# KU payout projected at half a cent per page, give or take <MERGED>



## MatthewBallard (May 21, 2013)

I just received an email from Amazon going over the changes to the KU/KOLL payout model.

Of interest was this line,

_As measured using KENPC, during the month of June, KU and KOLL customers read nearly 1.9 billion Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENPs) of KDP Select books._

With this information, can someone better than I with math, calculate the approx payout per page based on the June global fund? It might give us some real world numbers to work with. I was surprised that the pages read was so high.


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## tknite (Feb 18, 2014)

Based on an estimated fund of $11 million, also from that same email, the payout per page would be roughly $0.0058.

So that's...

$2.32 for 400 pages
$2.03 for 350 pages
$1.74 for 300 pages

And on down...

$0.58 for 100 pages
$0.29 for 50 pages

Hm. So every 100 pages gets you 58 cents more.


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## NoahPorter (Sep 15, 2013)

It's something like $0.0057. 

Unbelievably terrible.


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## Irelandsgirl1157 (May 17, 2013)

NoahPorter said:


> It's something like $0.0057.
> 
> Unbelievably terrible.


Man, I was hoping my math was wrong.. .$0.0057


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## MatthewBallard (May 21, 2013)

Yep, I came up with the same math. But, based on the massive number of pages they've assigned to my book, that's not surprising.


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## geronl (May 7, 2015)

and with 0 pages read... I can calculate mine easily. lol


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

Congratulations. Every writer who wanted this change will now get $1.25 for their 250 page novel... IF and thats a big IF it's read all the way through.


If the numbers in their email is right, then this new KU payout stinks and doesn't help anyone.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Another interesting point is that that isn't a lot of pages. It makes me think that KU actually has a lot fewer subscribers than Scribd or Oyster.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

AuthorX said:


> Congratulations. Every writer who wanted this change will now get $1.25 for their 250 page novel... IF and thats a big IF it's read all the way through.
> 
> If the numbers in their email is right, then this new KU payout stinks and doesn't help anyone.


I bet it helps Amazon.


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## ThePete (Oct 10, 2013)

I had $0.0054 as a mid range estimate and $0.0027 as low end, so I'm excited!


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

AuthorX said:


> Congratulations. Every writer who wanted this change will now get $1.25 for their 250 page novel... Less than the old system. IF and thats a big IF it's read all the way through.
> 
> If the numbers in their email is right, then this new KU payout stinks and doesn't help anyone but people who have 500 page tomb novels.


Except an actual 250 page novel will be assigned a page count for royalty purposes of 400 pages give or take. My 310 page novels have page counts for royalty purposes of 680-696. So those authors will actually be making over $2 for a 250 page novel read all the way through.

As has been discussed since this was announced, writers of very short works (incl kids and books heavy on art) and writers with a lot of readers stopping after 10% but before the end will make less. Writers of anything longer than about 40K words with readers who normally finish the book after reading 10% will come out ahead.


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## NoahPorter (Sep 15, 2013)

How can anyone be happy at $1.25 for a 250 page novel? Amazon is getting what it wants, I guess. Author's becoming okay with selling their hard work for the absolute lowest possible price. They win big. Authors lose big. Same old story.


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## funthebear (Sep 26, 2014)

Briteka said:


> Another interesting point is that that isn't a lot of pages. It makes me think that KU actually has a lot fewer subscribers than Scribd or Oyster.


What are we comparing it to?

1.9b/300pages = about 6.3 million novels read in June, or about 211,111 per day. That seems like a lot.


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## funthebear (Sep 26, 2014)

NoahPorter said:


> How can anyone be happy at $1.25 for a 250 page novel? Amazon is getting what it wants, I guess. Author's becoming okay with selling their hard work for the absolute lowest possible price. They win big. Authors lose big. Same old story.


Exactly. We were all bitching about it dropping below $1.50, and now we're happy with this? There's always a trade off between volume and unit price, but at some point things get devalued too much.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

NoahPorter said:


> How can anyone be happy at $1.25 for a 250 page novel? Amazon is getting what it wants, I guess. Author's becoming okay with selling their hard work for the absolute lowest possible price. They win big. Authors lose big. Same old story.


KU pushes out about double the sale as other sale channels, so 1.25 can be good for people who price their novels at 2.99 or below. Any price higher than that, and those people are better off going wide.

If these numbers are true, short stories are dead in KU. It's as simple as that. You make more money going wide.

Again, Amazon could solve all these problems with one move: drop exclusivity requirement. They would make more money and we would make more money. Of course, KU isn't about Amazon making money, it's about them attempting to kill off more competitors.


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## MatthewBallard (May 21, 2013)

Amazon set the pages on my recent release, 124,000 words, to 909 pages. You can see it in my sig below (Maylin's Gate). I have that on sale for $4.99. Under this model, I would get paid $5.13 for a full read through. That's MORE than I earn on a sale. I'll take it.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

funthebear said:


> What are we comparing it to?
> 
> 1.9b/300pages = about 6.3 million novels read in June, or about 211,111 per day. That seems like a lot.


Well, Scribd has around 80 million subscribers for example.


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## Mytransformations (Apr 23, 2015)

Just got an email from Amazon saying that payout in July will be "at least 11 million" while pages read in June was 1.9 billion. Doing the math, that's about half a penny per page. 

I understand what Amazon was trying to do, but this will likely reduce my borrow income by 80% and cost me hundreds of dollars per month. 

Here's a proposal for Amazon instead.

Go back to the old system of paying per book. But instead of Amazon counting a read as "10%" of the book, have it be 20 pages. That makes it more fair to the longer books, which had to hold reader's attention proportionally longer to be counted as a read, even though they were providing more content. Amazon could also provide some kind of small bonus for having a longer book.

But the pages read thing looks like it is going to devastate everyone, except those who have written very long series-style works. If this doesn't change, I'll have to pull all my books about of KDP.


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

If my math is right.

I just got an email from Amazon saying that 1.9 billion pages were read in June. If that stays about the same in July, with a pool of $11 million, that's $0.0057, or about 0.6 cents.

I'll make waaaay less money, but oh well, it's a much fairer system than before.


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## MatthewBallard (May 21, 2013)

The first in my series, priced to sell at 99 cents, will earn approx. $3.40 for a full read through (682 pages). That beats the $1.34 I would've earned otherwise.


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## TuckerAuthor (Jan 31, 2014)

Phronk said:


> If my math is right.
> 
> I just got an email from Amazon saying that 1.9 billion pages were read in June. If that stays about the same in July, with a pool of $11 million, that's $0.0057, or about 0.6 cents.


Yep, I was just doing those calculations too. My pages count is higher than I expected for the books I have in Select, however, so the payout for my 70,000 word novels is looking to be in the $2.30 range, by those figures. I'm certainly much happier with that than $1.37.


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## noob (Dec 11, 2014)

MatthewBallard said:


> Amazon set the pages on my recent release, 124,000 words, to 909 pages. You can see it in my sig below (Maylin's Gate). I have that on sale for $4.99. Under this model, I would get paid $5.13 for a full read through. That's MORE than I earn on a sale. I'll take it.


i'm in the same boat for several novels. not quite that long, but 650+ pages equals more than my paid royalty. IF read through.


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

Edited now that I've calmed down a bit:

I've swung my catalog around and emphasized long page counts, gave up on shorts entirely, and things are working out.


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## HillOnLong (Oct 11, 2014)

Ask and you shall receive!

And the math: Approximately 11 Million USD pot of June divided by 1.9 billion KENPCs is 0.579 cents ($0.00579) per KENPC.


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## noob (Dec 11, 2014)

bobfrost said:


> This is basically worse than any scenario I could have imagined.
> 
> Half a penny a page kills everyone. Novels make less. Shorts make less. Everyone makes less.
> 
> ...


i dunno. i have several novels with new page counts around 650. at .005 a page that's $3.25 a read-through. still a lot of questions: will these page counts stick? what's the price gunna be? what's my read through? but right now i make more per borrow on that book than i do on a sale royalty.


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## LadyStarlight (Nov 14, 2014)

C.S. Longhill said:


> Ask and you shall receive!


LOL!

It is ridiculous, though.


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## BlueGen (Jun 14, 2014)

I write non-fiction. My works are necessarily short. No one wants 650 pages of non-fiction. 

I've just lost about $1500 a month, according to those figures.

Never thought I'd leave Select. But that's now certain to happen


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

Actually, for those of us with longer books, and assuming Amazon's insane page count remains, and assuming readers actually read the thing, I'll be making more per book than I will with a sale.

Assuming they get back to something like the real page count (for those with print versions), I'll still make more than under the old system

Assuming a 10% read only....well...ouch.


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## StephenBrennan (Dec 21, 2012)

Amazon is making it less and less appealing to write books for them. Granted this may be good for some people, but it will destroy the business model for others.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

StephenBrennan said:


> Amazon is making it less and less appealing to write books for them. Granted this may be good for some people, but it will destroy the business model for others.


Why? Select is optional. If you're not happy with that payout- don't participate in KDP select. You can still have your books for sale on Amazon.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I reallllly hate to say I told you so, but I guessed .006 dollars per page. Because a 300 page book at .006 = $1.80 which about what I would expect them to pay for a "novel borrow" with the longer books 400 pages + getting the old borrow payment of roughly $2. 

Of course we will see come August 15. I suspect they will add to the pool because authors are going to tell their readers, you must read the whole thing or I don't get a full payment.


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## Cheyanne (Jan 9, 2013)

Welp, the sad thing is the majority of my income came from 100 page novellas. This no longer makes it worth it. I've emailed KDP asking them to remove my books from Select & I'll be going wide. I'm also looking for a day job because this will kill my income.


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## BEAST (Mar 31, 2012)

AuthorX said:


> Congratulations. Every writer who wanted this change will now get $1.25 for their 250 page novel... IF and thats a big IF it's read all the way through.
> 
> If the numbers in their email is right, then this new KU payout stinks and doesn't help anyone.


Well, with the way they calculating books this may not be true. I have a book that's 70K words and listed as 200 pages on the product page. With KENPC it is listed as having 382 pages. I'd made $2.17 if that book was read all the way through based on these calculations.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Two similar topic merged . . . sorry for any confusion.


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## noob (Dec 11, 2014)

i've made more in zonpages today at .005 than i have in straight borrows for any of my works under the old KU. 
not saying it'll last or shake out this way, but that's where i'm at right now.
keep in mind i'm at the very prawny end of the scale.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

I write shorts and I made some money today. I won't make as much per book anymore, but if I release more get and reads I'll still do okay and the visibility will get me sales, too. I do still get those. Not everyone subscribes to KU. I don't like it, but I can adapt to it and make it work for me as long as I have to. I also have books wide, but I wouldn't say I won't make anything from KU.


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## ketosis (Apr 19, 2013)

They also said July will be at least 11m, but I suspect it will be at least 14m.  They'll pad the coffers once again to keep people in.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Maximillion said:


> Well, with the way they calculating books this may not be true. I have a book that's 70K words and listed as 200 pages on the product page. With KENPC it is listed as having 382 pages. I'd made $2.17 if that book was read all the way through based on these calculations.


Yep.

This is bad for people who write shorts and people that price their novels at higher rates.

If you price your novels at $2.99, you guys win. Of course, I would never suggest to price a novel that low, but.... 

This price is exactly what I suspected would come out, and the people that I though would benefit will still benefit. I am not at all surprised... except for those low "read" numbers, especially if they count the new, weird page counts.


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

Hmm...


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

bobfrost said:


> This is basically worse than any scenario I could have imagined.
> 
> Half a penny a page kills everyone. Novels make less. Shorts make less. Everyone makes less.
> 
> ...


Sorry. My novels will make way more. Waaaaaaaaaay more.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Mytransformations said:


> But the pages read thing looks like it is going to devastate everyone, except those who have written very long series-style works.


Major winners will be those who write generalist non-fiction. The sort of book that a student uses only one chapter of as part of their essay that must cite a variety of sources. The sort of book that probably seldom hit the 10% mark.

How this pans out will not be evident for several months as in the major KU markets to quote Alice and the Muppets, School's Out for Summer.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xyztv_alice-cooper-the-muppets-school-s-o_music


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

People forget that the Global Fund is basically a lie. They'll pad it to .9 cents for July so everyone will go 'that wasn't bad as I expected!' and then get back to business as usual as the payout steadily shrinks.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Wow. This is bad. I can't see staying in KU with this news.


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## GwynnEWhite (May 23, 2012)

At Amazon's calculation of 629 KENPC pages on my memoir, I am also very happy with the new system. My reviews tell me that the majority of people like my book, so why won't they read to the end?


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## mrforbes (Feb 16, 2013)

KENPC is much higher than print or ebook estimated pages. One of my 100k novels is coming out ~600 KENPC. @.005, which is closer to .008-.01 in 'real' pages. 
That's $3.00 per full read. Even if it averages out to $2.00 based on abandonment, that still works out great for novels compared to KU 1.0.

To put it another way - I have a box set that has been in KU since it launched. Using book report to work some magic (and entering .0057 in the per page settings)...

One June 29, my box set was my 10th most profitable title out of 14.
Today, it's #4.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Vaalingrade said:


> People forget that the Global Fund is basically a lie. They'll pad it to .9 cents for July so everyone will go 'that wasn't bad as I expected!' and then get back to business as usual as the payout steadily shrinks.


Likely.

Honestly, I'm thinking of pulling out now, even though I told myself I would wait and see how it all shakes out. I'm looking at around $.20 a borrow. I make 10 times that amount a sale on other sites. It just makes no sense to stay exclusive to Amazon. I don't see how they can ever make it worthwhile under this new system. Then there's the very real possibility of KU losing a lot of subscriber over this, since the subscription cost doesn't make sense if you read a couple $2.99 novels a month. It does make sense if you read 10 $2.99 shorts a month, but those won't be offered anymore.


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## MatthewBallard (May 21, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Sorry. My novels will make way more. Waaaaaaaaaay more.


So much this. I'll make 3 to 4 times more under this model.


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Sorry. My novels will make way more. Waaaaaaaaaay more.


You're definitely in a different situation that is perfectly suited for this. Your average page count is VERY high. Even so, saying you'll make WAAAAAAAY more seems wrong.

Your average book seems to be about 350 pages, give or take. Your KENPC is undoubtedly higher, right? Lets say the average is 500 pages on KENPC. 62% completion per borrow only gives you roughly $1.55 per borrow. I mean, your income might go up, but it doesn't look like it's going to be an absolutely drastic change.

