefits some), and that they should try to blunt the force of the negative blowback from their announcement.

If that is true, it changes what is likely to be done with KU in the future, as it tells me Amazon does not believe in the program's viability.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Hey Aaron,
Do you think the changes will get more subscribers,  more authors, or less of each?


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I agree that Amazon doesn't believe in the viability of KU. The only way a subscription model can work is if the author gets screwed. Make it too expensive for the customer, and you don't get a big enough base. Keep the fee low and pay authors fairly, and the company loses money. The question is simply how long Amazon can afford to keep losing money, and what their goal is with KU.

Either way, KU only as a long-term financial strategy is foolishly risky. Unfortunately, I have to slid out slowly over time, or risk not having enough income to pay staff and continue working toward my long term goals. KU is a tactic, not a plan.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> Hey Aaron,
> Do you think the changes will get more subscribers, more authors, or less of each?


Good question, and the answer probably depends a lot on Amazon's true intention with the program. If they really still believe in its viability and aren't just marking time, then Amazon should be working to keep the payouts high. This will encourage more novelists to return and may get a boost in subscribers.

If, on the other hand, they continue to slowly drop the payout, they may be discouraging participation on all sides.

As an adjunct to this, it's interesting that Amazon has lengthened the amount of time for authors to LEAVE their program without notice. That certainly doesn't seem like they are encouraging people to stay in. But maybe in this case, Amazon is just that nice!


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Rykymus said:


> I agree that Amazon doesn't believe in the viability of KU. The only way a subscription model can work is if the author gets screwed. Make it too expensive for the customer, and you don't get a big enough base. Keep the fee low and pay authors fairly, and the company loses money. The question is simply how long Amazon can afford to keep losing money, and what their goal is with KU.
> 
> Either way, KU only as a long-term financial strategy is foolishly risky. Unfortunately, I have to slid out slowly over time, or risk not having enough income to pay staff and continue working toward my long term goals. KU is a tactic, not a plan.


Well, we agree much more than we disagree. You may see me as a whiner about the changes. Sure, the changes hit me hard in the pocketbook, although I have no intention of saying how hard.

But it hurt badly. I didn't like how I was treated as a content provider.

Lesson learned. A lot of my stuff was already wide, and now even more of it is....


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> When I pulled my books out, each one of them dropped by about forty or fifty percent in the rankings within a day..


That can't be good.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

gorvnice said:


> Good question, and the answer probably depends a lot on Amazon's true intention with the program. If they really still believe in its viability and aren't just marking time, then Amazon should be working to keep the payouts high. This will encourage more novelists to return and may get a boost in subscribers.
> 
> If, on the other hand, they continue to slowly drop the payout, they may be discouraging participation on all sides.
> 
> As an adjunct to this, it's interesting that Amazon has lengthened the amount of time for authors to LEAVE their program without notice. That certainly doesn't seem like they are encouraging people to stay in. But maybe in this case, Amazon is just that nice!


Well now I am no lawyer but I think the opt out time is to cover their butt because the payment change can potentially cost some authors 3/4 of their income from borrows. Actually I think one group stands to lose 90% or more.


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

Rykymus said:


> I agree that Amazon doesn't believe in the viability of KU. The only way a subscription model can work is if the author gets screwed. Make it too expensive for the customer, and you don't get a big enough base. Keep the fee low and pay authors fairly, and the company loses money. The question is simply how long Amazon can afford to keep losing money, and what their goal is with KU.
> 
> Either way, KU only as a long-term financial strategy is foolishly risky. Unfortunately, I have to slid out slowly over time, or risk not having enough income to pay staff and continue working toward my long term goals. KU is a tactic, not a plan.


I agree with this. I don't think KU is forever. I do think we have at least another year with it. Everything is subscription services now. How long will that last? I have no idea. I think KU will probably be gone in five years. Will another service take its place? I have no idea. Personally, I want KU to hang around until the spring -- because it benefits me. Once I own my dream house outright and have unloaded the craphole, life changes for me. Right now I live in a horrible neighborhood. I hold on and hoard money like I'm Darth Squirrel and I'm taking over the biggest tree in the yard. When it comes time to go wide, I'm fully prepared for a loss in income. I would prefer KU to hold on long enough to roll my series out, but I'm not dependent on anything. I plan ahead. I didn't leave my day job until I had a $100,000 cushion. I'm not leaving the craphole until I have a lot more than that (after taking a bath on the craphole and buying my dream house outright). I never dive in without thinking ahead as far as I can. I have never been wide. I don't stay in KU because I'm afraid my stuff won't sell on other channels. I stay in KU because it allows me to focus on more of my writing and handles the bulk of my marketing all by itself. Now, with that in mind, the circus calls and two of my characters are trying to fake a suicide to hide a body. Have a good night.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I agree with this. I don't think KU is forever. I do think we have at least another year with it. Everything is subscription services now. How long will that last? I have no idea. I think KU will probably be gone in five years. Will another service take its place? I have no idea. Personally, I want KU to hang around until the spring -- because it benefits me. Once I own my dream house outright and have unloaded the craphole, life changes for me. Right now I live in a horrible neighborhood. I hold on and hoard money like I'm Darth Squirrel and I'm taking over the biggest tree in the yard. When it comes time to go wide, I'm fully prepared for a loss in income. I would prefer KU to hold on long enough to roll my series out, but I'm not dependent on anything. I plan ahead. I didn't leave my day job until I had a $100,000 cushion. I'm not leaving the craphole until I have a lot more than that (after taking a bath on the craphole and buying my dream house outright). I never dive in without thinking ahead as far as I can. I have never been wide. I don't stay in KU because I'm afraid my stuff won't sell on other channels. I stay in KU because it allows me to focus on more of my writing and handles the bulk of my marketing all by itself. Now, with that in mind, the circus calls and two of my characters are trying to fake a suicide to hide a body. Have a good night.


Haha, good on you, Amanda! Seriously...You have an insane work ethic and you're crushing it.

Also, you've built a brand that's for sure exploitable in or out of KU, so no worries there, I don't think...

However, I think what you've shared is really very accurate. Now, consider this. if someone like you, who I view as KU's primary bread and butter content provider, is thinking this way...then where does that leave the other 99 percent of KU content providers?

This is a very flawed, very shaky system and Amazon knows it better than anyone. And the cracks are starting to show big-time. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, always helpful for me to read them.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

It doesn't matter what amazon 'knew'. It doesn't change anything. Unless there's a huge exodus from select and KU subscribers bail likewise, they don't have much incentive to change the rules again.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

ShaneJeffery said:


> It doesn't matter what amazon 'knew'. It doesn't change anything. Unless there's a huge exodus from select and KU subscribers bail likewise, they don't have much incentive to change the rules again.


It matters to me. Because from their messaging, we can glean a bit more about what's really at play behind the scenes.

And that will help long-term strategy, because there is always risk and gamble involved when deciding whether to opt-in or opt-out. I opted out so you can tell what I've decided. However, I'm still working my mind through things and trying to better understand Amazon's model and what they might be trying to accomplish.

Again, if they believed in KU and thought this was great news, then it changes how I view the program too. It's the difference between having a financial backer who has one foot out the door versus one who is in whole hog.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Popping in as a reader,
I think KU was Amazon's response to Scribd and Oyster.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I want to add to Phoenix. 
Walmart recently closed 5 of their older stores to fix some plumbing problems.    The employees found out on Monday, that they didn't need to show up Tuesday but do go to a hotel Thursday to find out whether they are being transferred or getting a severance with the option to reapply when the store reopens.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Hmm. I come from a Big Biz background. In fact, I've written some of the PR pieces and put the marketing spin on a lot of communiques. Where I see a possible disconnect is in the difference between what the company might perceive as bad news for the vendor versus what is good for the company.
> 
> Take layoff announcements, for instance. They generally happen on a Friday and often a couple of weeks before a holiday. The business is often protecting itself by the timing (in this case from possible scammers having the time to do last-minute scamming). But are layoffs bad from the company perspective? It might be an inconvenience, but layoffs are usually done for the overall health of the company. To make shareholders happy. To force vitality and automation into stagnant and manual practices. To improve the bottom line.
> 
> ...


Agreed. I don't view this is bad news for Amazon on the whole.

However, many are saying this is GOOD NEWS for authors. I believe Amazon absolutely knows this is not a wholly positive development for authors. I think they're aware that it has a lot of negative ramifications. Not just the pittance of a payout and the massive amount of pages read monthly, but also their decision to begin hiding data (such as units borrowed) so as to provide a lower threshold of transparency.

I do think that this was a step Amazon felt would have a long-term benefit FOR THEM.

I've never questioned it for a moment. But authors interests do not necessarily intersect with what is best for Amazon. And since we're authors, the question remains: Is this KU 2.0 a net positive?

I think it's clearly not, and I think Amazon absolutely knew it too. Despite their spin.

But I like your analogy of layoffs. I think some got laid off and some are getting golden parachutes, but in the end, more layoffs await down the line.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Amazon's reason for the change is straightforward. They had to think of a way to get novels back into KU because novelists left in droves, and their new idea will do it. Authors who write shorts will take a bruising, and novelists who left might go back in (I hope they don't). 

Amazon didn't like seeing their system gamed by shorts. Also, they want to control the  market as much as possible. My concern is the other vendors. If they don't thrive, we all lose. It's the same old 'put all your eggs in one basket.' If you do this, don't cry when they break.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

gorvnice said:


> I've never questioned it for a moment. But authors interests do not necessarily intersect with what is best for Amazon. And since we're authors, the question remains: Is this KU 2.0 a net positive?
> 
> I think it's clearly not, and I think Amazon absolutely knew it too. Despite their spin.


I'm still not seeing it. The introduction of borrows, yes. I didn't like that and still don't. But how is 2.0 different for the overall health of the ecosystem? I don't think it's substantially different. Yeah, some people are getting a promo and a corner office and others are being pitched to the street. But this is no great loss for writers as a whole. It's no gain, either, mind you.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Marian said:


> Amazon's reason for the change is straightforward. They had to think of a way to get novels back into KU because novelists left in droves, and their new idea will do it. Authors who write shorts will take a bruising, and novelists who left might go back in (I hope they don't).
> 
> Amazon didn't like seeing their system gamed by shorts. Also, they want to control the market as much as possible. My concern is the other vendors. If they don't thrive, we all lose. It's the same old 'put all your eggs in one basket.' If you do this, don't cry when they break.


I don't think it's at all that straight forward. Sure, they may want to encourage novels and novelists. However, it might also be that they want an overall different type of reader--one who reads LESS. Because subscription models do better when less is read.

So, for instance, Amazon seems to be showing the door to romance and erotica authors and readers at a much higher rate than others. In part because of the amount of short works, and the gaming of the system. But I would argue its also likely that Amazon wants LESS engaged readers, less voracious readers, and therefore they can pay less (since ultimately they only pay by the page anyway).

I understand that won't sound palatable to most, but given the nature of subscription markets, it would make a lot of sense for Amazon to try and ease the most voracious readers out the door (because like the big eaters at an all you can eat buffet, they're consuming way more than they even remotely pay for).


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

MichaelWallace said:


> I'm still not seeing it. The introduction of borrows, yes. I didn't like that and still don't. But how is 2.0 different for the overall health of the ecosystem? I don't think it's substantially different. Yeah, some people are getting a promo and a corner office and others are being pitched to the street. But this is no great loss for writers as a whole. It's no gain, either, mind you.


Well I can only phrase similar things different ways so many times, lol.
1. Amazon is hiding more data. There's no way that seeing pages read is anywhere near as robust a metric as units borrowed. I had a lot of both and it's not even close. I want to know how many units (knowing pages read would be awesome too, but not at the expense of seeing how many units move).
2. Amazon is controlling the payout and creating vast divergences in what's paid even when units moved are the same, changing payment structure on a whim. That kind of radical and erratic change to a program on short-notice is a bad precedent to set. And an even worse one to passively sit by and accept.
3. By turning the winners and loser on their heads in such a way, Amazon is showing total disregard for the very market they established. It tells me that the market isn't functioning, and that Amazon doesn't even have faith in it. 
4. It will be much easier to slowly lower payment and have many authors none the wiser as their page reads will be confusing and the data muddy. it's already muddy and getting worse with each new KU iteration.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> I don't see it this way, though, and mentioned the same on another thread. They did not hide units borrowed as they _never provided _that information. They took away the metric they were using to pay authors by -- the number of borrows that had been read to 10% -- and replaced it with the new metric they're using to pay by. Nothing nefarious there that I can see. And yes, I would LOVE to have ALL THE DATA, ALL THE TIME! But it isn't like they actually took away insight into the number of borrows _because they didn't_.


Hmmm..there's no question you outclass me when it comes to knowing your data and what it means.
So a couple of things. Firstly, I never ever liked borrows and especially not ghost borrows. I thought that when KU first started, Amazon created a rigged game and even though I ended up using that to my advantage...it still stinks.

The moment KU and the strange rankings advantage started for books in the program, I thought it was a really nasty change of direction. To me, the more transparency in the rankings and sales and so on--the better.

Now that they've removed borrows entirely, I'm left looking at only pages read. I noticed in the other thread, you said that Amazon was no longer paying us for borrows so the metric was now meaningless.

That's kind of my point!

I think that the change to pages creates a level of impenetrability with the data, and perhaps someone with your sophistication can penetrate it. But what I'm seeing so far is a lot of murkiness and I don't think it's going to get better.

I think Amazon is creating barriers to authors and outside parties having a handle on how many units are moving and what that creates for rankings, etc. They want less transparency, not more.

I find that to be a troubling development. For me, even with ghost borrows, there was a bit of consistency in the old system. Ghost borrows tended to be relatively few from what I could tell, proportionately to how many seemed to turn to reads. And I could have a sense of it from when my rankings jumped and I didn't see a corresponding jump on my dashboard.

Again, it wasn't perfect, and I didn't like it--but it was bearable.

Now, there is simply pages. This further obscures the issue at hand, which is just how many customers do I have?

It makes sense to me that Amazon is discouraging that. They discourage outside promotions, punishing rankings when you engage their system from a non-organic standpoint. They discourage having a robust mailing list and Facebook fans and so forth. I actually stopped announcing my books in advance because I did better with the slow build then when my readers would flood in and purchase all at once.

So Amazon is attempting to create a dependence on their particular ecosystem, and I think the new version of KU is taking it a step further. The more they remove us from data, the further removed we are from understanding our audience size, and engaging with readers, the more control Amazon has over the readership.

I get it, I don't have to say it's good for authors though either.


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

The only people who sees this as a good thing are the people who benefit the most from it. But to the people like me who should benefit from it, don't, then there might be a problem.
Personally I think KU 2.0 is a crock of shit until they fix the way they count their pages. When changing a font or a font size adds 150 pages to their bs page number scheme then there's a problem. Once they fix that though I could see KU being a good program but most authors wildly over estimate how many people finish books. I think it's going to look bad in the eyes of a lot more people when the numbers come out in August.
They lost my faith when my book has 112k words and someone with far less words has a lot more pages according to their count. And the only reply I got was a copy and paste answer. 
/rant

I'm in til the end of August to use a count down deal and then I'll take my chances of going wide.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

David S. said:


> Or maybe the simplest explanation is the best: Amazon just doesn't give a damn what we, or the media, think.


I think they care when it makes sense for them to care, and it's anybody's guess what triggers a reaction of caring from Amazon. They are intentionally guarded to a fault when it comes to how, when and why they make decisions.

They'd like us to believe they're an impenetrable, unstoppable force that doesn't care about anything. That discourages opposition and makes it easier to lead people in whatever direction Amazon would like to see them go.

But I have a feeling that even tough ol' Amazon has a point at which bad press effects them--likely it would have to hit their stock price in a major way to truly create changes in behavior. My guess is that they're constantly trying to control the discussion and their calculated communications is part of that tendency.

In other words, they still care. A little.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

To me the bottom line is the important thing.  If I make more money than before I am happy.  If it drops below what I can get elsewhere I will put my books back on D2D.

I don't really care about the details.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

P.S.Just saw this on Selena Kitt's twitter: 

Mais @maisieruckus
Amazon is blocking every tweet made after the one about indie authors and KU from showing up on my author page. #releasetherate #erotica

Mine too! selena kitt added

-------------------------------------------------
So you guys still think Amazon doesn't care?  They care, believe me...they're trying to cull which messages show up on author pages.  They're watching the fallout closely.


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

gorvnice said:


> P.S.Just saw this on Selena Kitt's twitter:
> 
> Mine too! selena kitt added,
> 
> ...


You mean the bots care. They've always been on the lookout for off color tweets. I had one about shark anatomy (it was during Shark Week last year) blocked. Is Amazon hypersensitive about shark/boat molestation, too?


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> You mean the bots care. They've always been on the lookout for off color tweets. I had one about shark anatomy (it was during Shark Week last year) blocked. Is Amazon hypersensitive about shark/boat molestation, too?


How is a #releasetherate tweet an off color tweet and why would bots be on the lookout? Also, Amazon isn't just blocking that tweet but all of the ones following, regardless of what they say.

In other words, immediately following a #releasetherate tweet, the entire feed is no longer updating after that point. The tweets are old and no new ones come through.

At least, that's how it seems thus far.


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

gorvnice said:


> How is a #releasetherate tweet an off color tweet and why would bots be on the lookout? Also, Amazon isn't just blocking that tweet but all of the ones following, regardless of what they say.
> 
> In other words, immediately following a #releasetherate tweet, the entire feed is no longer updating after that point. The tweets are old and no new ones come through.
> 
> At least, that's how it seems thus far.


I honestly don't care. Dude, write something. I left and wrote a 3,000-word chapter and came back while my iced green tea is brewing and you're still here. Nothing is going to change. It is what it is for the foreseeable future. You can't control Amazon. You can control your writing schedule.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I honestly don't care. Dude, write something. I left and wrote a 3,000-word chapter and came back while my iced green tea is brewing and you're still here. Nothing is going to change. It is what it is for the foreseeable future. You can't control Amazon. You can control your writing schedule.


Haha, true. I have a lot of writing to do and you beat me at that, hands down.

But honestly, you might feel differently if you were in my shoes. Still--you're correct. I'm going to write now.

Bye-bye.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I honestly don't care. Dude, write something. I left and wrote a 3,000-word chapter and came back while my iced green tea is brewing and you're still here. Nothing is going to change. It is what it is for the foreseeable future. You can't control Amazon. You can control your writing schedule.


THIS. 100 Percent.

I don't trust Amazon, but I don't trust Apple, Google, Kobo or any of the other ones, either. So what?

Sell books out of the trunk of my car?

No thanks.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I do not like the term "all authors" when saying that KU 2.0 is bad. It is not any worse than 1.0. It just depends on who you are, what you write, and how you price. The system was broken, not from the standpoint of authors, but from the standpoint of Amazon. Their payment system was stupid and they ended up not only paying out far more money than they needed to, but they also turned the KU library into one that was filled with mostly shorts. This drove customers away, and it drove authors of novels away. In addition, it attracted shorts like a magnet, and pushed novelists into breaking up their novels, costing Amazon even more money in payouts. (And don't say it was just more borrows splitting the pot, because Amazon had to add to that pot to keep it high enough that not everyone went running for the exit.)

If that were your company, you'd do something to fix it. (And you'd likely fire the people who conceived it to begin with.)

So, just looking at the surface, you know that you've got lots of shorts, and not enough novels. So of course, you find a way to decrease the payouts to one, and increase them to the other. And using a metric that ends up paying something similar to a sale of the same work (at average market price for length/genre) is a logical solution, regardless of how much we do or do not like it. But you have to admit, to Amazon, it makes sense.

Are there better ways to even this out? Possibly, but every one that I can think of would result in the same thing. Authors of shorts would have gotten screwed. In the end, the gravy train that was shorts in KU 1.0 was destined to go away, just as Scribd is destined to fail by trying to pay retail for borrows without enough cash to support it. If we should be made about anything, it should be the way that Amazon started KU. If KU 1.0 had been started with the same terms as 2.0, no one would have batted an eyelash. 

Now, I agree that not seeing the borrows is crippling, it not so from the standpoint of seeing earnings. It is crippling in the form of calculating the effectiveness of promotions, judging read thru rates of series, and in judging the effectiveness of KU for getting new readers. If Amazon really wants people to agree to exclusivity, they really need to give not only give us back the borrow counts, but a lot more data as well. They don't have to pay us more, they just have to make it easier to effectively run our business and sell more goods.

I'm not sure how much I buy into the notion that Amazon is taking actions to prevent us from growing our mailing lists, or tweeting, or marketing outside of Amazon. Think about it. Amazon is in the business of selling. Why would they not want you to drive customers to them. It's a win-win. In fact, it is only within the last couple days that I've even heard of such accusations.

Of course, I could be wrong... about everything. It wouldn't be the first time.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I just looked at my Amazon page.  No reviews removed.  So no I don't think Amazon is looking at anyone's Facebook. 
What I do think is people are telling authors that Amazon wouldn't let them review when in fact the person didn't want to take the time but also didn't want to hurt the author's feelings.

