# July KENP is 0.00403472



## Some Random Guy (Jan 16, 2016)

A new low.


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

That SUCKS. Well, it means I will be pulling out my books then.


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## GT59 (Jul 6, 2014)

I think you mean  .00403472

By my records, it seems this is the lowest payout since page reads started.


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

GT59 said:


> I think you mean .00403472
> 
> By my records, it seems this is the lowest payout since page reads started.


Yes, and it's a bad trend


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

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

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


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## NicoleSmith (Apr 11, 2016)

Pasting from this thread (can't figure out how to link to original post):

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,254247.0.html



> I have this -
> 
> June 2017 - $0.0042229
> May 2017 - $0.004338
> ...


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

I don't have a stake in this personally, but they did change the KENPC calculation in August. I would worry a bunch more if August's number was this low.


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## Chrissy (Mar 31, 2014)

Last month I predicted that July's rate would go down.
See here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,253271.msg3528470.html#msg3528470

I'm going to go on the record NOW and say that August's rate will go down lower than July's rate of .00403472 as well.

My reasoning stays the same....

Here's what the past shows:

JUN-2015 .00595
JUL-2015 .00578
AUG-2015 .00514

JUN-2016 .00493 
JUL-2016 .00481
AUG-2016 .00458

If the past is any guide to the future, I think July 2017 and August 2017 each WILL BE PROGRESSIVELY LOWER than the Jun 2017 rate of .00422

So far:

June-2017 .00422
July-2017 .00403
Aug-2017 LOWER STILL? I say yes. Unfortunately.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

GeneDoucette said:


> I don't have a stake in this personally, but they did change the KENPC calculation in August. I would worry a bunch more if August's number was this low.


If they continue to pay the scammers, then the number will continue to decline. They didn't change they way they pay, and for most people that were affected by August's changes, their page counts dropped. Either Zon needs to increase funding to the pot to reflect the number of pages read, or they need to decrease the number of books in the pool to favor legitimate authors. Based on mostly anecdotal evidence, August is a down month for a lot of people. If readers aren't reading as much, then the payment number per page will rise for August. If it stays at this level or drops even more, there will be a mass exodus from the program.

A lot of the popular genres in KU have a lot of shorter novels. At 50K-75K words, you're talking about payouts of $1 to $1.50 for a full read.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)




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## EvanPickering (Mar 8, 2016)

Not to pile on, but I pulled out of KU and went wide and I'm already selling like 2x more books on Kobo and Nook combined as I am on Amazon. Pretty crazy. Obviously I'll have to wait and see how those numbers go or if they cool down, but still. I miss KU somewhat but I'm not sure I'll go back if this keeps up.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

I think next month will be the more telling month of which way we're going, now that KENPC 3.0.  This stinks and definitely makes me wary,  but not pulling any triggers quite yet.


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## K.Peters (Aug 17, 2015)

brkingsolver said:


> If they continue to pay the scammers, then the number will continue to decline.


This... big time, this.
Still, in my mind, until I have a large following and a big list, I'll stick it out.
Thanks for reading my mind, though.


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## Sam B (Mar 28, 2017)

Rick Gualtieri said:


> I think next month will be the more telling month of which way we're going, now that KENPC 3.0. This stinks and definitely makes me wary, but not pulling any triggers quite yet.


I'm thinking this. My genre does very well with KU, and I don't intend to do anything without giving it some more time and thought. If the payout continues to drop like a rock while Amazon doesn't bother to address scammers, I'll start to think about going wide.

Especially when the book report is doing a thing where a bunch of my revenue has disappeared again.

What a stressful morning!


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

Rick Gualtieri said:


> I think next month will be the more telling month of which way we're going, now that KENPC 3.0. This stinks and definitely makes me wary, but not pulling any triggers quite yet.


Sorry man, you can't pull out of KU. I just signed up for 2 years of KU during the July Summer Sale promotion and also just finished Bill The Vampire. At the rate I read, you'll probably have to stick around until 2019.


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## LadyG (Sep 3, 2015)

Sam B said:


> Especially when the book report is doing a thing where a bunch of my revenue has disappeared again.
> 
> What a stressful morning!


Same here. July has disappeared from my Book Report. Everything else shows up fine, but all sales and pages have vanished for the entire month of July. Not gonna lie, that's got me a bit concerned.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2017)

The sad thing is that the discouragement of authors is not really necessary. If Amazon increased the pot to $22.5  million. that would increase the payout to .005 from .004. So they are saving only a few milllion at the risk of a mass exodus from KU. Makes little sense from here.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

SMays said:


> Sorry man, you can't pull out of KU. I just signed up for 2 years of KU during the July Summer Sale promotion and also just finished Bill The Vampire. At the rate I read, you'll probably have to stick around until 2019.


Ummm ... then they all died. THE END.


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## Picky Cat Editing (Dec 26, 2011)

SMays said:


> Sorry man, you can't pull out of KU. I just signed up for 2 years of KU during the July Summer Sale promotion and also just finished Bill The Vampire. At the rate I read, you'll probably have to stick around until 2019.


No doubt about it. This is the best post in this thread. 

ETA:

Rick's response is a very close second.


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## devalong (Aug 28, 2014)

It's like Amazon is playing limbo with us.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Nah, one author leaves, five more sign up. There's nothing we can do that will stop Amazon from squeezing us dry. Except not play the game.

I'm hoping for a better payout in September, since August should see a reduction in scammers getting all the pages, but not really hopeful. Amazon can pay what they want, and so far it seems they want to pay less (in terms of price per page).


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2017)

There will still be people gritting their teeth and hanging in there when it reaches 0.03 of a cent.

What a debacle.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

1) blame the hackers
2) it's clear amazon is not "topping up the pot" as many suspect. If they were, they wouldn't let it dip to this. 
3) I called KU going below .0038 before year end, now I'm going to call .0035 before year end 

More importantly, I'm starting to really suspect that Amazon is actually heading towards shutting down KU. Not addressing scammers, letting the pay-out crash worse than ever... this is the kind of "attention" you'd expect out of a tech vendor when a product has reached end of life. 

I won't be in the least bit surprised if they shut down KU sometime next year, or even late this year, and port the subscriber base over to Prime. They'll have to work out some funky legalize where they'll give KU subscribers access to prime books for one year but after that they must have prime itself. 

This would be a very smart move on their part. Not only does it increase prime subs (which gets people buying everything, not just books), but it will also let Amazon manage the quality of the books their readers are accessing. Maybe even implement something where readers can tell amazon books they wish were in the store and then zon will recruit those books into prime. 

If they shut down KU or port it over, I think that will be great. The market will return to more of a direct sales model without botting, or scamming, or any of that junk. Although, I remain happy KU is around as the less people wide the better for us who are wide. But in the aggregate, I think KU dying is nothing but a positive.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2017)

For me that does it. I unchecked all the boxes for auto-renewal on the titles I had in KU. I can't justify a payout of $1 for a full read of a 60K book anymore. Not worth it when the book is priced at $3.99.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

I've seen a couple of authors post that their July pages read from click farm sites were yanked. That gave me some hope that there was enough of that going on behind the scenes (that most affected authors weren't talking about) that the July rate would be improved. That we wouldn't have to wait over till Sept 15 to see an effect.

Now, last year, we received an adjustment payment for what appeared to be some of the monies reclaimed from the scamming. It helped, but wasn't a full adjustment for monies lost to scammers. I would, of course, hope that Amazon is planning another such adjustment soon. And I would hope that it's significant enough to be meaningful. 

There's a different point for all of us where KU simply won't pay enough to stay with the program compared to being wide. I'm betting fence-straddlers and those who've hit their point will be jumping wide as soon as they can now. But unless it's big names, I'm not sure Amazon will care. Then again, Amazon can always cut individual deals with those folk they really want to stay with the program.


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## Roberta Nicholls (Jul 23, 2014)

Oh I forgot that the rate came out today! Shocking and I agree with someone who mentioned above... I think this is directly linked to the scammers. 

To be worth their while they must be skimming thousands from the pot. These payout numbers are only going to keep going down and amazon know that even if it was 0.0038 people will still be keeping their books in.

For every 6 or 7 people on kboards that uncheck the box, 500 others will stick with it. 

Zon keeps giving cos we keep accepting. 

Phoenix, genuine question... how do you know the authors are complaining about July's clickfarm page reads?
I mean? Wouldn't that make them scammers?

Are scammers so brazenly talking about scamming in public? On these forums. I'm a little shocked actually. Not to mention I feel like it is a slap in the face to the rest of us!


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> However, I doubt the reduced page rate has anything to do with that. I don't think Amazon have a rate below which they will not go. They don't worry about losing the authors succeeding in KU because another batch will sign up. They don't even worry about KU members not renewing their subs because new people will join. Thanks to the authors KU has a critical mass now, so no single author is worth much to them despite what anyone wants to believe.


Yep, you could be right. I'm just speculating. But the majority of people to date have believed that zon tops up the pot to ensure KU is worth people's while. So one of two things are happening. Either, as you suspect, they've reached critical mass (ie. pure monopoly via a certain threshold of KU subscribers being reached) and now it's time to take the boots to the vendors and pocket the margins themselves, OR, KU is reaching end of life and the roadmap doesn't justify actions like artificially propping up the pot or launching an anti-scammer initiative.

No matter how it's sliced and diced, the fact they'd let the pot continue to decline (either by not topping up or by ignoring the scammer issue) when people are already fed up with them is not a good sign for those hoping to ever return to a .005 level.

But how people ever thought this was going to end well was always beyond me


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Roberta Nicholls said:


> Are scammers so brazenly talking about scamming in public? On these forums. I'm a little shocked actually. Not to mention I feel like it is a slap in the face to the rest of us!


Hell yes. There are tons of scam books still botting the ranks. Zon ain't going after anyone. They went after the stuffers according to kboards, but I don't really watch that area of the market. I can tell you there are plenty of books blatantly botting after the Dragonsoul ordeal and nothing is happening to them.

It literally makes zero sense (unless of course you're shutting the program down at some point and don't want to spend resources fixing something you're tossing out anyway).


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

Someone mentioned August is a down month for most people. Well, my page reads are doing very well. My guess is that's because the payout will be lower. Yes, I am a pessimist.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Prime has nothing to do with KU. They are both completely different programs. One is a primary shipping program with video, music and a handful of books added. The other is a reading only subscription program. I already have prime and I have KU. I have them for different reasons. Prime Reading has a whopping 1000 books in it. At a glance there are about 25 in the genre I like reading. Out of those when I checked I am interested in reading about 2. 

In addition they just sold 1 and 2 year subscriptions in July. I got one. Prepaid. There is no rolling anyone into prime, there is no substitute. 2 books are not a substitute for the price paid for unlimited reading. 

The death of KU has been predicted quite a few times. I doubt it, but if it did, they will have to refund all those subscriptions they just sold a month ago. They advertised those quite heavily all over the site all prime day. Just like they did the last year. 

I keep a wishlist of 1000's of books that are in KU I am interested in. I checked yesterday and I lost 1 book. Meaning 1 of those was taken out of KU. I check about monthly and haven't seen much change in the last 6 month. 

As a reader I love it. But it is what it is. If its gone, its gone. But I don't think its going anywhere any time soon. 
I hope in the next couple of months they get a handle on the scamming, or just go to curated all together. Like prime reading, but with actual books in it to read.


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## Roberta Nicholls (Jul 23, 2014)

Yes absolutely and back in the day a scammer would have had their account terminated but now, a scammer gets themselves to number 1 in the store and they keep their account and lose their rank... that's all. 

And to top that off they are obviously paying them hence the low 0.0040.  

What I don't understand fully is how Phoenix is able to know that the scammers have reported their july click farm page reads have gone? I feel like I'm missing something. Are the scammers on this forum discussing it? That's what I'm confused and shocked by.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Roberta Nicholls said:


> Phoenix, genuine question... how do you know the authors are complaining about July's clickfarm page reads?
> I mean? Wouldn't that make them scammers?
> 
> Are scammers so brazenly talking about scamming in public? On these forums. I'm a little shocked actually. Not to mention I feel like it is a slap in the face to the rest of us!


The ones posting _[ETA: on Facebook] _about July page reads being yanked were both using new "marketers" and claimed they didn't know the methods being employed. Nor did they seem to question many thousands of dollars and many hundreds of thousands of page reads as being anything outside the ordinary results of typical marketing. Such folk are either willfully blind or fully on board with fraud...until they're caught.

We've certainly seen scammers come on here and start threads about how cruel Amazon was being to them when their accounts were closed, books were yanked and/or rank was pulled. I don't get that behavior either, unless they're hoping Amazon reps are reading here and those posts will somehow evoke their sympathy. I mean, isn't that like a neighborhood thief showing up at a town council on crime and talking about how mean the police are?


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

I do wonder if...I mean, I really have no knowledge of data to back this up, but if they sold a ton of new subscriptions at a discount...the Groupon giveaway and the Prime giveaway happened, at least...couldn't that mean more pages read, less payout? Because I will say, I had an AWESOME month for page reads in July. I would have loved to see the payout higher obviously, but maybe there were more customers?

However, I think it is time to pull my books out of KU. My pen name is making enough money to start transitioning my real name wide.

On another weird side note, I didn't see any page count increases or decreases with KU 3.0 like some people did, BUT, yesterday I just updated my back matter on all of my pen name books. Two had a new "preview of the next book" chapter added and two just got an updated book list and author page, no real added page count. But on every single book, my KENPC went up by 20-25%.


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## Roberta Nicholls (Jul 23, 2014)

Oh thank you so much for explaining!

"I didn't realize" is the oldest excuse in the book. They knew, they just didnt think they would get caught. 

It's so crazy! I can't believe they're not only stupid enough to risk their accounts, but dtupid enough to post about it and not think it's obvious. 

I'm hoping the July loss of reads is the start of the crackdown that should have happened. 

Here's hoping that next months payout will at least be back to compensate it.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

brkingsolver said:


> If they continue to pay the scammers, then the number will continue to decline. They didn't change they way they pay, and for most people that were affected by August's changes, their page counts dropped. Either Zon needs to increase funding to the pot to reflect the number of pages read, or they need to decrease the number of books in the pool to favor legitimate authors. Based on mostly anecdotal evidence, August is a down month for a lot of people. If readers aren't reading as much, then the payment number per page will rise for August. If it stays at this level or drops even more, there will be a mass exodus from the program.
> 
> A lot of the popular genres in KU have a lot of shorter novels. At 50K-75K words, you're talking about payouts of $1 to $1.50 for a full read.


I am not sure how anyone can scam KENP. Can anyone give some examples? I am not fond of Bundled books in KENP ... I think those should not be allowed in the KU program ... it should be single books only I think. This is fair to all authors. Are there other scams?

With the August KENP change, I wonder what it is fixing? This trend is not an authors friend so to speak ATM ... Amazon needs authors for the KU program. KU makes Amazon money, Amazon will not let that go lightly.

I will have a book out soon ... but it has been in Amazon Limbo release Land for 6 days now (Drat!) but they are working on it to see what the problem is. Short Novel (Novella 20k words or so). So KU is a fit for me whatever KENP is.

For the new authors with over 300 pages or 50k+ words ... KU is life giving blood. I can imagine. That is a lot of work.

But an author here does not have to pay to play too ... so seeing $ figures being a bit volatile should be a given. Don't quit your day job.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Picky Android said:


> I am not sure how anyone can scam KENP. Can anyone give some examples?


Scammers put extra books in with their new release and often have 'special content" at the end so that users click to see the new content and the author gets paid for all the pages _they didn't read._

Those pages dilute the value of a "page read" and inflate that author's earnings so they get more of the pot than people who play by the rules.


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## going going gone (Jun 4, 2013)

For me:

highest month wide, total of all vendors: X dollars
last month's payout: 57X dollars. Yes, 57 times as much money. And without doing a single bit of advertising.

I still see no reason to jump ship. I'm not being harmed by Amazon in any sense. I'm being given the opportunity to get my books to thousands of readers. You all do whatever you'd like, though, and I wish you bon voyage if you leave. I have no investment in anyone else's business.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

There are also paid clickfarms where no one is reading gibberish or bot-rewrite books but some clickfarm worker who has a hundred devices in front of him/her and spends the day flipping pages.  Those "pages" get paid and the scammers steal money from authors whose books are actually being read by reducing the amount paid for everyone.


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## m.a. petterson (Sep 11, 2013)

I went wide several months ago for a different reason than the declining payout--because I want to support Amazon's competition. I'm just a drop in the bucket but if Kobo, B&N, iTunes, etc. go out of business I doubt the results for writers will be happy.

Of course I also love Amazon in many ways--not least because their stock is kicking serious butt in my IRA.


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## ShadyWolfBoy (Sep 23, 2015)

Rate by currency:

(note, I have no Mexican KU borrows for July, so I don't have that rate)


Store	Currency	Rate	Change from PriorAmazon.com	USD 0.0040347 -4.5%Amazon.co.uk	GBP 0.0030944 -4.5%Amazon.de	EUR 0.0027535 -4.5%Amazon.fr	EUR 0.0040063 -4.5%Amazon.co.jp	JPY 0.5000675 -4.5%Amazon.ca	CAD 0.0039672 -4.5%Amazon.it	EUR 0.0040064 -4.5%Amazon.es	EUR 0.0040064 -4.5%Amazon.in	INR 0.0784801 -4.5%Amazon.com.au	AUD 0.0034652 -4.5%Amazon.com.br	BRL 0.0097583 -4.5%


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Atlantisatheart said:


> So to make the $2. royalty for a paid book then you need 500 pages. KU is really not worth it.