Unless I'm missing something. How many pages-read have you had today so far? Are you earning more at half a cent than you would have on an average day last month by some wide margin?

I'm open to understanding.


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

MatthewBallard said:


> So much this. I'll make 3 to 4 times more under this model.


Yes, people with 500 page novels are going to do just fine.


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## GwynnEWhite (May 23, 2012)

I think the brainiacs at Amazon are a lot smarter than all of us put together— they live in the real world while, for the most part, we live in make-believe ones. You can bet their accountants have this whole thing buttoned up. Amazon will never do anything that hurts its own bottom line. Keeping authors in KU and away from Apple and the other stores is what they are all about. In the end, you will see that this works out for in favour of authors with quality books.


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## Censored (Oct 31, 2014)

bobfrost said:


> Yes, people with 500 page novels are going to do just fine.


Assuming they're read to completion.


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

bobfrost said:


> You're definitely in a different situation that is perfectly suited for this. Your average page count is VERY high. Even so, saying you'll make WAAAAAAAY more seems wrong.
> 
> Your average book seems to be about 350 pages, give or take. Your KENPC is undoubtedly higher, right? Lets say the average is 500 pages on KENPC. 62% completion per borrow only gives you roughly $1.55 per borrow. I mean, your income might go up, but it doesn't look like it's going to be an absolutely drastic change.
> 
> ...


I'm quite happy with my day -- and I am ahead of where I would be at this time on a different day. Thank you.


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

I hope they fix the discrepancies with the page count, i'm going to pull out if they don't. On this model i'll make far less even know my novel is 112k words


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## NoahPorter (Sep 15, 2013)

GwynnEWhite said:


> I think the brainiacs at Amazon are a lot smarter than all of us put together--


Thats exactly what they want you to think. And never question.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

$0.0579 per page. So a borrow of a 350 page novel, read to completion, pays about what it would if you priced it at $2.99 @ 70%.

For those who equate borrows to sales, this will be awful news.

For those who see borrows and sales as different things, this will be great news.

And for those who realize that a $10,000,000 pot, split evenly based on reader interaction, means nothing really has changed, this will be no news at all.

As an indie author, the best thing you can do now to increase your earnings is flap your arms, complain about KU, and hope your colleagues pull out, leaving you a bigger split of that pie.

If you're like me, and you're not out to maximize your earnings, feel free to encourage participation if you think the program makes sense for others.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I reallllly hate to say I told you so, but I guessed .006 dollars per page. Because a 300 page book at .006 = $1.80 which about what I would expect them to pay for a "novel borrow" with the longer books 400 pages + getting the old borrow payment of roughly $2.
> 
> Of course we will see come August 15. I suspect they will add to the pool because authors are going to tell their readers, you must read the whole thing or I don't get a full payment.


Except that an average novel borrow will be more like 450-500 pages. Like I said, my 310 page novels are coming up as almost 700 pages in the Amazon page calculation. So an actual 300 page novel will likely make closer to $3 if it is read all the way through. Assuming a rate of .005 to .006 per page.

For novelists, even those who write shorter novels the whole deciding factor here will be reader behavior. How many readers who read past ten percent will stop significantly before the end? Putting aside the very real potential challenges for books other than fiction over 50K words, I can't help but think this is overall rewarding authors who can engage their readers better. Which should be a win-win.


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I'm quite happy with my day -- and I am ahead of where I would be at this time on a different day. Thank you.


I get the sense you think I'm being combative. I'm not. I was genuinely curious about whether or not you were doing significantly better under the new system and I wast trying to make sense of it.

I'm taking a huge hit under the new system and you're clearly in a different place catalog-wise. My income is down 2/3rds and I'm certain there are plenty of authors in my boat.

I'm glad you've moved up. I'm happy to hear that the system is working out in a positive way for you. I just wish it wasn't so negative for me and I'm trying to figure out my next move. I'm already diversified into novels pretty heavily recently, but clearly I'm targeting word counts that are still too low. Looks like I'm going to be aiming for the 350+ page books at this rate.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)

bobfrost said:


> Half a penny a page kills everyone. Novels make less. Shorts make less. Everyone makes less.
> This is a disaster. A total disaster. Even if they double the pool this is a disaster.


Let's see: 0.0057 per page old payout per borrow is 1,34 This means if your book has *235 pages and more* you're better off under new system.


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

drno said:


> Let's see: 0.0057 per page old payout per borrow is 1,34 This means if your book has *235 pages and more* you're better off under new system.


I was being a bit bombastic with that comment now that I've had a few minutes to think it through, but you're still not totally correct.

It means if your average book gets READ to 235 pages, you're better off under the new system. The average 235 page book isn't going to get 100% read-through. You need books that have KENPC's significantly higher, depending on your average read-through rate. If you have 350 page books and can nail down something north of 65% average read-through, you're doing better under the new system, for example. It's all a function of how many pages VS how many average pages are read, but it definitely won't happen on a book that is exactly 235 pages.


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## BEAST (Mar 31, 2012)

drno said:


> Let's see: 0.0057 per page old payout per borrow is 1,34 This means if your book has *235 pages and more* you're better off under new system.


This kind of sums it up. The only issue is that we don't know what word count would meet that mark. I'd say around 50K words but there has been so much variable reported it's hard to say. Your Zonpages could be substantially higher or lower based on number of chapters, paragraph length and some other factor not yet seen.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)

A lot of people had no trouble selling 2.99 shorts before KU. I'm sure there's plenty that stayed outside of KU when it came round because they didn't want to take the royalty loss. Now that loss is beyond ridiculous, I think we'll see a mass evacuation of authors in this field. It's not just that you can't sell on the other platforms - it's that KU cannibalizes sales. Might still be good to do KU though if you're new and need exposure.


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## pwtucker (Feb 12, 2011)

I've done some quick math, and it's about 185 words/KENPC page. 

We're being paid about $0.0058/page.

Thus in order to earn the $1.35 we were making, you need to write about 43,000 words.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)

It seems to me that before KU, most short works selling for .99-1.99 made .35-.70 per copy. Then for a while that approximately doubled or even tripled to 1.34. Yay! Then Amazon took a step back and said, "Hey! Why are we paying some writers more than they're actually selling their stories for? We need to change this." So they changed it to benefit longer, more expensive books. Whoever didn't see it coming must think Amazon is stupid or unusually generous.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

pwtucker said:


> I've done some quick math, and it's about 185 words/KENPC page.


I don't think you can do it that way. Some folks with 90K books are seeing under 500 kenpc pages, while my 100K books are more like 700, which is less than 150 words/KENPC. You could probably collect a few dozen data points and then average them, but they could easily be off by 20-30% for any given author.


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

pwtucker said:


> I've done some quick math, and it's about 185 words/KENPC page.
> 
> We're being paid about $0.0058/page.
> 
> Thus in order to earn the $1.35 we were making, you need to write about 43,000 words.


Nope it's different for everybody, those kind of calculations won't work. i'm getting 305 words per page...


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## pwtucker (Feb 12, 2011)

Interesting. That was an average derived from my top 10 best selling books.


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## Kenson (Dec 8, 2014)

The headline figure may be low but my page count has very nearly doubled so superficially I'm going to be happy.

The big unknown for everybody is how much of their books actually get read!


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## D. Zollicoffer (May 14, 2014)

Good luck, everyone! I cashed out last week


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Hugh Howey said:


> As an indie author, the best thing you can do now to increase your earnings is flap your arms, complain about KU, and hope your colleagues pull out, leaving you a bigger split of that pie.


And...keep writing.


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## heynonny (Mar 12, 2014)

I really was dreading this change as my new pen name was doing pretty well in KU; I had some shorts in there plus a couple of 40K word novellas. No big books. Nothing over $3.99. My fears were starting to seem justified when the dashboard finally updated and the number crunching suggested .05/page. But Bookreport finally was able to scrape all the data in my dashboard, and I plugged in 0.05 in the settings.

In a word, I am _stunned_.

I am honestly not believing these numbers right now...if they hold after the first 48 hours shakes out, which is what I figure a reasonable time would be for Amazon to get the glitches fixed, my daily income is on track to triple overnight.


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## ChadMck (Feb 25, 2011)

I would be very interested in seeing where most of the borrows were coming from. Something tells me people were eating erotic shorts like candy and Amazon was taking a massive loss. Paying in $10 a month to the system while Amazon was paying out $20 or $30 to writers. I'm going to leave my old stories in just to see how it all works but all my new stories are going wide. 

Any day I can make a little money writing is a good day, but the tail keeps getting longer and longer. In 2009 through 2013 you could make a few grand a month easy with about 20 erotic short stories. Talking wistfully about those days just makes me feel like the fat quarterback talking about how awesome he was in high school. I need to learn and grow. This decision from Amazon has forced me out of my comfort zone. 

Do I like it? Nope. It stinks. 

Can I find a silver lining? Yup. The "quick buck" writers are going to getting fewer and further between. Lord knows they'll still be out there, but I don't think they will be much competition any longer. The challenge now is to write better, market better, build a mailing list better, do everything better. 

I no longer harbor the dream of writing full time. The market is too volatile. Too many what if's. Every time I think I'm making progress something happens. Whether it's blocked titles for unclear reasons or it's a cut in pay. So I guess I'll have to dig in, keep writing, charge what I think my writing is worth and keep leaving crumbs out there hoping my audience follows me. 

Hater's gonna hate. Writers gonna write.


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

heynonny said:


> I really was dreading this change as my new pen name was doing pretty well in KU; I had some shorts in there plus a couple of 40K word novellas. No big books. Nothing over $3.99. My fears were starting to seem justified when the dashboard finally updated and the number crunching suggested .05/page. But Bookreport finally was able to scrape all the data in my dashboard, and I plugged in 0.05 in the settings.
> 
> In a word, I am _stunned_.
> 
> I am honestly not believing these numbers right now...if they hold after the first 48 hours shakes out, which is what I figure a reasonable time would be for Amazon to get the glitches fixed, my daily income is on track to triple overnight.


You may be missing a zero. The number is .0058


----------



## NoahPorter (Sep 15, 2013)

Rayven T. Hill said:


> You may be missing a zero. The number is .0058


Yup. You're going to be stunned...in a completely different way.


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

Rayven T. Hill said:


> You may be missing a zero. The number is .0058


Yeah, I'm worried math reality is going to set in for someone, lol.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Hugh Howey said:


> As an indie author, the best thing you can do now to increase your earnings is flap your arms, complain about KU, and hope your colleagues pull out, leaving you a bigger split of that pie.


I disagree. From this indie author's point of view, the best thing I can do to increase my earnings is to realize that with the new changes, Amazon isn't paying me enough to be exclusive to them.


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## darkline (Mar 30, 2014)

It's been a while since I published anything and my income has been pretty low lately, but if my calculations are right, I need at least 20,000 pages read every day just to earn what I have been earning lately. So far I have only 1/4, but most of my borrows usually come late. We'll see.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Hugh Howey said:


> As an indie author, the best thing you can do now to increase your earnings is flap your arms, complain about KU, and hope your colleagues pull out, leaving you a bigger split of that pie.


Does that flapping your arms thing work? That's a tip I haven't heard before. I just tried it and a sale came in, so you could be onto something. . .


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

What I find slightly humorous, is that in their example when they announced the changes, they used 10 cents a page.  We all knew that was high, but realized they were using a rounded number for simplicity's sake. 

It turns out they could have made it even more simple and used 1 cent per page... and still been over the amount.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Read the writing on the wall, people!  Amazon is trying to accomplish 5 things:

1. Pay authors something approximating the royalty from a sale of your work. (Using the average market price, not the price you choose.)
2. Achieve a balance of long vs short works that is more inline with both their members' wishes, and their regular marketplace
3. Push the scammers out of KU by making it more difficult to make a buck
4. Stop authors from chopping up what should have been full length novels in order to increase earnings
5. Improve the overall quality of material available in the KU library

Stop whinning and start writing. Adapt. Make the system work for you, build an audience, create your slice of the pie. Write a lot of pages, be they grouped together as few or many. This has always been the way to make a living writing and self-publishing. Rushing to put as many titles as possible up to be seen by writing short has NEVER been the best road to real success, only short term gains. Readers want to be engrossed in your stories. Make that happen, again and again, and this system will work for you.

It's as simple as that.


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## Anna Drake (Sep 22, 2014)

bobfrost said:


> We need to get Amazon to set a low threshold again. We shouldn't be paying for people who's books don't get read to 10%. That's what's killing us here - millions upon millions of books that are bought and abandoned after a few pages without reaching 10%. Those weren't paid under the old system. Now those abandoned books are being rewarded at the expense of everyone else.


Oh, great. A new witch hunt.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> Read the writing on the wall, people! Amazon is trying to accomplish 5 things:
> 
> 1. Pay authors something approximating the royalty from a sale of your work. (Using the average market price, not the price you choose.)
> 2. Achieve a balance of long vs short works that is more inline with both their members' wishes, and their regular marketplace
> ...


Making sense helps nothing! You here me? Nothing!


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> It's as simple as that.


Yep!


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Rykymus said:


> Read the writing on the wall, people! Amazon is trying to accomplish 5 things:
> 
> 1. Pay authors something approximating the royalty from a sale of your work. (Using the average market price, not the price you choose.)
> 2. Achieve a balance of long vs short works that is more inline with both their members' wishes, and their regular marketplace
> ...


How dare you use logic on the first day of a major change to the KU program? How DARE you, sir?? 

(As an aside, don't forget that Amazon's giving anyone who wants it an out of their Select obligation. Here are the details..)



> If you do not want your book(s) in Kindle Unlimited, you have the option to immediately remove your book from KDP Select. To do so, please include the ASIN for your book when you complete this Contact Us form. We will remove your book from KDP Select right away and contact you to confirm. You can also remove your book from KDP Select at the end of your enrollment by going to your Bookshelf, clicking on the ellipsis button ("...") under the Book Actions menu next to your book, and selecting "KDP Select information." Then, uncheck the box next to "Automatically renew this book's enrollment in KDP Select for another 90 days."


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## bobbic (Apr 4, 2011)

Well, this is me deciding to just get the hell out of the KU program. I never got many borrows on my books or short stories anyway, for some reason. Ironically, I had decided this a couple of days ago after getting the fifth return on a 99-cent story. And now? I'm so glad I did.

bobbi c.


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## Jerry Patterson (Nov 20, 2013)

In the June 15th letter explaining the changes,  Amazon gave us an "example".  Their example used 100 million pages read instead of the June number which is 1.9 billion.  Gee I wonder if they knew that their example was off by only....  1.8 billion.  I  wonder why they did that?