Actually I have lost 3 reviews that I wrote.  The books were unpublished.


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## Diane Patterson (Jun 17, 2012)

gorvnice said:


> So you guys still think Amazon doesn't care? They care, believe me...they're trying to cull which messages show up on author pages. They're watching the fallout closely.


What seems to have happened is that on July 1 Amazon changed the algorithm for dealing with Twitter handles -- they now require you to enter them with an @-sign attached.

Yes, they could have attached them to the handles they already had. But they didn't.

If you enter in your Twitter handle with the @-sign, ALL tweets show up. Including ones mentioning #releasetherate.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Diane Patterson said:


> What seems to have happened is that on July 1 Amazon changed the algorithm for dealing with Twitter handles -- they now require you to enter them with an @-sign attached.
> 
> Yes, they could have attached them to the handles they already had. But they didn't.
> 
> If you enter in your Twitter handle with the @-sign, ALL tweets show up. Including ones mentioning #releasetherate.


Thanks for clearing that up. Seems like a false alarm. I did some writing but now I must go do more. Thanks for the great convo everyone!


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## delly_xo (Oct 29, 2014)

Briteka said:


> I just had my best month ever on Google last month, topping 10k for the first time. These streams are definitely not drying up for me.


Can we chat? My Google is abysmal, I can't even find my book on Google Play! I've made 3$ since I put it on their store several months ago.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

cinisajoy said:


> No. It won't be long vs short. It will be on pages.
> Every author, long, short or in between that has 100 pages read will make 50 cents. If they have 1000 pages read, they will all make $5.
> 10,000 pages will be $50.
> Individual book length now means nothing. It comes down to how many pages are being read per book.
> ...


I've been thinking a lot about the KU Math. Cin points out something important. IT makes it equal only if the short writers have 10,000 readers. A novel writer needs 1,000. So, shorts writers need a lot more fan base now than a novel writer. Just saying.

Getting started on building up that newsletter list a bit more now. ;-)


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## T.K. (Mar 8, 2011)

> You can't control Amazon. You can control your writing schedule.


And you control who distributes your books.

We are independent authors who have become dependent on ONE retailer. Think about that. I'm sure Amazon does. Maybe it's time to reclaim the spirit of being an Indie and create our own new courses for success. We carved out this path and were trailblazers in very uncertain times. We CAN do it again.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I hate to point out the obvious, and please no one take this the wrong way. But novels have always been preferred by the majority of readers over shorts. That's why in nearly every open marketplace, there will be more novels than shorts. It's got nothing to do with the value of one over the other. It's just one form is more popular than the other, just as some genres are more popular than others. Therefore, it will always be more difficult to make a good living as an indie writing shorts, as your target market is smaller. You either have to write more stories to feed a small audience, or grow a bigger audience, or both. It isn't really a matter of fair or unfair, it's just the market. Amazon should have seen this before they implemented KU 1.0. They could have avoided ruining a lot of people's lives, and the bad press, all at once.

THIS, more than anything, is what makes me mad. None of this should have happened to begin with. Of course, I didn't see this coming as a result of KU 1.0 when it was implemented, but then again, I'm just a writer. Amazon SHOULD have people that can predict this sort of thing. They just didn't bother. They just said, let's do X and see what happens. That's what sucks.


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

T.K. Richardson said:


> And you control who distributes your books.
> 
> We are independent authors who have become dependent on ONE retailer. Think about that. I'm sure Amazon does. Maybe it's time to reclaim the spirit of being an Indie and create our own new courses for success. We carved out this path and were trailblazers in very uncertain times. We CAN do it again.


How?


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Personally, I just want to pay my mortgage, property taxes, gigantic health insurance bill.... You know. I don't want to have to get a real job. If Amazon is the best way--I'm afraid I'm just that easily bought.


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

Rosalind James said:


> Personally, I just want to pay my mortgage, property taxes, gigantic health insurance bill.... You know. I don't want to have to get a real job. If Amazon is the best way--I'm afraid I'm just that easily bought.


You and me both. I'm not out to change the indie world. I just want to play in it and enjoy myself.


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## sinapse (Apr 28, 2015)

gorvnice said:


> Now, there is simply pages. This further obscures the issue at hand, which is just how many customers do I have?
> 
> Easy: *NONE* - we are suppliers to *their* store, and through Amazon, to *their* customers. *They created this market with their capital and amazingly sustained effort*, even while the trad publishers and sellers hated every step Bezos and Co took. Amazon didn't invent the ebook. *They invented a way for it to be viable across the globe*. They are bringing reading of a vast number of books to many millions who don't live in a fine city with big bookstores full of books they can't afford anyway. Or who live in a little town where the public library barely has enough funds to operate. THEY, Amazon have the customers, not us. And THEY, these controlling suits, are the reason many many thousands of writers have a chance to make a living from their art and work in an industry that has locked the vast majority of writers out of the ballpark. For two hundred years.
> 
> ...


Be very clear, please. I am not defending or applauding or celebrating Amazon. I'm going to be "hurt" as much as "helped" by KU 2.0. That is simply of no importance. If I were the CEO of Amazon I would manage things differently, as I in fact did when I was running a large services division of a Fortune Ten-type company. But who's to say my way would have yielded the net benefits to our industry and its users, the millions of readers everywhere, as the Amazon team has done?

My advice FWIW is to stop repeating over and over how "unfair" this new policy is, or Amazon as a whole is, or how hard it will be to manage with just the pages read number, or how rotten the policy of exclusivity is. Stop blaming your fellow suppliers for getting too much of the pot now, or for getting too much of the pot before now. As Amanda has said, *the pot is growing*. As I pointed out a week back, the KU pot is 1/1000 of Amazon's business, and they could well decide to arbitrarily increase it. Realize, those of you who have not spent frustrating decades inside a big corporation, that *Amazon's bosses are paid to grow things, not kill things.*

Instead, Get on with figuring out what CAN be done with what our single customer is willing to give us to work with. That single customer is Amazon. By all means, develop some additional customers. But don't assume Apple or Google would be any easier to deal with if they had even 5% of the economic power in this industry that our number one customer has amassed.

Amazon is a fact of economic life. If all or a significant part of your livelihood is based on that fact, then figure out how to use it to help you accomplish what you want to do, instead of bewailing what its implacable existence prevents you from doing.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

T.K. Richardson said:


> And you control who distributes your books.
> 
> We are independent authors who have become dependent on ONE retailer. Think about that. I'm sure Amazon does. Maybe it's time to reclaim the spirit of being an Indie and create our own new courses for success. We carved out this path and were trailblazers in very uncertain times. We CAN do it again.


I'll leave that for you young people.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

1) THIS: Well I can only phrase similar things different ways so many times, lol.
1. Amazon is hiding more data.  There's no way that seeing pages read is anywhere near as robust a metric as units borrowed.  I had a lot of both and it's not even close.  I want to know how many units (knowing pages read would be awesome too, but not at the expense of seeing how many units move).
2. Amazon is controlling the payout and creating vast divergences in what's paid even when units moved are the same, changing payment structure on a whim.  That kind of radical and erratic change to a program on short-notice is a bad precedent to set.  And an even worse one to passively sit by and accept.
3. By turning the winners and loser on their heads in such a way, Amazon is showing total disregard for the very market they established.  It tells me that the market isn't functioning, and that Amazon doesn't even have faith in it.  
4. It will be much easier to slowly lower payment and have many authors none the wiser as their page reads will be confusing and the data muddy.  it's already muddy and getting worse with each new KU iteration.


*******

2) The revolution isn't going to be carried forward by those who are making significant money from Amazon.

Just as authors published by the Big 5 were not interested in the ebook revolution.


The real opportunities are for authors who aren't yet making significant money from Amazon.

*****

3) Someone quoted how much money Amazon makes in revenues. It's much more relevant to look at the overall picture. They make small losses every quarter on tens of billions of dollars in revenue.

Nearly all their businesses operate on this principle i.e.

Maximize Number of Users and Amount of revenue
Minimize profits (not sure if this is by design or due to an inability to understand profit making)

As an author you should figure out whether or not this will affect their ebook division.
Whether or not you should be part of that.

The key figures/questions are

A) Books are a $26 billion a year business in the US.

What size business will they be in future, and how much will Amazon control?

B) Out of that $26 billion a yaer, what share do authors get? Perhaps 8% to 10%?

What share will authors get in future? How much would they have to get to make the same amount?
How will the money get redistributed.


*****

4) Fundamentally

you can sell directly to readers and make 70% to 90% using services like Gumroad.

Right now all of you are sening all your readers to Amazon.

Why not build a site yourselves and send all your readers there

If enough authors club together, it'll become significant.

You'll be pleasantly surprised by how many authors will flock to you once they realize

a) There's 70% or more cut even on low priced books.
b) There are no exclusivity and other conditions that reduce what you can earn outside the store
c) The lists aren't dicated based on how much money it generates for the store.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

gorvnice said:


> Nope, if its good news and something to be crowed, a company crows. The simplest explanation about burying good news is that the news wasn't good.


I'd say the simplest explanation is that Amazon remembers when all the Chicken Littles started screaming about the KUpocalypse last year.



ireaderreview said:


> you can sell directly to readers and make 70% to 90% using services like Gumroad.
> 
> Right now all of you are sening all your readers to Amazon.
> 
> ...


Not true. There are sites that offer those kinds of conditions. DriveThru Fiction comes to mind as one. I also think that iTunes pays 70% royalties across the board without any exclusivity. There are still problems with using those third party sites or going direct.

1. Audience size - Amazon still has one of the biggest ebook audiences out there. I love DTF's system, I love their royalty rate, I love some of the extras they offer like free promotion points, box set bundling, ability to email previous customers, etc. But at the end of the day, their audience is a fraction of Amazon's.

2. Ease of use - If you use DTF or Gumroad, you still have the problem of side-loading, which is a big issue. If you sell direct to readers, then you have to also take on the role of tech support. You're adding in an extra step with more work and a lot of people--both readers and writers--don't want to bother with that. I have a plugin called MyBookTable and the premium version includes Gumroad integration, so I put my titles on Gumroad. I even discounted all of the titles on Gumroad and advertised it on my site that way--if you buy from Gumroad, you get a dollar off. Do you know how many sales I've made on Gumroad since I put my books on there several months ago? Zero. Do you know how many free downloads I've gotten off Gumroad? Zero. Even when I launch a new book, readers prefer to click through to the stores they have ereader accounts with. Because they know that if they buy from Amazon or iTunes or wherever, even though they have to pay a dollar more, they get the convenience of not having to deal with side-loading.

3. Discoverability - Even if other sites offer better deals in terms of royalty rates and lack of exclusivity, Amazon still has one major leg up on the competition--discoverability. It's so much easier to get your books discovered organically on Amazon than it is on any other platform. Sure, it's great that you can get 70% off a $0.99 title on iTunes or DTF, but 70% of nothing is still nothing.

4. Advertising - Another reason why Amazon is the big dog is because the vast majority of the advertising sites cater almost exclusively to Amazon. Even when you do have a site that offers links to more than one vendor, the numbers on Amazon almost always dwarf the numbers on the other platforms. I managed to get an ENT ad recently on one of my permafree titles. I got thousands of downloads from Amazon from that, and then I got twenty-five downloads from iTunes and nothing from Kobo, Google, or B&N.

There are a lot more factors than just royalty rate and exclusivity to consider.


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## Eric Z (Apr 28, 2015)

So the gorilla in the room is still WHY did amazon do it?

I totally agree with you, -zon knew it was going to be a blow so they tried to bury/pad it.

But why screw your authors like this?

In the end amazon will also have less revenue!

So it looks like they are "culling" the "bad" authors out, who just push books out there en mass, 2 per week.

Again it begs the question -- If people are buying them -- who cares!?

The market will decide right?


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

My RANT on the KU argument/debate/discussion
I said at the beginning of KU1 that Amazon was seeking to turn itself into the reader service and intervene between the reader and the author by mass producing material, forcing the author to become a feeder service like milk at the farmers gate. That it would penalise the author in the same way as supermarkets driving down the price per pint in the stores. (KU1 did this and KU2 is going to be another nail into the coffin of the 'Indie' author. Don't believe me? or think I'm another 'Chicken Little'? I don't really care, I just think people should understand what it is they are tying themselves into).

This is borne out by the repeated efforts to force the back and front matter out of the ebooks as well as links to books. Quite simply - it [Amazon] does not want the authors to build their own lists because it needs a totally dependent supply chain. Which it has, in essence, been getting already (plenty of evidence on these threads that this is true).

Amazon, as a business considers all of YOUR readers as AMAZON CUSTOMERS. In it's view you/we have no right to the names and emails of their hard earned subscribers/customers. They will work hard to minimise your ability to scrape that information through your books without making it blatantly obvious. They want exclusive access to the readers.

I actually don't even think its about short/long or bad/good authors so much as trying to gain a tighter control of the ebook market. There are plenty of examples of quantity over quality and by giving their customers 'as much as they can eat' the readers are less and less concerned over quality and length - a case of 'never mind the quality - feel the width'.

As it happens, I don't even believe that Amazon 'likes' the subscription service - it's competing with its competitors who are trying to gain a sharp edge to cut Amazon down. The company is reacting to external forces and some of those forces are the authors themselves. Us, the indies as well as the traditional publishers.

The more authors accept KU, the more it will become a milkround for Amazon and the more dependent authors will be on the goodwill of Amazon for their monthly cheques. They will end up working harder, delivering more - just to stand still. Turning the book market into a consumer product like mass-produced red wine, or cheese - different label - same gunk.

Each to their own, it's why I asked about 'are we really 'Indies' to which the answer I got was - why should I care?

At the end of the day, you can walk into the abbatoir with your eyes open or closed. Either way you will end up as a string of sausages or a burger on a supermarket shelf.


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## Melody Simmons (Jul 8, 2012)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think your definition of proof is different than mine. Ignoring that, though, the pool of money is higher than it was last month. If people are losing money, it has to be going somewhere. Now, just because people aren't here dancing on the graves of others that doesn't mean it hasn't been a positive change for others. I'm not talking about really big sellers, either. I've seen quite a few smaller authors talking about positive changes to their bottom line in various private groups. They're scared to come here and say it because people will jump all over them. I don't blame them. Move away from that, though. Six months ago (or however long ago it was) Amazon pointed authors in the direction of longer works. Why? They were herding people to the area they knew they were going. Everyone knew this was going to happen eventually. It was only a matter of time. Now, could Amazon have given more notice? An argument can be made on both sides. Amazon knew there were going to be losers in this scenario. A longer rollout means more time for abuse. They opted to rip the bandage off. Now, their example was stupid. Their example was stupid when they announced KU in the first place, though, so I'm not surprised. They should have used a penny as the example. That was moronic on their part. I genuinely feel sorry for those who were making a living on KU alone. I do. This is a fluid business, though. No one is forced into Select.


Well if the KU total money is the same or even more then it simply means the distribution is going to change, but the money will go somewhere - different people are going to get more now and others less. So some will be happy indeed...with time we will see who they are. Hopefully it will be the dedicated authors with good books. Hopefully it will not be only a very tiny percentage of bestsellers whilst others get nothing...


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

What I and my guildmates object to, alongside I'm sure many other Amazon authors, is that Amazon needlessly expends time, money and energy maintaining an adversarial relationship with us.

They pointlessly build barriers between writers and readers, fail to allow us to leverage the strength of their platform and in the process produce exactly the same results as the traditional publishing industry: a few high profile self-congratulatory examples of "why can't my book sell like that?" and then everybody else.

Meanwhile, all KU2 proves is that authors are once again beset with the "solve the puzzle, win a prize" approach to Internet marketing. Google does it with their ever-moving SEO goalposts, Steam does it by turning a wild pack of paranoid foul-mouthed malcontents loose on games that aren't even finished yet, and now here's Amazon with a system that by all appearances is the last mystery in a Nancy Drew adventure.

The only true conclusion that has been consistent throughout is this: The way to succeed on Amazon is to pour a torrential flood of new titles into the big smoky machine and hope that the sheer weight of them all is enough to break through the hundred-foot doors that keep Kong off the rest of the island. That or dump several hundreds or thousands on Bookbub traditional advertising. In other words, what Amazon is telling us (without actually saying the words) is the only way to succeed is to become a traditional publisher and just buy everyone off.

It just doesn't have to be this way.



> This is borne out by the repeated efforts to force the back and front matter out of the ebooks as well as links to books.


Can't link to other books any more, eh? I'm shocked. Why would Amazon want to limit access to other books? What's next? No author names to prevent uncontrolled Googling?


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

justphil said:


> Can't link to other books any more, eh? I'm shocked. Why would Amazon want to limit access to other books? What's next? No author names to prevent uncontrolled Googling?


Why would you be shocked? It has it's own linking page at the end of every book which over-rides your back matter - why would it do that if it didn't want to control who sees and does what - it recommends OTHER authors books on the last page of YOURS - is that acceptable to you? and yes, they might just turn off the SEO at some point. Amazon doesn't want YOU to get famous - IT wants to hold the controls and drive.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Rubens4tune said:


> Why would you be shocked? It has it's own linking page at the end of every book which over-rides your back matter - why would it do that if it didn't want to control who sees and does what - it recommends OTHER authors books on the last page of YOURS - is that acceptable to you? and yes, they might just turn off the SEO at some point. Amazon doesn't want YOU to get famous - IT wants to hold the controls and drive.


I haven't found this to be true at all. If you sell well on Amazon, they actively will approach you and help you to sell better. They take feedback from authors a lot and are often testing things behind the scenes to improve both author and customer experiences.

Also... my backmatter is not replaced. The stuff asking people to rate the book and suggesting other books is behind my own backmatter. So I don't even know what you are talking about. My links to website and mailing list are there just fine, not removed at all.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

Annie B said:


> I haven't found this to be true at all. If you sell well on Amazon, they actively will approach you and help you to sell better. They take feedback from authors a lot and are often testing things behind the scenes to improve both author and customer experiences.
> 
> Also... my backmatter is not replaced. The stuff asking people to rate the book and suggesting other books is behind my own backmatter. So I don't even know what you are talking about. My links to website and mailing list are there just fine, not removed at all.


No, The link comes immediately after the last page of the story (i.e. The End'), the backmatter comes after that if you can navigate past the Amazon pop-up. On my kindle and kindle paperwhite.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

justphil said:


> What I and my guildmates object to, alongside I'm sure many other Amazon authors, is that Amazon needlessly expends time, money and energy maintaining an adversarial relationship with us.
> 
> ...
> 
> It just doesn't have to be this way.


Explain what you mean by adversarial -- and how you would correct your relationship.

We are suppliers. Amazon is our distributor. There are thousands of suppliers. Some may have the potential to make more money than others if Amazon would just DO something to help them. But HOW does Amazon identify the potential moneymakers? By promoting everyone with anything to sell the same? By democratizing the marketplace? By becoming the benevolent big brother and giving everyone a hand up? How is THAT a sustainable business model?

Amazon has plenty of triggers to help sell a book. More triggers than any other sales venue out there. I've pointed them out time and again in response to your "woe is me" posts. You want to play in the marketplace but you don't want to play by the same rules as everyone else plays. You want some big corporate entity to notice YOU and then to bend over backwards helping to promote your wares while what? Ignoring the vendors that make them money.

Yes, yes, advertising is EVIL! Making you find your own buyers is insensitive to the needs of the supplier. Yes? How are you getting on with the other sales venues out there, hmm? Is BN promoting you? iBooks? Kobo? Each of those venues is actually actively promoting indies who are mid-list-ish. You don't even have to be a big seller. But they do all require one thing: Effort on the part of the supplier. That's you. For suppliers to at least boot-strap themselves up the foodchain far enough to be noticed as a potential supplier of products their customers want to be connected to.

So what EXACTLY is it you want from a distributor when you're not willing to compete in the marketplace for a place at their limited-seating promo table? Seriously, what are you asking for? Spell it out.

Honestly, this type of rant sounds exactly the same as we used to hear from authors wailing at the gates of agents and publishers: Just give me a chance! Well, we now have our chance. And yet some folk still insist it's gatekeepers blocking their way to success at every turn.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

Rubens4tune said:


> No, The link comes immediately after the last page of the story (i.e. The End'), the backmatter comes after that if you can navigate past the Amazon pop-up. On my kindle and kindle paperwhite.


I have Justice Calling on my Kindle, and it shows the backmatter before the link recommending other books.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

I picked up two new Kindle books today. Went to the last chapter and flipped from there. Saw the links and back matter just fine.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

On every book I download, the End comes, then the Amazon pop-up which fills the page. I don't have any preset defaults. I get to the last page and the first thing I do is give the book 5 stars (trust me if I get to the end it's worth the stars IMO). If I can get my finger into the tiny space between the kindle screen edge and the amazon pop up I can navigate further. If you have physical buttons maybe its different.

Quite often additional chapters of the next book are provided, or the book seems to continue (so maybe the robot picks the wrong place to set the pop up) even though the story is finished -- in these cases I do see the backmatter.