This. It will be a long process pulling my books out but I am working on it. This is ridiculous.

No, I don't think Amazon cares, but as a business strategy for me KU no longer works. End. Of.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Glynn Stewart said:


> Rate by currency:
> 
> (note, I have no Mexican KU borrows for July, so I don't have that rate)
> 
> ...


That's oddly consistent across markets isn't it?


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

MyraScott said:


> There are also paid clickfarms where no one is reading gibberish or bot-rewrite books but some clickfarm worker who has a hundred devices in front of him/her and spends the day flipping pages. Those "pages" get paid and the scammers steal money from authors whose books are actually being read by reducing the amount paid for everyone.


So these click-farms ... pay for a KU account on each device? KU allows 10 books per month ... so I don't see how that pays back being a click-farm. Sounds more like a conspiracy theory to me. They could scam a first month free account with KU and click-farm away for a month (10 books per device - oooo) . Unless they have a way to hack and create a new KU account for free ... I am sure Amazon IT is up to snuff to spot that.

I do see the cramming angle though of bundled short story anthologies, and now bundled various authors novels, and bundlee series (series may be okay ... but I think in general no-bundling should be allowed as a KU KENP payout ... yes KU members can get it ... but it does not generate and play to KENP - or shouldn't (now some authors here may not like that ... but I think KENP should be a book for book play to play only - no bundling allowed for KENP. JMO))

That is a lot of theory for .004 cents per page and there be click-farms.

It could be more KU subscribers showed up and the fund has not been adjusted yet.

No one knows exactly for sure how KENP is figured for sure and how the fund is allocated.

It is zero $ cost to be an author (not sure why you would want to chase advertising if it costs you $ to get your work out there) ... and too, how many KU readers want to keep your book after they turn it back in ... so a KU reader could turn into a buyer.

I don't know. Why would anyone want to try and scam four 10ths of cent?


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

I answered the question you asked but this really isn't the thread for discussing scams.  Do a search in the board and you can find a few.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Picky Android said:


> So these click-farms ... pay for a KU account on each device? KU allows 10 books per month ... so I don't see how that pays back being a click-farm. Sounds more like a conspiracy theory to me. They could scam a first month free account with KU and click-farm away for a month (10 books per device - oooo) . Unless they have a way to hack and create a new KU account for free ... I am sure Amazon IT is up to snuff to spot that.


KU allows ten books at a time, not ten books per month. You could borrow ten books and flick through them in a few minutes, then borrow ten more, and so on. Even if they're paying for the accounts, that's a massive profit.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Picky Android said:


> So these click-farms ... pay for a KU account on each device? KU allows 10 books per month ... so I don't see how that pays back being a click-farm. Sounds more like a conspiracy theory to me. They could scam a first month free account with KU and click-farm away for a month (10 books per device - oooo) . Unless they have a way to hack and create a new KU account for free ... I am sure Amazon IT is up to snuff to spot that.


All you need is a name and an email to set up an account. And have you seen images of click farms? There's a LOT of devices they have set up. This isn't one person with an android phone trying to make $5 bucks a pop.



Picky Android said:


> I don't know. Why would anyone want to try and scam four 10ths of cent?


Because they can. Because it adds up. Because it's real money being paid.

Not understanding why scammers do things doesn't negate their existence.


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

Lydniz said:


> KU allows ten books at a time, not ten books per month. You could borrow ten books and flick through them in a few minutes, then borrow ten more, and so on. Even if they're paying for the accounts, that's a massive profit.


Also, the click farms aren't paying for accounts. They're simply setting up new accounts, doing the free month on it, then cancelling that account and moving on to another account. They're not adding any money to the pot.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2017)

Picky Android said:


> So these click-farms ... pay for a KU account on each device? KU allows 10 books per month ... so I don't see how that pays back being a click-farm. Sounds more like a conspiracy theory to me.


No - for starters they don't pay for a KU account. The first month is free and all you need is a disposable email address. And secondly its 10 books at a time, not per month. One free account can borrow and click to the end of hundreds of titles in one month.

The authors paying for click farm reads aren't scamming 4/10th of a cent - they are making tens of thousands of dollars per month and claiming All Star bonuses.


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)




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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Also, the click farms aren't paying for accounts. They're simply setting up new accounts, doing the free month on it, then cancelling that account and moving on to another account. They're not adding any money to the pot.


That's horrifying. Why isn't Amazon cracking down?


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

MyraScott said:


> Scammers put extra books in with their new release and often have 'special content" at the end so that users click to see the new content and the author gets paid for all the pages _they didn't read._
> 
> Those pages dilute the value of a "page read" and inflate that author's earnings so they get more of the pot than people who play by the rules.


I do see what you are saying Myra. Thanks. And I agree - that is not cool. Note from the author - cool, but I could go to the author page, a blub about a new upcoming work - maybe. Prefaces may could be too long intentionally ... I already spoke about bundled work, I think bundling should not be allowed to draw from KENP. If you have a short story, just have a book as that short. Amazon probable has a place for shorts. So if a KU reader wants to use a slot of 10 for a month for a short - cool.

Maybe, if you are a phone app readers, you could go to the shorts section and get 40 shorts being allowed for phones only. Now that would be cool. People on the phone device would likely rather read shorts there ... and the shorts are standalone and tap KENP just like a book.

I would think Amazons book bots look for bundling problem. Or I hope they do, or will if they don't. So some Amazon editing and blocking of the book if too much of that goes on.


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

Picky Android said:


> I do see what you are saying Myra. Thanks. And I agree - that is not cool. Note from the author - cool, but I could go to the author page, a blub about a new upcoming work - maybe. Prefaces may could be too long intentionally ... I already spoke about bundled work, I think bundling should not be allowed to draw from KENP. If you have a short story, just have a book as that short. Amazon probable has a place for shorts. So if a KU reader wants to use a slot of 10 for a month for a short - cool.
> 
> Maybe, if you are a phone app readers, you could go to the shorts section and get 40 shorts being allowed for phones only. Now that would be cool. People on the phone device would likely rather read shorts there ... and the shorts are standalone and tap KENP just like a book.
> 
> I would think Amazons book bots look for bundling problem. Or I hope they do, or will if they don't. So some Amazon editing and blocking of the book if too much of that goes on.


Again, people aren't limited to ten total books a month. They're limited to ten at a time. They can borrow as many books as they want.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Picky Android said:


> I would think Amazons book bots look for bundling problem. Or I hope they do, or will if they don't. So some Amazon editing and blocking of the book if too much of that goes on.


The scamming - and Amazon's lack of action to stamp it out - has been a problem for a long time. If you take a look around this forum you'll find lots of long threads discussing it.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Read this about the different scams going on. https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,253302.0.html

You really can't have a debate about scams if you don't know what they are. We are always up for a good discussion of scams, but you need to know the basics first.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Again, people aren't limited to ten total books a month. They're limited to ten at a time. They can borrow as many books as they want.


Thanks, I see now. So the way-ward author pays a click-farm to pump their books. I guess if Amazon catches them they try and block the farm. And if they catch the author they block the author?

Do they have a guess at how much of this goes on? It would seem Amazon could detect that activity at their high IT end.


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)

MyraScott said:


> There are also paid clickfarms where no one is reading gibberish or bot-rewrite books but some clickfarm worker who has a hundred devices in front of him/her and spends the day flipping pages. Those "pages" get paid and the scammers steal money from authors whose books are actually being read by reducing the amount paid for everyone.


Yup. Hundreds of these images available onine... the KindleUnlimited readers, hard at work!


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

Picky Android said:


> Thanks, I see now. So the way-ward author pays a click-farm to pump their books. I guess if Amazon catches them they try and block the farm. And if they catch the author they block the author?
> 
> Do they have a guess at how much of this goes on? It would seem Amazon could detect that activity at their high IT end.


You really should go check out the linked threads. This isn't a scammer thread and most of the scams have been laid out in those other threads. Try looking at them. I'm sure people will answer your questions on those threads. We don't want to completely derail this one.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

Well, phooey.

I already unchecked the box on my "best-selling" book, planning to go wide. But even so, I will be wondering if I did the right thing. Pages are up this month... 

It's very hard to let go, even of something that hasn't made me much money! (Cueing David Van D. to come in and talk about abusive relationships  )


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

MyraScott said:


> Read this about the different scams going on. https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,253302.0.html
> 
> You really can't have a debate about scams if you don't know what they are. We are always up for a good discussion of scams, but you need to know the basics first.


Thanks Myra for the link. I remember seeing this. This is the way to advertise your book ... but it costs the authors to subscribe to this game too.

I hope Amazon is getting better to stop this, from the article Amazon says they are on it - but it is not that big a deal (but they would naturally say that anyway) but KENP is falling fast, and you guys think it is all scammers. Don't know. We already see changes are coming. Needs to be faster. Amazon needs to get ahead of this curve.

Thanks again.

You're a good egg Myra


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

Silly Writer said:


> Yup. Hundreds of these images available onine... the KindleUnlimited readers, hard at work!


Wow, they use children? I always assumed it was a program that was flipping the pages.


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

kcmorgan said:


> Wow, they use children? I always assumed it was a program that was flipping the pages.


Doesn't look like a child to me.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Picky Android said:


> You're a good egg Myra


And you're a good blue-skinned girl with a blond wig. Or boy. I try not to assume people's... or alien's... gender... or whatever. Cheers!


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## BellaRoccaforte (May 26, 2013)

KU Limbo - How low will we go!!!

Is the favorable ranking really worth it anymore? That's a question I'll be asking myself as the clock ticks down to when I can leave select.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

Gabriella West said:


> Well, phooey.
> 
> I already unchecked the box on my "best-selling" book, planning to go wide. But even so, I will be wondering if I did the right thing. Pages are up this month...
> 
> It's very hard to let go, even of something that hasn't made me much money! (Cueing David Van D. to come in and talk about abusive relationships )


I would say don't drop Select just yet. It is what it is.

I am having a hard time publishing my book. Which may make sense. They don't want it to be a robo-book from the click-farms 

Truly, I have no idea why it is taking so long. Some of the messages I get back from "Contact Us" seem a bit canned. But it could well be this scamming paradigm is coming to a head. 

But I may be too honest a person to suspect someone would really want to try and game the system.

But going Select is a good thing I think.


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## BellaRoccaforte (May 26, 2013)

I'm wondering, is there a place we can find the list of the "All star" Authors. I'm just wondering if we can see whether any of the known scammers bonused $25k or not.


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## MaryBlaisdell (Jul 6, 2017)

Tilly said:


> No - for starters they don't pay for a KU account. The first month is free and all you need is a disposable email address. And secondly its 10 books at a time, not per month. One free account can borrow and click to the end of hundreds of titles in one month.
> 
> The authors paying for click farm reads aren't scamming 4/10th of a cent - they are making tens of thousands of dollars per month and claiming All Star bonuses.


What if authors were not paid for books read by people using the free trial subscription to KU? That would be monumentally unfair to the real authors, but might be worth it, to inconvenience the scammers?


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

MyraScott said:


> And you're a good blue-skinned girl with a blond wig. Or boy. I try not to assume people's... or alien's... gender... or whatever. Cheers!


ooo funny, Krysta Youngs' "Factory Made" album pic ... neat tune ... I like an android theme as an avatar ... yeah, I am a guy  just a guy - that likes girls ... don't like guys ... that way ... and all that


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

KU is no longer profitable for me. It is that simple. For the first time, I can say I would make more money wide. Consider it. In the past months, the per page payout has dropped by approximately 20%. My payout has gone down that much and a bit more. For anyone that it's still profitable for, staying in makes sense. It doesn't for me.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

MaryBlaisdell said:


> What if authors were not paid for books read by people using the free trial subscription to KU? That would be monumentally unfair to the real authors, but might be worth it, to inconvenience the scammers?


Mary, now that is a cool thought! And maybe part of the KENP changes ... hmmm ... a new KU account can get books all they want ... but KENP does not pay out to authors from a new account ... a true KU reader doesn't care ... after the KU reader actually pays $$$$ for the next month ... now authors can capitalize on KENP ... and that free month for the KU read could be grandfathered back in. Don't know.

But it does seem like people are seeing changes.

You are a genius Mary!


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## C.F. (Jan 6, 2011)

BellaRoccaforte said:


> I'm wondering, is there a place we can find the list of the "All star" Authors. I'm just wondering if we can see whether any of the known scammers bonused $25k or not.


Nope. There used to be, but once people started pointing out that scammers were getting bonuses, Amazon decided to hide the list because that was easier than dealing with the problem. Seriously, it would take a high school intern a couple of hours to look over the list of bonus earners and disqualify the scammers, but that would require admitting that Amazon has a scamming problem, and they seem to go out of their way to deny there's a problem while doing nothing to fix it.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

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

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


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

Atlantisatheart said:


> Amazon are known for having their employees fighting like cats in a sack and this is just an extension of that. They've always pitched authors against each other. Just allowing a new villain to play is just part of the game. They could kill off the scammers, botters, and stuffers tomorrow, but where would be the fun in that?


That's a serious allegation. It sounds like you're saying they want authors to fail. Do you have actual proof to back up this statement? They're a business after all and what's wrong with competition? It might not be as easy as everyone assumes to kill off scammers.


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## D. Zollicoffer (May 14, 2014)

They should start reviewing books to see if they're legit. I know that they can't read everything, but they could pick one of the author's book at random and have someone skim it. Real writers shouldn't have to suffer because of scammers. 

On Topic: The payout will keep going down at this rate.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## C.F. (Jan 6, 2011)

PhoenixS said:


> They nixed the author list (making hit harder to see at a glance who all are scammers All-Stars), but the books and series lists are still available. The lists aren't usually updated until the mails have gone out to the bonus getters, so I believe this is for June still. Note that these aren't the individual book/series earners, but all those belonging to the All-Star authors.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_457902022_2?ie=UTF8&node=11085390011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=special-offers-2&pf_rd_r=05B5CTZYC33KA4TCYM2M&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=2412951182&pf_rd_i=B017I0S4X4


Thanks for that, Phoenix! I've been trying and trying to find that in the store and never have. I find the way the Kindle store is laid out now to be confusing and I get hopelessly lost .

I liked the list of authors in the beginning because the bonus has always seemed to be more about recognition than the money. If you have enough page reads to earn a bonus, the bonus amount itself is a drop in the bucket. When they announced the All-Star program originally, I remember thinking it was a way for them to generate enthusiasm for KU among the group of people that are more motivated by recognition than money.

I've become incredibly disenchanted with Amazon as both an author and a customer. I used to be their biggest cheerleader (annoyingly so) and now the enthusiasm is gone. The only thing that keeps me excited is that the experience of reading on a Kindle and having my books wirelessly delivered there still blows my mind. I don't know why, but my Kindle impresses me more than all my other gadgets. But then again, if there was a super easy, hassle-free way to get Amazon purchases onto a Kobo, I'd get their new e-reader in a heartbeat.

This month's payout has me feeling down and baffled that the other retailers aren't jumping at this chance to lure authors away. I'm making contingency plans and have already un-enrolled my books so that when their terms are up in October I can make a conscious choice of where to have them going into the holiday season.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2017)

C.F. said:


> But then again, if there was a super easy, hassle-free way to get Amazon purchases onto a Kobo, I'd get their new e-reader in a heartbeat.


Calibre  I've been using it for years as we never used to be able to get kindles Downunder, but could buy kobo devices in bookstores. I buy books on Amazon and use Calibre to drop them onto my kobo reader. Its easy and simple, just like using file manager.


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## DanaFraser (Apr 5, 2016)

SMays said:


> Sorry man, you can't pull out of KU. I just signed up for 2 years of KU during the July Summer Sale promotion and also just finished Bill The Vampire. At the rate I read, you'll probably have to stick around until 2019.


Hmmm...Amazon sells a mass of 2 year subscriptions then lets the KENPC payout drop to .004. I might change my mind after reading through the remaining thread pages, but I'm favoring the theory by someone else that this is a tech wind down of the project. Let's hope their next move isn't used ebooks.


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## ImaWriter (Aug 12, 2015)

C.F. said:


> I've been trying and trying to find that in the store and never have. I find the way the Kindle store is laid out now to be confusing and I get hopelessly lost  .


Seconding Calibre! I started using it before KDP existed. I just download my ebook, open in Calibre, convert to my format of choice, which is epub, then sideload into my reader. It's not hard to set up, and once done it's basically click, click, click, then you have your book on your reader.


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

Some of you are in for a nasty surprise when you go wide. The problems that prompted people to go into KU in the first place are still there; nothing has changed. For many (most?) what will happen is, without the rank boost from borrows your ranks will plummet, and you simply won't sell enough wide to make up for it.