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

Rykymus said:


> Read the writing on the wall, people! Amazon is trying to accomplish 5 things:
> 
> 1. Pay authors something approximating the royalty from a sale of your work. (Using the average market price, not the price you choose.)
> 2. Achieve a balance of long vs short works that is more inline with both their members' wishes, and their regular marketplace
> ...


It's hard to make a living when peoples words per page are wildly different than each other.


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## AgathaMarch (Apr 17, 2015)

I suspect that people will ask people to borrow their books for free and simply swipe through the pages to achieve page count.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)




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## danielsolomonkaplan (Aug 8, 2014)

bobfrost said:


> We need to get Amazon to set a low threshold again. We shouldn't be paying for people who's books don't get read to 10%. That's what's killing us here - millions upon millions of books that are bought and abandoned after a few pages without reaching 10%. Those weren't paid under the old system. Now those abandoned books are being rewarded at the expense of everyone else.


If a million people read a page from those books, that's only $5,800 of the $11,000,000 pool. At any rate, there is a lot of room for those books to scrape a bit without majorly affecting the entire pool.

Even if we say that 1% goes to scammers (and that would be pretty reasonable for any system), that still means 19 million pages could be read of garbage. 1.9 billion pages read is an awful lot.


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## BEAST (Mar 31, 2012)

Rykymus said:


> Read the writing on the wall, people! Amazon is trying to accomplish 5 things:
> 
> 1. Pay authors something approximating the royalty from a sale of your work. (Using the average market price, not the price you choose.)
> 2. Achieve a balance of long vs short works that is more inline with both their members' wishes, and their regular marketplace
> ...


Actually, it's not that simple. And to suggest that people who invest time and effort into their writing business are whining when things change is a bit callous. Because of the whining we are seeing issues with how KENPC is calculated. Word length is not the only factor. It appears, based on said whining, that shorter paragraphs, shorter chapters and images used as chapter headings affect that count. These issue which professional writers are "whining" about have an impact on whether KU is right for a potential book.

I agree with all of your points. I have two novels, one at 70K and the other at 71K. Their KENPC pages are 325 and 432. That's more than a hundred pages difference. Obviously, writing isn't enough in this particular ecosystem. If the payout is indeed a half penny I would be earning about $0.50 less for a book that is pretty much the same length. When I release a novel I usually get about 500 borrows in the first three months. So, I'll make $250 less because one book isn't formatted to optimize it's KENPC count?

No one is whining. People are expressing concern with what's going on and trying to gain some understanding. It's human nature to try to figure things out and eliminate the unknown. A little compassion would be nice.


----------



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

AgathaMarch said:


> I suspect that people will ask people to borrow their books for free and simply swipe through the pages to achieve page count.


I don't think you can lend a borrowed book. You can lend a purchased book, but not a borrowed one.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

- The example was 10 cents.
- Most people's initial math was staked at 1 cent.
- Actual amount was .5 cents
- People are still trying to sell this as a Good Thing (tm).

The best part is, with the 'Normalized Page Count' being all wizardry and toadstools, there's no way of knowing what your book will stand to earn until you've already enrolled it.


----------



## pwtucker (Feb 12, 2011)

How long is the grace period within which we can remove books from KU? Does anybody know when it expires?


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)

Vaalingrade said:


> - The example was 10 cents.
> - Most people's initial math was staked at 1 cent.
> - Actual amount was .5 cents
> - People are still trying to sell this as a Good Thing (tm).
> ...


Yep. It's a classic case of FUD, with the objective to pay the writers less.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

drno said:


> Let's see: 0.0057 per page old payout per borrow is 1,34 This means if your book has *235 pages and more* you're better off under new system.


You are not necessarily better off. This isn't about KU before VS. now. Because of exclusivity, it's about KU vs. every other retailer. If you sell your novels at normal ebook prices, you will not be better off being in KU.


----------



## beccaprice (Oct 1, 2011)

Hey, I earned half a cent so far today!

(Does anyone here remember an old musical called "the Pajama Game"?)


----------



## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

In another thread, I mentioned Lincoln's adage, _Fool me once,shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me._

Shame on me.

Amazon, there won't be a third "fooling".


----------



## Ainsley (Dec 26, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> - The example was 10 cents.
> - Most people's initial math was staked at 1 cent.
> - Actual amount was .5 cents
> - People are still trying to sell this as a Good Thing (tm).
> ...


It was 1 cent based on the previous page count, not the new one. If you convert the new page count you get closer to the 1c - pretty much where people chose on the poll thread. So I would say folks got EXACTLY the rate they expected (I would say asked for).


----------



## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

pwtucker said:


> How long is the grace period within which we can remove books from KU? Does anybody know when it expires?


As near as I can tell, there is no grace period--you can make the request to withdraw your works any time. Just notify them at the link I provided up-thread.


----------



## Cheyanne (Jan 9, 2013)

T. M. Bilderback said:


> In another thread, I mentioned Lincoln's adage, _Fool me once,shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me._
> 
> Shame on me.
> 
> Amazon, there won't be a third "fooling".


Well said. I've asked them to pull all of my books from Select. It's no longer worth it to exclude non Amazon readers from enjoying my books.


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## Avis Black (Jun 12, 2012)

The math at half a cent a page doesn't work for me, either.  I'm going to have to pull just about everything out of KU.


----------



## 4eyesbooks (Jan 9, 2012)

My books are short...28-30 pages, but they are very costly to illustrate.  With this new system I will now earn $.15-$.17 if a child reads the entire book.  I think I'm going to be sick.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)

To make XX: How many pages need to be read?
$10 per day: 1754 pages
$20 per day: 3508 pages
$40 per day: 7017 pages
$50 per day: 8771 pages
$75 per day: 13157 pages
$100 per day: 17543 pages
$200 per day: 35087 pages
$400 per day: 70175 pages


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## D. Zollicoffer (May 14, 2014)

swolf said:


> I disagree. From this indie author's point of view, the best thing I can do to increase my earnings is to realize that with the new changes, *Amazon isn't paying me enough to be exclusive to them*.


Same here. It's no longer worth it unless you have a massive following IMHO. Me, I know for a fact that I can make more at the other channels. Even if I wrote longer books (my current books are short because they're for children), I'd still go somewhere else. Because honestly, I don't plan on charging less than $4.99 for my novels. That's still cheap for a 75k word book.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

swolf said:


> What I find slightly humorous, is that in their example when they announced the changes, they used 10 cents a page. We all knew that was high, but realized they were using a rounded number for simplicity's sake.


That will have been based on high-level legal advice. If you give a realistic example you are open to being sued because it was believable that that might have been the rate. By giving 10 cents as an example they have an easy defence that no-one would believe that they would be paid $1.30 for reading a 13 page short.

Just to double-down the defence they allow (for an unstated period) entering the scheme to see what the payments are like and leave in less than 90 days. Of course by the time you know what you are to be paid you might have been in the scheme for 46 days.


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## D. Zollicoffer (May 14, 2014)

4eyesbooks said:


> My books are short...28-30 pages, but they are very costly to illustrate. With this new system I will now earn $.15-$.17 if a child reads the entire book. I think I'm going to be sick.


They need a different program for children's books. All short books aren't equal. I think they'll fix this soon once they see a mass exodus of kid fiction authors. Good luck.


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## Evan of the R. (Oct 15, 2013)

pwtucker said:


> I've done some quick math, and it's about 185 words/KENPC page.





JalexM said:


> Nope it's different for everybody, those kind of calculations won't work. i'm getting 305 words per page...


FWIW, I just checked the two novels I have in KU, and after taking out the backmatter I got

191 words per "page" (KENPC)
187 words per "page" (KENPC)


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Briteka said:


> You are not necessarily better off. This isn't about KU before VS. now. Because of exclusivity, it's about KU vs. every other retailer. If you sell your novels at normal ebook prices, you will not be better off being in KU.


Agreed.

And to give credit where it's due, your guess about the page rate was a hell of a lot closer than mine.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)

Mercia McMahon said:


> That will have been based on high-level legal advice. If you give a realistic example you are open to being sued because it was believable that that might have been the rate. By giving 10 cents as an example they have an easy defence that no-one would believe that they would be paid $1.30 for reading a 13 page short.
> 
> Just to double-down the defence they allow (for an unstated period) entering the scheme to see what the payments are like and leave in less than 90 days. Of course by the time you know what you are to be paid you might have been in the scheme for 46 days.


More FUD. "We can't give you an accurate idea of what to expect because maybe you'll sue us for giving you false expectations."

No transparency whatsoever.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

4eyesbooks said:


> My books are short...28-30 pages, but they are very costly to illustrate. With this new system I will now earn $.15-$.17 if a child reads the entire book. I think I'm going to be sick.


Totally sucks. 

Maybe ... leave one book in to give KU-users a taste of your wares, and take the rest out. You can always go back if Amazon addresses this terrible problem with kids' books. Who knows? You might find good business on Google and iTunes.


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## LondonCalling (Dec 19, 2014)

Who do I contact to pull out of KU?


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## geronl (May 7, 2015)

beccaprice said:


> Hey, I earned half a cent so far today!
> 
> (Does anyone here remember an old musical called "the Pajama Game"?)


More than me!


----------



## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

LondonCalling said:


> Who do I contact to pull out of KU?


http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,217374.msg3033361.html#msg3033361


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## Julianna (Jun 28, 2015)

tknite said:


> Based on an estimated fund of $11 million, also from that same email, the payout per page would be roughly $0.0058.
> 
> So that's...
> 
> ...


This is what happens when an art form becomes commoditized.


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## Roman (Jun 16, 2015)

4eyesbooks said:


> My books are short...28-30 pages, but they are very costly to illustrate. With this new system I will now earn $.15-$.17 if a child reads the entire book. I think I'm going to be sick.


It's a sad day for children's book writers. I am lost and don't know what to do. There are four of my illustrated books which are supposed to be released and they have been in the works since last year. But there is still a lot of work to do and I still need to invest more money for final editing. Right now, I don't feel like putting more time into this though, since I would rather spend it with my own kids. I did count on the extra income though.


----------



## LondonCalling (Dec 19, 2014)

Jim Johnson said:


> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,217374.msg3033361.html#msg3033361


You're excellent, thank you!


----------



## Daniel Kenney (Sep 18, 2014)

4eyesbooks said:


> My books are short...28-30 pages, but they are very costly to illustrate. With this new system I will now earn $.15-$.17 if a child reads the entire book. I think I'm going to be sick.


I've gotten into lots of arguments on the boards and other forums about the issue of Children's books. The reply that I usually get is something like "so what, a page is a page is a page. Everything is fair now".

So, I will continue to disagree. I think for the most part, a book is a book is a book. And what is considered normal in the world of picture books is different from what is considered normal in the world of MG books which is also different from what is considered normal in the world of adult books. And when I bring this up I'm greeted with "so what, a page is a page is a page. 20 pages are harder to write than 5 pages so now everything is fair."

I just disagree. I think the unit of literary consumption is the book...these people think its the page, we are not going to convince each other. When I think back on Charlotte's Web, I don't think about the number of pages...I think about the story. Same with any book that I cherish. My point? The system you've created to lure long books back into KU and get rid of scammy short books will hurt children's books. And when I say hurt, I mean this. In one of these arguments, the person said that Amazon's goal is to make KU the best subscription library out there. And that you just can't do that without long form fiction.

I completely agree.

But I also don't think you can have the best subscription library out there without a kid's section.

It continues to be my hope that Amazon finds a way to account for this difference. And yes, I'm fully ready for people to say, one more time....but a page is a page is a page.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Roman said:


> It's a sad day for children's book writers. I am lost and don't know what to do. There are four of my illustrated books which are supposed to be released and they have been in the works since last year. But there is still a lot of work to do and I still need to invest more money for final editing. Right now, I don't feel like putting more time into this though, since I would rather spend it with my own kids. I did count on the extra income though.


I feel for you. But with the changes, I can't see any children's author staying in KU. So the readers looking for that kind of thing are going to know not to look there, and will have to buy instead of borrow.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

I'm thinking Amazon is going to sweeten that pot, but I wonder how long that would last. I'd be surprised at this point if KU had more than 10 million subscribers, about 80 percent less than its competitors, which means it brings in about 100 million a month. The pot could definitely use some fluffing going forward, especially if Amazon views KU as a loss leader in order to plump up.. other things.


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## 4eyesbooks (Jan 9, 2012)

Thank you Daniel Kenney.  That was well said.  I try to put out quality content and I would like to be judged by the whole of my material rather than some of the words on a page.  My books are not equivalent to a lengthy novel...but they are enjoyed by young children.  I want kids to fall in love with reading so that they become young adults who love to dive into a good book.  A page is not just a page in my world.


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## Roman (Jun 16, 2015)

Daniel Kenney said:


> It continues to be my hope that Amazon finds a way to account for this difference. And yes, I'm fully ready for people to say, one more time....but a page is a page is a page.


It absolutely isn't. Writing a 20k novella is faster than producing a quality picture book with 3000 words. Why? Because the novella author gets the book edited and publishes it. For a novella I write 2000 words a day but writing a children's book is much slower. After writing the text I start the costly illustration procedure which takes more than half a year of constant email exchanges. I am talking of easily more than 200 emails.


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## danpadavona (Sep 25, 2014)

Cheyanne said:


> Welp, the sad thing is the majority of my income came from 100 page novellas. This no longer makes it worth it. I've emailed KDP asking them to remove my books from Select & I'll be going wide. I'm also looking for a day job because this will kill my income.


I understand your frustration over the $0.005-$0.006, and that in itself may be a great reason to go wide.

However, I don't understand how your novella page counts make a difference in your decision. Total income comes from the total amount of words published on Amazon. Whether you have 5 novellas of 100 pages each or 1 novel of 500 pages, it adds up the same, which is basically the argument Hugh Howey put forth in his last article.


----------



## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Vaalingrade said:


> - The example was 10 cents.
> - Most people's initial math was staked at 1 cent.
> - Actual amount was .5 cents
> - People are still trying to sell this as a Good Thing (tm).
> ...


Indeed. I'd like to know their standardized font, line spacing, and eye of newt so I can match their formatting and have a rough idea how long my books are...but if they revealed that, we might discover it's all just standardized smoke and mirrors.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

So I guess that the two books that are left in KU by this time next week can split the $11 million pot?


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Something I'm not understanding...

There were approximately 7,250,000 borrows in May. Despite the summer slump, let's say it increased to an even 8,000,000 in June.  With 1.9 billion page reads, that's an average of 237 page reads per borrow.