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## books_mb (Oct 29, 2013)

gorvnice said:


> That kind of radical and erratic change to a program on short-notice is a bad precedent to set.


I have to disagree (only partly though). I don't see anything radical, erratic or even surprising about the recent change to KU. To be honest, I saw that train coming from a hundred miles because getting $ 1.35 for the borrow of a 20-page book is simply not a sustainable model. The free market would not give this to anyone (outliers excluded), why expect Amazon to do that? When I heard authors report a borrows to sales ratio of 5:1, my gut immediately told me that this is not going to end well. Putting KU 1.0 in place was of course Amazon's fault, you could call it radical and erratic, I would, and I'm certainly not saying that writers of short fiction or non-fiction "gamed" the system, it was just a rational business decision, but the recent change to KU 2.0 was absolutely necessary to make it sustainable. Just FYI: my income went down by roughly 30 % with KU 2.0, so I don't profit from this change in any way. I still prefer it though because it's a realistic model. I rather have a sustainable 70 % than a clearly unsustainable 100 %.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> But looking on from the sidelines of this whole thing, it's no wonder that those who stand to benefit from KU 2.0 are keeping quiet. One, it's rude to jump for joy when so many fellow authors are taking a hit.


Tell that to Hugh Howey. He's been on various places on the web practically giddy about how those upstart short story writers are going to get a butt-load of hurt because of this.

He's not the only one. There are plenty of people having a grand time lately.



> Two, jealousy is a powerful thing and no one wants their career sabotaged or their work attacked (things KB has been known to facilitate).


I hope this doesn't happen, but if people keep insisting on behaving like they've just won a big video game, but hey, let's be friends, how about round two, someone is going to crack and the retaliation will begin. We aren't talking about losing a small amount of money. Some people are wondering how they'll keep a roof over their heads and feed their children at the end of the month.

Real people are hurting here, folks. Writers like you and me, who only wanted to sell their stories. It's not us against them in a fantasy world. It's not fake blood and gelatin scars. It's real pain.



> And three, the vehement response and outright vitriol someone like Hugh Howey has received, just for pointing out the positives of KU 2.0, is pretty intense.


Hugh Howey deserves everything he gets. He's the one posting about how short story writers aren't putting in the same amount of work, or how their work is not worth as much as a novel. From someone who is bragging about getting shorter works done, it seems kind of odd to me he has that sort of attitude. But then I remember, he's not playing by the same rules we are. Nor is Rosalind James, or Amanda Lee, or the other "best sellers" who feel the need to put down anyone questioning these changes.

I frankly am tired of being lectured about this is how business works, or that it's no big deal to Amazon, or how it's finally "fair" that shorts are getting pushed out of KU. Amazon was all for short stories, especially erotica, when it was building KU from nothing.

And nobody stopped anyone from writing stories to take advantage of a program that AMAZON developed, that AMAZON let run for a year, knowing how it favored short works over long. I don't believe that was an oversight, or a miscalculation. Amazon has shown over the years that they know full well what their customers want, and how to get it for them. They could have set up a tiered system (which I said from day one was a better way to payout), but they chose not to. *THEY CHOSE.* Not erotica writers, not romance writers, not any indie writers.

Don't forget that this comes along as Scribd announced that they were basically purging romance from their subscription service. Erotica and romance readers use subscription services a lot. They get their money's worth, which is not good for the company's bottom line.

I don't need to be talked down to by authors who have special privileges from Amazon, and I certainly don't need it from readers who have no idea how hard I work, no matter what length I write, or how this affects me and my friends. You know, those fellow indie writers that Howey is supposedly rooting for.

Geez. Some folks here are blinded by status and the appearance of a hero, when every single one of us is no better than the rest. We are all trying to fulfill a dream, to be writers and make a living from our words.


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## books_mb (Oct 29, 2013)

she-la-ti-da said:


> Tell that to Hugh Howey. He's been on various places on the web practically giddy about how those upstart short story writers are going to get a butt-load of hurt because of this.
> 
> He's not the only one. There are plenty of people having a grand time lately.


There's also a lot of interpreting (I) "old system favored short fiction, was unfair, had to go" as (II) "glad those short story writers got it". (I) is not equal to (II). I see a lot of authors saying (I), but rarely anyone saying (II).


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Explain what you mean by adversarial


Announcing a tectonic shift in a major revenue source with two weeks notice.



> We are suppliers. Amazon is our distributor.


We should be working together.



> How is THAT a sustainable business model?


Amazon proved it was a sustainable business model by launching KDP in the first place.



> Ignoring the vendors that make them money.


False dilemma. Amazon loses nothing by promoting any particular book or series of books. They have unlimited promotional capacity. If they didn't, nobody's books would sell.



> Seriously, what are you asking for? Spell it out.


Fair enough. I want to know *EXACTLY* how many people are visiting my book pages, and I want to know *EXACTLY* where they are coming from. Further, I want demographics on those visits: Age, gender, income level, zip code. And I want that information over time so I can track my conversion rates and promotional effectiveness over time. If I took a poll I guarantee you my guild would vote unanimously with me, and our normally sweet and quiet romance writer would be in the front row with a fist raised.

If Amazon gave us that information, then I'd consider 30% to 65% of our cover prices and exclusivity a fair trade for some titles. After all, such information would only help Amazon and us sell more books, wouldn't it?

But Amazon's not going to do it, and I think we all know why. It's the same reason they want us to measure success by pageviews instead of unit sales. Unit sales are raw market power. Pageviews is sharecropping, and we all saw how pageviews worked out for web advertisers.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

gorvnice said:


> I did my time in the corporate world before going full-time as an author.
> 
> And one very clear-cut way that most public companies deal with releasing bad news is to try and somehow bury it. The timing of delivery of bad news is meant to have as little impact as possible, so its typically done before a holiday, etc.
> 
> ...


All this hangs on the holiday weekend which only happens in the USA. It is typical to assume the rest of the world does not exist, but if they really wanted a world wide hideout holiday, they would have chosen Christmas or Easter. The new payout affects EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, not just those celebrating Independence Day.

Amazon wants KU to work; if it didn't it would simply close it down altogether, they have that right. Instead they try a new scheme to make things fairer to all and they get accused of all sorts of deviant behaviour. I am pleased with the new scheme and I am not alone. So what excuse do you give them for trotting out good news just before the all important holiday weekend?


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Rubens4tune said:


> No, The link comes immediately after the last page of the story (i.e. The End'), the backmatter comes after that if you can navigate past the Amazon pop-up. On my kindle and kindle paperwhite.


Not in my Kindle... I just paged to the end of four different books. All of them have their backmatter (put in by the author) first, then the very final read page (after author bio etc) pops up the "leave a rating for this book" thingy and the suggested other titles. It's a pop-up, too, I can just click it closed. Also in every book I just looked at, the pop-up listed more of that author's books along with a couple other suggestions.

So... yeah. No seeing what you are seeing. No rewriting backmatter. Totally pushing other books by the same author even in the pop-up, etc.

In my experience, as I said, Amazon helps people who sell well to sell better. Actively.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> You mean the bots care. They've always been on the lookout for off color tweets. I had one about shark anatomy (it was during Shark Week last year) blocked. Is Amazon hypersensitive about shark/boat molestation, too?


It isn't just about bots caring. Amazon has software that closely monitors *every tweet* made about them. Last year a member of this board tweeted her concern that Amazon might unpublish all of her books. Within hours she received a phone call from Amazon Executive Consumer relations about the tweet. If you say anything about Amazon in a tweet, they'll react...and fast. They also read every comment made on this board about them.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

Annie B said:


> Not in my Kindle... I just paged to the end of four different books. All of them have their backmatter (put in by the author) first, then the very final read page (after author bio etc) pops up the "leave a rating for this book" thingy and the suggested other titles. It's a pop-up, too, I can just click it closed. Also in every book I just looked at, the pop-up listed more of that author's books along with a couple other suggestions.
> 
> So... yeah. No seeing what you are seeing. No rewriting backmatter. Totally pushing other books by the same author even in the pop-up, etc.
> 
> In my experience, as I said, Amazon helps people who sell well to sell better. Actively.


Weird - I'm an IT geek and have several kindles and the same happens on both. I'm wondering if Amazon handles things differently in different countries. Mine are registered in the UK. I would be interested in hearing from others in the UK if their experience matches mine. Otherwise i will have to go looking for a reason why its occurring.

Most platforms help writers sell books. It wouldn't be clever not to having got all of those items on their websites to sell.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

justphil said:


> Fair enough. I want to know *EXACTLY* how many people are visiting my book pages, and I want to know *EXACTLY* where they are coming from. Further, I want demographics on those visits: Age, gender, income level, zip code.


As a reader, I don't want you knowing that, and would, quite frankly, be massively pissed off at Amazon if I thought they were giving you details of where I live and how much I earn just because I happened to idly look at your book page.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

Clearly when Amazon introduced KU, they had either acted hastily, or not realized the impact and *inequity* it would have on authors by making payments of borrows standardized.

One the face of it, their deal was a bad one for the majority of authors in them wanting to participate, in so far as the royalty for books at $2.99 and above was less then the author would normally receive for a sale. That in itself was a slap in the face to many authors, but made sense to Amazon to maintain a payout ratio to ensure a profit.

An anomaly quickly came to light that books priced at say 99c - $2.98 were receiving more for a borrow that they would for a sale. More to the point, many authors realized that this benefited short works which could be pumped out quicker than full length books.

Amazon would be quick to spot this trend of publishing shorter works. They would also have received many complaints from authors not satisfied as to the inequity of the payout. I have no doubt that they would also have statistics of consumer complaints that the catalog was being inundated with new release short stories. Any analysis will show as a fact that the majority of customers don't want shorts.

Amazon are customer centric, not supplier centric. Any out-in-the-open PR is going to be Amazon shouting from the rooftops about a service they are introducing for consumers and not the means by which they provide it.

Equity has now been restored it is hoped. Authors of full length books, if they are to receive the same or similar royalty as for a sale, might choose to place it with KU, thereby enhancing the customer experience to want to continue with their subscription.

I don't think that there was any need for Amazon to bring out the big guns in their PR arsenal to promote this change. The change makes sense.

There would have been nothing to stop Amazon leaving as is. The business model is simple. Number of paying subscribers generate $X per month as a total fund. The basic costs are $R in royalties as a % of the total fund. This leaves $P in profit as the remaining % of the fund.

The model requires Amazon to retain subscribers. Short stories won't keep them in the long term.

The royalties paid to Authors needs to be maintained at a level of a % of total subscription. Only paying for pages read ensures equity across the board. Paying by the page will also go to canceling out those hungry readers that eat books for breakfast and basically throw the subscription model out of kilter.

Get either of those figures wrong and it would lead to $p = zero or less profit.


----------



## horrordude1973 (Sep 20, 2014)

I have actually tried direct selling before using Payhip and I sold a few and it was great getting 90% of the price. Problem is , even the most loyal readers dont' want to mess with the tech. 

They want to push a button and have their book on their kindle. They don't want to download the book, then email it to their kindle email then try and find it, etc....too many steps when there is an easier system in place. It is a tough sell to get someone wiling to do that when they say "well just put your books on amazon!"


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

horrordude1973 said:


> I have actually tried direct selling before using Payhip and I sold a few and it was great getting 90% of the price. Problem is , even the most loyal readers dont' want to mess with the tech.
> 
> They want to push a button and have their book on their kindle. They don't want to download the book, then email it to their kindle email then try and find it, etc....too many steps when there is an easier system in place. It is a tough sell to get someone wiling to do that when they say "well just put your books on amazon!"


Amazon have an App for that. AND its amazing. U download it, or click on your chrome link and choose which kindle you want it on and if you want it added to your library and in seconds it's there on all or just one of them.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> details of where I live and how much I earn just because I happened to idly look at your book page.


Aggregate data and zip codes are not details. Settle down.



> http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle


Five bucks says you can't send an EPUB to a Kindle.

*EDIT*: Five minutes later, EPUB to Kindle?


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

justphil said:


> Announcing a tectonic shift in a major revenue source with two weeks notice.


Digital publishing moves fast. It's _always_ moved fast. If you can't deal with tectonic shifts, then you're in the wrong business.



> We should be working together.


Amazon provides you with a platform to sell your books. Everything else is up to you. What they do for you is all clearly laid out in the KDP agreement that you agreed to (but I'm betting didn't actually read) when you signed up. If Amazon says "this is as far as we're going to go" and you click "I agree," you can't later complain about them not doing more.



> Amazon proved it was a sustainable business model by launching KDP in the first place.


No, that's not the same thing at all. You want Amazon to give you an unprecedented amount of information and to promote your books on THEIR dime. That is what's not sustainable.



> False dilemma. Amazon loses nothing by promoting any particular book or series of books. They have unlimited promotional capacity. If they didn't, nobody's books would sell.


There are millions of books in the Kindle store. How can Amazon possibly promote every single one of them?



> Fair enough. I want to know *EXACTLY* how many people are visiting my book pages, and I want to know *EXACTLY* where they are coming from. Further, I want demographics on those visits: Age, gender, income level, zip code. And I want that information over time so I can track my conversion rates and promotional effectiveness over time. If I took a poll I guarantee you my guild would vote unanimously with me, and our normally sweet and quiet romance writer would be in the front row with a fist raised.
> 
> If Amazon gave us that information, then I'd consider 30% to 65% of our cover prices and exclusivity a fair trade for some titles. After all, such information would only help Amazon and us sell more books, wouldn't it?
> 
> But Amazon's not going to do it, and I think we all know why. It's the same reason they want us to measure success by pageviews instead of unit sales. Unit sales are raw market power. Pageviews is sharecropping, and we all saw how pageviews worked out for web advertisers.


The reason Amazon's not going to give you all that information is quite simple: because there would be an exodus of customers from the site if Amazon started giving away information to anyone who can slap together a Word document and hit publish.

You want to know my income level? Fine, here it is: none of your damn business.




justphil said:


> Five bucks says you can't send an EPUB to a Kindle.


Then you create a mobi file instead. For such a genius publisher as you claim to be, I'm amazed you don't know how to do this.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Rubens4tune said:


> Weird - I'm an IT geek and have several kindles and the same happens on both. I'm wondering if Amazon handles things differently in different countries. Mine are registered in the UK. I would be interested in hearing from others in the UK if their experience matches mine. Otherwise i will have to go looking for a reason why its occurring.
> 
> Most platforms help writers sell books. It wouldn't be clever not to having got all of those items on their websites to sell.


I'm in the UK and all I see at the end of a book on my kindle is what the author has put there. Right after that I might have a request to rate the book, which I can't do from the kindle. Mine is very basic, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> You mean the bots care. They've always been on the lookout for off color tweets. I had one about shark anatomy (it was during Shark Week last year) blocked. Is Amazon hypersensitive about shark/boat molestation, too?


Yeah. It seems the Twitter feeds on our author pages are completely random sometimes. I wouldn't suspect an automatic conspiracy about this.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2015)

Doglover said:


> I'm in the UK and all I see at the end of a book on my kindle is what the author has put there. Right after that I might have a request to rate the book, which I can't do from the kindle. Mine is very basic, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it.


I'm going to have to see if there are settings somewhere. Thanks for the reply.


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

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Honestly, this type of rant sounds exactly the same as we used to hear from authors wailing at the gates of agents and publishers: Just give me a chance! Well, we now have our chance. And yet some folk still insist it's gatekeepers blocking their way to success at every turn.


(As usual, I agree with you.)

Sometimes you can give an author all the chances in the world but their books won't sell. Why? Because they're just not good. There might not be a tsunami of you-know-what, but there is still at least some poop out there.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> You want Amazon to give you an unprecedented amount of information and to promote your books on THEIR dime.


Since they're taking 65% of our cover price and exclusive rights, I'd say that's my dime.



> For such a genius publisher as you claim to be, I'm amazed you don't know how to do this.


My software produces flawless EPUBs and MOBIs simultaneously. Wrote it myself.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

justphil said:


> Since they're taking 65% of our cover price and exclusive rights, I'd say that's my dime.


If you charge between $2.99 and $9.99, which is pretty standard, they don't take 65% off your cover price. As for rights, you own the rights as a self-publisher.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

justphil said:


> Since they're taking 65% of our cover price and exclusive rights, I'd say that's my dime.


First, 65% of their cover price is a choice you made. As Cady and Lydniz pointed out, if you charge between $2.99-9.99, Amazon only takes 30% and you get 70%.

Second, they're not taking anything--they tell you the terms to sell on THEIR store and you either agree to them or don't. And exclusivity is 100% optional. Don't want to be exclusive? Fine. Don't enroll in Select. You can still sell your books on Amazon. Only five (soon to be two) of my titles are in Select. And even then, exclusivity only extends to digital versions. You can still publish paperbacks wherever you want.

If you want to sell on someone else's marketplace, you have to abide by their terms.

Tell me, what has iTunes done for you that Amazon refuses to do? What has Nook? Or Kobo? Or Google? I'm no blind Amazon loyalist but I am a realist. There are some things the other platforms do better than Amazon and there are things Amazon does that makes them better than those other platforms. But what platform has offered you even a fraction of what you're demanding from Amazon?

Maybe the emails from iTunes with my customers' email address, income levels and zip codes have just been getting sent to my spam box?


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

> No, that's not the same thing at all. You want Amazon to give you an unprecedented amount of information and to promote your books on THEIR dime. That is what's not sustainable.


No. Amazon's place within the book community is an advertiser. That's what they do. They bring new eyes to your work that you couldn't get anywhere else. Instead of getting paid upfront, they take a chunk of your royalties. For successful authors, if Amazon is requiring exclusivity, then that means they should offer up information that their advertising is worth more than everyone else's combined. They don't have to, of course, but they don't need our business either, and we're completely allowed to discuss Amazon's poor actions. If another advertiser said, "Hey, we will take your money and offer this service, but you can't work with any other firm, and we won't give you numbers to prove that it's worth it," wouldn't you discuss this firm with others for whom it's relevant? Wouldn't you warn them?


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> "Hey, we will take your money and offer this service, but you can't work with any other firm, and we won't give you numbers to prove that it's worth it,"


/thread


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

justphil said:


> Since they're taking 65% of our cover price and exclusive rights, I'd say that's my dime.
> 
> My software produces flawless EPUBs and MOBIs simultaneously. Wrote it myself.


You said you yanked all your books from Amazon and make more not selling with them. Why do you care what Anazon does? You said you're better off not offering any books on Amazon.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Briteka said:


> No. Amazon's place within the book community is an advertiser. That's what they do. They bring new eyes to your work that you couldn't get anywhere else.


Amazon is an online retailer. That's what they do. They sell things.

They want to sell more of what's popular, what will make them more money and as a side effect, you make money too. But they don't care whose product sells more, only that product is selling. You agree to their terms to list your work on their MARKETPLACE, not their advertising service.

It's up to you to sell it. If you want borrows, list with KU. If you want to sell your work, don't. If you want to sell to the people who shop at Amazon, list it there. But it's not their obligation to promote your work unless you signed a contract with them stating the conditions.


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

Eric Z said:


> So the gorilla in the room is still WHY did amazon do it?
> 
> I totally agree with you, -zon knew it was going to be a blow so they tried to bury/pad it.
> 
> ...


How is Amazon going to have less revenue? And, honestly, why its not a popular argument it is true: Not all authors have been screwed. I've seen plenty talking about making more money -- on private Facebook groups. They won't come here because they're afraid of being attacked. We're talking new, intermediate, and huge authors, too. I saw more and more talking about it as the week went on.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

MyraScott said:


> Amazon is an online retailer. That's what they do. They sell things.
> 
> They want to sell more of what's popular, what will make them more money and as a side effect, you make money too. But they don't care who's product sells more, only that product is selling. You agree to their terms to list your work on their MARKETPLACE, not their advertising service.
> 
> It's up to you to sell it. If you want borrows, list with KU. If you want to sell you work, don't.


Really, Amazon is just an advertiser. We are all able to sell our books without Amazon, and we'd make more money a sale to do it. The reason we pay Amazon money is because of their advertising potential. Some of us are running large publishing businesses that bring in a lot of money, and for us, it is not as simple as "If you want borrows, list with KU. If you want to sell you work, don't." This debate has made me realize that some people will knowingly lose money by giving Amazon exclusivity, but for most people, that isn't going to happen. Most of us are trying to maximize our income, and if Amazon wants our money, then they should give us the data that shows it's worthwhile to us.

ETA:


> But it's not their obligation to promote your work unless you signed a contract with them stating the conditions.


Just being on Amazon is Amazon promoting us. I don't need proof that they'll promote me. I need as much data as possible so that I can make the decision if giving them exclusivity makes me more money than not.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Folks, let's everyone take a deep breath...things seem to be heating up a bit and I really want to get some sketching done.   Let's avoid characterizing each other's posts negatively--deal with the content, OK?

I've been trying to keep up with this thread--and for those who don't see the point to the conversation, I'd say this thread isn't for you--lots of other threads.

Just trying to keep things a little calmer.  Try to disagree vehemently and pleasantly. Consider it a challenge.