I really don't know what else to tell you. Until the other platforms change their stubborn ways, KU will remain the best option for a lot of people.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Lady Vine said:


> Some of you are in for a nasty surprise when you go wide. The problems that prompted people to go into KU in the first place are still there; nothing has changed. For many (most?) what will happen is, without the rank boost from borrows your ranks will plummet, and you simply won't sell enough wide to make up for it.
> 
> I really don't know what else to tell you. Until the other platforms change their stubborn ways, KU will remain the best option for a lot of people.


<sighsandnodshead>


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Lady Vine said:


> Some of you are in for a nasty surprise when you go wide. The problems that prompted people to go into KU in the first place are still there; nothing has changed. For many (most?) what will happen is, without the rank boost from borrows your ranks will plummet, and you simply won't sell enough wide to make up for it.
> 
> I really don't know what else to tell you. Until the other platforms change their stubborn ways, KU will remain the best option for a lot of people.


I used to believe this until I went wide and didn't lose a dime. Wide replaced my KU revenue 100%. And a few months later, after an international bookbub I readily admit, I'm doing WAY better than I ever was in KU (like 500% increase in revenues better - but again, I attribute that to bookbub). But even still, being totally direct, I still sell more on Amazon than any other platform (probably 60% zon, 40% other vendors).

And you're definitely right, not everyone will do well wide, nor will being in KU guarantee you'll do well. You still need a good book and the proper promotion.

But I have to admit, it's a sad day when authors feel like they can't "survive" selling direct and "must" be in an idiotic subscription model to get anyone to read their work. Obviously just speaking for myself, but I'd rather quit writing than survive through a sub model that pays authors a tiny fraction of what (again, just my belief) a book is worth.


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## Guest (Aug 16, 2017)

Lady Vine said:


> Some of you are in for a nasty surprise when you go wide. The problems that prompted people to go into KU in the first place are still there; nothing has changed. For many (most?) what will happen is, without the rank boost from borrows your ranks will plummet, and you simply won't sell enough wide to make up for it.


That's a sweeping generalisation that's not true. Yes some books do really well in KU, and some books do really well wide. Personally, my income jumped substantially when my books came out of KU and I went wide. I make far more in sales than I ever earned in pages read. It depends where your audience is and what their buying habits are. I sell more outside KU and the US and there is also more stability to income on the other platforms, they don't suffer they huge swings that you find in the KU ecosystem.


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## DanaFraser (Apr 5, 2016)

Amazon isn't putting anything more than bandaids on the scamming problem, likely because it costs less to ignore the problem than fix it. Additionally, they know non-linear reading is a problem, they know page flip is a problem, but, again, it costs them less to ignore it than to fix it. At the same time, they're happily taking author money for AMS ads. We don't really know how good a book is doing, we just know what we're getting paid for it. I'm rolling mine out (sadly, a bit more than 2 months left) and putting my new ones wide from the beginning. I have a couple more books that are not in KU that are unpublished. I'm going to dust them off, give them new covers and put them wide while I'm waiting for the other stuff to roll out. 

We all reach our tipping point and I've reached mine.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Forget the "wide" stores for the time being (well, don't, but for the sake of the argument).

I had two series in Select and when I pulled them, *the increased sales on Amazon alone* made it worthwhile.

As for the other stores, when Amazon plummets, as it does in this time of the year, the other stores keep obliviously chugging along at their plodding level, which is kinda pathetic when Amazon pulls its socks up, but you can't have a really successful Bookbub every month.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> I used to believe this until I went wide and didn't lose a dime. Wide replaced my KU revenue 100%. And a few months later, after an international bookbub I readily admit, I'm doing WAY better than I ever was in KU (like 500% increase in revenues better - but again, I attribute that to bookbub). But even still, being totally direct, I still sell more on Amazon than any other platform (probably 60% zon, 40% other vendors).
> 
> And you're definitely right, not everyone will do well wide, nor will being in KU guarantee you'll do well. You still need a good book and the proper promotion.
> 
> But I have to admit, it's a sad day when authors feel like they can't "survive" selling direct and "must" be in an idiotic subscription model to get anyone to read their work. Obviously just speaking for myself, but I'd rather quit writing than survive through a sub model that pays authors a tiny fraction of what (again, just my belief) a book is worth.


Funny, I was at Write On learning and looking around and wondering ... KU and Select is fine. But Write On gets you zero $. I was there a LONG time learning and seeing what goes on WRT writing. So I go from zilch to something and it is just as much fun. Writing is tough but fun.

KENP is important and I hope the scamming goes away. I have notified Amazon of things said on this thread that were good, but who hasn't spoke to Amazon that is concerned with what seems to be happening.

You writer's are Amazon Kindle division's future. You work for them in a way. Or not?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

> You work for them in a way. Or not?


I don't work for Amazon. They're a content delivery site, and I drive traffic there so people can complete a monetary transaction that will be easy for them to make. Because they already have an account and Amazon has their CC number and they can handle stuff like returns and complaints and questions about delivery. The moment another content delivery site starts up and becomes viable with a decent number of buyer accounts, I will also list there and drive people there, if it's the site of their choice. I pay these sites in the % commission they charge. I do not work for any of them.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Picky Android said:


> You writer's are Amazon Kindle division's future. You work for them in a way.


I'm beginning to think Amazon think this way. We work for them, so therefore they can treat us like employees. Employees in the US where wages are pitiful and everyone relies on tips to survive.

Maybe Amazon think KU is a tips system, and we should welcome all we get?

I echo Patty. We dont work for them. They work for us. They are a sales and delivery platform. Nothing more or less. And at the moment, they are failing to deliver, and steadily costing us more and more for less.


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

I've unchecked all of mine. My books sell for $3.99. For a sale, I earn about $2.79. For a full KU-read, I earn about $1.70. That's a pretty big difference. 

I've made some nice money off KU, including some All-Star bonuses (alas, not recently). However, between the ever-reducing rate and the fact that it's harder to obtain bonuses when competing with scammers, I think it's time to give wide a try again. Plus, I don't think KU offers quite the rank-boost it used to.


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## Jay Allan (Aug 20, 2012)

PhoenixS said:


> I've seen a couple of authors post that their July pages read from click farm sites were yanked. That gave me some hope that there was enough of that going on behind the scenes (that most affected authors weren't talking about) that the July rate would be improved. That we wouldn't have to wait over till Sept 15 to see an effect.
> 
> Now, last year, we received an adjustment payment for what appeared to be some of the monies reclaimed from the scamming. It helped, but wasn't a full adjustment for monies lost to scammers. I would, of course, hope that Amazon is planning another such adjustment soon. And I would hope that it's significant enough to be meaningful.
> 
> There's a different point for all of us where KU simply won't pay enough to stay with the program compared to being wide. I'm betting fence-straddlers and those who've hit their point will be jumping wide as soon as they can now. But unless it's big names, I'm not sure Amazon will care. Then again, Amazon can always cut individual deals with those folk they really want to stay with the program.


I seriously doubt you're going to see top authors go anywhere. KU is just too big an influence on rank for anyone trying to get into the top 100 or even the top 200 or 300. I was wide for more than four years, but I finally gave in because it was getting harder and harder to maintain rank. You helped me with the transition, Phoenix, and you saw firsthand how it worked (as you no doubt have many times). Sure, I hate to make less, but the idea of giving up the exposure to pick up the sales available on BN, Kobo, and iBooks seems like a fool's game for anybody selling above a certain level. And I was always a strong seller at BN. But those other retailers are still losing this battle, and in some cases its just painful watching them compete.


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## Eugene Kirk (Oct 21, 2016)

I opted out a week ago on most of my books. My books were not long enough to benefit anyway. My ranking has dropped but my revenue has increased. Still don't know if I'll even bother going wide (too much hassle), but with the new KU rates, pulling out was an advantage to me.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

C.F. said:


> Thanks for that, Phoenix! I've been trying and trying to find that in the store and never have. I find the way the Kindle store is laid out now to be confusing and I get hopelessly lost .
> 
> I liked the list of authors in the beginning because the bonus has always seemed to be more about recognition than the money. If you have enough page reads to earn a bonus, the bonus amount itself is a drop in the bucket. When they announced the All-Star program originally, I remember thinking it was a way for them to generate enthusiasm for KU among the group of people that are more motivated by recognition than money.
> 
> ...


In the beginning, the bonus seemed calculated to me to be making up the difference between what you'd make for that number of books on a borrow vs. a sale. That was what it worked out to for me on the first bonuses, and by my calculations, it would be about what it worked out to for others. I'm not sure now, but probably not too terribly far off that. It's not a drop in the bucket. Remember that the bonuses are given on titles and authors, and in multiple stores.

For me, it's always been about the money. I don't think any readers looked at the All-Star page when there was a page. And they never listed all the authors anyway. It was demotivating, if anything, when you weren't listed!


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Jay Allan said:


> I seriously doubt you're going to see top authors go anywhere. KU is just too big an influence on rank for anyone trying to get into the top 100 or even the top 200 or 300. I was wide for more than four years, but I finally gave in because it was getting harder and harder to maintain rank. You helped me with the transition, Phoenix, and you saw firsthand how it worked (as you no doubt have many times). Sure, I hate to make less, but the idea of giving up the exposure to pick up the sales available on BN, Kobo, and iBooks seems like a fool's game for anybody selling above a certain level. And I was always a strong seller at BN. But those other retailers are still losing this battle, and in some cases its just painful watching them compete.


But the ballgame just changed.

I just did some math. With the current worst ever payout per page, and losing 30% of my reads, KU is now paying out less than 35% royalty does. On a $4.99 book with 512 KENPC, I'm now making $1.44.

How can we justify the cannibalization on sales when KU now pays less than the lower royalty?

KU2 was great for me.

KU3 is a disaster in progress.

I've pulled my 2 bundle books, in preparation for all of them coming out.

I was quite happy being exclusive with Amazon, but KU3 is like Amazon mugging me, and as people say, things change, and now they have. Time to move on.


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## Loosecannon (May 9, 2013)

Hmmmm... it's the part of Amazon not being able to clearly identify scammers in KU via their activities that seems weird. They are wizards at mining their own data for trends and patterns (which they use very effectively to tweak product inventories and pricing to great effect.) 

So, why couldn't they do some database queries each week to correlate A) New-ish titles high up in the KU page read charts (over a certain threshold) AND B) Pages reads generated for these same books by NEW 1st Month (Free trial) accounts.  This would hone in on titles that have just launched AND were getting a sudden burst of pages via Trial subscriptions. And, by looking at known scammer titles I am sure there are other 'markers' that indicate click farming is being used to boost sales numbers (i.e. geographic location, or platform of the reading device used). I'd love to brainstorm with some of their IT staff that is tasked to try and corral this issue...


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

TimothyEllis said:


> But the ballgame just changed. KU is now paying out less than 35% royalty does....How can we justify the cannibalization on sales when KU now pays less than the lower royalty?


That's a really good point. I just did a quick calculation, and a KU burrow (assuming someone reads the whole thing) nets me a "royalty" of around 42%. Not terrific.

I'm in romance. I'm noticing more and more big names dropping out of KU and increasing their prices to $4.99.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Loosecannon said:


> Hmmmm... it's the part of Amazon not being able to clearly identify scammers in KU via their activities that seems weird. They are wizards at mining their own data for trends and patterns (which they use very effectively to tweak product inventories and pricing to great effect.)
> 
> So, why couldn't they do some database queries each week to correlate A) New-ish titles high up in the KU page read charts (over a certain threshold) AND B) Pages reads generated for these same books by NEW 1st Month (Free trial) accounts. This would hone in on titles that have just launched AND were getting a sudden burst of pages via Trial subscriptions. And, by looking at known scammer titles I am sure there are other 'markers' that indicate click farming is being used to boost sales numbers (i.e. geographic location, or platform of the reading device used). I'd love to brainstorm with some of their IT staff that is tasked to try and corral this issue...


I've said all this on other threads. 30 years ago, I could have written a cobol program in less than a week, which would identify the scams and output a suspend file, which another program would look at and action.

Its not hard. All of that is basic array handling, and pattern analysis.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> But the ballgame just changed.
> 
> I just did some math. With the current worst ever payout per page, and losing 30% of my reads, KU is now paying out less than 35% royalty does. On a $3.99 book with 512 KENPC, I'm now making $1.44.
> 
> ...


Wait. What am I missing? If you make .4 cents per page and you have 512 pages, you are making 512 x .00403472, no? Which is $2.07. Where are you getting $1.44? That would be less than .3 cents per page.

At $3.99 for that book, you're making about $2.75 on a sale. A borrow gives you less than a sale, certainly. But I keep seeing this $1.35 figure, that it's "dropped as low as KU 1.0," and I'm confused. I assume that is for people who write 50K books, and I can certainly understand why KU might not seem like a great deal if they're not getting increased visibility from it.

I have books wide and in KU, so I'm not advocating for either. Just clarifying.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Usedtoposthere said:


> Wait. What am I missing? If you make .4 cents per page and you have 512 pages, you are making 512 x .00403472, no? Which is $2.07. Where are you getting $1.44? That would be less than .3 cents per page.


$1.44 is 70% of $2.07 (or put differently, 30% less). He was factoring in the 30% drop in sales after KU3 was introduced. He's basically saying he's taking a double hit... losing page reads (30% drop) AND crappy pay out .004.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Usedtoposthere said:


> Wait. What am I missing? If you make .4 cents per page and you have 512 pages, you are making 512 x .00403472, no? Which is $2.07. Where are you getting $1.44? That would be less than .3 cents per page.
> 
> At $3.99 for that book, you're making about $2.75 on a sale. A borrow gives you less than a sale, certainly. But I keep seeing this $1.35 figure, that it's "dropped as low as KU 1.0," and I'm confused. I assume that is for people who write 50K books, and I can certainly understand why KU might not seem like a great deal if they're not getting increased visibility from it.
> 
> I have books wide and in KU, so I'm not advocating for either. Just clarifying.


My bad. Its $4.99 book, not 3.99. Sorry.

I'm seeing a 30% loss in pages counted for KU3. So 512-30%= 358. 358*0.00403=1.44.

KENPC may say 512, but across all books, I'm being paid KENPC-30%.

This puts the payout below the lower royalty rate.

Edit: The 30% is readily seeable. Go to one of the rank sites and enter your rank. Then compare what they say to your sales + full reads. It used to be close enough. Now its a full 30% down.


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## SusanMayWriter (Jan 7, 2014)

I was one of the authors who noticed a 30-40% drop from KU3 in recording pages. I was hoping this might add some of that back. I've done well in KU and enjoyed one book in Prime Reads in January and I've got another scheduled from I think October. They pay well if you're book has ranked highly, which mine have for the past few years.

They offered me a Kindle Daily/Monthly deal back in March for between April and June 30.  But you have to keep your book in Select to qualify. Then after waiting 4 months to see if I was selected, I wasn't. So that's like a blackmail to keep you in for no result.

However, I sell my books for $6.99 and that now is $4.89 royalty. Under KU my most popular book pays at 601KENPC $2.42. That is half of what I would get for a sale. 

Trust me, my books have ranked in the top 5,000 for nearly two years and during Prime in the top #300 for 3 months but being ranked highly doesn't make your books sell or become more visible as far as I can tell. I even had a book in the top 100 for two weeks in January, through some weird algorithm that just picked it up and kept it there for no reason. Not scamming or hiding scamming because these were sales. But the minute the algorithm disappeared or my book was out of Prime Reads, my sales reverted to normal. They didn't stay up there because I was in the top 20 of my sub-categories.

I don't like that Amazon is treating us this way. If you add to this what they did with hiking our audible add-on sales to $7.49 but not making that universal and pretty much destroying my audible sales, I no longer trust them to be fair. Why they cannot make the payout .005 and leave it at that, so we know what we are playing with, is beyond me. What would the extra few million mean to them?

I have unticked my Select boxes but I'm in until September unfortunately. If the August payout goes up, I will leave a few key books in, but I'm moving everything out. I do a fair bit of marketing, so am happy to send readers to the other platforms. Marketing sadly now is what you need to do to keep up your visibility. This is the era of the marketer.

It's worth a try to go wide, because you never know until you try. If it doesn't work after six months, well, then I'll come back. But with everything that is going on, scammers, messing with accounts like they did to David and others, unknown KU payouts in the future, page reads not being recorded knowingly from page flip, this is not a company that I believe in like I once did.

I didn't want to make this decision because it's so easy to have everything in with Amazon but they are forcing our hands. When you have over 1 million page reads a month, these drops are serious $$, especially when you spend money on marketing. It's like you spend X amount to get X% return and then find out 6 weeks later that return has dropped 5% and in the last six months 20%.

This is the time for strictly business decisions. If it makes business sense to explore other options you have everything to gain and perhaps a slight loss to begin with, and then maybe a gain. At least you will know what is the best solution for you.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

SusanMayWriter said:


> I was one of the authors who noticed a 30-40% drop from KU3 in recording pages. I was hoping this might add some of that back. I've done well in KU and enjoyed one book in Prime Reads in January and I've got another scheduled from I think October. They pay well if you're book has ranked highly, which mine have for the past few years.
> 
> They offered me a Kindle Daily/Monthly deal back in March for between April and June 30. But you have to keep your book in Select to qualify. Then after waiting 4 months to see if I was selected, I wasn't. So that's like a blackmail to keep you in for no result.
> 
> ...