How is that possible? With all of the short works out there, that were supposedly the problem, how do you reach an average of 237 pages per borrow?

Sorry, I find that completely unbelievable.


----------



## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

danpadavona said:


> I understand your frustration over the $0.005-$0.006, and that in itself may be a great reason to go wide.
> 
> However, I don't understand how your novella page counts make a difference in your decision. Total income comes from the total amount of words published on Amazon. Whether you have 5 novellas of 100 pages each or 1 novel of 500 pages, it adds up the same, which is basically the argument Hugh Howey put forth in his last article.


And Hugh Howey's argument was flawed. If I have a 100 page novella, that means I have to attract three times the readers as a 300 page novel. They aren't equal.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

swolf said:


> Something I'm not understanding...
> 
> There were approximately 7,250,000 borrows in May. Despite the summer slump, let's say it increased to an even 8,000,000 in June. With 1.9 billion page reads, that's an average of 237 page reads per borrow.
> 
> ...


I think the 1.9 billion is this new "page", so that will inflate the numbers a bit. But then you have the fact that books read less than ten percent don't count as a borrow but their "page" count may count in the 1.9 billion number.

For all we know, these numbers are completely made up. I don't know. Summer slump could hurt. A mass pulling of short books in June may hurt. Perhaps they lost subscribers when the subscribers learned the shorts they read are likely not to be available anymore. There's a million things that could have happened.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

swolf said:


> Something I'm not understanding...
> 
> There were approximately 7,250,000 borrows in May. Despite the summer slump, let's say it increased to an even 8,000,000 in June. With 1.9 billion page reads, that's an average of 237 page reads per borrow.
> 
> ...


From looking at their new estimated page counts on the books I have (or rather had) in Select they are massively inflating the numbers of pages in each book. I had some that were double the old estimate (and double my own 250-300 wpp rule of thumb). I'd cut that by at least a third to get the kind of pages we usually think of.

It's also possible that the whole concept that readers aren't finishing most of the books they start was pure FUD spread to make people think that the payout would be higher.


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

swolf said:


> Something I'm not understanding...
> 
> There were approximately 7,250,000 borrows in May. Despite the summer slump, let's say it increased to an even 8,000,000 in June. With 1.9 billion page reads, that's an average of 237 page reads per borrow.
> 
> ...


Maybe a lot more people are reading the first twenty pages of a novel (or whatever wouldn't trigger a borrow) than we ever realized. I know I can tell pretty quickly if I'm going to like something and for every ten things I sampled I only read one through to trigger a borrow.


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## danpadavona (Sep 25, 2014)

Briteka said:


> And Hugh Howey's argument was flawed. If I have a 100 page novella, that means I have to attract three times the readers as a 300 page novel. They aren't equal.


Okay, but the author who wrote the 300 page novel spent 3x more time writing than you did with your 100 page novella (all things being equal), and you can easily produce 3 100 page novellas in the same amount of time.


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## darkline (Mar 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> Something I'm not understanding...
> 
> There were approximately 7,250,000 borrows in May. Despite the summer slump, let's say it increased to an even 8,000,000 in June. With 1.9 billion page reads, that's an average of 237 page reads per borrow.
> 
> ...


Yes, it doesn't make much sense. The worst part is, we have no way of knowing whether Amazon is telling us the truth about the pages read or not. It's a matter of trusting them(or not).


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## TheGapBetweenMerlons (Jun 2, 2011)

Rykymus said:


> Readers want to be engrossed in your stories. Make that happen, again and again, and this system will work for you.
> 
> It's as simple as that.


Absolutely... for fiction oriented toward teens and adults. But the book marketplace itself is not that simple. It is not just for fiction, nor is it just for teens and adults. This is as true for the Kindle as it is for paperbacks. This change will make "Kindle Unlimited" into "Kindle Limited" -- not in number of borrows but in scope of library. It was bad enough before that my decision to not pay to stay in KU after the free trial was due in part to not finding books I wanted to borrow available through KU. As writers of works _other_ than fiction for teens/adults pull their books out of KU due to the decline in earnings, KU will become even more focused on teen/adult fiction and less valuable for those who want other works (whether entirely or just as part of the mix of what they want to borrow). Maybe the program should be renamed to Fiction Unlimited.

Amused by the Pajama Game reference. "Seven and a half cents doesn't mean a thing"... but it's more than Amazon is paying per page!


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## TromboneAl (Mar 20, 2015)

Mytransformations said:


> Go back to the old system of paying per book. But instead of Amazon counting a read as "10%" of the book, have it be 20 pages. That makes it more fair to the longer books, which had to hold reader's attention proportionally longer to be counted as a read, even though they were providing more content. Amazon could also provide some kind of small bonus for having a longer book.


Here's my similar suggestion:

Go back to the old system, but have the payout based on the length of the book.

That's much simpler, and Amazon can adjust the relative payout amounts to achieve their goals.

When your spouse asks "How many books did you sell today?" you don't have to answer, "It's complicated."


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

MatthewBallard said:


> Amazon set the pages on my recent release, 124,000 words, to 909 pages. You can see it in my sig below (Maylin's Gate). I have that on sale for $4.99. Under this model, I would get paid $5.13 for a full read through. That's MORE than I earn on a sale. I'll take it.


My 120 000 word novel KENPC is 622 pages. I wonder why yours is 909 pages?

Mine sells for $2.99. How do we encourage borrows?


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

danpadavona said:


> Okay, but the author who wrote the 300 page novel spent 3x more time writing than you did with your 100 page novella (all things being equal), and you can easily produce 3 100 page novellas in the same amount of time.


But this isn't true. The time spent doesn't scale like this. Yes, I can write a novella faster than a novel, but it isn't three times faster. And this completely ignores the way people find books on Amazon. A large amount of people rely on Amazon to recommend them books. You can see this in the 30 day, 60 day and 90 day cliffs. If I release three novellas in a month, I need all three to get the same visibility as the novel does. This is incredibly unlikely to ever happen.


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## John Van Stry (May 25, 2011)

Until we see what they are actually going to pay out, per page, we have no idea if this is going to be good or bad. 
At the numbers that one person posted above, I'd see an increase of 50 cents per book, that's pretty sweet IMHO.

I also see that a lot of people who have been putting out shorter books (short stories really) are very upset over this, well guess what, the KU program isn't here to make you money, it's here to make Amazon money. For those of you whose entire business plan was based on KU, too bad but most of us don't care, because you really were just taking advantage of the system. Well guess what? Amazon got tired of being taken advantage of. 

Funny how that works, isn't it?

At $0.0058 and up, this program will make me money like it did, back before the scammers hit (and you know who you are) and diluted the pot with tons of stuff designed solely to profit off of KU. If they pay more than that, I'm going to be a very happy camper indeed. If the make it so cheap that I have to pull my books and go elsewhere, well so be it. But Amazon is here to make money and not get ripped off in the process. Remember that before you start complaining about the system, they're not here for your benefit, or our benefit, or my benefit. They're here for their own benefit.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Roman said:


> It's a sad day for children's book writers. I am lost and don't know what to do. There are four of my illustrated books which are supposed to be released and they have been in the works since last year. But there is still a lot of work to do and I still need to invest more money for final editing. Right now, I don't feel like putting more time into this though, since I would rather spend it with my own kids. I did count on the extra income though.


There is money to be made outside KU. Surely people want kids' books for their Android phone and iPhones, eh? Try what works for a lot of us: one book permafree (or in KU, with promoted free days/countdowns), and the others wide. Hopefully Amazon will start adjusting children's book page-counts by hand. If that happens, you can go back into KU.



swolf said:


> Something I'm not understanding...
> 
> There were approximately 7,250,000 borrows in May. Despite the summer slump, let's say it increased to an even 8,000,000 in June. With 1.9 billion page reads, that's an average of 237 page reads per borrow.
> 
> ...


That seems weird to me, too, especially since the "7,250,000" figure includes all the books that were only read to only 10% or slightly over (doesn't it?).


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## BEAST (Mar 31, 2012)

This will be a boon for novel writers. Especially Romance writers who write long series. All those folks burned by Scribd will love this. For the rest of us it is time to adapt. Weigh pros and cons and make a business decision. I have two dozen shorts, ten novellas and two novels. I was earning a little more than $3K a month. I'm not upset about the change. Just have to make some changes. I'm going wide and will be focusing on novellas and novels. At some point I may come back to KU but I'm looking forward to seeing if I can get traction on iTunes and other markets.

A note to folks benefiting from the change... Once the page pay comes out be critical of that number. If Amazon drops that amount like the KU1 payout you better email, complain, blog and get interviewed about how horrible it is to get squeezed every month. I no longer have a horse in this race but I want my fellow authors to make as much money from what they do.


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## ruecole (Jun 13, 2012)

swolf said:


> I feel for you. But with the changes, I can't see any children's author staying in KU. So the readers looking for that kind of thing are going to know not to look there, and will have to buy instead of borrow.


The problem there? Kids don't buy books. But they sure do borrow them!

At $1.35 a borrow, it made sense to stay in KU. With this new system? Not so much. :/

Both the readers and the writers suffer. 

Rue


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## MatthewBallard (May 21, 2013)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> My 120 000 word novel KENPC is 622 pages. I wonder why yours is 909 pages?
> 
> Mine sells for $2.99. How do we encourage borrows?


I don't have a good answer. My second book, which is 129,00 words is 772 pages.


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## TuckerAuthor (Jan 31, 2014)

Holy cow. All the screaming and arm waving!

Let's take a breath and look at a few numbers.

They gave us a figure of 1.9 billion pages read for June. They gave us the $10.8 million pot for May, which equated to approximately $1.37 per borrow. That equates to approximately 8 million books (borrows). If we take the pages read number for June and apply it to those May numbers as a guestimate, it comes out to about 240 pages read per book (borrow).

I had only a handful of borrows for my three books in Select for June, but I can pretty well guarantee they were read through because they are a series and the borrows pretty much showed up in sequence. Amazon is telling me that the page counts for those books are all at 400 (=/- 5). Under the new payout guess of .0057, I'm looking at about $2.30 per borrow on those same books. (Assuming full read through of course.)

Looking at this, admittedly anecdotal evidence (but what else do we have to go on right now?), one thing pops out to me. Amazon must have paid out a LOT of borrows for short works and scammers. My books are nothing special, given my low sales/borrows, yet my read through seems pretty high. If that's the case, and my page counts are coming out to around 400 for 70K word novels, that's close to double the average page count per borrow calculated above. Extrapolating that out, the more novels that are included in the KU pot, the average page count for the rest of the works that make up the total borrows starts to plummet. Meaning that the shorts, or the 10% and abandoned works, probably made up a pretty high percentage of the pot.

Again, I'm looking at this and thinking that the number of scammers is maybe higher than most people are thinking. Many of you will look at this and think Amazon hates short stories. Maybe both are true, maybe neither. The point is you own your work. You can choose to have it in Select or not. I've had some of my novels in Select, even though I wasn't happy with the dwindling payouts. That was my choice. If you think you will be better off now going wide with your distribution, then, by all means, have at it. Amazon has already stated they would waive the 90 day requirement to opt out during this initial change over period.

Knee-jerking and hand waving are rarely seen as sound business practices. Just sayin'.


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

Maximillion said:


> This will be a boon for novel writers. Especially Romance writers who write long series. All those folks burned by Scribd will love this. For the rest of us it is time to adapt. Weigh pros and cons and make a business decision. I have two dozen shorts, ten novellas and two novels. I was earning a little more than $3K a month. I'm not upset about the change. Just have to make some changes. I'm going wide and will be focusing on novellas and novels. At some point I may come back to KU but I'm looking forward to seeing if I can get traction on iTunes and other markets.
> 
> A note to folks benefiting from the change... Once the page pay comes out be critical of that number. If Amazon drops that amount like the KU1 payout you better email, complain, blog and get interviewed about how horrible it is to get squeezed every month. I no longer have a horse in this race but I want my fellow authors to make as much money from what they do.


How will this be a boon to Romance writers who write long series? As someone who writes long series of Romance myself, I will be making about 30% of what I used to make. My books are about 45k per novel, but Amazon is listing them as about 150 pages only. I'll basically need to write three 45k novel pieces AND have the read all the way through in order to make the same payout that one segment of my series used to pay.

In general, most books are only read through to about 60% on. A lot of novelists are going to get shocked.

The new system is going to see a HUGE portion of the pool go to a select few who already have a following (likely to read all their books) and those who make it to the best seller lists. The rest of us are going to be picking up the scraps left on the dinner plate.

The fact is this hurts 90% of people and gives a slap on the ass and a thumbs up to the 10 percenters.


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## Sally C (Mar 31, 2011)

Where are people seeing the new page counts?


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2015)

One thing some people should take away from this: Don't depend on long term income from a new program with giant, easy to see loopholes in it. If you quit your day job thinking it would last forever, it's on you. And a bet you're not feeling very bright right now. Hopefully you didn't go around bragging to your friends about making your living as a writer on the strength of a glitch in a new system rather than it being based on group of people who read your books and wait anxiously for the next one to come out. So just be happy you took advantage while it lasted and enjoy whatever you bought with the money. 

The writers who spent their time building an audience and establishing a solid foundation for their career, rather than pumping out as much material as possible to make a quick buck, will feel the impact far less (if at all). The others are scrambling to figure out the next end around. 
But take heart. Sooner or later someone will find another loophole. Hopefully this time more people will say to themselves, "Self...maybe I should build my foundation on my readers. After all, they're the people who buy books. If they like my work they'll buy it wherever or however it's sold."

I guess only time will tell.


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## Ainsley (Dec 26, 2013)

Some folks may want to look at JA Sutherland's post in the page count thread regarding formatting...


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## Navigator (Jul 9, 2014)

Here is what I'm hoping for

Short smut writers pull their books out, go wide, and sell at $2.99 once more.
Novel length books remain in KU.

KU payout increases per page due to there being less pages being read. Therefore, novels get even more $ per page read.

It's a win-win for everyone. Though smut readers will have to go back to paying more $ per book to get what they want.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Maybe a lot more people are reading the first twenty pages of a novel (or whatever wouldn't trigger a borrow) than we ever realized. I know I can tell pretty quickly if I'm going to like something and for every ten things I sampled I only read one through to trigger a borrow.


You may be right, but if so, that has to be a massive number. If it's that big, it's going to be siphoning a good chunk of money away from books that are being completely read.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

TuckerAuthor said:


> Holy cow. All the screaming and arm waving!