Betsy


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

she-la-ti-da said:


> Tell that to Hugh Howey. He's been on various places on the web practically giddy about how those upstart short story writers are going to get a butt-load of hurt because of this.
> 
> He's not the only one. There are plenty of people having a grand time lately.
> 
> ...


I'm confused. Where have I put down anyone? Someone must have put meth in my cereal, because I can't remember that. I have gone out of my way to talk through KU2 with people. I have not put down anyone. And who has special privileges from Amazon? I don't. Rosalind doesn't. I don't believe Hugh does. What special privileges are we talking about?


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Hugh has said some things here and elsewhere that were, well, less than gracious. I'm being polite.

But I've followed the posts here pretty closely (too closely, really) and your naming of Rosalind and Amanda as people who are putting others down over this? I think you're way off base. Both do very well, yet both have expressed sympathy and/or empathy for those who will be financially gutted by the change. Debating over finer points of the program and disagreeing about it in general are hardly putting other people down.

I could name some people here who have taken a great deal of glee in making disparaging remarks about the people who stand to lose out--I won't, but I could. There are several people who have been blowing noisemakers and dancing on the shrinking bank accounts of shorts writers, particularly erotica writers. It's been pretty disgusting, if you ask me. But Rosalind and Amanda have not been part of that at _all_, and I'm amazed you would claim that.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Shelley K said:


> Hugh has said some things that were, well, less than gracious.
> 
> But I've followed the posts here pretty closely (too closely, really) and your naming of Rosalind and Amanda as people who are putting others down over this? I think you're way off base. Both do very well, yet both have expressed sympathy and/or empathy for those who will be financially gutted by the change. Debating over finer points of the program and disagreeing about it in general are hardly putting other people down.
> 
> I could name some people here who have taken a great deal of glee in making disparaging remarks about the people who stand to lose out--I won't, but I could. There are several people who have been blowing noisemakers and dancing on the shrinking bank accounts of shorts writers, particularly erotica writers. It's been pretty disgusting, if you ask me. But Rosalind and Amanda have not been part of that at _all_, and I'm amazed you would claim that.


Thanks.

And for the record: No. No special privileges. I've never been offered any special deals--not that I think people who have been offered those have some "secret special in." They've just sold better than I do. The most I've had is being put into a newsletter once, when a book was performing well. I have a rep, but I have to say she doesn't talk to me anymore, since KU 1.0 happened and I left Select and stopped doing well on Amazon.

Amazon does extra things for books that sell really well--that the authors write and market such that lots of people pick them up. If you do that, they give you extra things (not special privileges--they just promote what customers have already PROVEN they want.) If you don't do that, as I haven't been, they don't do those extra things. So there you go.

My own plan is to keep trying to do the things that make me sell better, and to watch people who sell more than I do to see which things are replicable by me. Some aren't possible (write like them; publish a long novel per month), some I don't want to do (write to a market I'm not suited for; write short). Some I could be doing much better (why I finally started a mailing list!) And some I can now do (rejoin Select with some books).


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I just checked for back matter on a touch kindle.    I noticed an x in the top right hand corner of the pop-up.    I tapped the x.  Pop-up went away.  I still see the author's links and back matter.    As to links, you have never been able to put Apple links in an Amazon book.  

Now as to selling on your own website,  why should I give you all my personal information and my credit card number?  I don't want to have to go get a prepaid visa every time I want a book.  Oh and little trivia, most VISA gift cards are only valid in the country of origin.  
I don't want to bother getting paypal.

As to Amanda and Rosalind,  they are very sweet people.  They just write books that people want to read.  They are not special to Amazon.    They get no preferential treatment on their self-published books.    Not sure about Rosalind's imprint book.

Ok I think I am caught up.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Now as to selling on your own website, why should I give you all my personal information and my credit card number?


http://paypal.com

http://bitpay.com

http://payments.amazon.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_account

You shouldn't. Most sellers who run their own shops don't want your credit card information anyway.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

justphil said:


> http://paypal.com
> 
> http://bitpay.com
> 
> ...


Interesting.


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I agree with this. I don't think KU is forever. I do think we have at least another year with it. Everything is subscription services now. How long will that last? I have no idea. I think KU will probably be gone in five years.


Amanda, why do you think KU will end? And why the forecast of a year?


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

It will end when the other ebook subscription services go under.


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

Donna White Glaser said:


> Amanda, why do you think KU will end? And why the forecast of a year?


I didn't forecast a year. I said I wanted it to last for a year. If it lasts longer, that's fine. I have plans for it for the next year, lol. As for subscription services, I think they're the fad right now. I'm not sure they always will be. I think we will see a swing back in the other direction eventually, and that includes subscription services for software, books, etc. When will that happen? I have no idea. I was pretty sure that Amazon was going to start paying by length, but I honestly thought it was still months away. I was way off on that one. In the end, I don't expect this to be the final version of KU. I think we will see more shifts. It's one of those things you just kind of watch for now. I do not see KU being in danger of folding anytime soon.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

KU is likely here to stay. I don't think KU has anything to do with other subscription services. I'm not sure a more expensive service than only allows reads of self published books is meant to compete against a cheaper service that gives you access to trade published books. The other services may or may not last. It may be too expensive for them to pay full royalties, and without full royalties, they'll lose trade published books. But even if those services are crushed under their own weight, Amazon will keep KU.


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

Sorry for misquoting you. I'm not so sure about subscription services being a fad. Even Microsoft is using subscription for their Office software. Instead of buying it, you lease it for a year or whatever. But thanks for your thoughts.


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## scribblr (Aug 20, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> Now as to selling on your own website, why should I give you all my personal information and my credit card number?


I use Gumroad for selling from my website. They have a secure site and only require the credit card number, exp. date, security code, and your email address so they can send you the book. I never even see the personal data, much less have the ability to store it. And that's the way I want it. Let the financial people handle the finances and leave me out of it, except for sending me my payment every two weeks. 

I do get a record of every sale and see the email address so I can respond if the buyer has a problem.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

**********


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## shalym (Sep 1, 2010)

justphil said:


> Aggregate data and zip codes are not details. Settle down.
> 
> Five bucks says you can't send an EPUB to a Kindle.
> 
> *EDIT*: Five minutes later, EPUB to Kindle?


I don't understand...if you're selling direct on your own web site, why in the world would you only sell in epub format?

Shari


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## Conrad Goehausen (Jun 27, 2015)

Overall, this news is neutral - neither good nor bad for authors as a group. Overall, authors will make the same amount of money as before. Individually, it will change to some degree for everyone; up for some, down for others. All of it cancelling out in the bigger picture.

But others have pointed out the major reason for Amazon to try not to make a big deal of this. Authors whose incomes go down because of this change will hurt a lot and make much more noise about it than authors whose incomes will go up. Complaints will outnumber praises. So while the change is neutral, the response won't be. The silent majority will remain silent as always.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> To be fair, while Amazon gives everyone in KU the opportunity at All-Star bonuses, the ones eligible for them probably do have a different bias than the ones who know they'll never be so favored. Plus being featured in special Amazon promotions along the lines of the KDDs, the Under 3.99, the 50 (genre books) for $2, etc. types of deals usually requires you to be in KU (I hear personal reps are saying over and over, "Join Select and we'll talk."). And the folk picked up for those special promotions are generally going to be Amazon imprint authors and the better-selling indies. Right, wrong or indifferent, it's a matter of fact that there are more perks at the top.
> 
> (Please note I think Amanda and Rosalind are doing an awesome job discussing this [HUGE respect for them both! And my data maw is very happy that Amanda is an oversharer!] -- but rightly or wrongly the fact that they are getting/have gotten/may well get bonused above and beyond what non-bonused authors have gotten may well factor in with how some folk are perceiving what they say.)
> 
> Of course, they should be worried too.  If Amazon does manage to lure in more best-selling novelists who fled KU in the past when the sweetheart deals went away, that will mean even more competition for the bonuses and the promotional perks... No one's safe in these new waters *cue "Jaws" theme music"


I'll just state right here that I've NEVER been picked for any of those deals, and I was all-in with Select for over 2 years and did very well there until KU 1.0.

I think that sales & marketing have their own ideas of what books to push. It's not necessarily those of an author who's selling very well. I've consistently seen authors featured in KDDs or KMDs who were selling much less than I was on Amazon. In my top month, I was #28 on the All-Star list, at a time when all the "special" indies were allowed to be in KU non-exclusively--and was not on the All-Star page at all. Which was pretty interesting!

(The secret truth is that my books probably stink.) But anyway--I'm not expecting to get any special deals on the books I've put back into Select, since I didn't in the past. I'd hope to be eligible for some bonus money, maybe, but I'm not holding my breath for that, either. Lots of folks write WAY faster than me (looking at you, Amanda) and have way more great-selling stuff out there.

So, no, I wouldn't say that colors my decision-making. What I'm looking at is the $$ I'm earning right now on my stuff in Select, and the $$ I'm earning on the stuff out of it. I know people say that going wide is the best choice long-term, but I don't even know if I'll HAVE long-term. When I started writing, my goal was to be able to go back to New Zealand for a couple months every year. That was the dream. If this gets me there during the Rugby World Cup again? Dream achieved, as far as I'm concerned. And I'll bank as much as possible toward the future, whatever twists and turns that brings.

Bottom line--everybody has to make their own decisions, and people's lives and priorities and books and audiences are different. I try really hard not to concern myself with what Amazon or any other vendor "should" do, or to take it personally. Right now, I can see that Amazon offers something that will benefit me. Meanwhile, Nook, which is the other place I have a good "fit," seems to be going down the tubes as far as ebooks. And I'm not a great fit for iBooks. And I'm not sure I've ever even gotten a check from Google Play! So that's where I live.


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

Rosalind James said:


> I'll just state right here that I've NEVER been picked for any of those deals, and I was all-in with Select for over 2 years and did very well there until KU 1.0.
> 
> I think that sales & marketing have their own ideas of what books to push. It's not necessarily those of an author who's selling very well. I've consistently seen authors featured in KDDs or KMDs who were selling much less than I was on Amazon. In my top month, I was #28 on the All-Star list, at a time when all the "special" indies were allowed to be in KU non-exclusively--and was not on the All-Star page at all. Which was pretty interesting!
> 
> ...


Hey, I made it to the top twenty three times and the top thirty another three times on top of that and only ever got one of my books on the advertising page, lol. That was when I got a $1,000 bonus, too. Heck, my rep left and I never got a new one and that was almost six months ago now. I've only ever been offered one of the promotional deals and that happened quite recently. And, you want to know what? Amazon put them on sale and my sales are up but revenue is flat. I am appreciative for the new fans, don't get me wrong. The so-called "perks" come after you've built yourself up. You do the work for that. Amazon doesn't pick and choose who to help. They let us figure it out on our own and then they swoop in.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Hey, I made it to the top twenty three times and the top thirty another three times on top of that and only ever got one of my books on the advertising page, lol. That was when I got a $1,000 bonus, too. Heck, my rep left and I never got a new one and that was almost six months ago now. I've only ever been offered one of the promotional deals and that happened quite recently. And, you want to know what? Amazon put them on sale and my sales are up but revenue is flat. I am appreciative for the new fans, don't get me wrong. The so-called "perks" come after you've built yourself up. You do the work for that. Amazon doesn't pick and choose who to help. They let us figure it out on our own and then they swoop in.


Which is sort of my point. That you can't count on getting any of those deals. At least I'm not counting on it! I'm looking at the hard numbers of what I sell in & out of Select.


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## MatthewBallard (May 21, 2013)

I think it's far more likely that both Google and Apple will offer up their own subscription services before KU goes under. The writing is on the wall. Apple Music anyone?

However, I don't think the other players will require exclusivity like Amazon.

Rather than being a fad, I think the subscription model will be the standard sales model a few years from now, if not less.


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

Rosalind James said:


> Which is sort of my point. That you can't count on getting any of those deals. At least I'm not counting on it! I'm looking at the hard numbers of what I sell in & out of Select.


I've never been out of Select. I don't see it happening in the next year at least. After that? We will see how it shakes out. I'm always looking at my bottom line. I always think things out. Most people would have quit their day jobs a year before I did but I hung on (even though I was really miserable) until I was absolutely sure and had a big cushion. This world is different for all of us. We can't all follow the same path.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

MatthewBallard said:


> I think it's far more likely that both Google and Apple will offer up their own subscription services before KU goes under. The writing is on the wall. Apple Music anyone?
> 
> However, I don't think the other players will require exclusivity like Amazon.
> 
> Rather than being a fad, I think the subscription model will be the standard sales model a few years from now, if not less.


Standard, no. Leading, maybe. I still don't use music subscription. I still buy CD's because I want to own the ones I really like so that I can listen to them again and again, without dependence on anyone's platform, and I can put them on any device I want.

Same for books. I buy the digital ones I love, copy them from my kindle to my computer, then convert them using Calibre to whatever format I might need. (Although, I can just use the .mobi files.)

There will always be plenty of people who want to own the media they so enjoy.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

gorvnice said:


> I did my time in the corporate world before going full-time as an author.


Really? Me too. Five years with one of the greatest business minds I've ever known, my dad. He owned four businesses, more than just a handful of employees each, about a hundred in total and he managed them himself and worked alongside his employees. He did this with no more than a 9th grade education and poor reading and writing ability. After that, I spent 15 years as a business manager myself, with businesses up to eighty employees and then thirteen years as a business owner and now just over a year as a full time writer/publisher.

One thing my dad taught me early on, reinforced by every successful business person I've ever met, and something I always do myself. "Don't over-react, boy. What's true today might not be true tomorrow." Those mentors after my father put it in a lot more eloquent ways, using words my dad never knew the meaning of. But, it was always the same.

NEVER base a business decision that will affect you long term on short term data.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Waving at Wayne.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Really? Me too. Five years with one of the greatest business minds I've ever known, my dad. He owned four businesses, more than just a handful of employees each, about a hundred in total and he managed them himself and worked alongside his employees. He did this with no more than a 9th grade education and poor reading and writing ability. After that, I spent 15 years as a business manager myself, with businesses up to eighty employees and then thirteen years as a business owner and now just over a year as a full time writer/publisher.
> 
> One thing my dad taught me early on, reinforced by every successful business person I've ever met, and something I always do myself. "Don't over-react, boy. What's true today might not be true tomorrow." Those mentors after my father put it in a lot more eloquent ways, using words my dad never knew the meaning of. But, it was always the same.
> 
> NEVER base a business decision that will affect you long term on short term data.


It's good advice.

As to overreacting, well...I probably lost somewhere around 60 percent of my monthly revenue due to the changes implemented in KU 2.0.

But I pulled my books and went wide. Already, I'm bouncing back.

Despite the tone I've taken here, please don't misunderstand me. I don't expect Amazon or anyone else to give me a leg up. I earned everything I've gotten as a writer by busting my butt and it's given me everything I could have hoped for and more.

Even with my losses, I can't complain about my bad fortune, because I'm still doing well.

But my style is to poke at things and ask questions, sometimes questions that ruffle feathers. It helps me to think things through.

In the end, I did what I thought was right for my business, and it was a huge risk, but it already seems to be paying off. I value your thoughts, Wayne, and others like Amanda and Rosalind and Ryk and others who offer strong counterpoints to my opinions.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

FWIW, my experiment in sticking with short smut is looking promising so far. Anthology of five erotica shorts. Three days to write. Priced at $4.99. Published yesterday. No promotion what so ever. I've gotten 1500 pages reads, and several sales for a great royalty. Have also gotten a few thousand on some others. It's early in the month yet, but it looks like July won't be too bad if I publish at least 5 more anthologies. Plus I went wide with some and am starting to get bites from the other sites. Yes, I know I might make more money wide on the anthologies, but I like some stuff in KU for visibility. It will fall out eventually and I can still stand to make something out of KU instead of it just being a loss leader for a short. Also, I had to come back and add I believe it's a bit premature to be announcing the short story market dead, as least in erotica. It was alive before KU. It will likely survive, but you'll never know either way in just 6 days. Most erotica authors aren't going to come off the borrow drug and be thriving that fast. Give them a month or two.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

gorvnice said:


> As to overreacting, well...I probably lost somewhere around 60 percent of my monthly revenue due to the changes implemented in KU 2.0.


A perfect demonstration of what I said. You based this decision to pull out on four or five days of data? Four or five days of July data when sales are typically slow? Four or five days including a weekend in July when sales are slower? Over a holiday weekend in July when sales are nearly non-existent?

Anyone who thinks the average person was reading while barbequing, water skiing, camping, swimming, shooting rockets into the air, and a million other normal activities over this past week, has probably made a long term decision on not only short term data, but seriously flawed short term data. JMO


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> A perfect demonstration of what I said. You based this decision to pull out on four or five days of data? Four or five days of July data when sales are typically slow? Four or five days including a weekend in July when sales are slower? Over a holiday weekend in July when sales are nearly non-existent?
> 
> Anyone who thinks the average person was reading while barbequing, water skiing, camping, swimming, shooting rockets into the air, and a million other normal activities over this past week, has probably made a long term decision on not only short term data, but seriously flawed short term data. JMO


But Wayne, my reasons weren't about low page reads or low sales numbers. In fact, I had amazing page reads.

The problem was, the page reads could NEVER come close to making up for the loss of income I was seeing because of the change in dollar amount per book. I write shorter books, and each one is destined to lose in this new system. Believe me, I've done enough math on this thing to earn a Phd.

No amount of page reads was going to make up that loss. So my reaction to a couple of days of pages read data, as hasty as it might seem to you--was actually much more calculated than it might appear.

I've been doing this thing since 2011, I've also ridden the waves before. I know how it works. And my decision was largely financial but also based in principle. I will not be jerked around. I can do better than that, and I am doing better than that.

Did it sting? hell yeah. Did I get p*ssed? Of course. But anyone losing the amount of money I lost in the change would've been picking their teeth up off the ground and wondering why Mike Tyson just walloped them out of the blue.

Still, I'm here, scrapping and fighting and making money. I didn't get here by being dumb, much as that might surprise some who frequent these boards...


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

There is zero need for data to support that those that publish short form erotica are screwed under the new system. None. 

The best case scenario is a 2 cent per page payout. That would mean a 400 page book will generate an $8.00 royalty. Frankly, I think 2 cents is a pipe dream. All you need is common sense to figure it out. The subscription fee is $10.00. All you need is someone reading two decent sized books a month, and Amazon is losing major money. There's a reason they don't pay full royalties like the Oyster and Scribd economic disasters-in-the-making. 

So, no, if you're a short form erotica author, you need no data. We all know that the per page rate will lead to things like this:

25 page erotica short generating, at best, 50 cents but most likely more like 25 cents or less in revenue off a book that sells for $2.99. ONE sale at the combined storefronts outside of Amazon is worth 6-8 (or more) borrows and reads. And you know what is a lot easier than convincing 8 people to read a book? Convincing one person to read a book.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

On a different topic, I don't understand the point of this thread. Why does it matter if Amazon thinks the response of the writers and the public will be negative or positive? This was clearly a decision based on strategic growth. Amazon doesn't really care about anything else. To kind of worry about whether they think the news was good or bad? All that does is take time away from the important things, like writing your next sentence.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

jakedfw said:


> On a different topic, I don't understand the point of this thread. Why does it matter if Amazon thinks the response of the writers and the public will be negative or positive? This was clearly a decision based on strategic growth. Amazon doesn't really care about anything else. To kind of worry about whether they think the news was good or bad? All that does is take time away from the important things, like writing your next sentence.


Eh, a lot of folks have said a version of this. Somehow, I find it interesting to mull over what Amazon is trying to do and how and when.

Once again, it's served me in good stead over the years to contemplate these things. Obviously it's not everyone's cup of tea.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Personally, I think Amazon knows that this is going to be good news in the long run, and so they're just biding their time until they have the stories that they want to tell, which won't be until the actual payouts are announced. 

Even .005 page rate is a massive win for long form novelists. I haven't been on KBoards much lately, but I can guarantee you that, whether they are coming on here and saying it or not, a significant number of novelists are really enjoying KU 2.0 like erotica authors enjoyed KU 1.0. 

When the pay rate is announced and we start hearing about novelists screaming in joy while the negative message amounts to "those icky erotica authors left," Then you'll see the real marketing. Until then? Meh. Amazon won't really bother with even thinking about getting any kind of message out.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

At Wayne,
Read Jules Verne out loud while waiting on the fireworks to start.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

jakedfw said:


> Personally, I think Amazon knows that this is going to be good news in the long run, and so they're just biding their time until they have the stories that they want to tell, which won't be until the actual payouts are announced.
> 
> Even .005 page rate is a massive win for long form novelists. I haven't been on KBoards much lately, but I can guarantee you that, whether they are coming on here and saying it or not, a significant number of novelists are really enjoying KU 2.0 like erotica authors enjoyed KU 1.0.
> 
> When the pay rate is announced and we start hearing about novelists screaming in joy while the negative message amounts to "those icky erotica authors left," Then you'll see the real marketing. Until then? Meh. Amazon won't really bother with even thinking about getting any kind of message out.