Yes. This. Like. Share.


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## Guest (Aug 16, 2017)

It seems to me there are two possibilities:

1) The KU author payout depends totally on subscriber revenues.

2) The KU author payout depends only partially or not at all on subscriber revenues.

In the first case, if readers are reading more pages, the readers ought to pay more and not the authors get less.

In the second case, if readers are reading more and Amazon wants to keep the subscription cost the same, then Amazon should make up the difference to keep the author payout high enough to keep the authors in KU--which apparently means .005/KU page.

The idea of paying authors less when subscribers read more is both stupid and unfair.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> My bad. Its $4.99 book, not 3.99. Sorry.
> 
> I'm seeing a 30% loss in pages counted for KU3. So 512-30%= 358. 358*0.00403=1.44.
> 
> ...


Oh. My sales and full reads haven't dropped, so I'm not seeing that. I have a series wide and some series in KU. My page counts didn't drop, and my reads are pretty normal considering that I don't have anything new out.


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## SusanMayWriter (Jan 7, 2014)

icarusxx said:


> In the second case, if readers are reading more and Amazon wants to keep the subscription cost the same, then Amazon should make up the difference to keep the author payout high enough to keep the authors in KU--which apparently means .005/KU page.
> 
> The idea of paying authors less when subscribers read more is both stupid and unfair.


You are totally correct. They have not had an increase to the subscription in two years. Or have they, I'm not sure, but if they have, they are keeping the subscription price at a reader-appealing figure and stinging us.

With regards to the drop in KU page reads at the beginning of August, this is a thing. Like when it happened before, it just doesn't happen to everyone. My KU page reads to sales ratio has been stable for nearly twelve months and it changed dramatically beginning of August. I'm not an alarmist. I'm a mid-list author (I think) earning in the six figure bracket for nearly two years. This is my best year so far and I am making decisions based on thousands of dollars loss per month.

I don't care what other people are doing. I make my decisions based on the market at the time. I'm just adding my knowledge here based on my sales and how I've seen visibility work.

I believe in business in win-win situations. This has become a win-lose situation and if it continues I'm one author that has a reasonable reader base who is leaving an unfair system. My marketing sends readers to Amazon and this shows no respect for my loyalty. Good for them if that's how they run their business. My choice is to not do business if I don't like the system.


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## Crime fighters (Nov 27, 2013)

Had four books expire three days ago and was waiting for the July payout to determine if I'm going back in. The answer is a resounding no. Last two books will be pulled in October. Good riddance.


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## Tomass (Jul 17, 2017)

Here is a chart of the KENP per page payout rates over time that I made:








As was already mentioned earlier in this thread, I also think that KENPC V3 should help to turn the tide in the opposite direction.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Tomass said:


> As was already mentioned earlier in this thread, I also think that KENPC V3 should help to turn the tide in the opposite direction.


Even if they do increase the payout back above .0045, it wont compensate for the 30% drop in reads many of us are suffering.

Besides, Amazon has done this downgrade thing twice now. First they just decreased the KENPC. Now they are just not counting genuine reads.

It's time to avoid being fooled the 3rd time. Because even if the payout rate does improve in the short term, give it 9 months, and the drops will begin again, and KU4 will find another way to drop the number of actual reads.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

Lady Vine said:


> Some of you are in for a nasty surprise when you go wide. The problems that prompted people to go into KU in the first place are still there; nothing has changed. For many (most?) what will happen is, without the rank boost from borrows your ranks will plummet, and you simply won't sell enough wide to make up for it.
> 
> I really don't know what else to tell you. Until the other platforms change their stubborn ways, KU will remain the best option for a lot of people.


Yup. Yup, yup, yup.

Not to mention all the work of trying to manage all that information, formats, different ways of promoting, etc. Some people (a lot of people) are a whole lot smarter than I am and far better organized. They manage brilliantly. I found it daunting. Hard enough to keep my head above the administrative/promotional waters as it is. So when my B&N sales tanked (they'd originally been better than sales on Amazon), I jumped into KU. I'm nervous about jumping back...not because of the sales, but because of my personal limitations and failings in business management.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

PhoenixS said:


> They nixed the author list (making hit harder to see at a glance who all are scammers All-Stars), but the books and series lists are still available. The lists aren't usually updated until the mails have gone out to the bonus getters, so I believe this is for June still. Note that these aren't the individual book/series earners, but all those belonging to the All-Star authors.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_457902022_2?ie=UTF8&node=11085390011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=special-offers-2&pf_rd_r=05B5CTZYC33KA4TCYM2M&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=2412951182&pf_rd_i=B017I0S4X4


Just to tiptoe off topic for a moment - because I think this needs to be underlined - this is yet another example of how transparency in KU has worsened over time (the big one being not knowing how many borrows you actually have).

And to give you the timeline, I believe the list of who got what was nixed after myself and Phoenix wrote posts about scammers getting All Stars back in early 2016.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I don't consent


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

T. M. Bilderback said:


> Just a thought: are the other retailers losing the battle because authors aren't listing books and promoting those sites, or do they just suck? I really would like your opinion.
> 
> I'm doing better at the wide sites than I do at Amazon. I don't understand it, but I like it.


It's not just about the other sites sucking - which they do - but it's also about reader loyalty/buy-in.

People love Kindles. Amazon often sells them below cost (You could get a Kindle Fire on Prime Day for $32... I know because I picked up an extra one) in order to lock in the market.

Not only is there a hardware component, there is Prime and Kindle First, both of which offer bonus ebooks to members.

With Prime, people have become used to pulling up Amazon before going to the local store... it's become a lifestyle more than a store.

Regardless of what the other sites do at this point (and they are waaay behind on searchability, usability and offerings) converting readers from their preferred purchase, delivery and reading methods is a battle that would take a very clever campaign to win.

If Apple/Google made it easy to convert your entire library to/from the Kindle and came up with a similar all-you-can-eat model, there would be a chance of spreading the readers beyond Amazon/Kindle. Without that, the vast readership on a Kindle is an advantage that you won't find anywhere else.

But selling on Amazon isn't all about KU... plenty of people just buy their ebooks. If you have a following, people who read anything you put out, then you have more options than someone who doesn't have an established readership yet and needs the visibility of KU to grow their base.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

I also think some genres do better wide than others.  And for some, having less competition means more visibility so you can be a bigger fish in a smaller pond on Google/Apple/Kobo.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

PhoenixS said:


> Depending where you are on the spectrum will influence how you perceive KU and the current sad trending in payouts. But everyone's view, from wherever on the spectrum they may be, is legitimate. Staying in or going wide is, and always has been, a book-by-book, author-by-author, catalog-by-catalog decision that's in general no easier to make now than it was two years ago.


My general feeling too. The scamming is abominable, the inaction on same is incredibly frustration, the continued drop in payouts is very worrying indeed, but this is still how I view it.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> I'm beginning to think Amazon think this way. We work for them, so therefore they can treat us like employees. Employees in the US where wages are pitiful and everyone relies on tips to survive.
> 
> Maybe Amazon think KU is a tips system, and we should welcome all we get?
> 
> I echo Patty. We dont work for them. They work for us. They are a sales and delivery platform. Nothing more or less. And at the moment, they are failing to deliver, and steadily costing us more and more for less.


It is a pursuit, writing. You need an outlet. Amazon now has a super outlet. The restrictions are not so great. But I do agree we don't want our efforts to become a charity affair. And they are not.

On the outlet thing, it is super nice we have Amazon and it cost us nothing to publish. Now with advertising, you have to pay.

You knew Select makes for a lower priced return if a KU reader reads your book. You are at the mercy of discerning readers or not.

Not, appears to be more the case, but then again KU has 2.5 million or so readers who are desperate for something to read. So the odds are you will be read. Not that I really have anything to write home about. This is more a hobby for me. Seems it is too for a lot of people. Don't quit your day job. But I am retired.

So Amazon is putting in place I hope things that cut out scammers that game this system.

Amazon purveys the platform to us, they make good revenue with KU and this Wide sale thing, so they want you to be creative and write for them. You are not really an employee, true, but you have a contract, general but you understand the terms.

Amazon I am sure knows the KENP is a life blood to lots of authors. But imagine a world with out e-books. Now where would we be? If you are like me and new to writing - Select is a god-send. But if you happy with wide and have a following. That may allow you to skip Select.

I don't know. But I am not worried. Click-farms look pretty low tech from the picture I see on this thread. KENP has to just not pay KU pages read during the free trial ... now the click-farms will have to pay for the next month to be effective ... if they do (which I doubt - I see hundreds of tablets ... each a likely KU account ... who's credit card are they going to max out ?) they will have to jack up their service fee a LOT (don't know) ... since they are likely deleting all accounts after the free trial they can reuse the same CC # over and over again while not charging to it? I bet Amazon knows and has access to that info.

I don't really know. But Amazon can shut these click-farms down and/or make it painful for them.

Really Amazon needs you as much as you need them. If enough people leave Select, it may catch their attention.

JMO


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

icarusxx said:


> It seems to me there are two possibilities:
> 
> 1) The KU author payout depends totally on subscriber revenues.
> 
> ...


It could be too, there are now more books and authors jumping into the fray ... and this will also dilute KENP ... click-farms are a given and they need to be stopped.

it takes a month to write a book ... hours to read it ... once your KU reader friends have passed it around ... it languishes.

I don't know, but I don't think the increased in-flow justifies the drop. Could be KU revs are falling too as you suggest. Same pages read = less money to go around. Combination of a lot of things.

So soon we will know more where this is going. I think we are all guessing currently. Cool ideas though. Seems some folks can opt out of Select and want to.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

I'm waiting to see what the August payout will be before making any decisions. (The big, upcoming decision: whether to release my next series into KU.)

I do have one series wide. It is definitely less visible on Amazon. The highest ranked book is currently 21,000 in the store. However, its earnings are very stable compared to my KU series. Although it's harder to advertise off of Amazon, some ad sites: BookBarbarian, Riffle, ReadCheaply, ebookdiscovery, Freebooksy / Bargain Booksy, ENT become more effective when you can add non-Zon sites into the mix.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Picky Android said:


> I think we are all guessing currently. Cool ideas though. Seems some folks can opt out of Select and want to.


that's the nature of a black box. People will always be guessing. No one will ever be able to say anything with 100% certainty. Unless one day someone inside Amazon leaks or Congress goes after them for antitrust and somehow KU is part of that. But ain't holding my breath for that.


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## 91831 (Jul 18, 2016)

TLDR:  I've seen it before in other companies, unless amazon comes up with a way to balance things, KU will eventually be worthless (to readers or authors, not to Amazon). 

Being a bit of a geek, I'm going to liken KU (and it's scammers) to Blizzard's World of Warcraft (and it's gold farmers).

I was an avid player of WoW, paid my monthly subscription and was on it every day. Gosh that game was awesome... until the Gold Farming (click farming) started. It was strange to watch Blizzard not do anything about them for years. And I mean years. Regular players could spot a gold farmer a mile away -- it was slightly worse with them as these farmers would hack genuine accounts of uses and basically steal their play time (I had it happen) -- and they were often reported to the GM's who did... nothing.  (sound familiar!?)

For years the gold farmers drove up the prices of items on the auction houses, making it far too difficult to actually play the game honestly -- without buying gold from said farmers that were causing the damage.  (Click farms, driving up ranks and lowering KENP)

Blizzard eventually changed this.  But it took about 10 years or so for them to "fix it".  In the end by allowing regular players to sell gold for real money on the auction houses.  Of course this didn't actually solve anything, as it only gave the farmers a legitimized way to sell their wares.  

And Blizzard only did this because they amount of subscribers they LOST to this false economy was too great.  They went from over 16million subscribers at one point (as in playing at any one time) to having about five million now.. it's been lower, it's been higher, but it's about that at the moment.  

Of course Blizzard had to find other ways of bringing in money to make up for the loss subs by those fed up of the scammers.  They never fixed the game so to speak, they patched it to fix their pockets. WoW was the biggest (and probably still is) MMORPG, just as KU is the biggest sub service, but unlike WoW, Amazon can't legitamize click farming to balance the books -- or their pockets.

The bottom line is, Amazon won't fix the scammers, they can't unless they have someone checking every book every day, or at least looking into complaints made by customers -- and *actually* looking at them. What they will do, is find a way to make it work for them  until there is a mass walk out.  The difference between Blizzard and KU is that Amazon doesn't provide the content readers want to read, therefore they NEED authors to make people pay the subs, no authors no readers, and likewise, no readers no authors putting into it. 

If one side of the scale goes too low (KENP) then the authors walk. If the other side (books) go to low then the readers will walk. Amazon needs to get a balance.  They need to start vetting authors submitting to Select, rather than offering it to all. Like an invite situation if you will in order to balance the books and keep everyone happy.  If they only allow x books into KU, then this would allow a more stablised KENP payout -- especially when they offer cut-priced, long-term KU membership to customers.


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

T. M. Bilderback said:


> Just a thought: are the other retailers losing the battle because authors aren't listing books and promoting those sites, or do they just suck? I really would like your opinion.
> 
> I'm doing better at the wide sites than I do at Amazon. I don't understand it, but I like it.


I buy books mostly on Kobo. One of the frustrating things is coming across books where I've downloaded the preview, and several months later by the time I get round to reading it and want to buy, the book just isn't there any more because it's in KU. So there's a definite cost to authors flip-flopping in and out, which happens a lot. The reading experience is fine, but the choice can be limited. Having said that, there are still more good books available on Kobo than I could reasonably read in my lifetime.

I suspect the key to doing well wide has something to do with having a large enough catalogue, pricing, and keeping a series wide once it's on those sites (something I'm guilty myself of not sticking to - lesson learned).


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

evdarcy said:


> They need to start vetting authors submitting to Select, rather than offering it to all. Like an invite situation if you will in order to balance the books and keep everyone happy. If they only allow x books into KU, then this would allow a more stablised KENP payout -- especially when they offer cut-priced, long-term KU membership to customers.


Now there's an idea. And they could call it...let's see...something like Prime Reading, maybe.

Hmm.


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

Some of this comes down to the fact that it wasn't too long ago that Amazon would actually SELL your books. If you wrote a great book in a great genre and had a great cover, the algos would practically sell your book on your behalf. Generally speaking, this is no longer the case, at least not for most of us. Now, to get results, you've got spend significant time and/or money advertising. 

One reason I didn't stick with wide was because those other outlets did very little to actually sell our books. Unfortunately, this has become true for Amazon, too. If it's necessary to spend a ton of time and money on advertising anyway, I might as well advertise for multiple retailers and cast my net wide. This leads to an interesting realization: Once advertising becomes the primary driver of sales, sales-rank isn't nearly as important.

Plus, I despise not knowing how much I'm going to make each month from KU. I've always estimated super-low, just to make sure I wasn't caught up short. My low estimate? .004 per page. Now, the super-low estimate has become reality. For some reason, this is a tipping point for me.

I don't regret moving into KU. I've had some great months. But now, it's time to move wide. If nothing else, it will help prevent the cannibalization of actual sales via KU borrows.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

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

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


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## Matt.Banks (May 5, 2016)

At this rate, by the time I finish my ms, _I'll_ owe Amazon for page reads!


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

Like everyone else, it's a hard decision for me. I'm one of those who lost 20% KENPC on every book when the big adjustment was made in January. I only lost on one book for KENPC3, but that one lost another 20%. So I'd love to leave in a huff.

However, I was wide for 5 years and never made much from non-Amazon vendors and know if I went wide again and wanted to change that, I'd have to do the promotion I don't do and don't want to do. I did the math for my own situation as best I can, knowing figures from my wide revenues, which are from several years ago, would be different now. The fact is for me at .004 and extending out this month's low pages read over 12 months, I'm still making more than 3 times as much from KU as I ever did from wide. That's in spite of the fact some personal things in early 2015 stopped me from getting anything at all out that year, I only published a short novel in 2016, and nothing so far this year.

So for me unpromoted sales and borrows on backlist are still bringing in more on Amazon than I can reasonably expect Amazon and non-Amazon would. So I'll stay in KU until that changes.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

ellenoc said:


> So for me unpromoted sales and borrows on backlist are still bringing in more on Amazon than I can reasonably expect Amazon and non-Amazon would. So I'll stay in KU until that changes.


Your post excellent describes 99% of amazon's behavior. It's simply supply and demands. No business pays more than they have to. If people will stay with KU at .004, then .004 is a fair price. If they'll stay for .001, then that's fair. If they'll stay for .0001.. again, that's what the market will pay.

I think for this simple reason the author community is going to eventually end up splitting into two distinct segments. Those selling direct, and those selling through subscription models.


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## Jay Allan (Aug 20, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> But the ballgame just changed.
> 
> I just did some math. With the current worst ever payout per page, and losing 30% of my reads, KU is now paying out less than 35% royalty does. On a $4.99 book with 512 KENPC, I'm now making $1.44.
> 
> ...