Where? I see posters discussing the changes and making decisions for themselves.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

swolf said:


> There were approximately 7,250,000 borrows in May. Despite the summer slump, let's say it increased to an even 8,000,000 in June. With 1.9 billion page reads, that's an average of 237 page reads per borrow.
> 
> How is that possible? With all of the short works out there, that were supposedly the problem, how do you reach an average of 237 pages per borrow?


I think the answer lies somewhere in the possibility that while there are a lot of short works in KU, it's the longer works that are getting downloaded and read more. Data Guy posted an interesting graphic over at Hugh's blog.










I don't think looking at average pages per borrow quite makes sense in this context.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

vanstry said:


> I also see that a lot of people who have been putting out shorter books (short stories really) are very upset over this, well guess what, the KU program isn't here to make you money, it's here to make Amazon money. For those of you whose entire business plan was based on KU, too bad but most of us don't care, because you really were just taking advantage of the system. Well guess what? Amazon got tired of being taken advantage of.
> 
> Funny how that works, isn't it?
> 
> ...But Amazon is here to make money and not get ripped off in the process. Remember that before you start complaining about the system, they're not here for your benefit, or our benefit, or my benefit. They're here for their own benefit.


Excuse me, sir, but I write short stories AND novels. I kept them out of KU because of the dropping "borrow" rates, because, truth to tell, I write stories to amuse myself first, then to amuse readers _by selling my work to them!_

I wasn't scamming anyone. I wasn't trying to game any systems. I was simply trying to sell my wares. I tried KU1 and was disillusioned by the "borrow" rates. I foolishly added six titles to KU2 without knowing what the per-page-borrow rate was going to be.

Now I have six titles that I can't bring back to wide release until October - four short stories and two novels - because I trusted Amazon to pay me a decent "borrow" rate.

They may be in business to make them money, but so am I. If Amazon can't make it decent for us as KU Lending Library suppliers, then I won't participate. I'll simply be a seller, and a writer.

And I won't ever trust Amazon again for anything related to selling my stories.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Navigator said:


> Here is what I'm hoping for
> 
> Short smut writers pull their books out, go wide, and sell at $2.99 once more.
> Novel length books remain in KU.
> ...


While this is good in theory, what looks better to you as a KU subscriber? I read two $2.99 novels a month so I will pay $10 for KU, or I read 10 $2.99 shorts a month so I will pay $10 for KU?


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

T. M. Bilderback said:


> Now I have six titles that I can't bring back to wide release until October - four short stories and two novels - because I trusted Amazon to pay me a decent "borrow" rate.


You can request to pull them right now if you want to.

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,217374.msg3033361.html#msg3033361


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

Still in the high weeds looking and listening...  But it is illuminating to watch writers play the what-if game with numbers instead of words.


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

Jim Johnson said:


> You can request to pull them right now if you want to.
> 
> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,217374.msg3033361.html#msg3033361


Not if he already pulled them from KU early once before. That's my understanding, at least. You only get one early removal for each book.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Jim Johnson said:


> I think the answer lies somewhere in the possibility that while there are a lot of short works in KU, it's the longer works that are getting downloaded and read more. Data Guy posted an interesting graphic over at Hugh's blog.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That graph tells me that over half of the borrows were of books that had less pages than the average pages read. That doesn't even take into account people not finishing books they borrow.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

Jim Johnson said:


> You can request to pull them right now if you want to.
> 
> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,217374.msg3033361.html#msg3033361


Only one. The other five have been in Select before, and I can't pull them. Might as well leave all six in, Jim, and pray for a miracle.


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## BEAST (Mar 31, 2012)

AuthorX said:


> How will this be a boon to Romance writers who write long series? As someone who writes long series of Romance myself, I will be making about 30% of what I used to make. My books are about 45k per novel, but Amazon is listing them as about 150 pages only. I'll basically need to write three 45k novel pieces AND have the read all the way through in order to make the same payout that one segment of my series used to pay.
> 
> In general, most books are only read through to about 60% on. A lot of novelists are going to get shocked.
> 
> ...


Trust me when I say I feel your pain. I have two dozen shorts that were in KU and they earn the majority of the $3K I earned for the last 6 months. I also have 10 novellas (25K words) that did quite well. Personally, I'd consider 45K words a novella, not a novel. I said that those who write novels will benefit. Those that have books at the 250 page on Amazon listing and apparently 450 - 550 KENPC pages. I'm not going to subscribe to the 60% read through. That may be the case on the first book in a series but not the subsequent books. If a reader loves the first book they will like finish the series. I've seen previous threads where authors stated they were seeing that folks who went to book two in a series complete the whole series 95% percent of the time. These are personal accounts. But I still believe authors of romance with books in the 80K word range will do exceptionally well.

With the way the new dashboard looks I don't think we will be able to see the read through on books. If we could see something like:
BOOK
-Reader #1: 35 pages
-Reader #2: 200 pages
Etc.

Then we could figure out the read through. We don't have that. We just have a total tally across all readers.

Yes, authors with a following and long works will do well. But lets not forget the power of discoverability in KU. An author who writes romance series with longer lengths can really break out with this new system. But, only time will tell.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

T. M. Bilderback said:


> Only one. The other five have been in Select before, and I can't pull them. Might as well leave all six in, Jim, and pray for a miracle.


Gotcha. Good luck!


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## Navigator (Jul 9, 2014)

Briteka said:


> While this is good in theory, what looks better to you as a KU subscriber? I read two $2.99 novels a month so I will pay $10 for KU, or I read 10 $2.99 shorts a month so I will pay $10 for KU?


Depends. I read smut; and unless KU has the majority of those books, then KU does not look all that better. I suspect the majority of erotica writers will be pulling their shorter work OUT of KU.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

multiple reports . . .  and Betsy and I are both busy with Real Life on this lovely summer day . . . . . . 

will check in later and decide whether re-opening is warranted.


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## MikeDavidson (Oct 5, 2013)

According to KU in june the readers read 1.9 billion pages. and according to KU they are paying out 11 million dollars. So do the math. it comes to about a half a cent. I'm going to start pulling titles today...


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## Censored (Oct 31, 2014)

Yeah, there was a multi-page thread on this topic that's hugely important to writers, in this subforum meant for writers... but it's inexplicably locked now.

LOL, Kboards.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

Censored said:


> Yeah, there was a multi-page thread on this topic that's hugely important to writers, in this subforum meant for writers... but it's inexplicably locked now.
> 
> LOL, Kboards.


This is why we can't have nice things.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Censored said:


> Yeah, there was a multi-page thread on this topic that's hugely important to writers, in this subforum meant for writers... but it's inexplicably locked now.
> 
> *LOL, Kboards.*


Oh, I think it was very explicably locked. You got the answer right there.


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## Gail Hart (Apr 11, 2014)

MikeDavidson said:


> According to KU in june the readers read 1.9 billion pages. and according to KU they are paying out 11 million dollars. So do the math. it comes to about a half a cent. I'm going to start pulling titles today...


But apparently KENP page counts come out high, so it's not as bad as it sounds. Also, this is a zero sum game--same pool (for now anyway), just distributed differently.

My only book is already wide, so this is all academic for me.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> According to KU in june the readers read 1.9 billion pages. and according to KU they are paying out 11 million dollars. So do the math. it comes to about a half a cent.


That is probably so. However, Amazon usually adds a bonus so it will go up to a more reasonable figure.


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## MikeDavidson (Oct 5, 2013)

Censored said:


> Yeah, there was a multi-page thread on this topic that's hugely important to writers, in this subforum meant for writers... but it's inexplicably locked now.
> 
> LOL, Kboards.


I didnt know this was locked. my apologies.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Folks, I've had time to review this thread now, and we're going to reopen it.  I'm going to review it again to see if any pruning is needed.

Thanks.  Sorry for the delay, I'm on the road.

Betsy
KB Mod


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I think given the very tumultuous time this has been for so many of us, Kboard mods have done a bang up job the last few weeks. Just my 2 cents.


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## SB James (May 21, 2014)

MikeDavidson said:


> According to KU in june the readers read 1.9 billion pages. and according to KU they are paying out 11 million dollars. So do the math. it comes to about a half a cent. I'm going to start pulling titles today...


I have a new theory: Amazon wants authors to voluntarily pull their books out of KDP Select so they don't have to do what Scribd did with the romances...


Hugh Howey said:


> This is why we can't have nice things.


I could be kidding...


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Other thread unlocked.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I'm shocked that everyone thinks their novels will not be read all the way through. When I write a novel, I try to make sure that every page is worth reading, and that every page gives the reader something they need to enjoy the story. I assume that everyone else does the same when they write. 

If people are only reading 60% of your books, you have far bigger problems than the payment per page amount.


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

Children's book authors, when Google Play opens its doors again, do go check them out. They recently added a whole new section to their store just for children's books. Android and Apple are HUGE markets for younger readers. 

The fat lady's gonna be out of commission for a while. Just saying.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Rykymus said:


> I'm shocked that everyone thinks their novels will not be read all the way through. When I write a novel, I try to make sure that every page is worth reading, and that every page gives the reader something they need to enjoy the story. I assume that everyone else does the same when they write.
> 
> If people are only reading 60% of your books, you have far bigger problems than the payment per page amount.


THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS.


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## SB James (May 21, 2014)

This may sound like a dumb question, but how can we tell what the KENPC for a book is? Does Amazon bother with that with any books not in Select?


Rykymus said:


> I'm shocked that everyone thinks their novels will not be read all the way through. When I write a novel, I try to make sure that every page is worth reading, and that every page gives the reader something they need to enjoy the story. I assume that everyone else does the same when they write.
> 
> If people are only reading 60% of your books, you have far bigger problems than the payment per page amount.


This is quite true. There are even books that I stop reading only 5% of the way through.


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## setherd (Jan 25, 2014)

Just wondering... has anyone heard if KDP will tell us the average length read? If you can find out that 40% of readers stop reading at a certain point, maybe you can look at your book and change it to make them want to keep reading. 

Something like that would be useful. I'm not holding my breath.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Well now as a reader, I either stop before 20% or read it completely.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

SB James said:


> I have a new theory: Amazon wants authors to voluntarily pull their books out of KDP Select so they don't have to do what Scribd did with the romances...I could be kidding...


When I think of the erotica readers in KU I can't help but think of Jeff Bezos doing the old Louie Anderson at the Chinese buffet skit. "You here four hours. *Four hours.* Go home!"


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## MikeDavidson (Oct 5, 2013)

I think the whole thing is a bad idea. If a customer bought a paperback they would buy it for $10 whether they read 10% or 100% is up to them. I think I should be paid fully for giving them possession of my book whether in paper or digital format. But at 1/2 a cent your novel needs to be around 260 pages long by amazon's standards (whatever they are) in order to make $1.3 per borrow... I think they are trying to push out small works and rake in large works that people will read. 

In the end I will need to make some rash decisions, beginning with pulling my titles and switching genres. I don't want my books being borrowed, just sold.


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## blubarry (Feb 27, 2015)

Maximillion said:


> I'm not going to subscribe to the 60% read through. That may be the case on the first book in a series but not the subsequent books. If a reader loves the first book they will like finish the series. I've seen previous threads where authors stated they were seeing that folks who went to book two in a series complete the whole series 95% percent of the time. These are personal accounts.


This. Series writers with loyal readers will do fine. Over the last 6 months, I have about 65% conversion from book 1 to book 2, with 95% or more for each later book in my series. I've been using the subsequent book numbers to estimate prior book read through. Whether that will play out remains to be seen, but even at 0.0058/page, my 75k novels come out better than before.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Mercia McMahon said:


> That will have been based on high-level legal advice. If you give a realistic example you are open to being sued because it was believable that that might have been the rate. *By giving 10 cents as an example they have an easy defence that no-one would believe that they would be paid $1.30 for reading a 13 page short. *
> 
> Just to double-down the defence they allow (for an unstated period) entering the scheme to see what the payments are like and leave in less than 90 days. Of course by the time you know what you are to be paid you might have been in the scheme for 46 days.


I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic, but Amazon have absolutely been "giving" $1.30 for a 13-page read (and a 130-page read, and a 1300-page read, and everything in between), so there is clearly an expectation that this is realistic.


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## Jacob Stanley (May 25, 2015)

blubarry said:


> I think we need to keep in mind that KENPC is considerably higher than most expected. Factoring that in, my math tells me that I will get get roughly $0.01/previous page count. From the KENPC thread, it seems there is significant variability (and I only wish my novels came out on the better end, like some!), but most longer works (40-45k and up) will _still_ do better than the old system if they're read all the way through.


For me it will be a drop, but it's a drop I can live with because I think it's reasonably fair. KENPC puts my book at about 180 pages, which is 80 pages more than what it says on the product page. That means if I get a 60% readthrough rate, which seems to be the industry average, I will make about 60 cents per borrow. Not great, but still better than what I make charging 99 cents for my novella outside of KU.

Also, there are some encouraging signs that the KU readthrough rate may be way higher than the industry average. The huge number of pages read last month, higher than almost anyone predicted, tells us that KU readers are especially hardcore. It could turn out that the average KU reader reads 75% or more per borrow. That would put me around 80 cents per borrow, and I feel that's a fair rate for my novella, which is mainly intended to get people interested in reading the rest of the series. I would absolutely give it away if I could just to generate interest.

Once I get all four parts out, readers who go through all of them will be paying me for 100% read-throughs, and that will net me about 4 bucks, which is a very fair price for 120,000 words I think. It's more than I could make charging 2.99 for the whole thing in the Amazon store.

Another thing to consider: there will be a mass exodus because of this from writers who mostly wrote very short works. They're going to get huge pay cut, and I don't blame them a bit for pulling out. Erotica writers, in particular, can potentially make way more money by going wide and charging a premium price. But once they leave, the price per page will be presumably go up a little (or maybe a lot, who knows) for the ones who stay.



Rykymus said:


> I'm shocked that everyone thinks their novels will not be read all the way through. When I write a novel, I try to make sure that every page is worth reading, and that every page gives the reader something they need to enjoy the story. I assume that everyone else does the same when they write.
> 
> If people are only reading 60% of your books, you have far bigger problems than the payment per page amount.


The statistics don't lie: http://publishingperspectives.com/2014/12/havent-finished-reading-bestseller-youre-not-alone/

Of course everybody wants to make sure readers finish their books, but sometimes people buy your book who aren't really your ideal readers, and some books have way more mass appeal than others. I'm sure plenty of people buy books by Cormac McCarthy and end up putting them down because his style is so unorthodox, or because his books are so bleak, but that doesn't mean he isn't one of the greatest living writers. I wouldn't want McCarthy to change his style to make his books have more mass appeal.