First of all who are you calling icky? Second of all, some of us have plans to make KU work for us. I'm not the only one planning to release a slew of short anthologies and they've always been quite popular in erotica. The second one of us guinea pigs has a really good month with those you'll be seeing a whole lot more.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

katrina46 said:


> First of all who are you calling icky? Second of all, some of us have plans to make KU work for us. I'm not the only one planning to release a slew of short anthologies and they've always been quite popular in erotica. The second one of us guinea pigs has a really good month with those you'll be seeing a whole lot more.


Well now you are (st) icky, 3 months of the year.

Oh and the children's book authors are leaving faster than the erotica writers.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Okay, let's assume a penny a page payout for a minute and compare a 25 page short to a 250 page novel.

Assuming a full read, the short will get $.25 and the novel will get $2.50. 

Now let's assume that the short story writer and the novelist write at the same pace, a thousand words a day, roughly four pages and for argument's sake leave out the non-writing part of the business for a minute, editing, cover design and so on. The novelist won't start making money for 63 days. The short story author will start making money on his first short in five days, ten for the second one, fifteen for the third and so on. In the end, the revenue per day will be the same, when the novel is finished and the ten shorts are finished. But, the short story author will have been earning money already for 58 days, increasing every five days or so.

In the real world, there will be more costs in creating ten short stories, sure. Covers, for instance. Editing is usually based on length, so that's not really a huge consideration. Will the cost be more than the amount of potential income for more individual works for the short story author? Probably close to even.

The fact is that writers of short stories have been enjoying an unsustainable windfall, making more for a borrow than a buy. At the same time, writers of longer works have been making less per borrow than a sale. A per page payout clearly levels the revenue across all lengths from a ten page erotica short to a six hundred page opus. The ones who are really hurting in this are the children's book authors. Many are illustrated, with very few words for small children. Just as I knew the old KU was unsustainable, I also know that a change will be made for these writers. Probably sooner than later.

I've had but one answer when I ask myself how to make more money with my fiction. Write more.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

katrina46 said:


> FWIW, my experiment in sticking with short smut is looking promising so far. Anthology of five erotica shorts. Three days to write. Priced at $4.99. Published yesterday. No promotion what so ever. I've gotten 1500 pages reads, and several sales for a great royalty. Have also gotten a few thousand on some others. It's early in the month yet, but it looks like July won't be too bad if I publish at least 5 more anthologies. Plus I went wide with some and am starting to get bites from the other sites. Yes, I know I might make more money wide on the anthologies, but I like some stuff in KU for visibility. It will fall out eventually and I can still stand to make something out of KU instead of it just being a loss leader for a short. Also, I had to come back and add I believe it's a bit premature to be announcing the short story market dead, as least in erotica. It was alive before KU. It will likely survive, but you'll never know either way in just 6 days. Most erotica authors aren't going to come off the borrow drug and be thriving that fast. Give them a month or two.


Don't take this the wrong way, because I applaud what you're doing, katrina46. You're taking a negative change and figuring out how to make it work. But it demonstrates a point that many of us who write in the long form were saying to those crying foul when 2.0 was announced. You CAN crank out 5 shorts, blank page to clicking 'publish' in 3 days, and then price them at $4.99 and have them sell. Not everyone can, but it is possible. I cannot do that with a full length novel. So, the short form author simply has to write (and have read) the same number of words as the long form author to get paid just as much. There is nothing 'unfair' about that. It sucks that Amazon made the change so suddenly, just as it sucked when the introduced KU 1.0. (Although, admittedly, it took a couple months before it really started to suck.)

Not to defend Amazon, but it's pretty obvious why they didn't lay it all out there in the beginning for 2.0, and why they only gave 2 weeks notice. Can you imagine several months of this? They knew that the loudest voices would be the ones taking cuts, and that only an extremely small minority would admit, "it was good while it lasted, but it had to happen sooner or later, the deal was too good to be true."



jakedfw said:


> There is zero need for data to support that those that publish short form erotica are screwed under the new system. None.
> 
> The best case scenario is a 2 cent per page payout. That would mean a 400 page book will generate an $8.00 royalty. Frankly, I think 2 cents is a pipe dream. All you need is common sense to figure it out. The subscription fee is $10.00. All you need is someone reading two decent sized books a month, and Amazon is losing major money. There's a reason they don't pay full royalties like the Oyster and Scribd economic disasters-in-the-making.
> 
> ...


I would agree with this... To an extent. You don't need to be a mathematician or a data analyst to figure this out, however, as demonstrated by katrina46, there are other ways to offset the negative effects of t KU 2.0. That doesn't necessarily mean that gorvnice reacted hastily. For all we know he could have been planning to go wide for sometime, but was just waiting until the gravy train stopped. (I mean, who wouldn't?) Now, if he had been screaming from the rooftops that everyone must get out now, that would be a hasty and illogical response, and would not be one worth paying attention to.



katrina46 said:


> First of all who are you calling icky? Second of all, some of us have plans to make KU work for us. I'm not the only one planning to release a slew of short anthologies and they've always been quite popular in erotica. The second one of us guinea pigs has a really good month with those you'll be seeing a whole lot more.


I don't think you're icky.



gorvnice said:


> It's good advice.
> 
> As to overreacting, well...I probably lost somewhere around 60 percent of my monthly revenue due to the changes implemented in KU 2.0.
> 
> ...


I lost 40% of my revenue when KU 1.0 dropped down to $1.30ish per borrow. I pulled out and went wide, and subsequently lost 50% of my remaining revenue. So there is some value to waiting, even if you are losing money, and seeing how things shake out. After 3 months wide, I had no choice but to shutdown my wide distribution and return to KU. The only reason I rebounded quickly was because it coincided with a new release. But I had to apologize to a lot of people who could not purchase from Amazon because of where they lived. (I sent them free copies.) I would have lost a lot less money had I waited it out, and in the meantime written a serial to milk a little cash out of KU 1.0 like everyone else.

That's why I love katrina46's post. It demonstrates a positive, proactive approach to dealing with a negative event, and it's something that everyone needs to hear right now.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

> First of all who are you calling icky?


Perhaps I wasn't clear. I personally would never call erotica icky. What I was trying to do was explain that when the press releases DO start to fly from Amazon, they most likely won't have much problem with the inevitable press about the flood of erotica books that departed KU. Why? Because it is still, unfortunately, considered by a large swath of the broader populace as not something they want in their bookstore.

In other words, if the marketing narrative is "You traded icky smut for fine outstanding epic fantasies" I don't think Amazon will disagree with it.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

cinisajoy said:


> Well now you are (st) icky, 3 months of the year.
> 
> Oh and the children's book authors are leaving faster than the erotica writers.


sticky yes, but not icky.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

jakedfw said:


> Perhaps I wasn't clear. I personally would never call erotica icky. What I was trying to do was explain that when the press releases DO start to fly from Amazon, they most likely won't have much problem with the inevitable press about the flood of erotica books that departed KU. Why? Because it is still, unfortunately, considered by a large swath of the broader populace as not something they want in their bookstore.
> 
> In other words, if the marketing narrative is "You traded icky smut for fine outstanding epic fantasies" I don't think Amazon will disagree with it.


Would you like some ketchup for your foot? It makes feet more edible.


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## lostagain (Feb 17, 2014)

jakedfw said:


> There is zero need for data to support that those that publish short form erotica are screwed under the new system. None.
> 
> The best case scenario is a 2 cent per page payout. That would mean a 400 page book will generate an $8.00 royalty. Frankly, I think 2 cents is a pipe dream. All you need is common sense to figure it out. The subscription fee is $10.00. All you need is someone reading two decent sized books a month, and Amazon is losing major money. There's a reason they don't pay full royalties like the Oyster and Scribd economic disasters-in-the-making.
> 
> ...


You're forgetting one big thing. Exposure. Every KU borrow boosts your rank. The higher your rank, the more sales you can make.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

lilywhite said:


> Trust me on this: Jake is an amazing, truly awesome guy, who was in no way calling erotica icky from his own perspective. This I can swear to you. He would never.


I know he wasn't, but his trying to get his foot out of his mouth made me giggle.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Okay, let's assume a penny a page payout for a minute and compare a 25 page short to a 250 page novel.
> 
> Assuming a full read, the short will get $.25 and the novel will get $2.50.
> 
> ...


I would agree with everything you said except that erotica covers don't cost a whole dollar if you know how to do the text. I don't and still I only pay a designer 10 bucks to do it for me. Most don't pay editors because it really is easy to do it yourself when it's only 5-10k long. Even at 25 cents you'd earn it back pretty fast if you are one to do well. My page reads increase every day, so i actually expect to be doing okay in the new KU by the end of the month, but still have some wide as well. I think a little of both is the best way for me.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Rykymus said:


> I lost 40% of my revenue when KU 1.0 dropped down to $1.30ish per borrow. I pulled out and went wide, and subsequently lost 50% of my remaining revenue. So there is some value to waiting, even if you are losing money, and seeing how things shake out. After 3 months wide, I had no choice but to shutdown my wide distribution and return to KU. The only reason I rebounded quickly was because it coincided with a new release. But I had to apologize to a lot of people who could not purchase from Amazon because of where they lived. (I sent them free copies.) I would have lost a lot less money had I waited it out, and in the meantime written a serial to milk a little cash out of KU 1.0 like everyone else.
> 
> That's why I love katrina46's post. It demonstrates a positive, proactive approach to dealing with a negative event, and it's something that everyone needs to hear right now.


Yeah, there are so many variables involved with these decisions now.

When I said that I wasn't being hasty to Wayne, I meant that I spent a lot of time doing math and figuring different scenarios. And the only way I could have stayed in and been even close to breaking even (or just losing a little) would have been a per page payout of around 3 to 4 cents per page (or maybe 2-3 cents with the new way Amazon's figuring pages).

Once Amazon came out with 2 billion pages read and the pot being 11 million--the writing was on the wall.

Not only is it almost impossible for Amazon to make the pot big enough to compensate my books close to what I was getting before the change--but I felt that Amazon had used a very slimy business tactic in how they went about the change.

So for me, I saw pretty much instantly with that last "doomsday" email that KU 2.0 was devastating to my bottom line. Even with great pages read per day, I couldn't make up the difference.

As for going wide, I've been distributed wide already for years and have traction in other platforms. I still had material wide, but I was just focusing all my new stuff on KU and I was doing gangbusters. In any case, knowing that I could distribute wide and also do some other things with pricing made the decision a little easier for me.

It was still risky though. Anytime you make a drastic move like that, it's scary. But I felt it in my head and in my heart that to stay in KU, for me, would have been both taking a kick in the crotch and also groveling at the feet of the one who did the kicking. Furthermore, I didn't NEED to do it.

Going wide vs staying in is likely going to be a wash for me. In other words, the damage to my old way of doing business has been done and there's no way to recover the lost revenue either way at this point. So the next question for me, is where do I want to focus my energy going forward?

By distributing wide with everything, I've gotten CONTROL back of my business. That means more to me than a few bucks one way or the other.

And longterm, I think I can eventually make more wide distribution then with the changes KU has made. And still, tactically I might enter back into KU from time to time when it suits me.

So that is how I've approached the change, and now more than ever, every writer is different and every plan will thus need to be different too.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

There are a couple of misconceptions here. Let's start with this one from my friend, Wayne, who has probably forgotten more about promo'ing books than I'll ever know:



> So, the short form author simply has to write (and have read) the same number of words as the long form author to get paid just as much.


This is just not true. What you are forgetting is that you have to *sell* those ten books. It's not like someone looks at your books and grabs ten and reads them all. Even series have erosion from book 1 to book 5 or more. So what you are really comparing here isn't just page length but also purchase decisions. Which is easier: Convincing someone to buy one book or to buy ten books? Basically, erotica writers have to not just do 10x the work on editing and covers and publishing to make the same money, _they have to do 10x the marketing work_, and even if they do all that work, they are facing a sell through that is likely going to be less than the read through of a single book.

Really, this whole argument of 10 shorts = 1 long is just not true.



> I'm not the only one planning to release a slew of short anthologies and they've always been quite popular in erotica.


Yes, these are called bundles in erotica, and they certainly work. This will also certainly help with the problem I outline above from Wayne in regards to selling multiple books. But that strategy does nothing to improve the massive revenue differential between the per page income versus the sale income. What people are really overlooking here is that erotica books sell for $2.99. These are short works that have sold and continue to sell for $2.99. Not 99 cent shorts making 35 cents in royalties. These are actual sales that make over $2.00 in royalties.

So let's look at Katrina's strategy: She's packaging a collection of shorts and putting it into KU as a bundle. Let's say that the collection has 10 stories in it. Let's say that those ten stories are 5K each. So as a longer length, it will be, what, 300 pages? 300 pages at the currently assumed rate of .005 is like a $1.50 in revenue or so. Hell, let's round it up to $2.00. Was this a good strategy?

Well, let's say she pulled those stories from KU and published them as erotica shorts at $2.99 a piece. If she sell 10% of her series in one day--just 1 out of 10--she'll make more than if she had someone buy her collection and read it all the way through.

So think about that: *If she went wide, and going wide was 1/10 as successful as staying in KU, she made more money.*

Is this a guarantee? Of course not, but it certainly gives you an idea as to why the erotica authors are fleeing KU in droves. Their price point of $2.99 for a short has proven to be sustainable. The KU price point for pages read is such a small percentage of that $2.99 that even modest success outside of Amazon is a win.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> Don't take this the wrong way, because I applaud what you're doing, katrina46. You're taking a negative change and figuring out how to make it work. But it demonstrates a point that many of us who write in the long form were saying to those crying foul when 2.0 was announced. You CAN crank out 5 shorts, blank page to clicking 'publish' in 3 days, and then price them at $4.99 and have them sell. Not everyone can, but it is possible. I cannot do that with a full length novel. So, the short form author simply has to write (and have read) the same number of words as the long form author to get paid just as much. There is nothing 'unfair' about that. It sucks that Amazon made the change so suddenly, just as it sucked when the introduced KU 1.0. (Although, admittedly, it took a couple months before it really started to suck.)
> 
> Not to defend Amazon, but it's pretty obvious why they didn't lay it all out there in the beginning for 2.0, and why they only gave 2 weeks notice. Can you imagine several months of this? They knew that the loudest voices would be the ones taking cuts, and that only an extremely small minority would admit, "it was good while it lasted, but it had to happen sooner or later, the deal was too good to be true."
> 
> ...


Thank you. I just think if you're going to stay in this business there will be ups and downs we'll have to adapt to. This is really nothing compared to an erotica writer who woke up one morning during the pornacolypse and found their account suspended. That's when it's over.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

jakedfw said:


> So think about that: *If she went wide, and going wide was 1/10 as successful as staying in KU, she made more money.*
> 
> Is this a guarantee? Of course not, but it certainly gives you an idea as to why the erotica authors are fleeing KU in droves. Their price point of $2.99 for a short has proven to be sustainable. The KU price point for pages read is such a small percentage of that $2.99 that even modest success outside of Amazon is a win.


I wouldn't classify myself as an erotica author, but this point is very much in line with how I see things. Once Amazon's page payout eroded the royalty rate on my shorter books, it makes more sense to try and drive for the higher royalty rate with 2.99 and up pricing.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

> The higher your rank, the more sales you can make.


I've thought this over a lot, and I've not experienced or read anything that indicates this will substantially help you sell more books unless you have already gotten to the point of where you are selling a ton of books.

I would LOVE information that clarifies this, however.

My limited set of observations here is that there is a fairly massive point of diminishing returns once you get outside of the top 100 charts that matter. Will being at 20K REALLY move a ton more books than if you're at rank 30K? Maybe a little, but nothing that would make me consider that a borrow or three to get me there is worth much.

So much of this is guesswork, so I can't claim to really have any answers, but I do know from my experience that there is a massive disconnect between the power of increasing your rank from something like 90K to 20K than the reality of what that can do for you.

In short, counting on a non-top 100 rank in a category that matters to drive your sales is probably one of the least effective ways to market your book.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

It's probably not a good idea to make a decision just yet. I just got my first confirmed page read on July 6 (yay!). The problem is that I removed all my books from KU on July 2 (oops!). And there hasn't been a ranking jump on that book to suggest a borrow. 

So, yeah, if you're on the edge and don't know which way to jump, you may just want to hold off a while to see how the reporting pans out.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

jakedfw said:



> There are a couple of misconceptions here. Let's start with this one from my friend, Wayne, who has probably forgotten more about promo'ing books than I'll ever know:
> 
> This is just not true. What you are forgetting is that you have to *sell* those ten books. It's not like someone looks at your books and grabs ten and reads them all. Even series have erosion from book 1 to book 5 or more. So what you are really comparing here isn't just page length but also purchase decisions. Which is easier: Convincing someone to buy one book or to buy ten books? Basically, erotica writers have to not just do 10x the work on editing and covers and publishing to make the same money, _they have to do 10x the marketing work_, and even if they do all that work, they are facing a sell through that is likely going to be less than the read through of a single book.
> 
> ...


Well, I have shorts wide, too. I use bundles in erotica to gain visibility. It seems to be moving the rest of my catalog and because they are popular, they just might get more borrows than one short. So far that seems to be the case, I think. Can't say for certain since we don't get the numbers of borrows included in reports anymore, but the bundles are higher ranked than my shorts, so I'm assuming. I try not to think in terms of "Oh, I would have made more wide with these bunldles. For one thing, I don't know that since sales on other sites don't touch Amazon's. For another thing, it's like I said before. The visibility moves my catalog so I do make sales on those 2.99 shorts. It's marketing that gains me money instead of costing me. Going wide can be an uphill battle. I've always said we should do it, but have some income from KU to get you through until you gain traction. That's just the way I see it. Some might disagree. I know of several writers who went wide all at once this week and have flat lined. I haven't and I want to keep it that way.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

jakedfw said:


> Perhaps I wasn't clear. I personally would never call erotica icky. What I was trying to do was explain that when the press releases DO start to fly from Amazon, they most likely won't have much problem with the inevitable press about the flood of erotica books that departed KU. Why? Because it is still, unfortunately, considered by a large swath of the broader populace as not something they want in their bookstore.
> 
> In other words, if the marketing narrative is "You traded icky smut for fine outstanding epic fantasies" I don't think Amazon will disagree with it.


Thank you for clearing that up. Sorry if I took it wrong. Amazon has treated erotica like it was icky since the start, so they don't bother me.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

lilywhite said:


> I'm assuming you mean July.
> 
> If someone borrowed your book before you took it out of KU, Amazon isn't going to take that book away from them. You will get borrow income from it when they read it. A friend of mine in another forum just got a borrow line on her graph last month and she's only ever been in KU for one 3 month period last summer with a single book.


Oops. Yes, July. That's right. And my mistake is a good reminder to all that one must not mix flu medication with liberal amounts of alcohol and caffeine. Especially not in the smae glass. Okay, mug. Okya, pitcher. Whatever.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

jakedfw said:


> There are a couple of misconceptions here. Let's start with this one from my friend, Wayne, who has probably forgotten more about promo'ing books than I'll ever know:


You made good points, but it wasn't me that said those things. You quoted Rykymus and Katrina.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> why in the world would you only sell in epub format


Because EPUBs work on every mobile device and PC platform with a minimum of fuss. They also support all the features we need.

Amazon's Kindlegen tools prohibit compiling MOBIs for any platform other than their store. Apple's too. Most other proprietary formats have similar restrictions. We looked in to Mobipocket and discovered it is owned by Amazon, so we're pretty sure MOBI is off the table altogether at this point.



> at a time when all the "special" indies were allowed to be in KU non-exclusively


Well, well. The penny drops.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

justphil said:


> Because EPUBs work on every mobile device and PC platform with a minimum of fuss. They also support all the features we need.
> 
> Amazon's Kindlegen tools prohibit compiling MOBIs for any platform other than their store. Apple's too. Most other proprietary formats have similar restrictions. We looked in to Mobipocket and discovered it is owned by Amazon, so we're pretty sure MOBI is off the table altogether at this point.
> 
> Well, well. The penny drops.


that is no secret. Mega selling indies were offered a six-month period during which they could put books into KU non-exclusively. It was never a secret. I wasn't one of them. People who were wide. It was all over six months ago. But yes, for the first six months or so you could see all sorts of names in there who weren't exclusive. I'm surprised you didn't notice. One reason why 1.0 was difficult for novelists who'd been in Select all along--they were competing with the mega-sellers at the start.


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## lostagain (Feb 17, 2014)

jakedfw said:


> I've thought this over a lot, and I've not experienced or read anything that indicates this will substantially help you sell more books unless you have already gotten to the point of where you are selling a ton of books.
> 
> I would LOVE information that clarifies this, however.
> 
> ...


Interesting. We're looking at this from two different perspectives. I would agree that if you aren't making a visible list (90K to 20K in sales) you probably aren't increasing sales, because you're still not visible. I was imagining KU actually propelling you to that list. If KU can do that for you. Then it does increase your sales.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> that is no secret. Mega selling indies were offered a six-month period during which they could put books into KU non-exclusively.