Timothy,

You missed my point. I wasn't saying anything about direct revenue neutrality (though 512 KENPCs pays over $2 at current rates, not $1.44). That's a far more complicated comparison than just assuming X borrows become Y sales. How many books do you sell because of exposure caused by KU-supported rank? That was my question. And, as someone who has been on both sides, I can tell you, at least at moderate to high sales levels, those borrows make a HUGE difference in rank and exposure. Also, Amazon promos are very highly-aligned to exclusive content. I say this as someone who used to get Amazon promo ALL THE TIME, and the got none because my stuff was wide. Now I get more.

All that stuff is going into the number of books anyone sells, and my point is simply, it's very foolish to react on being annoyed rather than to try to evaluate things on a deeper level. As I said, you will see that most top (or close to the top) authors will be very reluctant to give up, even if they're upset about the borrow payouts.


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## 91831 (Jul 18, 2016)

Lydniz said:


> Now there's an idea. And they could call it...let's see...something like Prime Reading, maybe.
> 
> Hmm.


Don't worry I felt your disdain for my own thoughts and opinions in your reply.

But as you felt warrant to comment--albeit unhelpfully--Prime Reading wouldn't be the same as an actual 'select select'. Authors would apply to be considered, not just picked out at random from the top books Amazon likes as is the case with Prime. They wouldn't have to read the book necessarily, but check that the author had genuine reviews, had things such as author pages, websites, presence. That the book didn't have bonus content and wasn't filled with gibberish -- all things easy to check. Once they had submitted one this one, they could be free to submit what books they wanted -- subject to the occasional unannounced spot check if you upload a new MS.

They could also submit random spot checks over the whole thing-- ie if an author has spikes, it sends an alert to a checker, said checker looks through the book, looks at stats and either lets it slid, or investigates.

Prime Reading could stay the same where they pick the top 1000 books they like. KLL could stay exactly the same. The only thing they need to vet/check would be that an author is genuine.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

evdarcy said:


> Don't worry I felt your disdain for my own thoughts and opinions in your reply.


It seems I should have put a smiley in there, as no disdain in the slightest was intended. I only meant to say that I believe this is Amazon's plan and I think we're heading in this direction already. I'm sorry if you thought I was being rude.


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## Jay Allan (Aug 20, 2012)

Pretty much everything Phoenix said is spot on.  The problem is, a lot of people are going to react emotionally.  They're going to get mad (and forget that Amazon pretty much created this entire market), and they're going to assume there must be a way to do better wide.  They're going to ignore things like how many sales they'll lose from the lack of any Amazon support or increased visibility because of borrows.  They're going to assume those borrows they thing they're underpaid for are going to magically materialize as purchases.  They're going to ignore the fact that every retailer except Amazon is declining, and not one has shown a shred of what it would take for them to compete.  

I only say this because I was wide for more than four years.  I hate the idea of exclusivity, and I avoided it for as long as I could.  I had a rep at BN.  They did promos for me all the time.  But there was always a hard ceiling on what they could move, and it was way, way lower than Amazon's.  I was never very strong on iBooks, and very honestly, that is going to be a weak market for anyone without solid support from them.  And you're not going to just get that.  Their reps hide at trade events.  They don't do programs at events.  It's a bad joke.  I know people who do really well there, but they are favored children, so to speak, and for the most part, people I know who sell well elsewhere do not do so at iBooks.  Kobo's nice enough, but other than a nice chunk of the Canadian market, they're a rounding error.

Another way to look at KU is, you're getting a lot of borrows that wouldn't have been sales without KU.  If I had a mailing list, and I said I can double your sales, but I want 40% of your royalties, most people would go for it.  Authors fall all over themselves to give away books or sell them for 99 cents.  Yet, with KU all I see are hard calculations about how much less they get than for a sale.

The point isn't to tell anyone what to do.  It's just to say, be realistic and analytical, at least if career success is your goal.  You can hurt yourself chasing wide distribution.


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## 91831 (Jul 18, 2016)

Lydniz said:


> It seems I should have put a smiley in there, as no disdain in the slightest was intended. I only meant to say that I believe this is Amazon's plan and I think we're heading in this direction already. I'm sorry if you thought I was being rude.


Ah, the internet is such a cruel, heartless mistress being only words  I apologies for my comment too!


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

evdarcy said:


> Ah, the internet is such a cruel, heartless mistress being only words  I apologies for my comment too!


I just found the missing smiley!


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

Seneca42 said:


> I think for this simple reason the author community is going to eventually end up splitting into two distinct segments. Those selling direct, and those selling through subscription models.


Maybe so, but my sales are 50% of my revenue, so I can't say I'm only "selling" through borrows. Quotes are because I don't consider KU borrows the same as sales, not just in revenue but also in reader attitude toward the book. The indie world has been split into KU and non-KU since the program began. As someone who has never had a book free anywhere (I do give short works to my mailing list sometimes), KU is the closest I come to that, but at least it pays if not as much as we'd like. When I first tried KU with one book it was KU1. A borrow paid about $1.35. That same book will bring in $2.12 for a complete read for July.

I'm not arguing with leavers. As I said, I'd love to show Amazon how disappointed I am with a lot of what's going on and leave in a huff. IMO Amazon could stop pretty much all the abuses by hiring some real people to look over books as they're submitted. It would solve the miscategorization problem and all sort of scams, and probably not cost a lot more than having bunches of IT people writing algos that don't get it done. Anyway, my personal financial calculations tell me that "wide" would be the old cutting off my nose thing, and I have to admit dealing with those other vendors was a major PITA.


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## Drew_Harmon (Jun 23, 2015)

I am getting ready to run a countdown to herald the release of my second novel, The Storms of Tarshish.
I've read a lot of helpful threads on promotion and marketing, today; but it still leaves me bewildered.
This news just plain makes my spirits sag and my brain hurt!

I agree that it is Amazon's ballgame, and I agreed to their terms when I signed up. There's a lot of competition out there, not to mention scammers. This is a serious venture for me. It's a bid for financial independence- or at least a little economic boost.

It gets discouraging. But I believe in my books. My fans urge me on. So, when I'm not scratching my head about my marketing strategy,  I'm researching background info for my final book in my trilogy.

I wish us all success!


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> TLDR: I've seen it before in other companies, unless amazon comes up with a way to balance things, KU will eventually be worthless (to readers or authors, not to Amazon).


They will fix it as soon as big name authors like Rosalind James start leaving (again). Before KU 2, when Amazon had Facebook posts advertising KU1 *READERS* were leaving comments on the FB post about how it should be called "Kindle Limited," grumbling about the horrible selection, and all the short-short serials.

When popular indies start pulling out, they'll step up their game again. I know Rosalind has said that going wide was a mistake for her, but I also think if indies like her hadn't split, KU 2 wouldn't have materialized.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

PhoenixS said:


> When it comes to KU vs wide, genre matters, size of catalog matters, author name/popularity matters, and promotional opportunities matter. Those are a lot of forces stressing the decision.
> 
> I've been fortunate in working with authors at various levels and being privy to KU stats, mainly for romance, science fiction, and thrillers. And it always comes down to individual performance. KU loves and favors big names, big books and series, and lots of promotion and visibility, including Amazon's internal visibility and recommendation engine.
> 
> ...


I know you've talked about this before in a different context, but it seems like the overall market has evolved in the past year, where it's a LOT harder to stay sticky now. I've only had my entire catalog back for a year now, so it's difficult to assess how much of this is just my books finding normal, but Bookbubs aren't going as high and books aren't staying high for as long, and the same is true for audiobooks. I'm doing all right, certainly, but it's far more feast or famine lately. I'm wondering if the dwindling in KU payouts is in part a reflection of a down trend in the entire market.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> that's the nature of a black box. People will always be guessing. No one will ever be able to say anything with 100% certainty. Unless one day someone inside Amazon leaks or Congress goes after them for antitrust and somehow KU is part of that. But ain't holding my breath for that.


Anti-trust --- probably not. Amazon will let other big players live  --- but authors going Select and KU are like a hand and a glove - they were made for each other.

Sans knowing how many free monthly trials there really are at any one moment ... KU has 2.5 million readers = $300 million a year from KU alone. Just a guess (not to mention wide sales talked of here). All cyber (and now on-demand paper) product : ... it comes in sort of free, stored sort of free, and sold high enough. Perhaps Scammers do get to big a piece of that pie and the uproar is starting to be heard. If this all starts making big headlines, Amazon fixes it.

KU is a fairly big business for a major corp as a division. It is not a baby you through out with the bath wash ... it is an experiment that worked. So I really think Amazon is trying to get that control we all want from behind the scenes. Or we all hope so. Stability anyone? But who knows the future?

Vetting authors for Select (I've read this on this thread) is not the answer. Let the readers decide. My guess is if they Vet on editing - half the books on Amazon will fail. They wouldn't get past an editor. Kindle Scout author's selected works usually turn down the editing that is offered. So if you Vet for real, Amazon cuts off its nose.

It may just be me, but I see Amazon really wanting MORE books to enter Select.

Kindle Scout, Write On, new advertising, all are pushing new books and wanting new work and sponsoring new authors. Their algo's know what KU readers like to read - what you like to read ... I wonder what book advertising they get in their e-mail? I may eventually go KU - but read-inside does enough for me.

Write On was an experiment that failed. I loved the platform. I guess the gain/pain ratio dropped below one. Cut it. Maybe they will bring it back in a more manageable form. But I doubt it. It was meant to bring more books to offer to KU I bet. But I saw scamming (really bullying) type things there too. It was too fractionalized. I think it was to try and make better work too. I am sure it was tough for WO mods and that small division to try and manage. Shoe string budget, live or die division.

So do we need to Vet, or let those disappointed leave Select and go wide? It is a small thread to yell boycott. Maybe there is now, starting to reach, a critical mass of books and authors here want Vetting now to bump up KENP ... really?

We don't know ... fuzzy graphs don't have the answers for us, they just tell us something is amiss or changing. Pareto analysis does not isolate the problem, but it may be there, maybe - maybe not. Is my writing not good enough? Or just on par with everyone else?

Don't know. Fun thread, food for thought.

_Edited out political content, which is not permitted here. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I don't consent


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Jay Allan said:


> You missed my point. I wasn't saying anything about direct revenue neutrality (though 512 KENPCs pays over $2 at current rates, not $1.44).


And you missed mine, and my follow up post explaining that. The difference between $2 and $1.44 is the 30% drop in reads they are paying me for, averaged across my entire catalog.

If it was just the low payout, I wouldn't have such a problem. But the 30% drop in reads on Aug 2, and not fixed in any way since, as showing in comparison with ranks and sales/reads for that rank, put me past the floor I'd placed under KU.



> That's a far more complicated comparison than just assuming X borrows become Y sales. How many books do you sell because of exposure caused by KU-supported rank? That was my question. And, as someone who has been on both sides, I can tell you, at least at moderate to high sales levels, those borrows make a HUGE difference in rank and exposure. Also, Amazon promos are very highly-aligned to exclusive content. I say this as someone who used to get Amazon promo ALL THE TIME, and the got none because my stuff was wide. Now I get more.


At the moment, not many. KU cannibalizes sales. How much difference it will make, is something I need to find out. The first interesting thing will be seeing how many sales I get without KU, while the rank holds. I've never done that before, since I started publishing about the time KU2 began, and I've been all in ever since.

But the other side of this is the higher likelihood of getting a Bookbub, which is impossible now in KU. A BB would change everything for me.



> All that stuff is going into the number of books anyone sells, and my point is simply, it's very foolish to react on being annoyed rather than to try to evaluate things on a deeper level. As I said, you will see that most top (or close to the top) authors will be very reluctant to give up, even if they're upset about the borrow payouts.


That's been me for the last year. Annoyed but not enough to pull out.

KU3 changed the ballgame again, and this time the numbers are below my "must rethink" threshold.

Amazon have just told me in no uncertain terms, its time for me to go wide. I didn't ask for this, they did it on their own. I was happy with KU, as long as it was paying enough to to cover the loss of sales to it. Now they aren't.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> I've only had my entire catalog back for a year now, so it's difficult to assess how much of this is just my books finding normal, but Bookbubs aren't going as high and books aren't staying high for as long, and the same is true for audiobooks.


Changing in pricing in audiobooks is definitely new. Every time you use an advertiser, even BookBub, it becomes less effective, so that may be what you're seeing.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

C. Gockel said:


> Changing in pricing in audiobooks is definitely new. Every time you use an advertiser, even BookBub, it becomes less effective, so that may be what you're seeing.


very possibly. I'm not sure how much I lost from the Audible whispersync price change. My unit sales went down, but my $ per unit stayed about the same. I would have expected it to rise. I don't think I was moving a lot of units with people buying the ebook and then the audiobook. But the point is well taken. I might not have an extensive enough history to gauge the market with my results.


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## going going gone (Jun 4, 2013)

Jay Allan said:


> The problem is, a lot of people are going to react emotionally. They're going to get mad (and forget that Amazon pretty much created this entire market), and they're going to assume there must be a way to do better wide. ...
> 
> Another way to look at KU is, you're getting a lot of borrows that wouldn't have been sales without KU. If I had a mailing list, and I said I can double your sales, but I want 40% of your royalties, most people would go for it. Authors fall all over themselves to give away books or sell them for 99 cents. Yet, with KU all I see are hard calculations about how much less they get than for a sale.


yes. And thanks for sharing your experience


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

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

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


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Atlantisatheart said:


> They advertised the program as being paid per page read that they assured us they could calculate - they lied.
> They now say that they decide what is a page read and what qualifies - ie; not on page flip and a guestimate of pages - they stole.


This.

The more I look at my ranks verses actual recorded sales and reads, the more I'm coming to the conclusion they are only paying me for about half the reads I actually should be paid for. I cant document that yet, and I may not bother.

I completed the Draft2Digital registration a couple of hours ago, and my only non-KU book in the correct format is now loading up. I've pulled the 2 books closest to renewing, and the rest will follow in the next few days sometime.

Amazon have shot a loyal contributor in the foot, and that's the end of my loyalty.


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## Jay Allan (Aug 20, 2012)

Atlantisatheart said:


> While it's true that not all borrows would turn into sales, some would, and who is to say how many?
> 
> When authors give away or sell at .99 cents it's usually with a calculated eye on marketing. Amazon are doing it indiscriminately and for their own gain, not ours.
> 
> ...


I don't purport to tell anyone what percent of borrows would have been sales, but it doesn't seem very rational to decide to leave KU without considering that question and putting together some guesstimate, at least if you want to manage your career like a career (or business). All I'm saying, is that I had a lot of experience wide, and I sold a lot of books on other platforms, and a huge number of people are setting themselves up with unrealistic expectations. I couldn't care less what other people choose to do, but I hate to see people really trying to make a living go stampeding off like a herd for the pleasure of selling a handful of books elsewhere while their Amazon ranks go through the floor.

I can't speak to the decline in the KU "bump" you are experiencing (and really, neither can you unless you have multiple wide titles to compare). You have no idea what your Amazon sales will look like. All I can say is I just started KU the end of last year, and it allowed me to push a new release back into the top-100 overall, which was something I hadn't been able to do the last couple years I was wide (without a BB or something).

So, don't mistake anything I say for advocating any course of action. I just hate to see people trying to build a career get whipped up into doing self-destructive things because they're mad. Just because you're unhappy KU is less lucrative than it was DOES NOT necessarily mean there is a better option. I fought like a banshee for years to avoid exclusivity, while practically my whole genre moved to KU and blasted up the charts. Not that anyone will listen. People are mad at Amazon, and that will bestow magical abilities to make moribund retailers post monster results.

As one last note, all this angst about Amazon not appreciating authors, etc...we've got a lot of entitlement flying around here. The KU rate reductions hit me for a big chunk of change too, but are you really suggesting that authors are not better off for Amazon's actions by orders of magnitude? Seriously? Yes, they changed the whole market. Yes, most of the people publishing wouldn't be without them. But KU rates are 20% off their peaks, so they're the bad guys. I'm not saying happily accept everything they do, but my God, take a look at the big picture too.


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## kenbritz (Oct 24, 2016)

Mathematically, the issue I see with KENPC/KU, is that the page reads are growing faster than the global fund. If you account for bounding the increases of the KDP Select Global fund [-1M to +1.5M range], the total payout will continue to decline as the average page reads increase. Assuming the All-Star Payout is negligible in aggregate to the fund, KENP has been ticking up .5B reads on average in 2 years. Reduction in scamming can cause the KENP to flatten, but I don't see readership decline. If KENPC 3.0 reduces the average monthly amount of page reads and assuming the global fund increases by $300,000 as it has the previous 2 August periods, you'll see a corresponding increase in KENP to somewhere around May-June levels. However, if the average KU page read rate continues at its clip, you'll see a decline to around $.00388944. The only other way to increase the KENP value is by a large pump to the global fund, which we only see around January (then a reversal of about $1M in Feb). Page reads are on a tear, even if you account for scamming, but the fund isn't increasing in a lock-step.