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## John Hartness (Aug 3, 2009)

Maybe I'm crazy, but I think I'm going to hang out and wait and see what happens. If we end up sticking at half a cent per page, then my novellas are going to get crushed, and I'll have to shift my focus to more novel writing. I had already decided to switch from short stories to novellas because I find it to be a more natural length of story for me, but if I need to adjust to make money, I will. But I think we're too soon to actually tell anything. 

But always remember - nobody cares as much about your career as you do. Amazon is here to make money for Amazon, and everyone you read here is on this board to make money for themselves. So take in as much information as you can, and make your own educated decisions.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Navigator said:


> Depends. I read smut; and unless KU has the majority of those books, then KU does not look all that better. I suspect the majority of erotica writers will be pulling their shorter work OUT of KU.


Pretty much everyone I've talked to has already sent in the request to KDP support to yank their titles. No one is going to deal with CarlosF for half a cent a page.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> I'm shocked that everyone thinks their novels will not be read all the way through. When I write a novel, I try to make sure that every page is worth reading, and that every page gives the reader something they need to enjoy the story. I assume that everyone else does the same when they write.
> 
> If people are only reading 60% of your books, you have far bigger problems than the payment per page amount.


I have to disagree. You can intend to write a book that will keep your reader for 100% of the pages, but not all readers like a book, even an arguably great book that wins awards. Some will buy it and stop reading because something content wise or pace or plot or whatever displeases them. Another reader will think your book is the cat's meow and totally tubular dude. It depends on your book as to whether it has a wide appeal and keeps people turning pages or has a smaller appeal and a lot of people decide it's not their cuppa. 119 reviewers gave To Kill a Mockingbird 1-star ratings. 156 reviewers gave Fahrenheit 451 1-star reviews. Some people have books that are not well categorized, leading to unhappy readers who didn't get what they thought they were getting.

In other words, there are a lot of reasons why readers stop reading books. I have hundreds of books on my Kindle but have only read a dozen of them in the past six months. Some I have read past 10% and stopped, but will go back later when I feel like it.

So it is not true that a bad book will not be read through while a good book will. The industry standard is 60%? That's a whole lotta books that don't get read through.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> I'm shocked that everyone thinks their novels will not be read all the way through. When I write a novel, I try to make sure that every page is worth reading, and that every page gives the reader something they need to enjoy the story. I assume that everyone else does the same when they write.
> 
> If people are only reading 60% of your books, you have far bigger problems than the payment per page amount.


I'm guessing 60% is a mean and not a median, because very few people read to 60% THEN give up. At that point, you finish the book.

I usually give up early, but I do sometimes make it to 50%.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

A sampling of only one vendor, and one of the smaller ones at that, is hardly significant. While I'm not disputing that not every book started is completed, I stand by my assertion that if your completion rate is as low as 60%, you've got bigger problems.

I think one of the main reasons that you find such a high statistic is because of the open door system that allows everyone who can tap out words on a keyboard to publish. Of course you're going to have a lot more books that aren't going to be completed. Prior to KDP, I don't remember ever not finishing a book. (Not sure if it's because of the price, or the quality, to be honest.) After I started reading indie work, yeah, I'd say I've probably abandon at least 40% of what I started. (However, I abandon them far earlier than 60% in, I can tell you that.)


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## Ted Cross (Aug 30, 2012)

edwardgtalbot said:


> Except an actual 250 page novel will be assigned a page count for royalty purposes of 400 pages give or take. My 310 page novels have page counts for royalty purposes of 680-696. So those authors will actually be making over $2 for a 250 page novel read all the way through.
> 
> As has been discussed since this was announced, writers of very short works (incl kids and books heavy on art) and writers with a lot of readers stopping after 10% but before the end will make less. Writers of anything longer than about 40K words with readers who normally finish the book after reading 10% will come out ahead.


If this is true, and it sounds like it to me, then I'm all for the change. I always disliked seeing all the tiny 'books' being released to game the old system.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

KelliWolfe said:


> Pretty much everyone I've talked to has already sent in the request to KDP support to yank their titles. No one is going to deal with CarlosF for half a cent a page.


Quoting you because I think it is important. I looked today and less than half of the erotica books are not in KU. Last time I looked, the average was higher than that. But, that is not my primary concern. My concern is will the KU readers start buying their erotica or just get their kinks from the freebies. I hope this isn't the case.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Sela said:


> I have to disagree. You can intend to write a book that will keep your reader for 100% of the pages, but not all readers like a book, even an arguably great book that wins awards. Some will buy it and stop reading because something content wise or pace or plot or whatever displeases them. Another reader will think your book is the cat's meow and totally tubular dude. It depends on your book as to whether it has a wide appeal and keeps people turning pages or has a smaller appeal and a lot of people decide it's not their cuppa. 119 reviewers gave To Kill a Mockingbird 1-star ratings. 156 reviewers gave Fahrenheit 451 1-star reviews. Some people have books that are not well categorized, leading to unhappy readers who didn't get what they thought they were getting.
> 
> In other words, there are a lot of reasons why readers stop reading books. I have hundreds of books on my Kindle but have only read a dozen of them in the past six months. Some I have read past 10% and stopped, but will go back later when I feel like it.
> 
> So it is not true that a bad book will not be read through while a good book will. The industry standard is 60%? That's a whole lotta books that don't get read through.


If stopped reading a book, only to go back and finish it later, you still read the whole book, so that metric wouldn't count in this argument. (Although I'm not really arguing anything here.)

Also, I don't remember seeing any reports that covered the entire industry that reported 60%. Only the one from Kobo. Granted, it may be out there and I haven't seen it, since I don't usually look for such things.

However, since the debate regards KU, I would still stand by my previous assertion. If you were only making money because you could hold a reader's interest long enough to trigger a $1.35 payout, then yeah, KU 2.0 is going to suck for you... and rightfully so.

As for myself, that half a cent per page is going to give me a payout slightly above the $2.70 royalty I was making on the sale of a $3.99 cent book, so I'm good. I lost 50% of my royalty for every book borrowed for the last 10 months. When I pulled my work out of KU and went wide, I not only saw my mailing list signup rate drop by 50%, I lost $15k per month for 3 months, before I finally went back into KU. I'm glad I did, especially now that KU 2.0 has come along. To be honest, I found Apple and Google to be sourly lacking in the customer interface department, and I hope I am never forced to go wide again.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

cinisajoy said:


> Quoting you because I think it is important. I looked today and less than half of the erotica books are not in KU. Last time I looked, the average was higher than that. But, that is not my primary concern. My concern is will the KU readers start buying their erotica or just get their kinks from the freebies. I hope this isn't the case.


My books are still in there and I sent in the request to pull them early this morning. Because KDP support has to do this manually on a publisher by publisher basis it's going to take a while. But I expect by this time next week at least 70% of the "real" erotica authors, as opposed to the scammers publishing 1500 word Borrow Circle Specials, will have pulled everything and begun the process of publishing wide.

Judging by the sales drops reported across the board when KU started last year, a lot of the subscribers switched from paid sales to borrows. Just like everyone else in KU if they can't find the content they want, they'll look for it elsewhere.


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## Hope (Nov 28, 2014)

Hugh Howey said:


> This is why we can't have nice things.


I know, right?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Just marking it here. Currently there are 1,020,068 KU eligible items.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> If stopped reading a book, only to go back and finish it later, you still read the whole book, so that metric wouldn't count in this argument. (Although I'm not really arguing anything here.)
> 
> Also, I don't remember seeing any reports that covered the entire industry that reported 60%. Only the one from Kobo. Granted, it may be out there and I haven't seen it, since I don't usually look for such things.
> 
> ...


Our experiences diverge then because I lost 50% of my income when KU 1.0 was unleashed and have doubled my income since I went wide. It takes time to find your audience on Apple and B&N and Kobo. Yes. It takes promotion and patience. But if you have a book that is selling on Amazon, why wouldn't it sell on Apple? It's a matter of getting your book in front of Apple / B&N / Kobo readers. A lot of book promotion sites are now including links to Apple and B&N and Kobo etc. in their promotions. My last Bookbub gave me twice as much from Apple than from Amazon.

So I am here to tell you that there is life outside of Amazon KDPS.

I've said it before -- start out in KDPS for sure. My career started there and I think it's great for fledgling authors who need to build an audience. But once you have wings, fly baby.


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

L C Storm said:


> That is probably so. However, Amazon usually adds a bonus so it will go up to a more reasonable figure.


They've already added the bonus.


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## Someone (Dec 30, 2011)

KU cannibalized the well-established price point of $2.99 for an erotica short. It will be back.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

To be honest, when I went wide, I did nothing to market. The logic was that I did nothing to market to Amazon, either, and I wanted to compare apples to apples. Might have been a mistake on my part. However, the experiment did teach me that KU was getting a lot of new readers on the series, and a good number of members on the mailing list. That mailing list is the reason that I am able to do as well as I have, and it is my insurance for the future, should conditions on Amazon (and others) become untenable. At this point, I'd rather stay put, especially since I am now going to get paid for borrows what I would get for sales. I'm only halfway to my goal of a minimum safe-size mailing list. As to the completion rate, I'm not worried, as my read-thru rate has held at about 80% through 13 episodes, with little time between purchases. Besides, even at a 60% read completion rate, I'd still make considerably more under KU 2.0 than 1.0.

There are valid reasons to stay all in. They don't work for everyone, but that doesn't mean they are a bad decision. I also just do not see the danger that is being spoken of on these boards. Amazon isn't as all powerful and able to do whatever they want as everyone likes to think they are. They know that if they go to far, writers (and subsequently readers) will jump ship. They want to be the biggest kid on the block. They want you to buy everything from apples to zumba pants from them. They'll keep tweaking KU until they get it right. The question that still has to be answered is, what 'right' is to Amazon.


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## Ian Jaymes (Jan 22, 2015)

Monique said:


> Just marking it here. Currently there are 1,020,068 KU eligible items.


And just one hour later, there are 1,015,175


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## MikeDavidson (Oct 5, 2013)

Rykymus said:


> To be honest, when I went wide, I did nothing to market. The logic was that I did nothing to market to Amazon, either, and I wanted to compare apples to apples. Might have been a mistake on my part. However, the experiment did teach me that KU was getting a lot of new readers on the series, and a good number of members on the mailing list. That mailing list is the reason that I am able to do as well as I have, and it is my insurance for the future, should conditions on Amazon (and others) become untenable. At this point, I'd rather stay put, especially since I am now going to get paid for borrows what I would get for sales. I'm only halfway to my goal of a minimum safe-size mailing list. As to the completion rate, I'm not worried, as my read-thru rate has held at about 80% through 13 episodes, with little time between purchases. Besides, even at a 60% read completion rate, I'd still make considerably more under KU 2.0 than 1.0.
> 
> There are valid reasons to stay all in. They don't work for everyone, but that doesn't mean they are a bad decision. I also just do not see the danger that is being spoken of on these boards. Amazon isn't as all powerful and able to do whatever they want as everyone likes to think they are. They know that if they go to far, writers (and subsequently readers) will jump ship. They want to be the biggest kid on the block. They want you to buy everything from apples to zumba pants from them. They'll keep tweaking KU until they get it right. The question that still has to be answered is, what 'right' is to Amazon.


Hi Ryk,

Agreed. Email list is the way up and out. But when you say your halfway, how big is yours? (if I may ask) What's your ultimate goal and how have you been achieving it?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

sakurajima said:


> And just one hour later, there are 1,015,175


It fluctuates up and down a lot hour to hour. I'm curious to see the numbers over the next few weeks/months.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I'm at 15,000 names write now. All I did was put a call to sign up in my back matter, and try to publish on a regular schedule. And I only send out a (text only) email when there is a new release.

My goal is 50,000 names, but the have to be good names. Ones that will read everything I write. My safe-size is 30,000 names. I'm hoping to reach that within another 3-4 years.

As an aside, I am considering cycling new releases by enrolling them in Select/KU for the first 90 days only, then going wide. But not until I start part 2 of my series. I want to keep the first part (15 books) in Select/KU for as long as possible.


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## BEAST (Mar 31, 2012)

John Hartness said:


> Maybe I'm crazy, but I think I'm going to hang out and wait and see what happens. If we end up sticking at half a cent per page, then my novellas are going to get crushed, and I'll have to shift my focus to more novel writing. I had already decided to switch from short stories to novellas because I find it to be a more natural length of story for me, but if I need to adjust to make money, I will. But I think we're too soon to actually tell anything.
> 
> But always remember - nobody cares as much about your career as you do. Amazon is here to make money for Amazon, and everyone you read here is on this board to make money for themselves. So take in as much information as you can, and make your own educated decisions.


Not so fast. Now, I've pulled all my titles (40) from KU. I write erotica. My shorts I sell for .99 and novellas for 2.99. If you like writing novellas do that. If you can write two novellas and price them at 2.99 in the same time frame you can write a novel at 5.99 it is worth it. Heck, if you can write three in the time it would take to write a novel even better. You still get the 70% on a sale. And, your visibility increase with back to back releases. Whether you publish 100k words in a novel or three novellas that add up to 100k words you still get the pages.


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## Avis Black (Jun 12, 2012)

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of 'dead wood' titles that will never leave Select, although Amazon may be counting on getting rid of them.  Some books don't earn much either in or out of Select, so their authors may not bother to yank them even with a low payout.  

Nor do I see how the new Select process is supposed to attract the H.M. Wards back into the system.  I glanced at a book in one of her series, and I'd estimate it has a page read count of 200 or so.  That would pay only a 1 dollar royalty instead of the 2 dollar royalty she'd get for a sale at 2.99.  To get that 1 dollar lower payout, she'd have to be exclusive to Amazon as well.  The only way she could make up the sales loss would be to more than double her Amazon readership via Select, and add enough extra readers on top of that to make up the loss on other platforms.  What's more, every single one of those has to be a fully completed read.  I don't see how that's possible.  The whole thing reminds me of another author who quit Select because he said it was cannibalizing his sales, and I have no doubt his data is correct.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Saul Tanpepper said:


> I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic, but Amazon have absolutely been "giving" $1.30 for a 13-page read (and a 130-page read, and a 1300-page read, and everything in between), so there is clearly an expectation that this is realistic.