Never said it was a secret. At the same time I think we can now conclude the people who casually tossed around accusations of "conspiracy theorist" when it came to equal opportunity on Amazon were wrong.

It doesn't surprise me some of us are more indie than others. It also doesn't surprise me that greed inspires some people to blame the losers for not cheating. One would hope we can now once and for all retire the notion that "all Amazon does" is provide us with a level playing field and an opportunity to sell our books. It turns out they do much more. They just choose to do it in whispers.

Nevertheless we all pay the same *price*, naturally.

One would hope we could also retire the envious and cowardly notion that the reason some books sell better than others is due to the deficiencies in the poorer-selling author's talent. In a marketplace where some are chosen and others are not, talent yields to privilege regardless. All I asserted (and I stand by it) is that Amazon could provide the same advantages to all its authors at zero cost to itself or anyone else.

We have writers in our guild capable of 1000 words an hour of quality copy. Our romance writer alone kicked out almost two dozen titles in 2014. Perhaps we'll take the advice of the favored few (and the Pulp Speed guy) and simply flood the marketplace with new work until the sheer weight of it all knocks the gate down. It's worth considering.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Well, looked at that way-Amazon also favors its own imprints. And EVERY retailer helps books more that sell better.

The thing is--nobody "gave" those mega-sellers their status. They earned it by selling tons of books. When I saw that they were in there exclusively? You betcha I was sad. Hey, here I'd been, in Select all along, and they got to come in non-exclusively and compete for those borrows?

And then I thought, well, wait. They're there because Amazon wants to launch the program big, and I can see how that would work. And they're there because they sell TONS OF BOOKS and readers will want to borrow their books MORE than mine. 

There was no secret, and no conspiracy. It was clear that mega-selling indies were in KU without being exclusive. They were offered something special to get them to participate, just like you have to pay, oh, Joe Montana if you want him to come to your event, even though your Neighbor Bob would do it for free. Because they brought value to the program. And all I have to do to get that status? Sell tons of books myself. But that's on ME. And if I do? Amazon will send out lovely emails on my behalf. Amazon helps those who have already proven they can sell. As does every single other retailer. Want to get on Kobo's sale pages? Want a banner on iBooks? Guess how you get those things? You somehow sell lots of books by yourself. By what and how you write, by how you package it, by how you market it, by how you price it. 

It isn't easy to get all that right. Heaven knows I'm still trying. But it's not rigged, not from anything I've seen. Books that readers want to read? They get bought more. And if the readers like them, they buy more of the authors' books. I'd call that a meritocracy. 

As far as me? No special deals. I don't even have series bars on any of my series. I'm no Special Snowflake to Amazon. But I want to be one. So I'm busting my BUTT. I'm putting out my third long novel in three weeks right now. (I didn't write three in three weeks, though!) I'm figuring out what I write best, what my readers respond to best, taking risks and hanging it out there. It's really scary. I could fall on my face. Or I could win. I'm hoping for the win!


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

justphil said:


> We have writers in our guild capable of 1000 words an hour of quality copy. Our romance writer alone kicked out almost two dozen titles in 2014. Perhaps we'll take the advice of the favored few (and the Pulp Speed guy) and simply flood the marketplace with new work until the sheer weight of it all knocks the gate down. It's worth considering.


 Well, why not? If you have writers who can put out 1,000 words per hour of quality work, why aren't they doing it? That's what the megastars are doing. That's why they're megastars.

Personally, I can write and edit maybe 45,000 publishable words a month these days, so I can put out a long novel every 2-1/2 months. That's my speed. But if pulp speed works better for somebody, if they can do it and maintain quality? Why not?


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

justphil said:


> Never said it was a secret. At the same time I think we can now conclude the people who casually tossed around accusations of "conspiracy theorist" when it came to equal opportunity on Amazon were wrong.
> 
> It doesn't surprise me some of us are more indie than others. It also doesn't surprise me that greed inspires some people to blame the losers for not cheating. One would hope we can now once and for all retire the notion that "all Amazon does" is provide us with a level playing field and an opportunity to sell our books. It turns out they do much more. They just choose to do it in whispers.
> 
> ...


As someone who took the "flood the market" advice for four years, I really don't recommend that approach. Without marketing, paying attention to audience, and having a plan beyond "write ALL the books" you are likely to see sad results similar to that "pulp speed guy"  If your romance author has 24 titles and they aren't selling... there is most likely some kind of issue with the books or the presentation or the marketing plan, not with Amazon. Sorry, but that's reality. Not every book is equal. Some books just don't have much audience and some books just aren't presented in a way that finds their audience if they have one. Nobody owes you sales. You want sales, you better study the business and go after them.

Anyone starting out on Amazon has the same chances as anyone else. You only potentially get extra help once you've proven yourself as someone who moves books and makes them money. Which makes sense, if you stopped ranting long enough to think about it.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

justphil said:


> Because EPUBs work on every mobile device and PC platform with a minimum of fuss. They also support all the features we need.
> 
> Amazon's Kindlegen tools prohibit compiling MOBIs for any platform other than their store. Apple's too. Most other proprietary formats have similar restrictions. We looked in to Mobipocket and discovered it is owned by Amazon, so we're pretty sure MOBI is off the table altogether at this point.


I don't know anything about Amazon's Kindlegen tools...but someone is creating Mobi files that I can buy/download outside of Amazon--Smashwords, Project Gutenberg for a couple--and send to my Kindle using Amazon's Send to Kindle app for PCs and Macs.

They appear on Kindles under "docs" instead of "books" but they're there.

Betsy


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> you are likely to see sad results similar to that "pulp speed guy"


We'll see.



> but someone is creating Mobi files that I can buy/download outside of Amazon


I'm sure its possible. Calibre is the best option, as it includes a command-line conversion program that takes an epub and makes a "non-Amazon" mobi out of it. The last time we tested it the conversion wasn't as good as we would have liked. The mobi had font issues and HTML entity artifacts, etc. We'd love to offer mobi versions if we can do it within the licensing requirements and maintain the quality level.


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## hughmichelsen (Jun 8, 2014)

You can definitely create mobi's; the question is whether or not you can read them outside of Amazon, isn't it? Any Kindle app can read/display mobi's generated outside of the Amazon store. It's other apps that can't.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

hughmichelsen said:


> You can definitely create mobi's; the question is whether or not you can read them outside of Amazon, isn't it? Any Kindle app can read/display mobi's generated outside of the Amazon store. It's other apps that can't.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Moon+reader reads mobi.


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## Guest (Jul 7, 2015)

cinisajoy said:


> Moon+reader reads mobi.


True and I have created mobi's from my Jutoh and loaded them into kindle apps for PC and android which pretty much means that you can read a mobi on any device.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Rubens4tune said:


> True and I have created mobi's from my Jutoh and loaded them into kindle apps for PC and android which pretty much means that you can read a mobi on any device.


I don't have a kindle app on my Samsung. By choice.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

KU2 seems to me to be good news for good authors, especially good novelists, bad news for bad authors of any kind, and great news for KU subscribers.

Bad authors dislike the small payout and withdraw, good authors will love the increased payout and stay in, and eventually all that will be available for KU subscribers are good books.

A stroke of genius by Amazon, imo, so not sure how they can have viewed it internally as bad news.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

thesmallprint said:


> KU2 seems to me to be good news for good authors, especially good novelists, bad news for bad authors of any kind, and great news for KU subscribers.
> 
> Bad authors dislike the small payout and withdraw, good authors will love the increased payout and stay in, and eventually all that will be available for KU subscribers are good books.
> 
> A stroke of genius by Amazon, imo, so not sure how they can have viewed it internally as bad news.


I suppose there's a difference between good authors and good business people then.

Because, personally, I don't like depending on some random corporate entity to tell me that last month I ended up earning fifty percent less than I thought I was going to because they decided to flip the script on me.

And I don't like that entity suddenly taking away data points that I'd been using to make important business decisions.

And I don't really appreciate that same entity incentivizing me to produce certain kinds of work one month and then penalizing me for that same work the next month.

So yeah. Maybe KU 2.0 is good news for some good authors.

But I think it's bad news for good businesspeople.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

So someone who has reviewed the program and believes that they will be better off staying wtih KU based on known facts and their own situation is a bad business person because they made a different decision?  I'd have to disagree and hope that you wouldn't make that sweeping statement, gorvnice.

Betsy


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> So someone who has reviewed the program and believes that they will be better off staying wtih KU based on known facts and their own situation is a bad business person because they made a different decision? I'd have to disagree and hope that you wouldn't make that sweeping statement, gorvnice.
> 
> Betsy


Well, I was simply providing a counterpoint to the assertion that only bad writers will suffer under KU 2.0 and good writers will profit.

I don't think either statement is true, but I offer mine as a rebuttal to that sort of thinking...food for thought. Take it as you will.

Edited to add: Earlier in the thread, I advised someone who asked my opinion to go into KU with their new releases. So clearly I'm being a bit tongue in cheek (at least, clearly to me anyway  )


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

justphil said:


> Because EPUBs work on every mobile device and PC platform with a minimum of fuss. They also support all the features we need.
> 
> Amazon's Kindlegen tools prohibit compiling MOBIs for any platform other than their store. Apple's too. Most other proprietary formats have similar restrictions. We looked in to Mobipocket and discovered it is owned by Amazon, so we're pretty sure MOBI is off the table altogether at this point.


So let me get this straight.

Rather than give your customers the option of downloading mobi or epub, you're only going to give them an epub file and if they have a Kindle, then you're going to give them the additional step of converting the epub to mobi.

_Edited. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> you're only going to give them an epub file and if they have a Kindle, then you're going to give them the additional step of converting the epub to mobi.


Exactly.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Folks,

second yellow card.  Next, red cards and post moderation.  Resist the urge to make personal remarks.  Remember, not all posts need to be responded to.  I've edited some posts in this thread; I'm looking to allow the conversation to continue.  Help me out.

Betsy
KB Mod


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Putting obstacles between your customer and your product is seldom good business.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Monique said:


> Putting obstacles between your customer and your product is seldom good business.


I think I learned that in Marketing 101 in college . . . . back before the InterWebs when dinosaurs roamed the earth. . . .


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

There are no obstacles between our customers and our e-books.  Our customers read EPUB format books on Kindles just as easily as they read them on iPads, Android phones or PCs.

Our customers listen to our audiobooks on Kindles just as easily as they do on iPods, Zunes and Blackberries.  

We have full-color step-by-step instructions on how to download, install and read our books on every mobile device and every operating system from Nintendo DS consoles to BSD Linux. 

To date, we have received precisely zero complaints from customers about their inability to read the books they bought.

And if the tools to convert EPUB to MOBI someday work with our in-house proprietary book-building software and can also maintain the high quality level of our existing products, then we can literally flip a switch and make MOBI formats available for every one of our titles in five seconds.  

Thank you all for your kind concern.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

gorvnice said:


> Well, I was simply providing a counterpoint to the assertion that only bad writers will suffer under KU 2.0 and good writers will profit.
> 
> I don't think either statement is true ...


On this, we can agree. I don't think the results of KU2 is going to be that clear cut. I think some good and bad authors of both shorts and novels will leave, and some good and bad writers of shorts and novels will stay. It is going to come down to how low the payment goes and how individual authors value their work.

I spent a few hours browsing last night and noticed that a lot of novels I looked at were not available to borrow, where a month ago, it seemed a lot more were in KU. Maybe it is coincidence -- maybe I just happened to stumble into a batch of novels that were not in KU, but it could also be that it's not just short story writers leaving.

I think the intention of KU2 was to address the quality issues with a lot of the self-pubbed books, or so many people say, but I am not convinced that it is going to work. If they really wanted to weed out the poorly written books and reward the best writers, KU would be an exclusive program. And by exclusive, I don't mean the author agrees to exclusivity, I mean not every book would be allowed in. But, there is no way Amazon will do that, because it would take a huge amount of man hours to accomplish, and because they want as many titles as they can get in the program. The more titles they have, the more readers they attract.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the total number of titles (and subscribers) over the next couple months. If they start losing titles as a result of the new pay plan, you can bet the subscribers will follow them out the door. I know a lot of novelists felt the previous pay plan was unfair -- I disagree, but now that KU2 is here, I hope this doesn't come back to bite those who lobbied for a change in the tush.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

What sort of sales volume does your site do daily?


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

L C Storm said:


> The more people that leave KU the better. We will have less people to split the pot with.


Not really. Maybe for one payment, but they'll lower the pot if too many drop out. It's not like they'll ever say oh I'll just give you guys left 50 bucks a borrow. Unless of course they send an example of the payment plan with inflated numbers. But they wouldn't do that. Oh, wait...


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Monique said:


> What sort of sales volume does your site do daily?


Sorry guys, but isn't this a bit off topic at this point? Maybe Phil could start another topic to discuss this...


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

vlmain said:


> If they really wanted to weed out the poorly written books and reward the best writers, KU would be an exclusive program. And by exclusive, I don't mean the author agrees to exclusivity, I mean not every book would be allowed in.


On the other hand, what if Amazon had just said--at the end of each month we'll cut the lowest performing 10 or 20 percent of books? Or whatever amount they would have needed to do to save money and keep quality up?

Then the pot gets split between good performers and a lot of the poor stuff would go out each month because it wouldn't likely perform well.

Sure, that's a fairly dog-eat-dog proposition, but at least its even-handed and you can always put a different book in and hope it fairs better...

I think there were a lot of other solutions that would have made things a lot cleaner and fairer all around then what they actually chose.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

justphil said:


> There are no obstacles between our customers and our e-books.


Well, but, objectively . . . there are.

If you have a book that I want to buy, I can't buy it on Amazon -- which is where I acquire 99.99% of the content currently on my kindle. So there's that. For most titles that would be enough to make me say, "never mind."

But, maybe I decide that book looks AMAZING . . . so I'm willing to go to a little trouble. So I'll just go to your website and buy a copy there. I regularly use "Send to Kindle" to send files to my Voyage -- some fan fiction given away freely, monthly file of Mass readings, things I want to take with me to read later rather than sit at my desk and read on my computer. No problem! 

But, wait. The only thing you have available is ePub?  My kindle Voyage doesn't DO ePub. In order for me to be able to read the book, I'd either have to download an ePub reader to my tablet -- which is NOT my preferred reading device -- or download some software that would let me convert the ePub to a kindle compatible file which I could then send to my Voyage. It's just become too hard. 

Obviously, from your perspective, your customers don't mind any of that. But *I* mind. Which means I am unlikely to _become_ your customer. I may be the only person who feels this way, and you may be fine with there being no chance of me ever becoming your customer. But, I rather suspect I am NOT the only one, and you may be shutting the door on a LOT of folks who just don't want to go to so much trouble.

I think it's an odd choice . . . . but, I'm not you.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Well, but, objectively . . . there are.
> 
> If you have a book that I want to buy, I can't buy it on Amazon -- which is where I acquire 99.99% of the content currently on my kindle. So there's that. For most titles that would be enough to make me say, "never mind."
> 
> ...


Quoting Ann because I agree with her.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> you may be shutting the door on a LOT of folks who just don't want to go to so much trouble.


Perhaps, but not permanently. I'm sure the tools to convert EPUB to MOBI will improve. Right now, they don't meet our quality standards.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Obviously, from your perspective, your customers don't mind any of that. But *I* mind. Which means I am unlikely to _become_ your customer. I may be the only person who feels this way, and you may be fine with there being no chance of me ever becoming your customer. But, I rather suspect I am NOT the only one, and you may be shutting the door on a LOT of folks who just don't want to go to so much trouble.


I shop exclusively on Amazon and I use the Buy now with 1-Click button. No 1-Click, no sale. I am _that_ lazy.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

vlmain said:


> I shop exclusively on Amazon and I use the Buy now with 1-Click button. No 1-Click, no sale. I am _that_ lazy.


quoting VL because I agree with her.


(Not that SHE's that lazy, but that I am. )

Betsy


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

vlmain said:


> I shop exclusively on Amazon and I use the Buy now with 1-Click button. No 1-Click, no sale. I am _that_ lazy.


This is me. I don't even look inside. If it looks good, I hit one button and call it a day. I can't see myself ever going to private sites to buy books.


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## lostagain (Feb 17, 2014)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> quoting VL because I agree with her.
> 
> 
> (Not that SHE's that lazy, but that I am. )
> ...


Count me in the lazy camp


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

After all the brouhaha I went and checked my borrows on the two stories I have remaining in KU, (I just checked US sales/borrows).
In June, in KU 1, one title had one borrow, and the other had two. So far, in July, one has 59 and the other 48, and we are only seven days in. I'm on vay kay with little internet access, so nothing I've done would have changed. 

I'd have to say KU 2 is working fine for me. However, ranking doesn't seem to be influenced any.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

VioletVaughn said:


> Every KU borrow boosts your rank.


I suspect this won't be true for much longer. Kind of like when they changed freeloads to no longer boost paid sales rank.


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

Cherise Kelley said:


> I suspect this won't be true for much longer. Kind of like when they changed freeloads to no longer boost paid sales rank.


I think the opposite is true. KU is their exclusive content. They want to promote it. Promoting free books wasn't helping their business model. Helping KU is.


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## lostagain (Feb 17, 2014)

Cherise Kelley said:


> I suspect this won't be true for much longer. Kind of like when they changed freeloads to no longer boost paid sales rank.


I think it'll stay. It a KU benefit that keeps a lot of authors in.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Lisa Grace said:


> After all the brouhaha I went and checked my borrows on the two stories I have remaining in KU, (I just checked US sales/borrows).
> In June, in KU 1, one title had one borrow, and the other had two. So far, in July, one has 59 and the other 48, and we are only seven days in. I'm on vay kay with little internet access, so nothing I've done would have changed.
> 
> I'd have to say KU 2 is working fine for me. However, ranking doesn't seem to be influenced any.


Those are pages read, not borrows. Each one is worth approximately $0.0058


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## Guest (Jul 8, 2015)

Cherise Kelley said:


> I suspect this won't be true for much longer. Kind of like when they changed freeloads to no longer boost paid sales rank.


I love you, Cherise, but your suspicion doesn't make any sense. NO author would remain in KU if borrows no longer played a role in sales rank.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Jolie du Pre said:


> I love you, Cherise, but your suspicion doesn't make any sense. NO author would remain in KU if borrows no longer played a role in sales rank.


 

I want borrows to keep helping rank, so I'm preparing myself for that crutch to be taken away, heh.


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## Guest (Jul 8, 2015)

Cherise Kelley said:


> I want borrows to keep helping rank, so I'm preparing myself for that crutch to be taken away, heh.


Ha Ha! Love you!


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

justphil said:


> Perhaps, but not permanently. I'm sure the tools to convert EPUB to MOBI will improve. Right now, they don't meet our quality standards.


Or you could just make your own mobi files and give your customers a choice. That's what I do with the books I sell through Gumroad--I give readers the option of PDF, mobi, or epub. Whichever one suits them best. You're making your customers jump through an additional hoop when you could just as easily not.


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## lamaha (Nov 12, 2011)

I haven't read this whole thread. I picked out this post by Jeanne as an example:



> The bottom line is this. Authors of longer works felt they should make more money...and upon reflection...they are absolutely right in asking for more. But instead of reaching in their pockets to give them more, *Amazon decided to take it out of the pockets of shorter form writers, *thereby causing a rift among writers as well as causing loss of income for many.


 (my bold)

The entitlement in the bolded part is stunning. No, Amazon did not take money out of short-form writers' pockets. For a year, Amazon *put*, unasked, a hell of a lot of money into the pockets of short-form writers, and as a result, more short-form writers came to take advantage of Amazon largesse. So, Amazon decided to put a stop to the leakage -- as was their good right. Amazon was perfectly entitled to stop raining its own money. Short-form writers, never were entitled to that money. It was a year they got lucky. It's time to move on -- either write more short stories, create anthologies, or start writing novels.

To depend on the payout, to make it the basis of one's livelihood (if that is what happened) was an extremely unwise decision. A day job, until the day you have a steady income from SALES, is the best way to secure an income. It's what most writers do. Short stories have never earned much money. Why should they do so now? 
Flexibility is the name of the game.

_Edited. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


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## lamaha (Nov 12, 2011)

Conrad Goehausen said:


> Overall, this news is neutral - neither good nor bad for authors as a group. Overall, authors will make the same amount of money as before. Individually, it will change to some degree for everyone; up for some, down for others. All of it cancelling out in the bigger picture.
> 
> But others have pointed out the major reason for Amazon to try not to make a big deal of this. Authors whose incomes go down because of this change will hurt a lot and make much more noise about it than authors whose incomes will go up. Complaints will outnumber praises. So while the change is neutral, the response won't be. The silent majority will remain silent as always.


Exactly. In a nutshell. Quoted for truth.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

I'd be very surprised if this was the final iteration of KU, and I reckon it's more a reaction to reader behavior than author remuneration. I would not be at all surprised if a small segment of the KU subscriber base were losing Amazon money. The sort of folk who read three or four shorts per day. Before KU, they would probably part with $3-$4 per day to get their fix. If Amazon forces the shorts out of KU, then I reckon those folk would go back to getting their daily fix of short form literature, while still holding on to their KU membership for the longer stuff.