I understand there are a huge number of variables to consider - KU book churn and the distribution of the payouts for more popular books and genres, but on such a large scale, it's reasonable to assume that holding some variables constant, you can see there's a clear disconnect from the fund amount and pace of subscription/readership. Anything wrong with my math?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Jay Allan said:


> Just because you're unhappy KU is less lucrative than it was DOES NOT necessarily mean there is a better option.


and that is the thing every author needs to ask themselves. If one reaches this conclusion, then one should really ask whether self-publishing, long term, is something one should even try to make a career in. If the market is that "captured", then sustainability becomes something the majority of authors will never achieve. Sure, some will, but you'll have to be a superstar to exist on KU's margin-crushing payouts.

Those selling hundreds of thousands of books will be able to make it work. Others? Not so much.

Does it make business sense to create a *business* that is wholly dependent on a single market vendor who offers zero transparency and total market control? Most people would say it makes zero business sense; or at the very least it's about the highest-risk business model you could participate in.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Jay Allan said:


> As one last note, all this angst about Amazon not appreciating authors, etc...we've got a lot of entitlement flying around here. The KU rate reductions hit me for a big chunk of change too, but are you really suggesting that authors are not better off for Amazon's actions by orders of magnitude? Seriously? Yes, they changed the whole market. Yes, most of the people publishing wouldn't be without them. But KU rates are 20% off their peaks, so they're the bad guys. I'm not saying happily accept everything they do, but my God, take a look at the big picture too.


I don't think it's entitlement on the part of authors. I think it's more of a *head shake* why can't they see what's right in front of them. Frankly, your post is a bit entitlement on the part of Amazon. KU doesn't exist without books people want to read. Amazon can supply some of those books with their imprints, but they can't do it all by themselves. They need us. We need them. In theory, it should be a mutually beneficial arrangement.

So what if Amazon opened up indie publishing? That doesn't mean we owe them anything. Amazon gets 30% of my royalties. They get $10/month from each KU subscriber (and presumably a lot more sales on other products). They aren't doing this out of charity. As soon as KU stops making sense for Amazon, they'll cut it. We should think the same way.

Amazon *could* take steps to make KU more desirable (adding to the fund, stopping scammers, etc). People do pull out when the rate drops like this. People do pull out when scamming is everywhere. Yeah, it might not matter if John Doe pulls out, but if big authors start leaving (and they are. Whether or not new authors are replacing them fast enough/adequately is another conversation), then readers will stop subscribing. Readers are only in KU as long as they can find books that meet their standards.

It doesn't really matter how Amazon feels about us in terms of business, but people are emotional creatures and they want to feel like they matter. It would be smart of Amazon to do more to convince authors they matter to Amazon. I don't make decisions based on being angry at Amazon or wanting to scorn them. But I do make decisions based on what Amazon has told me these last two years. The rate has dropped 30% since its peak IIRC, and Amazon isn't doing anything to stop that. I'm not pulling out of KU right now, but I'm certainly thinking harder about going wide. Sure, I'd lose a lot of money if I did it right now, but that doesn't mean I can't work towards that. Honestly, I'd rather not. I'd rather be in KU. But I don't want to be in a KU with a borrow rate lower than July's rate.

I'm a six-figure author. I'd like to think I'm a name in my niche. Many readers have told me they signed up for KU to read my series. Between the rate and internal promotions, Amazon was good to me for a long time. But they didn't do that out of charity. They did it to sell books. And I'm not staying in KU out of loyalty. I'm doing it because it makes sense for me right now. As soon as it stops making sense, I'm leaving KU.

Amazon doesn't owe me anything and I don't owe them anything.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Crystal_ said:


> So what if Amazon opened up indie publishing? That doesn't mean we owe them anything. Amazon gets 30% of my royalties. They get $10/month from each KU subscriber (and presumably a lot more sales on other products). They aren't doing this out of charity. As soon as KU stops making sense for Amazon, they'll cut it. We should think the same way.


exactly. False equivalencies are always the norm in a race to the bottom.

It's like complaining about something that's wrong in your country (whatever country that may be) and the politician turns around and says "are you serious? How would you like to live in North Korea? You should be appreciative for all we DO have! How dare you complain about these other problems."

No. That's not how this works. You don't compare one situation against the absolute worst alternative situation to assess whether corrective action needs to be taken. You compare based on what's feasible out of a system (based on the resources available) and then analyze why that is not being delivered. Sometimes there is a good reason and then you accept things. Other times, it's because you are being ripped off and gouged, in which case action should be taken.

Every good con starts with a "I'm here to help you" pitch and ends with "no one forced you into this."


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## Jay Allan (Aug 20, 2012)

Crystal_ said:


> I don't think it's entitlement on the part of authors. I think it's more of a *head shake* why can't they see what's right in front of them. Frankly, your post is a bit entitlement on the part of Amazon. KU doesn't exist without books people want to read. Amazon can supply some of those books with their imprints, but they can't do it all by themselves. They need us. We need them. In theory, it should be a mutually beneficial arrangement.
> 
> So what if Amazon opened up indie publishing? That doesn't mean we owe them anything. Amazon gets 30% of my royalties. They get $10/month from each KU subscriber (and presumably a lot more sales on other products). They aren't doing this out of charity. As soon as KU stops making sense for Amazon, they'll cut it. We should think the same way.
> 
> ...


Crystal, I find your post very interesting, because it shows an stark contrast to mine. Specifically, I hate the idea of exclusivity, while you seem to want to make KU work. I felt terrible about dumping BN for most of my books, especially after I'd sold so many there. But the business decision was a clear cut one. I couldn't endure the continued, massive boost all my peers were getting from KU borrows. You may or may not find things the same for you, but I can pretty well attest that it's that way in my genre. So, I'm not raving KU fan, swing from the rafters shouting its praises. I made a decision based on logic and analysis.

My point on entitlement is just that people look right at the top range for KU payouts and assume that should be some kind of baseline that is inviolate. I have no idea what will happen to the pricing going forward, but a 20% range between payout rates is well within a commercially reasonable variation for most business endeavors. I haven't seen anyone suggest that maybe the .005 months were the outliers. Everyone sees the highest they've ever gotten and then takes that as their just due. This isn't about ethics and fairness...it's just that is not likely to be a recipe for happiness and success.

I couldn't care less who leaves KU. Actually, I suppose technically it helps me when people leave. I'm just saying I think a lot of people are going to be in for bitter disappointment, and they're going to find themselves at half their former Amazon levels and replacing that with a pittance from other retailers.

You're right that Amazon and KU needs authors, but I think that argument creates a false equivalency. There are tons of authors, more than can ever sell large numbers of books. There always have been, which is why the industry developed as abusively as it did. So, the cold reality is, Amazon created the entire market we utilize. Authors on here are FAR, FAR better off for the existence of Amazon and KDP than they were before. I just think it makes sense to consider that before getting so upset that peak royalty rates have not sustained themselves.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Gabriella West said:


> Well, phooey.
> 
> I already unchecked the box on my "best-selling" book, planning to go wide. But even so, I will be wondering if I did the right thing. Pages are up this month...
> 
> It's very hard to let go, even of something that hasn't made me much money! (Cueing David Van D. to come in and talk about abusive relationships )


I've already been told that's a prohibited metaphor, despite its aptness.

So here's another one: Lake KU is the biggest, easiest water hole to access, but it's dirty, there are too many animals drinking from a declining trough, and some weird naked apes have hooked up hoses and are draining off some of the water--and the park rangers seem to be drunk all the time and only intermittently come by to chase off the water thieves.

In the meantime, some of the animals have scouted out some other, clearer water sources and, though they might visit the Lake KU now and again, they find it suits them better to spend more time on other ponds, where the water thieves can't reach.


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## PatriciaDreas (Mar 30, 2017)

Jay Allan said:


> Authors on here are FAR, FAR better off for the existence of Amazon and KDP than they were before. I just think it makes sense to consider that before getting so upset that peak royalty rates have not sustained themselves.


It's certainly lowered the bar for becoming an "author".


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Jay Allan said:


> Crystal, I find your post very interesting, because it shows an stark contrast to mine. Specifically, I hate the idea of exclusivity, while you seem to want to make KU work. I felt terrible about dumping BN for most of my books, especially after I'd sold so many there. But the business decision was a clear cut one. I couldn't endure the continued, massive boost all my peers were getting from KU borrows. You may or may not find things the same for you, but I can pretty well attest that it's that way in my genre. So, I'm not raving KU fan, swing from the rafters shouting its praises. I made a decision based on logic and analysis.
> 
> My point on entitlement is just that people look right at the top range for KU payouts and assume that should be some kind of baseline that is inviolate. I have no idea what will happen to the pricing going forward, but a 20% range between payout rates is well within a commercially reasonable variation for most business endeavors. I haven't seen anyone suggest that maybe the .005 months were the outliers. Everyone sees the highest they've ever gotten and then takes that as their just due. This isn't about ethics and fairness...it's just that is not likely to be a recipe for happiness and success.
> 
> ...


I agree Amazon and KDP do a lot for us, but I don't think that matters. They opened up indie publishing to make money, not to make life easier for indie writers. And we should publish with them to make money for ourselves, not to help Amazon's stock.

IIRC, the very first rate was .0058, so .005 is still quite a drop from the peak rate. I do agree there's no reason why the rate should necessarily stay .005, but .005 is clearly a desirable number to people, so it would be wise of Amazon to top off the fund to make the rate higher. For me, it's not about the number but about the trajectory. The rate is trending downward. If the rate kept bouncing around .0045 or .005, I'd be less concerned. But when I make less and less for each read? That isn't good for business. If I'm going to keep making less and less for a read, I'm going wide. It's just a matter of time. If I only sell 50% of the books but I made 2x as much for each read, I still break even.

I like KU. It's easy. It's nice for readers. All Star bonuses are an addictive game. But I don't like my income slipping. If I'm going to drive people to my books with advertising, I might as well drive them to other platforms. I'm not there yet, and I'm not making plans to do that yet, but I don't really see another reliable option if the rate keeps dropping. At a certain point, if you're only making $1/read and you can make $2.70 a sale, then it becomes very hard to get the KU volume to justify staying.

edit: The Feb 2016 rate only bounced up after KENPC 2.0. I don't know about others, but I lost 20% of my average page length (and eventually got back 5-10% by switching to using Vellum). Which means, for all practical purposes, the Feb rate was not actually an increase on the January rate. It was actually the same. Which means all rates below .0048 are still a decline from January 2016. For me, the "actual rate" vs the very original KU rate is .0058 vs .0034 (accounting for a 15% drop in page count. Correct me if my math is wrong). That is a huge difference. The rate being .005 for someone who lost the same page count I did would still be a 10-20% paycut. Again, I'll leave KU when I think I'll make more money (and enjoy more non-monetary benefits) wide. That isn't dependent on any one rate. But looking at that rate drop really does hurt.


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## devalong (Aug 28, 2014)

David VanDyke said:


> -and the park rangers seem to be drunk all the time and only intermittently come by to chase off the water thieves.


And half the time the rangers dramatically take down an innocent Zebra just having a drink then hand a Supastar! badge to the bemused water thieves running a gas powered water pump into a leaky tanker truck with "Scams, Inc." spray painted on the side.


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## Ava_Red (Sep 13, 2016)

MyraScott said:


>


Thank you for posting this graph. Wow! Nothing like a picture to really capture it.


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## Ava_Red (Sep 13, 2016)

Crystal_ said:


> I don't think it's entitlement on the part of authors. I think it's more of a *head shake* why can't they see what's right in front of them. Frankly, your post is a bit entitlement on the part of Amazon. KU doesn't exist without books people want to read. Amazon can supply some of those books with their imprints, but they can't do it all by themselves. They need us. We need them. In theory, it should be a mutually beneficial arrangement.
> 
> So what if Amazon opened up indie publishing? That doesn't mean we owe them anything. Amazon gets 30% of my royalties. They get $10/month from each KU subscriber (and presumably a lot more sales on other products). They aren't doing this out of charity. As soon as KU stops making sense for Amazon, they'll cut it. We should think the same way.
> 
> ...


Very well said.


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

Seneca42 said:


> and that is the thing every author needs to ask themselves. If one reaches this conclusion, then one should really ask whether self-publishing, long term, is something one should even try to make a career in. If the market is that "captured", then sustainability becomes something the majority of authors will never achieve. Sure, some will, but you'll have to be a superstar to exist on KU's margin-crushing payouts.
> 
> Those selling hundreds of thousands of books will be able to make it work. Others? Not so much.
> 
> Does it make business sense to create a *business* that is wholly dependent on a single market vendor who offers zero transparency and total market control? Most people would say it makes zero business sense; or at the very least it's about the highest-risk business model you could participate in.


Even before KU existed, the vast majority of authors who tried self-publishing didn't end up making a living at it. KU certainly isn't improving that situation, but it's hard to know how much it's hurting it, since different authors get radically different results. Some do better by going wide, but others don't.

As for selling hundreds of thousands of books, though, that might be a bit of an overestimate. Let's imagine an author whose average ebook retails for $3.99, which would generate around $2.73 in royalties, depending on delivery costs. At that rate, someone would need to sell almost 18,000 books--more than most authors do--to gross $50,000. Netting $50,000 after taxes, social security, etc. would require considerably more sales. For the sake of argument, let's say that 36,000, though I suspect the actual number is less.

Authors in KU are going to have some sales and some borrows, but just for the sake of argument, let's say there's an author whose income is entirely borrows. If the books average 500 KENP, that's around $2.00 per borrow at July's rate. That means 25,000-50,000 sales to reach the same level as the author described in the last paragraph. That's considerably more, but if the first example isn't beyond the realm of possibility, then probably neither is the second. As already noted, the second is a scenario that won't happen anyway, so the reality would be somewhere between those two.

Does it make business sense to be reliant on one vendor? Ideally, no, but everything is contextual. Does it make business sense to throw away half to two-thirds of one's income in the hope that one may be able to make that up or increase it by diversifying? People do make that model work, but that's not without its risks either, and virtually every thread on the subject has at least a few authors who tried that approach and found it didn't work for them. If one can gain as many sales as one loses borrows, then yes, one can do better, but it doesn't always pan out that way. It also seems apparent that wide success is skewed heavily in favor of authors who get Bookbubs. (I'm sure there are a few who are successful without Bookbubs, but most of the ones who report success in going wide cite Bookbub as a reason.) Some say Bookbub opportunities are getting increasingly hard to come by. I'm not sure that being dependent on Bookbub is that much better than being dependent on Amazon.

Market shares help explain why everyone doesn't make the jump successfully. Taking Data Guy's figures, about 83% of US ebook sales are on Amazon. (Amazon is expanding its share of other English markets as well.) Data Guy estimates that if KU borrows are isolated, that's about 20% of the total market, so that Amazon sales would account for 63%, KU for 20%, and everyone else for 17%. Giving up 20% for 17% means one can be successful, but it may require a lot of work and/or luck. One has to make more per book and/or capture a higher percentage of available readers in one's chosen pool.

It would be nice if there was one simple answer, but one size does not fit all. Some people will do as well or better going wide. Others will not. Each author needs to find the recipe that works best for him or her.


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## Jay Allan (Aug 20, 2012)

You don't get to decide how many vendors there are in your business, nor how competent and capable they are.  You can only choose your business and do the best you can.  The non-Amazon players in the e-book business are almost comically outmatched.  Anybody who thinks long term, they're going to make up for lost Amazon sales out there somewhere else, is just fooling themselves, with perhaps the extremely rare exception of someone who stumbles on a true connection at iBooks and becomes one of their favored children (rarer it seems to me than trad pub favored children).

I could list people selling enormous numbers of books who figured out that KU and exclusivity was a way to drive exposure.  I had people (whose sales make mine look like a rounding error) telling me how important KU was to driving the overall machine, and they weren't talking about a few cents for reads.  Still, I held out for a long time. 

I'm just saying, the wish for more vendors does not make it so.  Being mad at Amazon does not make the available alternate moves likely to succeed.  Some things are what they are.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Jay Allan said:


> You don't get to decide how many vendors there are in your business, nor how competent and capable they are. You can only choose your business and do the best you can. The non-Amazon players in the e-book business are almost comically outmatched. Anybody who thinks long term, they're going to make up for lost Amazon sales out there somewhere else, is just fooling themselves, with perhaps the extremely rare exception of someone who stumbles on a true connection at iBooks and becomes one of their favored children (rarer it seems to me than trad pub favored children).
> 
> I could list people selling enormous numbers of books who figured out that KU and exclusivity was a way to drive exposure. I had people (whose sales make mine look like a rounding error) telling me how important KU was to driving the overall machine, and they weren't talking about a few cents for reads. Still, I held out for a long time.
> 
> I'm just saying, the wish for more vendors does not make it so. Being mad at Amazon does not make the available alternate moves likely to succeed. Some things are what they are.


A lot of people who go wide end up saying they make up their sales JUST at Amazon though. I can see this. I'm a KU subscriber. But if I really want to read something that is out of KU, I buy it. On Amazon. If it was in KU, I wouldn't buy it, I'd read it. At this point, even if I didn't go wide, but simply pulled out of KU, I get $1.30 for a KU read of my books (on average) and $2.80 for a sale...

I just unchecked the renew box on all of mine. My pen name is in KU and doing well, so I'm not totally crapping out on it, but it just feels like the right time to diversify, I have to say...