I grew up in Belfast where the local sense of humour was a poor excuse for rampant sarcasm. Actually we didn't need an excuse to be sarcastic; if you lived in fear of being blown up you needed something to relieve the tension. If KDP said 1 cent a page (as some on kboards said they should have) then there might be grounds for complaint if the payment ends up at 0.58 cent per page, but a 10 cent per page rate was clearly not meant to be taken seriously. No-one would see 10 cents per page as a realistic rate for a 700 page novel, but I couldn't resist the temptation to return to my sarcastic youth and point up the anomaly that 13 page reads in June will in effect be paid at that rate.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> To be honest, when I went wide, I did nothing to market. The logic was that I did nothing to market to Amazon, either, and I wanted to compare apples to apples. Might have been a mistake on my part. However, the experiment did teach me that KU was getting a lot of new readers on the series, and a good number of members on the mailing list. That mailing list is the reason that I am able to do as well as I have, and it is my insurance for the future, should conditions on Amazon (and others) become untenable. At this point, I'd rather stay put, especially since I am now going to get paid for borrows what I would get for sales. I'm only halfway to my goal of a minimum safe-size mailing list. As to the completion rate, I'm not worried, as my read-thru rate has held at about 80% through 13 episodes, with little time between purchases. Besides, even at a 60% read completion rate, I'd still make considerably more under KU 2.0 than 1.0.
> 
> There are valid reasons to stay all in. They don't work for everyone, but that doesn't mean they are a bad decision. I also just do not see the danger that is being spoken of on these boards. Amazon isn't as all powerful and able to do whatever they want as everyone likes to think they are. They know that if they go to far, writers (and subsequently readers) will jump ship. They want to be the biggest kid on the block. They want you to buy everything from apples to zumba pants from them. They'll keep tweaking KU until they get it right. The question that still has to be answered is, what 'right' is to Amazon.


I am not advocating that all authors go wide or suggesting that it is a bad decision to be exclusive to Amazon. As I have said, Amazon was great for me for the first two years of my career and did really well for me, but KU was _not_ good for me and for many romance authors. KU took a huge chunk of the really voracious romance readers who were my natural audience and gave them my books to read for a low price and I got $2.00 less per read than I would have made if I sold that book to them. I wasn't as big as Holly Ward, but I was doing very well for an indie. KU cannibalized my sales. Going wide saved my income from staying in the doldrums (well, granted I was making six figures even under KU but not what I was making before) and I have doubled my income so far this year by going wide and doing some promotion.

You didn't do any marketing when you went wide, but that was a mistake. The other retailers do not market books the way Amazon does, but that doesn't mean that you can't make money there. Apple promoted my series and I had a fantastic month in April. A Bookbub in May doubled my income again. It wouldn't make sense at this point for me to go exclusive to Amazon.

At this point, it doesn't make sense for you to leave Amazon exclusivity. Hopefully the terms stay favourable to you and you keep doing well.

As with all things, YMMV.


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

I'm shocked that so many do not realize how easily swindled they have been by Amazon regarding this. For those who want to live in an imaginary world where everyone reads their books all the way through, go ahead. There has been factual data released about book read-thru rates, and even the BEST books are read through on average of 70% or so. A 60% read through is good for any author... especially a KU author, where someone can check out your book with no risk.

Anyway, Amazon gave a payout amount of $1.40 or so. Long novel authors thought that this payout was too low to *"sell" one of their books *for and chose not to participate and thought it wasn't fair that it took longer for them to get a 10% read-through (WHY? Don't you get your magical 100% read-throughs all the time?!) Other authors started putting books into Kindle Unlimited that they thought were worthy of the $1.40 Payout. IMO my 50k novellas are worth about that much to me to hand over to KU and go exclusive with them. This wasn't a "glitch" in the system or "playing the system"... It was authors selling their material for a worthwhile price.

Now Amazon has put the blinders on all authors. They no longer tell you how many times your book has been borrowed. All you get it pages read. This is hilarious because now long novel authors think that they are *selling one of their books* for a higher royalty, when in reality they are probably giving away hundreds upon hundreds of their books which are being read through to 2%, 3%, 4% and of course may 60% and 100%. In essence, they are giving away tons of books and don't even know it. Now 2 books read through 50% are worth the same as 1 book read through 100%.

This has arbitrarily assigned the same value to everything... Before you could look at the royalty amount and make an educated guess on whether or not one borrow of your book is worth the $1.40 royalty amount or not. Now... well, forget about it. Somehow, writing a 50k word masterpiece is worth a 10% read through of a 500 page garbage novel. Somehow a 10 page children's book is worth 1/30th that of any 300 page book.

Putting that aside, let's assume that we're all good authors. Suddenly, it's not about who has the best idea, who writes the best material. It's about who writes the most. Paid by the word typed onto a page. The person who slaves away all day will make the bucks. Steven's King's 300 page book that would sell for $14.99 is worth the same as a read through of Debbie Doofus' $0.99 noobie book. Of course, Steven King would get 100x more borrows than Debbie Doofus', but that's beyond the point. He doesn't want to give his book away thousands of times for $0.005 per page. in the past, Steven King would know that his 300 novel does not fit in Kindle Unlimited, but a 50k novella would be worth his while. Now, even his 50k novella does not even fit in the system because he'll make almost nothing selling it.

I applaud Amazon for coming up with such a plan that tricks authors into thinking they are getting more per borrow and beckons novel writers to enroll their books. It was genius the way it was played out. I guarantee if they showed the number of borrows on the dashboard, Authors would be irate at the royalty per borrow that they are actually getting.


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## ThePete (Oct 10, 2013)

Just for a little perspective, at $0.0058 a page, a book will "break even" (earn the old KU average payout of $1.35) at only 233 KENP pages read, which is somewhere between 40,000 - 46,000 words. According to KDP's latest bulletin, the average KENP pages read in June was 237.5 for every qualified borrow. So earning quite close to your previous revenue is not so far fetched.

Sure, in practice, that reading is split over many authors, but the "macro data" is encouraging. No matter how that reading is broken down, tons of partial reads or a few full reads, the average pages read per borrow is slightly higher than the amount of pages you need read per borrow in order not to lose revenue.

I think the vast majority of authors won't see any significant change to their borrow income. Likely less than plus or minus 10%. Those writing ultra-shorts (I've done several myself) will clearly take a hit, but only at first. They'll soon adapt by ramping up volume, creating more boxsets, investing more in marketing or some other new strategy.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Hi folks, I've merged Mike's thread with the existing thread on this topic.  Sorry for any confusion.

Betsy


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

ThePete said:


> I think the vast majority of authors won't see any significant change to their borrow income. Likely less than plus or minus 10%.


Agreed, the one thing that Amazon don't want to do is line your pockets more than they already do. They don't mind readjusting who gets what, but on the whole they want to obtain more bang for 'their' buck by appearing to give you more bang for 'yours'. So those who write longer books will get more and the shorts will yes, get less (but, people you expected this to happen didn't you?). The overall increased cost to Amazon is going to be negligible (or they wouldn't do it).

At the end of the day you might be a little lighter, or a little heavier in your pocket, but if like me you have short and long books - it will probably come down to pushing the longs more than the shorts to get a rise in income. Which is fair enough IMO.


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## a_g (Aug 9, 2013)

What it comes down to is a business decision. More profitable to stay in or out of KU.

My issue is that I don't have the tools (that don't involve some magical machinations of a chart that someone sort of figured out from the current configuration of the algorithm that is sure to change with no notice at all) to determine what is doing well in KU and what isn't.

What's selling well and what isn't _can_ be determined more easily. So I'm not sure how anyone is getting any meaningful information on how profitable KU is for them (especially at this early date). An awful lot of assumption and supposition is getting poured in along with a great amount of heated emotion when in the end _none of us know much of anything at this time_.

So I hope, after the dust settles, that people doing well in KU will shine a light on how they're figure that out just from the scant information Amazon doles to authors.


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## Jacob Stanley (May 25, 2015)

ThePete said:


> Just for a little perspective, at $0.0058 a page, a book will "break even" (earn the old KU average payout of $1.35) at only 233 KENP pages read, which is somewhere between 40,000 - 46,000 words. According to KDP's latest bulletin, the average KENP pages read in June was 237.5 for every qualified borrow. So earning quite close to your previous revenue is not so far fetched.
> 
> Sure, in practice, that reading is split over many authors, but the "macro data" is encouraging. No matter how that reading is broken down, tons of partial reads or a few full reads, the average pages read per borrow is slightly higher than the amount of pages you need read per borrow in order not to lose revenue.
> 
> I think the vast majority of authors won't see any significant change to their borrow income. Likely less than plus or minus 10%. Those writing ultra-shorts (I've done several myself) will clearly take a hit, but only at first. They'll soon adapt by ramping up volume, creating more boxsets, investing more in marketing or some other new strategy.


I agree with most of what you're saying, especially since the KENP page-count numbers are so generous for most folks. Many books are almost doubling in length, so 0.6 cents is not nearly as bad as it sounds at first.

But I think those writing really short stuff (less than 10,000 words) are going to take such a big hit that most of them will just flee KU and go wide. They were often making as much as 6 to 10 cents a page in the old system. Now they'll be losing about 90% of their income. I don't think there's any way to adapt to that except to escape it.

Erotica authors are still able to get 2.99 for 5000 word stories on the open market. I think 90% of them are just going to jump ship. And I think they're making the right decision.

I'm probably going to keep my novella in for now. $0.70 to $1.00 a borrow doesn't sound too bad to me, especially when I factor in the potential profit down the road when the series is done. I could make 4 dollars from each reader that goes through my whole series, and that's not bad at all.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

At this moment in Kindle Unlimited:
Kindle ebooks: 1023161
Kindle short reads: 354490
Kindle singles: 443


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

ThePete said:


> Just for a little perspective, at $0.0058 a page, a book will "break even" (earn the old KU average payout of $1.35) at only 233 KENP pages read, which is somewhere between 40,000 - 46,000 words. According to KDP's latest bulletin, the average KENP pages read in June was 237.5 for every qualified borrow. So earning quite close to your previous revenue is not so far fetched.


Except there is so much variation in the word count to page count ratio. Some books won't "break even" until 80,000 words, others at 40,000.


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## Charmaine (Jul 20, 2012)

Good thing I've long decided to quit self-publishing children's books... ;_;


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## NoahPorter (Sep 15, 2013)

AuthorX said:


> I'm shocked that so many do not realize how easily swindled they have been by Amazon regarding this. For those who want to live in an imaginary world where everyone reads their books all the way through, go ahead. There has been factual data released about book read-thru rates, and even the BEST books are read through on average of 70% or so. A 60% read through is good for any author... especially a KU author, where someone can check out your book with no risk.
> 
> Anyway, Amazon gave a payout amount of $1.40 or so. Long novel authors thought that this payout was too low to *"sell" one of their books *for and chose not to participate and thought it wasn't fair that it took longer for them to get a 10% read-through (WHY? Don't you get your magical 100% read-throughs all the time?!) Other authors started putting books into Kindle Unlimited that they thought were worthy of the $1.40 Payout. IMO my 50k novellas are worth about that much to me to hand over to KU and go exclusive with them. This wasn't a "glitch" in the system or "playing the system"... It was authors selling their material for a worthwhile price.
> 
> ...


This guy (or gal) gets it. I want to hug you.


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## Irish Mint (Jul 19, 2014)

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/02/amazon-pay-self-published-authors-per-page-read-kindle

Go to the link to check the whole article.



> Casey Lucas, a literary editor who works with self-publishing authors, says she has lost six clients already. They have decided tostop writing after "estimating a 60--80% reduction in royalties".
> 
> "A lot of self-published romance authors are disabled, stay-at-home mums, or even a few returned veterans who work in the field because a regular job just isn't something they can handle," she says. "People are shedding a lot of tears over this."
> 
> ...


Good thing the press is picking up on this. I encourage everyone to tweet and share this on Facebook.

Honestly, the $0.0057 potential payout per page is going to be crappy for all the but the top 0.01% of authors who write interesting 600 page doorstoppers. Yes, there's a thread for this discussion but I thought people might want to check this article out.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

It sounds to me like yet another 'authority' publishing stuff they know nothing about. Sales and royalties have not changed, only the amount paid for KU borrows and if these 'writers who are giving up' were proper writers in the first place, they would have nothing to concern them. There are also other outlets besides Amazon and they don't have to be in the KU program. I don't understand why people are getting their knickers in a knot over this; KU has only been going for a year, what about how it was before. Prime members tended to use their one borrow a month on well known authors, so we didn't miss out a lot of those. Still, if people believe this sort of article, they will leave or not join and leave the fund for the rest of us.


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

I'd be interested to know how many readers read the first two or three chapters of the Look Inside and then if they decide to borrow the book they start reading at chapter four. Would the writer end up losing out on those first chapter pages?


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> I'd be interested to know how many readers read the first two or three chapters of the Look Inside and then if they decide to borrow the book they start reading at chapter four. Would the writer end up losing out on those first chapter pages?


Jan, I'm not sure if a consensus was reached, but there was a thread about this topic yesterday:

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,217345.0.html


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

swolf said:


> Jan, I'm not sure if a consensus was reached, but there was a thread about this topic yesterday:
> 
> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,217345.0.html


Thanks.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I am curious about this so called 60% read through. 
Is that 60% read a book then buy the next one?
Are people suddenly stopping at 60%?
Are 60% of all books read?
Was this just digital books, bestsellers or all books? 
Also survey or actual data?

I would also bet that at least a couple of authors in this thread are read to 100%.  At least on books 2 through whatever.


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

What I find most alarming is that so many people's careers were riding on this one program. If people are having to give up writing simply because of this one tweak, I'd say they need to re-evaluate the way they run their business. And I don't mean that in a nasty way. You need to insulate yourself, it's as simple as that. It doesn't necessarily mean diversification, but if you're going that route, do it properly; realise that it's a tougher road in the beginning.


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## funthebear (Sep 26, 2014)

Doglover said:


> It sounds to me like yet another 'authority' publishing stuff they know nothing about. Sales and royalties have not changed, only the amount paid for KU borrows and if these 'writers who are giving up' were proper writers in the first place, they would have nothing to concern them. There are also other outlets besides Amazon and they don't have to be in the KU program. I don't understand why people are getting their knickers in a knot over this; KU has only been going for a year, what about how it was before. Prime members tended to use their one borrow a month on well known authors, so we didn't miss out a lot of those. Still, if people believe this sort of article, they will leave or not join and leave the fund for the rest of us.


Because the readers who used to buy books converted to borrowing at least some percentage of what they used to buy, and for erotica and a good deal of romance readers, that percentage is likely near 100%--the readers who switched to KU are borrowing instead of buying.