Regardless of why Amazon changed KU, it shouldn't have come as a shock to any of us. The whole ebook industry is still in a state of flux. There is no established distribution model, a fair chunk of the reading public are still unaware that you can read books electronically, and retailers look upon our products like a farmer would look upon a sheep that grows blue wool. 

Not eighteen months ago, people would have scoffed at any suggestion that there could ever be an ebook subscription service. Now, these services are the foundations of many a business plan.

Things have changed. Things will change again.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

lamaha said:


> I haven't read this whole thread. I picked out this post by Jeanne as an example:
> (my bold)
> 
> The entitlement in the bolded part is stunning. No, Amazon did not take money out of short-form writers' pockets. For a year, Amazon *put*, unasked, a hell of a lot of money into the pockets of short-form writers, and as a result, more short-form writers came to take advantage of Amazon largesse. So, Amazon decided to put a stop to the leakage -- as was their good right. Amazon was perfectly entitled to stop raining its own money. Short-form writers, never were entitled to that money. It was a year they got lucky. It's time to move on -- either write more short stories, create anthologies, or start writing novels.
> ...


I don't see it this way, and the fact that so many of see the 35% royalty rate as somehow reasonable - nay, that 70% is unreasonably high - just shows how strongly we come to accept Amazon's terms, even when they fly in the face of general practices elsewhere. Most of my shorts are priced at $1.99, and on all my other distribors those books earn me between $1.18 and $1.40, so the ~$1.35 I got for a borrow was a shift AWAY from Amazon's punitive $0.70 I get from a borrow. KU 2.0 returns us to those punitive levels and, in fact, worsens them. My short stories will now average less than a sale with every borrow, even if read to 100%.

_edited quoted post. --Betsy_


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## lamaha (Nov 12, 2011)

Short stories have never been profitable for their authors.


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## shalym (Sep 1, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Well, but, objectively . . . there are.
> 
> If you have a book that I want to buy, I can't buy it on Amazon -- which is where I acquire 99.99% of the content currently on my kindle. So there's that. For most titles that would be enough to make me say, "never mind."
> 
> ...


Another post agreeing with Anne. I really just don't understand this. If you really truly don't want to sell on Amazon's site, at least make it easy for Kindle owners to get the book onto their devices. Unless your ultimate goal is to alienate Kindle owners? Have you ever gotten any feedback indicating that Kindle owners are buying your books?

Shari


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

justphil said:


> Perhaps, but not permanently. I'm sure the tools to convert EPUB to MOBI will improve. Right now, they don't meet our quality standards.


I guess if it was me, knowing the difficulties prospective customers would have in doing it on their own, I'd opt to figure out how to make 'em meet my standards. Because if they try once and it's too hard, they'll likely never come back. So the sooner I can make it easier for them, the more chance I have to capture them as a customer.

There are MILLIONS of books that work just great in both .mobi and ePub format . . . they're available on multiple sites . . . . so it must be possible.


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## latepaul (Jan 1, 2015)

Saul Tanpepper said:


> I don't see it this way, and the fact that so many of see the 35% royalty rate as somehow reasonable - nay, that 70% is unreasonably high - just shows how strongly we come to accept Amazon's terms, even when they fly in the face of general practices elsewhere. Most of my shorts are priced at $1.99, and on all my other distribors those books earn me between $1.18 and $1.40, so the ~$1.35 I got for a borrow was a shift AWAY from Amazon's punitive $0.70 I get from a borrow. KU 2.0 returns us to those punitive levels and, in fact, worsens them. My short stories will now average less than a sale with every borrow, even if read to 100%.


Comparing the return you get from a rental (which has less value to the end user) to a sale is a mistake. Amazon over-paid (and still does IMO) for borrows to make the whole subscription thing viable.

The other problem with the comparison is that a sale commands a royalty not a share of some variable pot of cash. That's always been the dangerous thing about KU in my view. If you can predict your sales you can have a pretty good idea of your income from them. Your income from KU depends not only on the formula used for your share (1.0 v 2.0 v X.0) but on the size of the pot which is entirely under Amazon's control. How anyone can base a business on that I don't know. Fair enough treat it as a windfall when the pot is high and you're on the right side of the current formula but don't rely on it. And if/when Oyster and Scribd fail - look out!


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

lamaha said:


> Short stories have never been profitable for their authors.


Not true. I know several authors who have been very successful with short stories and they have been very profitable. One short story writer I read (don't know him but read his work) ended up getting a contract with Penguin as a result of the success of his short stories.


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## Guest (Jul 8, 2015)

vlmain said:


> Not true. I know several authors who have been very successful with short stories and they have been very profitable. One short story writer I read (don't know him but read his work) ended up getting a contract with Penguin as a result of the success of his short stories.


Thank you.

I'm getting increasingly tired of the offensive comments, at Writers' Cafe, toward authors of short works.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Jolie du Pre said:


> Thank you.
> 
> I'm getting increasingly tired of the offensive comments, at Writers' Cafe, toward authors of short works.


I am tired of it, too, and I am not even a short story writer. Well, technically, I have written one, but every time I sit down to write another short story, it ends up being a novella. It seems a lot of people do not understand how difficult it is to create completely fleshed out characters, environments, and plots in a very short space. My hat is off to anyone who can do that on a consistent basis. You have my respect.

Since shorts are primarily what I read, I would hate to see our short form writers leave.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Maybe they meant that short stories have been historically very difficult to make a living on? That's certainly true. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but it sure has been hard. There's no insult in that.

But I feel like everyone is so poised to take offense, it doesn't matter what's actually meant anymore.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> I guess if it was me, knowing the difficulties prospective customers would have in doing it on their own, I'd opt to figure out how to make 'em meet my standards. Because if they try once and it's too hard, they'll likely never come back. So the sooner I can make it easier for them, the more chance I have to capture them as a customer.
> 
> There are MILLIONS of books that work just great in both .mobi and ePub format . . . they're available on multiple sites . . . . so it must be possible.


Technically, writing a program to pull stuff out of an epub should be "easy" as far as programming goes. Taking that stuff and outputting it as text would be easy also. Whether it's easy to output it as mobi, I don't know, that all depends on how sticky it is to put something into mobi.

However, I'll just note that the fact that loads of books exist in both epub and mobi and are well done doesn't mean people are converting from epub to mobi. I create my book files in HTML and then convert to epub and mobi separately from the html (I use calibre). Calibre does a great job of this. I've never tried converting from epub to mobi using calibre but I am pretty sure it has the functionality - no idea how good the output is.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Monique said:


> Maybe they meant that short stories have been historically very difficult to make a living on? That's certainly true. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but it sure has been hard. There's no insult in that.
> 
> But I feel like everyone is so poised to take offense, it doesn't matter what's actually meant anymore.


It does seem like a lot of other authors are telling us "shorter" authors to suck it up because we never were supposed to make money anyway...

There seems to be some resentment on both sides of the aisle. The longer novelists were getting a raw deal before and feel like this is due, and us shorter authors feel like we were just writing what the market wanted and are now being punished for it.

I don't think I did anything wrong but be successful and savvy. But lately I feel like a card counter who takes a big casino for too much money and is having my picture plastered everywhere so I can't ply my trade. And that's not what I do and I don't think I should apologize for writing shorter works and making good money at it.

In the end, my word count and production has to be right up there with the novelists, it's just different packaging.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

lamaha said:


> The entitlement in the bolded part is stunning. No, Amazon did not take money out of short-form writers' pockets. For a year, Amazon *put*, unasked, a hell of a lot of money into the pockets of short-form writers, and as a result, more short-form writers came to take advantage of Amazon largesse. So, Amazon decided to put a stop to the leakage -- as was their good right. Amazon was perfectly entitled to stop raining its own money. Short-form writers, never were entitled to that money. It was a year they got lucky. It's time to move on -- either write more short stories, create anthologies, or start writing novels.


These are the sorts of arguments that make me feel like some long-form writers don't care if they're actually making more, or even as much, as they would have in KU1, so long as the short-form writers are properly "punished" by making less.


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

Monique said:


> Maybe they meant that short stories have been historically very difficult to make a living on? That's certainly true. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but it sure has been hard. There's no insult in that.
> 
> But I feel like everyone is so poised to take offense, it doesn't matter what's actually meant anymore.


I'm with you. While a handful of people have been obnoxious, most have been gracious during debate. However, I can't help but notice a lot of people being tossed in the "short story haters" group no matter what they say. I am officially weary. Therefore I will run to get some K-Cups so the caffeine can perk me up for writing today.


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## lamaha (Nov 12, 2011)

Dragovian said:


> These are the sorts of arguments that make me feel like some long-form writers don't care if they're actually making more, or even as much, as they would have in KU1, so long as the short-form writers are properly "punished" by making less.


No, that's not it at all. I just don't get that the complaining hasn't yet stopped. I'm the kind of person who, when reality turns against me, I gather my forces and see how I can get the wind behind me again. I'm sure if I were a short-form writer I'd have felt the hurt, then counted my blessings for the good year I've had behind me, and found a different direction to go in. Please don't read spite into my words. I'm the first to care and give others a hand up, and I don't expect to make loads with my single book in KU -- but isn't it time to move on? Sitting still and complaining isn't going to help.


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## lamaha (Nov 12, 2011)

Monique said:


> Maybe they meant that short stories have been historically very difficult to make a living on? That's certainly true. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but it sure has been hard. There's no insult in that.
> 
> But I feel like everyone is so poised to take offense, it doesn't matter what's actually meant anymore.


Thank you, yes, this is what I meant. Of course there are some exceptions. But I spent fifteen years on the agent-trade-publisher merry-go-round, know the Big Publishing scene inside out (I once had a Big Five publisher) and it's a fact that short stories were never on their radar. It was all about novels. SHort stories were sold mostly to magazines, and paid by the word. And yes, some writers made a living like that, even a good living -- but you really don't hear of a Stephen King of short stories, do you? Nothing wrong with that; but they just have never been the gold mine they were in KU for a short period of time.



> seems to be some resentment on both sides of the aisle. The longer novelists were getting a raw deal before and feel like this is due, and us shorter authors feel like we were just writing what the market wanted and are now being punished for it


.

In my case at least, there's no resentment. I didn't think I was getting a raw deal because I wasn't even aware of the problem -- the first I ever heard of "gaming the system" and the inequity of KU1 was when KU2 was announced and I came to the Kboards to check it out. I only have one book in KU and I never thought of it as a stake in my financial future. I have a day job, after struggling for years to live from my writing -- ie, advances and royalties. If anything I'm trying to help. It really is a bad idea to depend on something as fickle as book sales, and in this case, borrows, to build your life on and support your family. I tried it, and even with a big publisher, and foreign sales, the tide can turn and funds dry up. Now, I advise all writers not to give up the day job -- not until you really have hit it big. Because fiction writing, long or short, just isn't dependable.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

edwardgtalbot said:


> Technically, writing a program to pull stuff out of an epub should be "easy" as far as programming goes. Taking that stuff and outputting it as text would be easy also. Whether it's easy to output it as mobi, I don't know, that all depends on how sticky it is to put something into mobi.
> 
> However, I'll just note that the fact that loads of books exist in both epub and mobi and are well done doesn't mean people are converting from epub to mobi. I create my book files in HTML and then convert to epub and mobi separately from the html (I use calibre). Calibre does a great job of this. I've never tried converting from epub to mobi using calibre but I am pretty sure it has the functionality - no idea how good the output is.


Which is kind of my point. 

There are clearly two 'standards'. You want to reach the most people so you put your books into both formats. I get that it probably takes you a modest amount of additional time. But you do it because you figure it's worth it.

Why alienate all the people who have devices using one standard, by only producing books using the other. That's what doesn't make sense to me. I can't conceive of it taking so much extra time/money/effort at the production end as to not make it worth doing at the outset. 

But . . . again . . . everyone is, I think, entitled to operate their business as seems most appropriate for them. 

On the other topic of this thread , regarding this post.


lamaha said:


> Short stories have never been profitable for their authors.


I don't understand how people can call it offensive. It's very likely wrong, but offensive? I don't get that. But, then, I'm the sort who tends to assume nothing more than ignorance if a post seems 'off' rather than attributing malice or anything else.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I'm with you. While a handful of people have been obnoxious, most have been gracious during debate. However, I can't help but notice a lot of people being tossed in the "short story haters" group no matter what they say. I am officially weary. Therefore I will run to get some K-Cups so the caffeine can perk me up for writing today.


You've been gracious about it. I don't know that most have.

Regardless, when you've experienced a big financial loss, you get sensitive--least I do, anyhow. I don't begrudge anyone who's made out on the new terms, but some folks' insistence on calling me a "complainer" because I think there are major issues with how Amazon handles KU is a little off the mark.

I'm not crying sour grapes. Amazon has done a ton for me, and it's by far the bulk of where my money comes from. That doesn't mean I'm overjoyed to see them manipulating rankings for KU books, taking away data, and changing terms willy nilly. It's not very stable and it doesn't give me a lot of confidence for the future.

Some say, suck it up--that's business. And they have a point. Then again, some of them don't know what the heck they're talking about...


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## lamaha (Nov 12, 2011)

Ann in Arlington said:


> I don't understand how people can call it offensive. It's very likely wrong, but offensive? I don't get that. But, then, I'm the sort who tends to assume nothing more than ignorance if a post seems 'off' rather than attributing malice or anything else.


I should have added a strong adjective: "hugely" profitable, or something. It's implied.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

justphil said:


> To date, we have received precisely zero complaints from customers about their inability to read the books they bought.


Potential customers, though, who click away because they don't want to have to convert the file, aren't going to take the time to complain. So you've no idea how big that pool is.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Shelley K said:


> Potential customers, though, who click away because they don't want to have to convert the file, aren't going to take the time to complain. So you've no idea how big that pool is.


This in a nutshell.


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## Guest (Jul 8, 2015)

lamaha said:


> No, that's not it at all. I just don't get that the complaining hasn't yet stopped. I'm the kind of person who, when reality turns against me, I gather my forces and see how I can get the wind behind me again. I'm sure if I were a short-form writer I'd have felt the hurt, then counted my blessings for the good year I've had behind me, and found a different direction to go in. Please don't read spite into my words. I'm the first to care and give others a hand up, and I don't expect to make loads with my single book in KU -- but isn't it time to move on? Sitting still and complaining isn't going to help.


I didn't write novellas to take advantage of KU1. I've always been a short story and novella writer. I don't have a problem with KU2 - even as an author of short works.

I was in KU before, and I remain in KU. Not all authors of short works are dropping short works, like bare hands to a hot plate, in favor of writing novels. Nor are we all running away in a panic to go wide.

Maybe that's just me here at Writers' Cafe, and that's fine too. But I know others outside of Writers' Cafe who share my view.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

gorvnice said:


> Some say, suck it up--that's business. And they have a point. Then again, some of them don't know what the heck they're talking about...


What, one is supposed to have knowledge when opining on the Internet? *starts to go through own posts with a cleaver.*

Seriously, though, one of the standard responses I've seen here in most discussions of changes at Amazon is "suck it up, things change." It's not unique to the KU change and short story writers.

And in many of the cases I've seen, umbrage has been taken at comments that to me were directed at "scamlets."

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> And in many of the cases I've seen, umbrage has been taken at comments that to me were directed at "scamlets."
> 
> Betsy


THIS!! ^^^

I've been monitoring all these KU threads since the fit hit the shan (as my mother would say) and I NEVER felt that any of the criticisms or were toward bona fide short story writers who were simply benefiting from a payout system that was somewhat skewed in their favor.

I did see Much Glee that maybe this would finally stop the scammers who throw up a couple thousand words copied from Wikipedia and get paid because people open it and have already read 10%. But I never felt like long form writers were saying 'nanny nanny boo boo' at legitimate short form writers who now may not make quite so much.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> THIS!! ^^^
> 
> I've been monitoring all these KU threads since the fit hit the shan (as my mother would say) and I NEVER felt that any of the criticisms or were toward bona fide short story writers who were simply benefiting from a payout system that was somewhat skewed in their favor.
> 
> I did see Much Glee that maybe this would finally stop the scammers who throw up a couple thousand words copied from Wikipedia and get paid because people open it and have already read 10%. But I never felt like long form writers were saying 'nanny nanny boo boo' at legitimate short form writers who now may not make quite so much.


Tone gets lost easily, especially when change is happening at a rapid pace.

It's funny, because I certainly see that some think I'm telling authors not to go into KU because it's "bad" or something. I know that KU is going to be a boon for certain long form authors who have high read through rate.

My comments have much more been about the precedent I see Amazon setting for how they pay, how they change it, and how they take away (or provide) data on a whim.

I make my business, my living, on this stuff. When another company shuts down my ability to make clear-cut business decisions, and I think they're doing it somewhat intentionally, of course i'm going to mention it as something to be concerned about.

KU 2.0 is absolutely going to benefit some authors--some in a major way. However, many authors aren't even aware of the fact that it's not going to benefit them as much as they assume. A lot of things have to fall into place (payout and read-through to name a couple) for someone to make big money.

And in any case, the situation is a lot more complex than just--suck it up, things change. If it's that simple, please tell me: why are we on a message board again?

I thought it was to discuss things, not just to say suck it up because a situation might have complexity attached to it.


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## NoBlackHats (Oct 17, 2012)

However the hand was dealt, I still need to play it.  The dealer's motives and previous actions are essentially immaterial, as I cannot change them.  The only thing I can do is adjust my business in the best way possible to react to what has happened, and to be nimble for the next adjustments coming down the road in the future.

I went from four figures a month down to three, so you can be very sure that my emphasis is entirely on move forward well.


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## RN_Wright (Jan 7, 2014)

However, I'll just note that the fact that loads of books exist in both epub and mobi and are well done doesn't mean people are converting from epub to mobi. I create my book files in HTML and then convert to epub and mobi separately from the html (I use calibre). Calibre does a great job of this. I've never tried converting from epub to mobi using calibre but I am pretty sure it has the functionality - no idea how good the output is.
[/quote]

All my work is available in ePub and MOBI (courtesy of Calibre) and most is in print version as well, via CreateSpace.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

The numerous mentions of how 'business' is affected are striking. Over the years, much of what has been written in this cafe - and roundly admired - is about how well people run their 'business' with marketing, mailing lists, social media, blog tours etc., and now how the commercial imperatives meant KU was a natural draw for business-minded people. But if you are in business for writing, it's pointless railing at commercial changes. If you are in writing because that's what you do and have always done, the commercial aspects matter little if at all. Long form, short form, medium form...KU2 will finally reward those with the skill to sustain page-turning in novel after novel. Those writers benefit from their years of perseverance and practice, and if the worm turns once again, it will change little in their lives.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Frankly, a great many of us would take this as bad news no matter what. We're crabby internet people. That's just the deal.

And yes, for a lot of people, it's terrible news. KU2 eviscerates the main income my family was earning off of Amazon. That doesn't mean it's a bad change. Why did we deserve to benefit from the inequities of KU1? All this represents is a positive, inevitable, easily foreseen correction to a new, flawed, and evolving program.

Here's the bottom line: Amazon cares about customers, Amazon, shareholders, and authors in that order. To the extent that KU2 is a bad thing, it's a bad thing for a small subset of the group they care about the least. Customers don't see a change except indirectly, as it impacts the books they're offered--yes, erotica may suffer, but longer works are Amazon's bread and butter, and novelists should be flocking to KU. Amazon clearly has their reasons and thinks they'll benefit. Shareholders probably don't give much of a damn about KU, as small as it is relative to Amazon's entire business. Some authors are hurt by this and other authors benefit, since the global fund is a zero-sum game.

So who's suffering from this? Who's the victim of this bad news? A subset of authors? So what? Go wide with your shorts if you want to. Amazon can always revert the changes later if they realize that they undervalued your shorts relative to the novels they're able to stock up on now. I doubt they'll find themselves in that position. All they've done is figured out how to stop disproportionately rewarding folks for gaming KU1, and potentially increase the value of KU for their customers--the only people who truly matter to them.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Dolphin said:


> Frankly, a great many of us would take this as bad news no matter what. We're crabby internet people. That's just the deal.
> 
> And yes, for a lot of people, it's terrible news. KU2 eviscerates the main income my family was earning off of Amazon. That doesn't mean it's a bad change. Why did we deserve to benefit from the inequities of KU1? All this represents is a positive, inevitable, easily foreseen correction to a new, flawed, and evolving program.
> 
> ...


Gaming the system is what you do when you know how to write to markets. I'm going to stop being ashamed of the term. I'm a gamer. Go me! Lol.

Yeah, I will just say it. This change sucked for me. I'm reading enough to see that many, many, many authors seem to like the change--so I suppose that I was wrong again. I'm used to it. This was a good change apparently.

In any case, I've already pulled my stuff and gone wide. I made money before, I made it during, and I seem to be continuing to make it afterwards. That's because I've still got some game left in me.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

Just yesterday, my son showed me a book he'd been interested in buying - until he read the sample. It was a minecraft themed story, which wasn't a bad thing, but it had three changes of tense within the first two pages. 