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Jay Allan said:


> You don't get to decide how many vendors there are in your business, nor how competent and capable they are. You can only choose your business and do the best you can. The non-Amazon players in the e-book business are almost comically outmatched. Anybody who thinks long term, they're going to make up for lost Amazon sales out there somewhere else, is just fooling themselves, with perhaps the extremely rare exception of someone who stumbles on a true connection at iBooks and becomes one of their favored children (rarer it seems to me than trad pub favored children).
> 
> I could list people selling enormous numbers of books who figured out that KU and exclusivity was a way to drive exposure. I had people (whose sales make mine look like a rounding error) telling me how important KU was to driving the overall machine, and they weren't talking about a few cents for reads. Still, I held out for a long time.
> 
> I'm just saying, the wish for more vendors does not make it so. Being mad at Amazon does not make the available alternate moves likely to succeed. Some things are what they are.


People aren't leaving Amazon. They're leaving KU. At a certain point, if you're not making enough per read, you're better off out of KU. If you get 1,000 full reads a month but each is worth $1 and half those people will buy your book for 3.99 ($2.70 royalty), then you'll make more money out of KU on Amazon alone. That's just math. My books average 80k words and they now average 450 pages/ $1.80/read. People who write shorter books, more like 50k words/200 KENPC are only making $1.20/read. That's half what you'd make on a 3.99 sale. It makes leaving KU really tempting.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Jay Allan said:


> You don't get to decide how many vendors there are in your business, nor how competent and capable they are. You can only choose your business and do the best you can. The non-Amazon players in the e-book business are almost comically outmatched. Anybody who thinks long term, they're going to make up for lost Amazon sales out there somewhere else, is just fooling themselves, with perhaps the extremely rare exception of someone who stumbles on a true connection at iBooks and becomes one of their favored children (rarer it seems to me than trad pub favored children).


Yeah, let's be clear, the conversation is about exiting Kindle Unlimited and going wide, not exiting Amazon entirely. And if you want to talk to someone whose non-Amazon vendor income is higher than KU income, hi there, that's me.

Most of my income is absolutely from Amazon, and the Amazon-owned Audible. But if you think it's impossible to earn more from Apple, Nook, Kobo and Google Play than from KU, you're overplaying your hand.


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## JDMatheny (May 7, 2017)

Is there any circumstance where it would be better for a debut series by a new other to go wide?  I planned on going into KU just because I have no audience yet, so it seems to make sense.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> Is there any circumstance where it would be better for a debut series by a new other to go wide? I planned on going into KU just because I have no audience yet, so it seems to make sense.


Anyone starting out now, I would advise to go into KU. You get more visibility, and a certain number of readers who will consider your work basically "free."


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

Ultimately the only way KU is going to change is if GooglePlay and/or iBooks start up a subscription service that pays by the page.

The 70% royalty only exists because Apple entered the game. Not because of protest or emails but due to direct competition.

Look at Audible for the example of what no competition does. Seven-year terms and 40% royalty and a convoluted royalty calculation and new programs (Whispersync) that means authors don't even make 40%. 

Stay in, go wide, it won't sway Amazon one bit. 

Apple or GooglePlay, if you're reading this - there are masses of authors yearning to be treated better. Start up a subscription service that pays better than KU, doesn't require exclusivity and you'll do well.

Without these two competitors in the game KU is only going to get worse over time. Lower page rates and shrinking KENP numbers.


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## Chrissy (Mar 31, 2014)

........ said:


> Ultimately the only way KU is going to change is if GooglePlay and/or iBooks start up a subscription service that pays by the page.
> 
> The 70% royalty only exists because Apple entered the game. Not because of protest or emails but due to direct competition.
> 
> ...


Let's not just limit the plea to those in the ebook market--- calling Walmart or Alibaba want to stick it to Amazon?

Yes?

Great.

Jump in the ebook market and give Amazon a run for the money!


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Chrissy said:


> Let's not just limit the plea to those in the ebook market--- calling Walmart or Alibaba want to stick it to Amazon?


sub models are going to suck no matter who runs them. We don't need more of them.

What we do need is Walmart to get into the game; partner up with the other vendors and then let the war begin. Authors will be the big winners in that for at least a few years.


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> sub models are going to suck no matter who runs them. We don't need more of them.


Agreed 100%.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> sub models are going to suck no matter who runs them. We don't need more of them.


Yep. Every sub system that tries pay authors a fair price for reads has failed. For it to work readers would need to consume fewer books than the cost of the subscription and that just doesn't happen.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

........ said:


> Ultimately the only way KU is going to change is if GooglePlay and/or iBooks start up a subscription service that pays by the page.
> 
> The 70% royalty only exists because Apple entered the game. Not because of protest or emails but due to direct competition.
> 
> ...


THIS.

Amazon initially only paid 35% share of the sale price, IIRC. It wasn't until Apple came along and offered 70% that Amazon did as well.

We need competition to keep Amazon honest. If none of the other retailers step up to the plate and compete effectively, Amazon can get away with what it can get away with.

COME ON GOOGLE PLAY AND iBOOKS! COMPETE!


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## Chrissy (Mar 31, 2014)

*I agree that we don't need another subscription model.
*
I suggested Walmart and/or Alibaba to enter the ebook market because they have the money, clout and desire to compete with Amazon.

[i]*No where*[/i] I wasn't suggest Walmart or Alibaba start a ebook subscription.

Apple and Google have already shown they are NOT interested in truly competing with Amazon. That's why I suggested other corporations that may have a stronger incentive.

Either way, Amazon needs competition and I DO NOT think it will come from the existing competition. 

EDIT:  Oops, I see where you got the impression I meant a subscription model. Sorry.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

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

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


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## Jay Allan (Aug 20, 2012)

........ said:


> Apple or GooglePlay, if you're reading this - there are masses of authors yearning to be treated better. Start up a subscription service that pays better than KU, doesn't require exclusivity and you'll do well.
> 
> Without these two competitors in the game KU is only going to get worse over time. Lower page rates and shrinking KENP numbers.


I'd look elsewhere for a savior. As far as ebooks go, Google and Apple are lucky days when they don't tie their shoelaces together.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Jay Allan said:


> I'd look elsewhere for a savior. As far as ebooks go, Google and Apple are lucky days when they don't tie their shoelaces together.


Ha this. No store cares what individual-you or I think about what they should do. Publishing is changing all the time and the bar has also been raised in many areas. Nobody owes you or me or Jay Allen day-job money no matter what we made last year. Adapt or die.


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

JaclynDolamore said:


> A lot of people who go wide end up saying they make up their sales JUST at Amazon though. I can see this. I'm a KU subscriber. But if I really want to read something that is out of KU, I buy it. On Amazon. If it was in KU, I wouldn't buy it, I'd read it.


This is a good point. It doesn't matter how cheap something is or if it's in KU and I'm a subscriber. If it doesn't appeal to me, I won't read it. But if it does, I'm willing to pay up to ten bucks for an ebook. Unless your great ranking helps your visibility, you might as well not be in KU. No one will really know your book exists anyway.


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## JDMatheny (May 7, 2017)

C. Gockel said:


> Anyone starting out now, I would advise to go into KU. You get more visibility, and a certain number of readers who will consider your work basically "free."


Thanks, that was my plan, but all this negative talk had me thinking!


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

JDMatheny said:


> Thanks, that was my plan, but all this negative talk had me thinking!


That is the object of the exercise. Because you can only make the decision for you.

One problem here is everyone is talking from different perspectives. There are people who've been in KU from the beginning, people like me who came in at KU2, people who've been wide the whole time, and people who mix it up. Everyone has a different perspective and experience. Not to mention different genres, which really complicates it.

We all have to make our own decisions. The more info, the better the decision. (usually)


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Usedtoposthere said:


> Ha this. No store cares what individual-you or I think about what they should do. Publishing is changing all the time and the bar has also been raised in many areas. Nobody owes you or me or Jay Allen day-job money no matter what we made last year. Adapt or die.


Can we stop making this argument? I haven't seen anyone suggesting they're owed day job money. I have seen people suggesting ways Amazon and other storefronts could improve to be more desirable to authors.

Nobody owes me day job money. But I'm in a vendor relationship with these businesses. They do owe me some things, any I could argue that some stores are failing to hold up their end of the bargain. (PageFlip not counting pages, for example). Wanting to be paid as promised is not entitlement.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

juliatheswede said:


> I'm willing to pay up to ten bucks for an ebook.


We all have our own pain threshold. I'm reluctant to pay for ANY book. If it's in KU... click. If not, I'll think long and hard about how badly I want to read it. There are only a few instances (book group read, say) where I'll willingly buy the book. And even then, if it's over $5? You'd have to have a knife at my throat first.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Crystal_ said:


> Can we stop making this argument? I haven't seen anyone suggesting they're owed day job money. I have seen people suggesting ways Amazon and other storefronts could improve to be more desirable to authors.
> 
> Nobody owes me day job money. But I'm in a vendor relationship with these businesses. They do owe me some things, any I could argue that some stores are failing to hold up their end of the bargain. (PageFlip not counting pages, for example). Wanting to be paid as promised is not entitlement.


Well, I probably won't stop making the argument, because I'm trying to say that it's fruitless, not that anybody's wrong to feel aggrieved. Just that feeling aggrieved won't get you anywhere. What Amazon or iBooks or any vendor owes people in terms of whatever it is--not messing up (Barnes & Noble), improving their search (iBooks), not letting people read in Page Flip, whatever--just doesn't matter if it's not enforceable. Your choices are stay or go, or do some of both, diversify in other ways. I just don't see all this angst, which has been going on for the five years I've been writing and publishing, as much more than spinning people's wheels. The. Stores. Don't. Care. They may care (slightly) if you're an 8-figure author, I don't know. Otherwise, they don't care. They make their decisions about their business based on THEIR (shareholders') best interests, because that is literally their job.

I'm not saying that to be cynical. (I am not a cynical person.) Just to be realistic about where it makes sense to put your efforts. I've worked in business and for companies for a long time. I know about griping and the endless sitting around talking about what your CEO should do instead of what he is doing. Ultimately my choice was to quit or to stay and find ways to get what I needed out of the job. Or to let my frustration eventually drive me to try writing books, and to put said CEO into the story. That worked, so it's not like NO good comes out of frustration.

Or you could get a sign like my coworker used to have. A white sign with a big circle, and inside, the words, "Stress Relief Device. Bang head here."

ETA: Yes, we have power. The power to choose how to respond. But as Jay Allen has been at some pains to say, it's probably a bad idea to make a move based on anger at a company. On the other hand, maybe your frustration moves you to take a series wide and start experimenting. To try your hand at writing longer books, or a different genre that isn't overrun by ghostwritten books. In that case, your anger can be productive. But your anger, righteous or not, isn't going to change the publishing world. That's why I say "Adapt or Die," because I HAVE been doing this five years. Even in that time, I've seen that the rare thing, the tricky thing, isn't even selling very well. It's selling very well consistently over five years, ten years, or more. That I think requires some adaptation or a lot of talent and some strong branding and good decision-making. It can happen in the face of traditional publishers or storefronts that change the rules, that drop the author, in the face of agents that don't follow through--whatever it is. But the author has to be flexible and to work a plan.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> We all have to make our own decisions. The more info, the better the decision. (usually)


If writing isn't your thing and you're doing it solely for the money, I'm not sure what would keep you in the game now other than hope. The only decision one could make, based on a business analysis of self-publishing, is to move on. But if writing is your thing, there's enough evidence here to suggest that sticking with KU is the best way to raise your visibility and build your audience.


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## RedFoxUF (Nov 14, 2016)

JDMatheny said:


> Is there any circumstance where it would be better for a debut series by a new other to go wide? I planned on going into KU just because I have no audience yet, so it seems to make sense.


Just remember KU is the easiest money you'll ever see in this business and it won't be much b/c of all the scamming. And if you happen to break out in a big way and are that .00001% who are superstars, you will kick yourself for not going wide at the start.

My vote is to go wide. It's harder. It's a slog but it's also more stable.

Just know your marketing.

Marketing, marketing, marketing.


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

TimothyEllis said:


> That is the object of the exercise. Because you can only make the decision for you.
> 
> One problem here is everyone is talking from different perspectives. There are people who've been in KU from the beginning, people like me who came in at KU2, people who've been wide the whole time, and people who mix it up. Everyone has a different perspective and experience. Not to mention different genres, which really complicates it.
> 
> We all have to make our own decisions. The more info, the better the decision. (usually)


I couldn't agree more. Not only do we have different experiences, but they don't always point in the same direction in terms of next steps.

It's great when people share their experiences. However, we all have a tendency to present our experience as if it's the only possible scenario or that what we did would work for everyone. Each author needs to find his or her own path.


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

Dpock said:


> If writing isn't your thing and you're doing it solely for the money, I'm not sure what would keep you in the game now other than hope. The only decision one could make, based on a business analysis of self-publishing, is to move on. But if writing is your thing, there's enough evidence here to suggest that sticking with KU is the best way to raise your visibility and build your audience.


It would be interesting to know how many people write solely for money. A lot of writers seem to follow that famous saying by Stephen King that writers are people who _have_ to write and who would do so for more pay if they had to.

The situation seems especially tough now, but the odds were always against any particular author, whether self-published or trad-published, making a living at it. The ones who did in the past and those who do now are the exceptional cases. The issue just wasn't as visible with trad publishing, because we had no clear idea of how people submitted for years and never got published. I think hope has always been part of the equation.


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

RedFoxUF said:


> Just remember KU is the easiest money you'll ever see in this business and it won't be much b/c of all the scamming. And if you happen to break out in a big way and are that .00001% who are superstars, you will kick yourself for not going wide at the start.
> 
> My vote is to go wide. It's harder. It's a slog but it's also more stable.
> 
> ...


Amazon has recently made some effort to close some of the scammer loopholes, so let's see what August brings.

You were obviously successful going wide, but remember that your experience isn't universal. I went wide for several months, then kicked myself for wasting my time with it. Everyone needs to experiment to see which path works best for them.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> And if you happen to break out in a big way and are that .00001% who are superstars, you will kick yourself for not going wide at the start.
> 
> My vote is to go wide. It's harder. It's a slog but it's also more stable.


If you have more reasonable expectations, you'll go into KU and then go wide later. 

Being a superstar is rare, being a $50K+ a year person is doable.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Usedtoposthere said:


> Well, I probably won't stop making the argument, because I'm trying to say that it's fruitless, not that anybody's wrong to feel aggrieved. Just that feeling aggrieved won't get you anywhere. What Amazon or iBooks or any vendor owes people in terms of whatever it is--not messing up (Barnes & Noble), improving their search (iBooks), not letting people read in Page Flip, whatever--just doesn't matter if it's not enforceable. Your choices are stay or go, or do some of both, diversify in other ways. I just don't see all this angst, which has been going on for the five years I've been writing and publishing, as much more than spinning people's wheels. The. Stores. Don't. Care. They may care (slightly) if you're an 8-figure author, I don't know. Otherwise, they don't care. They make their decisions about their business based on THEIR (shareholders') best interests, because that is literally their job.
> 
> I'm not saying that to be cynical. (I am not a cynical person.) Just to be realistic about where it makes sense to put your efforts. I've worked in business and for companies for a long time. I know about griping and the endless sitting around talking about what your CEO should do instead of what he is doing. Ultimately my choice was to quit or to stay and find ways to get what I needed out of the job. Or to let my frustration eventually drive me to try writing books, and to put said CEO into the story. That worked, so it's not like NO good comes out of frustration.
> 
> ...


Yes, we can't control what the stores so, but venting is useful in and of itself. It helps clear your head and make you feel heard, which is something we solely lack in this industry. Of course, when people come in telling you that your concerns don't matter, that makes you feel unheard again, and it only compounds your frustration.

Taking to other writers confirms that your feeling and experiences with stores are valid and common (or not) and it helps you see the bigger picture vs your slice of it. It's a useful part of the decision making process.

Even if that wasn't true, there no need to call people entitled for wanting fairness and honesty. Or for wishing stores would get their sh*t together. I've seen many claims of entitlement in this thread but no examples of it. Wanting to be paid as promised is not entitlement. Period.


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

RedFoxUF said:


> Just remember KU is the easiest money you'll ever see in this business and it won't be much b/c of all the scamming. And if you happen to break out in a big way and are that .00001% who are superstars, you will kick yourself for not going wide at the start.
> 
> My vote is to go wide. It's harder. It's a slog but it's also more stable.
> 
> ...


I'll admit that marketing isn't my strongpoint. Can someone point me to a guide that outlines the best marketing tactics for authors who are wide? Or feel free to answer here.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

RedFoxUF said:


> My vote is to go wide. It's harder. It's a slog but it's also more stable
> 
> Just know your marketing.


I think wide really starts to work well once you have at least three books. Before that, KU is almost like a pit stop in the real race. Maybe some folks will read your book, maybe they won't, but with one book it doesn't matter much because your marketing efforts are so limited. There's this notion that if you're in KU you're going to get reads... but there are TONS of new authors in KU who get zero reads. Amazon doesn't push your book just because you're in KU.

Once you get 3+ books going, then you tap into the permafree strategy that wide offers, make money on the sell through, build your reviews and brand. Then flip to paid even on the first book and increase your revenues further.