The author had at least 20 such books available through KU, each more badly written than the last (regardless of how you line them up - they were that bad). It's people like him that are going to cop it in the hip pocket more than anyone else. There is no way that anyone could read beyond the first few pages of any of his books, which means that his royalty will drop from $1.30+ per borrow to 1 or 2 cents.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

gorvnice said:


> Gaming the system is what you do when you know how to write to markets. I'm going to stop being ashamed of the term. I'm a gamer. Go me! Lol.
> 
> Yeah, I will just say it. This change sucked for me. I'm reading enough to see that many, many, many authors seem to like the change--so I suppose that I was wrong again. I'm used to it. This was a good change apparently.
> 
> In any case, I've already pulled my stuff and gone wide. I made money before, I made it during, and I seem to be continuing to make it afterwards. That's because I've still got some game left in me.


You're certainly not alone in resenting KU2. I don't think you're better or worse than any other author if you write only novels or only shorts, but the bottom line for me is that I think KU2 is better than KU1 for the fans, and they're the ones who really matter. Ain't no game without them.

But again, even if this change is aimed at improving things for readers, readers don't care about it directly. Readers don't even know about it. We're the audience for the press release, and it's not surprising if a vocal minority of us need a holiday weekend to cool off after Amazon moved our cheese (or 50-75% of our sole source of income, as the case may be).

Game on, gamer. Even the Patriots lose at least once a year. All it does is make them mad and hungry.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

justphil said:


> Perhaps, but not permanently. I'm sure the tools to convert EPUB to MOBI will improve. Right now, they don't meet our quality standards.


I honestly don't understand this. If you're sending instructions to customers on how to convert the EPUB to MOBI, why not do this in-house? You say it doesn't meet your quality standards, but if customers are converting the files anyway, that's exactly what they're going to receive one way or the other. Plus, some people are not very tech-savvy, so this creates an enormous barrier for some potential readers who aren't going to understand how to do this. My mom, bless her, would have a lot of trouble with this, despite how detailed the instructions might be. It's fairly easy to create a MOBI file using Calibre. You wouldn't even need to convert it from EPUB, and it would eliminate any barriers and extra steps for customers.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Justphil , 

Pretty much everything you've outlined here sounds like how not to run a successful publishing business.  Seriously,  my first recommendation to new self-published authors would be to read this thread and do this opposite of everything you recommend.  

But,  hey,  maybe I'm wrong.  I haven't seen you post your ebookstore Web address.  I'd like to buy a few of your books and check out what you're doing.  Maybe you're crazy like a fox. 

Can you please post it so I can check out your books?


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

jakedfw said:


> Justphil ,
> 
> Pretty much everything you've outlined here sounds like how not to run a successful publishing business. Seriously, my first recommendation to new self-published authors would be to read this thread and do this opposite of everything you recommend.
> 
> ...


Jake- in a different thread at one point, JustPhil talked about one of his writers selling 30 copies a month on Amazon and referred to this as "gaining traction and good sales" more or less. So I think his definition of success is just a bit different than it is for most of us


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I'm with you Gorvnice. I keep scratching my head at all of these "I'm going to make more money!!!" threads and posts and wondering how that adds up. It just defies my logic. If you weren't selling well before KU2, why do these novel writers suddenly think they're going to get massive page reads? To make $1,000 of the proposed pool on 5 books that are 400 KENPC pages long, at 1 cent a borrow, that's 100,000 pages read, or roughly 50 readers reading EACH of your 5 books to completion each month. At the .0057 number we extrapolated from June's data, it's obviously even harder. That's 88 readers PER book.

And if you ARE writing novels and getting 50 readers a month to buy each title, at $4.99 each, that's $873 on Amazon. Could you make up the $127 on all of the other vendors combined? And at 88 readers for each book, that's $1536 on Amazon alone, MORE than that $1,000 in page reads. 

I know my sales and I know where that puts me in the grand scheme of Kindle Authors (you can see ranking in Author Central. I stay between #5,000-#10,000 in the Paid Kindle Store author ranking), and that is not a reality for the majority of authors. I know very few people who sell 88 copies a month on 5 books. In fact, if I look at MY numbers from June, I only have a single title with 89 sales, the other 7 have less, but because of my prices, I still made $1960 last month on Amazon alone. None of those books in KU (I am excluding my test short story in KU that was just so I could see what data I could get, it's not even my real name so I could SEE what a "nobody" author in my genre could expect with no promotion and one book). It's very hard to reach 50 readers per book in a month.

Good news or bad news, I just don't see how everyone's math is going change.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Folks, let's get back to talking in this thread about KU and not about Phil and his business.

Thanks.

Betsy
KB Mod


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I'm with you Gorvnice. I keep scratching my head at all of these "I'm going to make more money!!!" threads and posts and wondering how that adds up. It just defies my logic. If you weren't selling well before KU2, why do these novel writers suddenly think they're going to get massive page reads? To make $1,000 of the proposed pool on 5 books that are 400 KENPC pages long, at 1 cent a borrow, that's 100,000 pages read, or roughly 50 readers reading EACH of your 5 books to completion each month. At the .0057 number we extrapolated from June's data, it's obviously even harder. That's 88 readers PER book.
> 
> And if you ARE writing novels and getting 50 readers a month to buy each title, at $4.99 each, that's $873 on Amazon. Could you make up the $127 on all of the other vendors combined? And at 88 readers for each book, that's $1536 on Amazon alone, MORE than that $1,000 in page reads.
> 
> ...


I agree with some of this. A book that doesn't sell probably won't see massive page reads either, but you never know. It's possible a boo that doesn't get bought much will see some borrows and gain more visibility, but I agree it isn't the most likely scenario.

However, I quibble with the 88 copies a month thing. I know many authors who sell more than that of each of their books a day, much less a month. Think about it... your author rank means that at least 5000 authors are selling more volume than you do in the given time period.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

No 5,000 pen names. And it includes many trad pub author names that are not in KU. 

My lowest author rank has been #600,000 and that was 2 years ago. That's why I say it's NOT the reality for MOST authors in the store.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

True. Selling books at all at any kind of sustainable level isn't reality for most authors, to be honest. 

However, that doesn't mean that for some, KU makes more sense to their business than going wide. There are visibility options with KU that you don't get elsewhere. It's something people have to decide for themselves with the information they have available.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I think we see the same picture Annie B. I am probably falling into that "but what about the newbies" fallacy of Kboards.  I really have to stop worrying so much about strangers on the Internet. LOL. Time to pack and hit the road to Virginia.


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## lamaha (Nov 12, 2011)

Joe Konrath has blogged about KU2:http://jakonrath.blogspot.de/2015/07/ebook-subscriptions-q-a.html


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

US link to both of Joe's blogs on KU.
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com


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## Guest (Jul 9, 2015)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I know my sales and I know where that puts me in the grand scheme of Kindle Authors (you can see ranking in Author Central. I stay between #5,000-#10,000 in the Paid Kindle Store author ranking), and that is not a reality for the majority of authors. I know very few people who sell 88 copies a month on 5 books. In fact, if I look at MY numbers from June, I only have a single title with 89 sales, the other 7 have less, but because of my prices, I still made $1960 last month on Amazon alone. None of those books in KU (I am excluding my test short story in KU that was just so I could see what data I could get, it's not even my real name so I could SEE what a "nobody" author in my genre could expect with no promotion and one book). It's very hard to reach 50 readers per book in a month.


I just looked at my author ranking, and it's 9,505. That's only because I'm one of the authors in a zombie box set that is selling well at Amazon. I didn't manage my speed of production well, so the sales of my previous books have dropped off. But that 9,505 tells me that just one book can get you there.

With my future production plan, and what I know I have accomplished in the past, I'm not worried about getting good sales in the future.

When successful authors tell others that very few authors can do it, it translates for some authors a "Then why should I bother?" attitude.

I'm glad I'm not one of those authors. I'm glad I believe I can make it despite the odds. You've got to be a fighter in this business, and you've got to believe in yourself.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Jolie du Pre said:


> You've got to be a fighter in this business, and you've got to believe in yourself.


Amen.

Whatever else there is to take away from this thread, I'd take this point. In the end, it can be a brutal business and those who make it long-term are fighters.


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## a_g (Aug 9, 2013)

gorvnice said:


> Yeah, I will just say it. This change sucked for me. I'm reading enough to see that many, many, many authors seem to like the change--so I suppose that I was wrong again.


Other authors liking the change does not make you wrong. What's good for you is good for you. What is not good for you is not good for you. What is good for another author is great for them but doesn't really apply to you or affect you in any way.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

a_g said:


> Other authors liking the change does not make you wrong. What's good for you is good for you. What is not good for you is not good for you. What is good for another author is great for them but doesn't really apply to you or affect you in any way.


well the whole point of this thread was that I believed Amazon thought this KU 2.0 change was "bad news" on the whole for authors.

So I guess I was wrong 'bout that


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

a_g said:


> What is good for another author is great for them but doesn't really apply to you or affect you in any way.


Well, not necessarily. There's a fixed pot here. The total money going to authors is going to be the same, so if some authors are losing money, others are gaining.


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## 555aaa (Jan 28, 2014)

So... has someone explained, perhaps upthread, how sales rank is supposed to get calculated when you have this pages read metric? Is it weighted somehow?  Do you think that the % of pages read is going to feed into the search algos, so that books with higher percent page reads show up more in search results (which is something they could do now, independent of KU)?


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

555aaa said:


> So... has someone explained, perhaps upthread, how sales rank is supposed to get calculated when you have this pages read metric? Is it weighted somehow? Do you think that the % of pages read is going to feed into the search algos, so that books with higher percent page reads show up more in search results (which is something they could do now, independent of KU)?


Under KU 1.0, sales rank was impacted only when a book was first borrowed. It had nothing to do with 10% being read to trigger a royalty payout. There is no indication that this has changed with KU 2.0.

Search algos are more complex - no idea on that.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Good news or bad news, I just don't see how everyone's math is going change.


Previously, borrows were paid on the order of $1.35 apiece. With KU2, a 400 KENP novel--which isn't particularly long, mind you--comes to $2.28 at a $0.0057/KENP royalty. That's better than what you'd get for a sale at $2.99. Granted, you sell for much higher prices, but we all know that your catalog and readership are a bit eccentric. The math _has_ changed, and KU2 is a substantial improvement over KU1 for most genre novelists.

If you're pricing at $4.99, then the difference per reader is $1.21. Still a gap there, but 1) not all KU members will buy your books if they can't borrow them; 2) some KU members will borrow your books and still go on to buy them; 3) these increased sales will increase your ranking, and therefore your visibility, and therefore your sales and borrows; 4) there may be even more arcane, algo-related visibility advantages that we're not aware of; 5) KDPS/KU open up discoverability/promotional advantages that you wouldn't have otherwise (KU-focused sites, free days, countdowns, &c.). I don't see most authors losing money there, ultimately. Especially ones who are unable to promote successfully on wide sites, which is an incredibly difficult process.

Clearly it's an improvement for novelists over the KU1 regime. Whether or not it's better than going wide...that's an incredibly difficult question to answer. I suspect that it is, generally, but nobody--not a single soul on this board--has the ability to say so for certain. We simply don't have enough data or tools to assess with 100% certainty whether you, or Randall, or anybody else would be better off going wide or going into KU. There's just no methodologically pure way to run that experiment--or at least no way to do it with existing pen names.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Okay, so I have some preliminary numbers that point toward the trend I predicted way up thread. Before KU2 launched, I'd already done the math and revised my spreadsheet to accept the new numbers. I calculated that I'd need 12K pages read per day on average to equal an average day's revenue in KU1 for June. I also knew that the first few days would be low, due to the US holiday this past weekend and said as much. Pages read began to increase on Monday, just as I'd predicted. Tuesday and Wednesday were just shy of that 12K mark and Thursday was just above it. Basically, no change in revenue for me. Possibly an increase if the payout is above .005, which is what I used for the calculation. I'll continue to monitor things, but for the foreseeable future, my novels will stay in.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Wayne,
Where is your newest book?


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

cinisajoy said:


> Wayne,
> Where is your newest book?


Still with Clio Editing, but the invoice has been paid, so Eliza Dee is finished. I expect it from her very soon. Give me 24 hours to go over the edits, 24 hours for Donna Rich to proofread it, 24 hours for me to go over her recommendations, and a final 24 hours for RavenTide Books to format it.

Late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Are you on the mailing list? It'll be announced there first and at only $.99 for 24 hours.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Still with Clio Editing, but the invoice has been paid, so Eliza Dee is finished. I expect it from her very soon. Give me 24 hours to go over the edits, 24 hours for Donna Rich to proofread it, 24 hours for me to go over her recommendations, and a final 24 hours for RavenTide Books to format it.
> 
> Late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Are you on the mailing list? It'll be announced there first and at only $.99 for 24 hours.


Please update the date on your website. Some of us or at least me have been hitting it once a day to check.
Yes, you go to my promotions folder.


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## Rayven T. Hill (Jul 24, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Still with Clio Editing, but the invoice has been paid, so Eliza Dee is finished. I expect it from her very soon. Give me 24 hours to go over the edits, 24 hours for Donna Rich to proofread it, 24 hours for me to go over her recommendations, and a final 24 hours for RavenTide Books to format it.
> 
> Late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Are you on the mailing list? It'll be announced there first and at only $.99 for 24 hours.


Just saw your bundle Wayne. Hope it does well for you, but I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to put Dowb Island Press.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Lisa Grace said:


> After all the brouhaha I went and checked my borrows on the two stories I have remaining in KU, (I just checked US sales/borrows).
> In June, in KU 1, one title had one borrow, and the other had two. So far, in July, one has 59 and the other 48, and we are only seven days in. I'm on vay kay with little internet access, so nothing I've done would have changed.
> 
> I'd have to say KU 2 is working fine for me. However, ranking doesn't seem to be influenced any.


I wonder how many people are in Lisa's boat and have no idea what's really happening. Will make for a depressing August reveal.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

Monique said:


> I wonder how many people are in Lisa's boat and have no idea what's really happening. Will make for a depressing August reveal.


I've been thinking the same thing. I fret about them.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Monique said:


> I wonder how many people are in Lisa's boat and have no idea what's really happening. Will make for a depressing August reveal.


I just hope they don't spend their money in advance.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

cinisajoy said:


> Please update the date on your website. Some of us or at least me have been hitting it once a day to check.
> Yes, you go to my promotions folder.


Thanks, Cin. I've been neglecting a lot of things lately.



Rayven T. Hill said:


> Just saw your bundle Wayne. Hope it does well for you, but I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to put Dowb Island Press.


Ouch, thanks! It's only $.99 for a day longer.


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## sinapse (Apr 28, 2015)

Thanks for publishing your first take on your KENP reads vs. your previous month's borrows. It's a tentative confirmation of the rough projection I worked up for a long post on another thread a few weeks ago. Obviously, we need a couple of months actual KENP read results to say anything conclusively, but this is a solid step forward. Thank you for yet another Stinnett gift to the community! Best of luck on the new book!


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## Eric Z (Apr 28, 2015)

I hate the new KU, and I'm not too chicken to show you my cräppy sales:





My sales were crappy before but they were totally gutted by the new KU, now I'm counting how many consecutive weeks I can flatline! Anway...

What a lot of people don't know is that the new KU is nOT just a new payout scheme but also a new "algorithm" and a new TREATMENT, i.e. books that are not in KU get deferential treatment and aren't shown as much in places like "readers who bought this also liked" etc. etc.

KU books are favored over non-KU books.
So for non-fiction stand alone books, you're buggered.

Dave Chesson talks about this a little in this interview:
http://www.zbooks.co/2015/11/the-most-awesome-seo-blueprint-ever_9.html


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## C. Rysalis (Feb 26, 2015)

Eric Z said:


> KU books are favored over non-KU books.
> So for non-fiction stand alone books, you're buggered.


I wonder if this is true for trad-published books. If it was, then I imagine those publishers would be rather unhappy with Amazon.


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## Eric Z (Apr 28, 2015)

I'm sure they get -pre-ferential treatment. We've seen how they "kinda" won the price wars and can now set their prices. But they also get other features us little guys don't. For example pre-sales was something that was only reserved for the big publishers until recently (correct me if I'm wrong guys!) and I'm sure there are other things/features they get and we don't. But we knew that right?


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## Greg Dragon (Jun 10, 2014)

Boyd said:


> we're already on the new rendition of KU... why are we talking about something over 8 months old?


Never question the motives of a necromancer!


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Boyd said:


> we're already on the new rendition of KU... why are we talking about something over 8 months old?


Was sure I saw that horse carcass twitch.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Greg Dragon said:


> Never question the motives of a necromancer!


I chortled.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Eric Z said:


> I hate the new KU, and I'm not too chicken to show you my cräppy sales:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It feels like you've resurrected a zombie thread to advertise your services and products. Could be wrong.

If your sales were crappy before (your words), then it's time to take the focus off KU and put it on your platform. Professional, eye-catching covers aimed at enticing the audience they're intended for to stop and have a look, and an active, helpful blog with a lot of followers eager for what you're selling. That's how non-fic both in and out of KU sells. Aim your blog at people with a problem. Solve it with your books. If you don't want to experiment with KU, don't, but that doesn't seem to be the real problem by your own admission.


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## Greg Dragon (Jun 10, 2014)

Boyd said:


> LOL! So much truth! Hey Greg, love your covers!!!!!


Wow, thank you! Love your posts.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Boyd said:


> we're already on the new rendition of KU... why are we talking about something over 8 months old?


Because people who are losing out because either their work is too short or readers don't want to read the whole thing, can't find a way to adapt and move on. This same whining is all over the kdp forum, as though they are being forced at gunpoint to stay with the program. They are not; when the system changed, Amazon gave them every opportunity to remove their stuff from Select. If the poster's books are still in Select, why wait until now? I have seen people threatening to sue Amazon for changing the rules, as though they are not entitled, even saying it is unconstitutional - whatever that means to a British person.


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## Evan of the R. (Oct 15, 2013)

Boyd said:


> we're already on the new rendition of KU... why are we talking about something over 8 months old?


That brings up a good point, though: what do we call the new regime that started this month? Is it now KU 3?


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## Aero (Jan 17, 2014)

Evan of the R. said:


> That brings up a good point, though: what do we call the new regime that started this month? Is it now KU 3?


Here are my thoughts...

This is about strategy and managing expenses - that doesn't mean that the pot shrinks, in fact you want it to grow as it shows that the industry is growing. They are just managing their costs...

Kindle 1.0
Pay book borrows - people do more short books faster to "game system"

Kindle 2.0
Pay per page - artificially inflate page to "game system"

Kindle 2.5
Reduce page count algorithm & cap page count - ?

-------

Kindle 3.0 opportunities

Minimum page reads for payout set and then raised semi annually (say minimum 5,000 page read to get paid) separate from book sales minimum payout - just a KU thing

Amazon promote author book - books in KU that give you ranking/visibility but you get paid nothing

Pay ranges for page count (1,000 -5000 = .0015 per page --- 5,000-100000 = .003 per page, --- 100000-1000000 = .006 per page)

And annual algorithm changes to further reduce page count

Maybe they should hire me?


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Evan of the R. said:


> That brings up a good point, though: what do we call the new regime that started this month? Is it now KU 3?


Beware, lots of acronyms. It gets annoying.

KU1 was the original program. KU2 is when they went from flat $1.35 per page to per-page payment. We're still in KU2. But for a while we cruised along under KENPC 1.0, the original method of determining how many pages a book had for payment purposes. This method involved alchemy, Red Bull, and monkeys throwing their poo at a wall while the ghost of Sylvia Brown interpreted the patterns. Now we're on to KENPC 2.0, which is a new way of determining the pages of a book for payment purposes that's supposed to involve methods that are more accurate, fair, and standardized. It seems most people's books pushed closer to 190-210 words per page, whether that meant going up or down, so they probably added some raccoons in with the monkeys.

I don't think it constitutes KU3, because the basic structure has not changed, it's KU2 with KENPC 2.0, which in addition to the supposedly more standardized way of determining pages adds a cap on the number of pages paid out from an individual reading a single book. There will probably be a KENPC 3.0 while we're still under KU 2. Probably more, since I doubt they're going to abandon the pages-read model and ever go back to a flat fee.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

Shelley K said:


> But for a while we cruised along under KENPC 1.0, the original method of determining how many pages a book had for payment purposes. This method involved alchemy, Red Bull, and monkeys throwing their poo at a wall while the ghost of Sylvia Brown interpreted the patterns.


Snort! At last! An explanation I understand! (Thank heavens I'd just swallowed that mouthful of coffee or it would be all over the keyboard!)


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

My Dog's Servant said:


> Snort! At last! An explanation I understand! (Thank heavens I'd just swallowed that mouthful of coffee or it would be all over the keyboard!)


Jeff Bezos appeared in my dream and revealed that to me while he glued rhinestones to his head and fed me gummy fruit snacks, so I know it has to be true!


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