So I almost think not much matters until you've got 3 books out there.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

juliatheswede said:


> I'll admit that marketing isn't my strongpoint. Can someone point me to a guide that outlines the best marketing tactics for authors who are wide? Or feel free to answer here.


The strategies are exactly the same as marketing to amazon. Same promo outlets.

The only difference is might use FB over AMS. Kobo has its own direct promos that are cheap and work well also (if you are direct with them).

Even when you go wide, you'll still probably sell more on Amazon than the other vendors, so that will still drive most of your marketing decisions. The only difference being wide is instead of tapping KU, you're tapping the other vendors - which means more revenue (per unit sale) and not having to put up with whatever drama is unfolding in the KU universe


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

I agree that none of us are owed a living. The only thing we are owed is what we agree to with our distributor. They have all the power and our own power is to adapt or move on.

Self publishing is really truly a new world. Maybe some of us forget how new, or never realized how new. It really is in its infancy. That means there is no guidebook. There aren't even enough stats yet to know how to write a decent business plan. What worked in the past may not work now, and certainly is less likely to work in the future. Therefore, the best we can do is focus on the fundamentals of writing a great book with a market, get it on the market, and make sure it's visible. And keep doing that.

I first published a book in 2012 when KDP was relatively new. That's only 5 years ago. There were people self publishing for a few years when I got into it. Joe Konrath, forex. So, self-publishing as a business is just a toddler learning how to do stuff. We don't know much yet. It's such a fast-growing business that we don't know what works and why and how because it's so new and because it's undergoing such a rapid change.

I have a backlist now of 13 books in three series. If I don't promote it, I earn six figures off it but for how long? When will it drop to near-zero? How long will I be able to tweak it and relaunch and keep it selling? I have no idea. This is a brave new world. My original series, which sold terribly in its first 3 years, has made over $100K since its launch -- almost half of that on a boxed set of the books. My best selling series has earned $700K over the past 4 years. My other series earned $200K over the past 3 years. How long can I keep these backlist books alive? 

It's so new there are no stats yet to use to plan. 

KU has been a game-changer. It's thrown a monkey wrench into the works. We all have to adjust again and again. 

Luckily, we indies are flexible and adaptive. Those who can change and adapt will be more likely to see success in the long term. Beyond that, who can say what will happen two years down the road? This is not trad publishing. It's eCommerce and social media and a search engine store with millions of independent business people trying to compete for visibility.

Most of the old rules of thumb for trad publishing are meaningless with one exception -- write the best damn book you can and do your best to make it as visible as you can. The rest is magic pixie dust that no one can bottle and sell. You either have it or you don't. 

You won't know until you give it your best try.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

JDMatheny said:


> Thanks, that was my plan, but all this negative talk had me thinking!


Just looking,

You book is KS, you have 23 days to go, not HOT yet, and by your web-site you plan to KDP if you don't win.

WRT KENPC --- the message at the top of this page I think says it all --- adapt or die ... Amazon has a lot to juggle to keep KU readers and author's coming to the table ... not everyone is going to like the outcome.

I for one don't see a problem really.

But if KU dies ... a whole lot of people here can pick up their toys and go home.


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## RedFoxUF (Nov 14, 2016)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Amazon has recently made some effort to close some of the scammer loopholes, so let's see what August brings.


There are over a 100 scam books in my genre right now. Botting their way into top 100 visibility. 70 from ONE scammer alone. Reported multiple times by multiple people and even reported in person to Amazon reps and...

Amazon has done jack.


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## RedFoxUF (Nov 14, 2016)

C. Gockel said:


> If you have more reasonable expectations, you'll go into KU and then go wide later.
> 
> Being a superstar is rare, being a $50K+ a year person is doable.


Most authors who try to leave KU find there is no instant gratification (see my reference to hard slog) and then go back to KU.

KU is crack. Most authors find they can't give up the money...even as the scammers squeeze earnings lower and lower. So as KU completely falls apart (barring some final save from Amazon) you risk having nothing at all.

We are webpreneurs in addition to being writers, which means we are at the whims of the shorter business cycles online. Eggs in one basket goes along for a while and then it implodes and wipes many business owners out...unless they can time the business cycle and spot the next thing OR diversify so any one thing can't sink them. KU will not continue as it is...how it will change, I don't know but it's a short term play on all sides, except Amazon seems to be the only one who knows that. I see a lot of folks in KU with no long term plan.


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## RedFoxUF (Nov 14, 2016)

juliatheswede said:


> I'll admit that marketing isn't my strongpoint. Can someone point me to a guide that outlines the best marketing tactics for authors who are wide? Or feel free to answer here.


Regardless of your genre, I recommend an RWA membership and attendance at the national convention. I like Chris Syme's training for social media/newsletters. She won't scam you, she's affordable and she's very thorough. And network. And do cross promos. And get a Bookbub.

FREX networking and going to the RWA con can help get you into promo ops at iBooks and other places. I used to (USED to please don't message me) collect and send lists of authors in to my iBooks rep to try and get people onto their promo newsletter list. That's the kind of stuff other authors can do for you.

There aren't any really great ebooks on marketing right now imo partly b/c it's very individual now. It's not abc123 for everyone. There used to be some good ones but they are outdated now unfortunately.

HTH


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

RedFoxUF said:


> Regardless of your genre, I recommend an RWA membership and attendance at the national convention. I like Chris Syme's training for social media/newsletters. She won't scam you, she's affordable and she's very thorough. And network. And do cross promos. And get a Bookbub.
> 
> FREX networking and going to the RWA con can help get you into promo ops at iBooks and other places. I used to (USED to please don't message me) collect and send lists of authors in to my iBooks rep to try and get people onto their promo newsletter list. That's the kind of stuff other authors can do for you.
> 
> ...


Thanks so much for this post. No worries, won't message you  Yes, Bookbubs are great. Have had two while in KU. Hopefully they'll pick me up now that I go back wide. Have done cross promos and will do more. Have newsletter of course. 800 ppl so far. Never thought about going to the RWA conference solely to meet reps from distributors. Good idea. What's FREX networking?


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Usedtoposthere said:


> Well, I probably won't stop making the argument, because I'm trying to say that it's fruitless, not that anybody's wrong to feel aggrieved. Just that feeling aggrieved won't get you anywhere. What Amazon or iBooks or any vendor owes people in terms of whatever it is--not messing up (Barnes & Noble), improving their search (iBooks), not letting people read in Page Flip, whatever--just doesn't matter if it's not enforceable. Your choices are stay or go, or do some of both, diversify in other ways. I just don't see all this angst, which has been going on for the five years I've been writing and publishing, as much more than spinning people's wheels. The. Stores. Don't. Care. They may care (slightly) if you're an 8-figure author, I don't know. Otherwise, they don't care. They make their decisions about their business based on THEIR (shareholders') best interests, because that is literally their job.
> 
> I'm not saying that to be cynical. (I am not a cynical person.) Just to be realistic about where it makes sense to put your efforts. I've worked in business and for companies for a long time. I know about griping and the endless sitting around talking about what your CEO should do instead of what he is doing. Ultimately my choice was to quit or to stay and find ways to get what I needed out of the job. Or to let my frustration eventually drive me to try writing books, and to put said CEO into the story. That worked, so it's not like NO good comes out of frustration.
> 
> ...


*shrug* You see 'angst'. I see people discussing their decision to either stay in KU or not. And frankly the number who think Amazon cares is pretty minuscule as well.

Why you insist on believing you know everyone's motivation, I don't know. Like several other people, I do find that slightly annoying.


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## RedFoxUF (Nov 14, 2016)

juliatheswede said:


> Thanks so much for this post. No worries, won't message you  Yes, Bookbubs are great. Have had two while in KU. Hopefully they'll pick me up now that I go back wide. Have done cross promos and will do more. Have newsletter of course. 800 ppl so far. Never thought about going to the RWA conference solely to meet reps from distributors. Good idea. What's FREX networking?


FREX = for example

I didn't mean YOU you just you in general re: ibooks.

Good cross promo can be tough to find but keep pushing. You need something every month at least.


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

RedFoxUF said:


> FREX = for example
> 
> I didn't mean YOU you just you in general re: ibooks.
> 
> Good cross promo can be tough to find but keep pushing. You need something every month at least.


Oh, I absolutely didn't take it that way! Good to know about the cross promos. I'll keep pushing!


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## Jay Allan (Aug 20, 2012)

I certainly don't care what people decide to do, nor do I have the slightest desire to tell anyone what to do.  I posted for one reason, and one reason only.  When I started, these threads were full of really useful advice that helped me.  By all means, do whatever you feel is right for yourself.  But for the truly new people on here, who are trying to figure out how to try to start building careers, don't let your angst at Amazon cloud the advice you give.  At .004 a word, or even at .002 a word, KU is very likely the smartest way for someone trying to build discoverability to go. Most people who go wide are not going to sell a ton of books that way, and they're going to see their Amazon ranks slip for the lack of the borrows they had.  At least that's my experience, coming from the perspective of four years of wide distribution, and being dragged kicking and screaming into KU.

Another perspective worth a quick look is why everyone so quickly assumes the highest point something reaches instantly becomes the new baseline.  I like .005 better than .004 too, but what is the basis to assume that .005 is some kind of benchmark "value" of a page read?  Maybe some of those higher numbers were benefiting from Amazon goosing things to intro the program.  Guess what, it was a lot easier to sell books in 2013 too, but that didn't make it a lasting norm.  Things like this will change constantly.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Again, 'angst' has nothing to do with it.

One fact is that $.005 wasn't the 'high point' of KU. It went slightly higher and then stayed in that general range for an extended period. However, what is more important rather than a range of payment or a high point is at what point KU ceases to be profitable. At .0042 it was on the edge for me. At ,0040 it is no longer profitable. I will make more money with sales than with KU. Just converting a modest percentage of Amazon borrows to Amazon sales I will do better. 

Does this mean I am advising others to leave? In fact I NEVER advise what others should do except to hesitate in giving advice. They're in a different position, in different genres, with a different backlist, in a different financial situation, with a different ability to buy advertising. Each of us has to look at our own situation situation and decide for ourselves what to do for our own business.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

It's a vicious cycle. If (and I stress 'if' because it's a thing that isn't true) it were impossible to make a tidy living wide, that would be because we authors staying with Amazon through loyalty or fear is what keeps them at the top of the ebook market. If we didn't give them so much power, they wouldn't wield so much power over us.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Vaalingrade said:


> It's a vicious cycle.
> If we didn't give them so much power, they wouldn't wield so much power over us.


Do people really need KU that much? I could understand if they weren't allowed to sell on amazon otherwise, but you can still sell books on amazon if you aren't in KU.

It's a vicious cycle, but it's one people willingly engage.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

That's exactly my point. We really don't need Amazon all that badly, but people keep preaching that not only do we, but we need to just accept everything they do to us because they're just so awesomeballs great and indespensible. Which they aren't. BN still outperforms 'zon for me and I haven't even been able to advertise or publish something new in a year. Just running on its own, BN's still good to me.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> Do people really need KU that much?


Before Aug 2, yes. For me it was 65% of my income, and about the same in terms of full reads vs sales.

Even with the dropping payout rate, it was still worth it.

But the crunch was Amazon telling me all of a sudden, they were not going to pay me for 30%+ of my actual reads. So income and full reads are now around 45%, and still falling.

Even with the Amazon Followers Email they sent out during the night for my latest book, for the first time ever, sales are higher than full reads.

So yes, KU was needed, but things have now changed dramatically, and some of us have said enough is enough.



Dpock said:


> If writing isn't your thing and you're doing it solely for the money, I'm not sure what would keep you in the game now other than hope. The only decision one could make, based on a business analysis of self-publishing, is to move on. But if writing is your thing, there's enough evidence here to suggest that sticking with KU is the best way to raise your visibility and build your audience.


Writing is my thing. But here's my thing about the thing. I'm not a newbie anymore. I have a good sized back catalog. I've had 2 good years, and for the first time in over 20 years, I felt comfortable enough to take out a mortgage again. Once you do start making a decent living out of your writing, everything changes. You do start to become dependent on it, simply by using it.

When KU suddenly chops 30% out of what was 65% of your income, KU is no longer the best. Its relegated itself to second best, and in doing so, its also dropped itself down among the other platforms.

I'm no longer a newbie. Interesting revelation to have.

The other thing is, my KU income has dropped to the point where I can pull my belt in and do without it for a while, and attempt to replace it by being wide. And once I'm wide, I can see it being easier to get that first elusive Bookbub.

Everything KU is doing at the moment tells me its time to leave. It has nothing at all to do with 'need', and everything to with them shooting me in the chest for the 3rd time, and expecting me to remain loyal.

Additional:

This is interesting. I did some math on my almost end of today's stats, and I find the following:

Sales 65%, Reads 35%.

This is the exact opposite of how things were on Aug1.

As such, KU has pretty well become irrelevant. Getting other platforms to fill 65% of your income is a hard ask. 35% is a completely different, and much more achievable ask.


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## alawston (Jun 3, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> But the crunch was Amazon telling me all of a sudden, they were not going to pay me for 30%+ of my actual reads.


I'm sorry, I don't understand this - are you saying that some of your accrued page reads have disappeared from your account? Or did you have your pagecounts reduced in the KENPC 3.0 roll-out?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

alawston said:


> I'm sorry, I don't understand this - are you saying that some of your accrued page reads have disappeared from your account? Or did you have your pagecounts reduced in the KENPC 3.0 roll-out?


Neither.

On Aug 2 I had a dramatic decrease in page reads of 30% over what had been a steady previous month. My sales have been like a heart monitor all year, but my reads have been pretty constant within a very slowly decreasing range as my ranks dropped. Suddenly, they drop like a stone, and stay there, and the only event is KU3.

But then something weird happened. My ranks stayed the same, even though my reads had dropped. Transfer ranks to rank into sales converters, and low and behold, they indicate 30+% discrepancies between expectations and actuals. Varies by which converter tool you use, but the lowest was 30%.

Add to that a sudden appearance of 1 read, 2 read, 3 reads, on books where I get 1, 2 or 3 full reads normally each day, and hey? Where are my reads? And no, there haven't been unexplained higher days following which might account for late delivery. Those reads were not counted.

It will be interesting to compare month stats at the end of Aug. But its pretty obvious the 65-35 separation is swapping, without sales actually going up.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Anyone following my blog posts lately will see that I'm pretty annoyed with how Amazon has been taking a very hands-off approach with scammers who are getting increasingly brazen. I'm also seriously p*ssed off with how they will cancel promos and remove books for typos, for unauthorized editions popping up somewhere, for failing to respond to a BS copyright notice, or whatever. Amazon seems to enforce the wrong things in a very hardline way and lets some egregious and damaging behaviors go pretty much unchecked..

And I have personal experience of all that quite recently. I feel I was treated very shabbily indeed.

BUT I have to push all that to one side when it comes to making a decision about whether KU is right for my books or not, and I have to make that calculation as coldly as possible.

The fact of the matter is that staying out of KU has a huge visibility cost. Enrolling in KU has revived some dead books of mine. Countdown deals and free days have worked very well on some backlist titles. I hate exclusivity, and I find it much harder to get BookBub deals now that most of my stuff is in KU, but overall it has been a net win (at least when those countdowns aren't cancelled!).

Do recent events make me consider unenrolling everything? Sure. Does the continued downward trend in pay rates have me second guessing my position? Definitely. But I'm not quite at the point where I want to go wide with everything yet. And I'm not 100% sure what I'll do with my next releases. It's a tough decision.

Maybe KU isn't a smart long-term play. But maybe it's still a smart short-term play.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Another revelation time just now, looking back on my stats.

I've been wondering for a long time why on any given day, some books just dont seem to be there in KU for most of the day. They have random drops in reads for no apparent reason.

So what if the page-flip problem has been there since the beginning of page-flip, and we never noticed because not enough devices were being used that way. But it shows up as random drops in reads for no apparent reason. And on some days, the majority of your pages for a particular book, were read in page-flip, and not counted. It also accounts for why these drops happen so regularly across a group of 3 or 4 books in a series. Someone downloads say 3 or 4 books, unsyncs, reads them in page-flip, and syncs again a few days later getting the next lot.

Ok, very conspiracy theory, but it makes a lot of sense to me.


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## MelD (Jun 15, 2017)

I can only confirm the same trend.
The number of read pages have clearly dropped. About 30% seems like a fair estimate.

With the exception for my latest book (which was released just when KU3 kicked in). Pretty decent sales but basically no reads. It's sold 90 copies but has only been read 5 (yes, you read it correctly) times. I've been in touch with support (and forwarded to tech team) but they cannot find anything unusual with my KENP.

That makes being exclusive with Amazon feel pretty pointless. I get almost no extra money and cannot sell elsewhere.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

TimothyEllis said:


> So what if the page-flip problem has been there since the beginning of page-flip, and we never noticed because not enough devices were being used that way.


If you open a page flip enabled book on the current Android app you are informed of the fact and offered a mini tutorial on using it. That is one example of how Amazon is pushing page flip. With the trend towards larger screens (especially since iPhones got bigger) page flip became easier to stay in and read the whole book that way. So its also because the devices have been changing.


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