It has to do with quality only if you assume that longer is better. People used to get $2 or more per sale. Then $1.3 with KU, but with an increase in volume. Now something has to be about 228 pages to get $1.3, and there's no reason to think there'd be a significant increase in volume.


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## HillOnLong (Oct 11, 2014)

Doglover said:


> *It sounds to me like yet another 'authority' publishing stuff they know nothing about. Sales and royalties have not changed, only the amount paid for KU borrows and if these 'writers who are giving up' were proper writers in the first place, they would have nothing to concern them.* There are also other outlets besides Amazon and they don't have to be in the KU program. I don't understand why people are getting their knickers in a knot over this; KU has only been going for a year, what about how it was before. Prime members tended to use their one borrow a month on well known authors, so we didn't miss out a lot of those. Still, if people believe this sort of article, they will leave or not join and leave the fund for the rest of us.


That's mighty thick stuff you got there. Could you enlighten us with the description of what you consider a 'proper writer'?


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

One interesting observation today, and it's completely anecdotal: I follow the author ranking lists closely, and "KU short authors" saw a huge jump in the ranking. I wonder if this is from a mass exodus of shorts. This includes a couple in the overall store, and they've jumped higher than I've ever seen them before.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Lady Vine said:


> What I find most alarming is that so many people's careers were riding on this one program. If people are having to give up writing simply because of this one tweak, I'd say they need to re-evaluate the way they run their business. And I don't mean that in a nasty way. You need to insulate yourself, it's as simple as that. It doesn't necessarily mean diversification, but if you're going that route, do it properly; realise that it's a tougher road in the beginning.


This really is key. Whether or not the program is working well for you now, recognize that it could change again in a heartbeat in the opposite direction. We may not be able to predict the next disruption or that it will upset our apple cart or give it turbo boosters, but we can count on the reality that there will be more disruptions and be ready to shift with them. Insulating oneself - whether that means diversifying by going wide, writing a variety of lengths and genres and formats, adding audio... These are all things we should be aware of and ready to pull the trigger on at a moment's notice if need be.


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## TromboneAl (Mar 20, 2015)

The new system obscures the information I'm most interesting in: How many people are downloading my book? 1000 pages read could mean one person reading the whole thing or ten reading one hundred pages each.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

funthebear said:


> Because the readers who used to buy books converted to borrowing at least some percentage of what they used to buy, and for erotica and a good deal of romance readers, that percentage is likely near 100%--the readers who switched to KU are borrowing instead of buying.
> 
> It has to do with quality only if you assume that longer is better. People used to get $2 or more per sale. Then $1.3 with KU, but with an increase in volume. Now something has to be about 228 pages to get $1.3, and there's no reason to think there'd be a significant increase in volume.


But quality writers have nothing to fear, have they? Their books will get read all the way through, and they will receive whatever the payout is per page and they can write more books. They can produce 300 pages just as easily as novel writers can and just as quickly, if not quicker and keep people's interest. If they are giving up, they were never writers in the first place. I don't publish well thought out novels to support poor little housewives who can't get out. If that is their only reason for writing, I doubt they have the skill or talent to keep people reading for a whole novel or several shorts and they are just the sort of people I would like to see out of indie publishing. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it is a fact. I don't care about the subject matter or the length, I care about the quality. If they can't produce quality that keeps people reading, they should find another occupation.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Doglover said:


> But quality writers have nothing to fear, have they? Their books will get read all the way through, and they will receive whatever the payout is per page and they can write more books. They can produce 300 pages just as easily as novel writers can and just as quickly, if not quicker and keep people's interest. If they are giving up, they were never writers in the first place. I don't publish well thought out novels to support poor little housewives who can't get out. If that is their only reason for writing, I doubt they have the skill or talent to keep people reading for a whole novel or several shorts and they are just the sort of people I would like to see out of indie publishing. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it is a fact. I don't care about the subject matter or the length, I care about the quality. If they can't produce quality that keeps people reading, they should find another occupation.


You have a much more optimistic view about the correlation between quality and popularity than I do.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Lady Vine said:


> What I find most alarming is that so many people's careers were riding on this one program. If people are having to give up writing simply because of this one tweak, I'd say they need to re-evaluate the way they run their business. And I don't mean that in a nasty way. You need to insulate yourself, it's as simple as that. It doesn't necessarily mean diversification, but if you're going that route, do it properly; realise that it's a tougher road in the beginning.


This! This! This! I shudder at the number of writers that probably dumped their day jobs when KU 1.0 handed them a gravy train. I made a similar mistake by jumping ship several months after KU 1.0 was implemented and going wide. I lost a boat load of money, and barely made it through those few months of much lower income. The lessons I learned were "Don't overreact" and "have a backup fund." These (especially the latter) are almost never spoken of in these threads, and in the volatile world of digital self-publishing, they are instrumental to your long term success and financial stability.


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## Jerry Patterson (Nov 20, 2013)

Doglover said:


> But quality writers have nothing to fear, have they? Their books will get read all the way through, and they will receive whatever the payout is per page and they can write more books. They can produce 300 pages just as easily as novel writers can and just as quickly, if not quicker and keep people's interest. If they are giving up, they were never writers in the first place. I don't publish well thought out novels to support poor little housewives who can't get out. If that is their only reason for writing, I doubt they have the skill or talent to keep people reading for a whole novel or several shorts and they are just the sort of people I would like to see out of indie publishing. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it is a fact. I don't care about the subject matter or the length, I care about the quality. If they can't produce quality that keeps people reading, they should find another occupation.


I'd like to see a definition of "quality". I think I know what you mean, but is "quality" always interesting to many readers? Are your books of the same quality as "War and Peace" or anything by Vonnegut? Isn't quality relative? I think that what "poor little housewives" are writing must be in demand or they wouldn't be making sales.

My writing might not be what you would term "quality". I've never had a creative writing class but I do know how to tell a story. I think I know how to entertain people and isn't that the bottom line? Sorry but my "snob alarm" went off loudly.


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## Ted Cross (Aug 30, 2012)

http://www.hughhowey.com/great-ku-flip-2015/


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Quality: what YOUR customers think is good.  This applies to books.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

cinisajoy said:


> Quality: what YOUR customers think is good. This applies to books.


This, thank you. War and Peace might be a classic, but I have never found any inclination to read something with that title. I am not a snob in any respect, but I do think the reputation of indie writers has been degraded by the sort of people who want to write just for the money. They might hold the readers' attention, but I suppose it depends on what that reader is looking for. I repeat: if they are giving up because they won't make so much money with their offerings, they should go away and allow the reputation to restore itself.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

C.S. Longhill said:


> That's mighty thick stuff you got there. Could you enlighten us with the description of what you consider a 'proper writer'?


I consider a proper writer to be someone who wants to write, regardless of the remuneration. I see a proper writer as someone who has to write, even sneaking off on Christmas day or hoping visitors don't appear because they would rather be writing. If someone is thinking: Oh, well, better find something else to do to make money, they are not writers.

I also think that all these people who have been having a ball with KU so far are being dog in a manger about the fairer share out. They can make the same amount of money as everyone else; all they have to do is writer more for the same payout.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

AuthorX said:


> Now Amazon has put the blinders on all authors. They no longer tell you how many times your book has been borrowed. All you get it pages read. This is hilarious because now long novel authors think that they are *selling one of their books* for a higher royalty, when in reality they are probably giving away hundreds upon hundreds of their books which are being read through to 2%, 3%, 4% and of course may 60% and 100%. In essence, they are giving away tons of books and don't even know it. Now 2 books read through 50% are worth the same as 1 book read through 100%.





TromboneAl said:


> The new system obscures the information I'm most interesting in: How many people are downloading my book? 1000 pages read could mean one person reading the whole thing or ten reading one hundred pages each.


Yes, I'm surprised that the removal of the author's borrow total from the new KU reports has received much less attention than the estimated $0.0057 per page payout.

It's not like it's a hard number to calculate. Amazon was furnishing it to us up until a couple days ago. Now they aren't.

When a simple, significant figure like that vanishes it contributes to the perception that something is now being hidden.

Maybe Amazon had to withhold that number because the pages-read figure can potentially be quite long, stretching across the screen, and there wasn't room for a borrows column on the new month-to-date reports? I guess that's why the McDonald's slogan cites hamburgers served rather than calories consumed, otherwise those golden arches would soar clear over the interstate.


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## HillOnLong (Oct 11, 2014)

Doglover said:


> I consider a proper writer to be someone who wants to write, regardless of the remuneration. I see a proper writer as someone who has to write, even sneaking off on Christmas day or hoping visitors don't appear because they would rather be writing. If someone is thinking: Oh, well, better find something else to do to make money, they are not writers.
> 
> I also think that all these people who have been having a ball with KU so far are being dog in a manger about the fairer share out. They can make the same amount of money as everyone else; all they have to do is writer more for the same payout.


I feel you have mastered the art of reading things from an article that I can't ever surpass. I bow for your wisdom.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Briteka said:


> One interesting observation today, and it's completely anecdotal: I follow the author ranking lists closely, and "KU short authors" saw a huge jump in the ranking. I wonder if this is from a mass exodus of shorts. This includes a couple in the overall store, and they've jumped higher than I've ever seen them before.


This made me go look at the author rank for one of my pen names. It was at 5290 yesterday and jumped to 2333 today on the basis of, as far as I can tell, one borrow of one book. Interesting.


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## Jerry Patterson (Nov 20, 2013)

Mike McIntyre said:


> Yes, I'm surprised that the removal of the author's borrow total from the new KU reports has received much less attention than the estimated $0.0057 per page payout.
> 
> It's not like it's a hard number to calculate. Amazon was furnishing it to us up until a couple days ago. Now they aren't.
> 
> ...


Something is being hidden. The number of books borrowed is probably not something we're supposed to see. It would be easy to take the number of books borrowed and multiply times $1.34 (last month's payout) to compare with the number of pages read times 1/2 a cent.


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

Mike McIntyre said:


> Yes, I'm surprised that the removal of the author's borrow total from the new KU reports has received much less attention than the estimated $0.0057 per page payout.
> 
> It's not like it's a hard number to calculate. Amazon was furnishing it to us up until a couple days ago. Now they aren't.
> 
> ...


No offense, but you never got a graph with all your borrows. It is the sales dashboard. You got notification when a book passed the 10 percent mark and passed a mark where you would get paid. On the sales dashboard, money is the key. So now you're getting notification when a page is read - something that will involve money.


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## Michael Murray (Oct 31, 2011)

Mike McIntyre said:


> Yes, I'm surprised that the removal of the author's borrow total from the new KU reports has received much less attention than the estimated $0.0057 per page payout.
> 
> It's not like it's a hard number to calculate. Amazon was furnishing it to us up until a couple days ago. Now they aren't.
> 
> When a simple, significant figure like that vanishes it contributes to the perception that something is now being hidden.


There is no technical reason for them to remove the borrows number. Amazon removed it because they don't want us to know that anymore. It would be VERY useful to have it back.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Michael Murray said:


> There is no technical reason for them to remove the borrows number. Amazon removed it because they don't want us to know that anymore. It would be VERY useful to have it back.


I agree. Even the 10% threshold of KU 1.0 aside, knowing # of borrows and correlating that with pages read helps us determine (among other things) how successful we are being in engaging readers, not to mention how successful our promotions are (Countdown, anyone?). People have been talking about how this is Amazon's way of encouraging writers to write more engaging (better? cleaner? quality?) books, but they've talking away the best metric we have of determining that (those who write series/serials can still indirectly measure engagement, but it's not the same). Amazon is telling us we'll pay you by the page, but we won't tell you anything about how of your book readers are reading or where they're falling off, the whole quality/engagement argument is little more than a red herring.


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## TheGapBetweenMerlons (Jun 2, 2011)

Doglover said:


> I am not a snob in any respect...


Oh, I am. I'm a beer snob. I consider a proper beer drinker to be someone who drinks craft beers, not mega-swill. I'm also a coffee snob. I consider a proper coffee drinker to be someone who drinks coffee straight without sweeteners or anything else that masks the coffee flavor.



Doglover said:


> I consider a proper writer to be someone who wants to write, regardless of the remuneration. I see a proper writer as someone who has to write, even sneaking off on Christmas day or hoping visitors don't appear because they would rather be writing.


'Nuff said.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Crenel said:


> Oh, I am. I'm a beer snob. I consider a proper beer drinker to be someone who drinks craft beers, not mega-swill. I'm also a coffee snob. I consider a proper coffee drinker to be someone who drinks coffee straight without sweeteners or anything else that masks the coffee flavor.
> 
> 'Nuff said.


Come on over. I have good coffee and don't do cheap beer.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> I shudder at the number of writers that probably dumped their day jobs when KU 1.0 handed them a gravy train. I made a similar mistake by jumping ship several months after KU 1.0 was implemented and going wide. I lost a boat load of money, and barely made it through those few months of much lower income. The lessons I learned were "Don't overreact" and *"have a backup fund."*.


Yes, yes, yes! When you go into business for yourself ALWAYS have money for a year of rainy days.

My current series is wide. KU killed my income by about 50%. I've recovered, but it was a depressing time for me.


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## Redacted1111 (Oct 26, 2013)

Thank god for good months and extra money. You know what makes me feel better? Working.


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

TromboneAl said:


> The new system obscures the information I'm most interesting in: How many people are downloading my book? 1000 pages read could mean one person reading the whole thing or ten reading one hundred pages each.


It was similarly obscure before, when all we had access to was the number of people who passed the 10% mark.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

SevenDays said:


> It was similarly obscure before, when all we had access to was the number of people who passed the 10% mark.


True, but it wasn't really important before. We knew how many copies we were moving and we were paid according to that. With the new system you're being paid by page, but if your 100 page novel has 400 pages read you don't know if 10 people get to page 40 and throw it at the wall or if 4 people devoured the entire book. That's pretty critical information when you're being paid by the number of pages being read. Do you need to focus your efforts on improving your writing so that readers get past page 40, or do you need to work on your marketing to get your book into more readers' hands? You can't tell from this information.


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

KelliWolfe said:


> With the new system you're being paid by page, but if your 100 page novel has 400 pages read you don't know if 10 people get to page 40 and throw it at the wall or if 4 people devoured the entire book. That's pretty critical information when you're being paid by the number of pages being read.


I don't know about others, but for my short story and 2 of the 3 novels I have in KU, there's enough history of sales to borrow ratios that I think I can come up with a pretty good idea of how many borrows are accounting for my pages read and therefore an idea of overall percent read for each book.


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## TromboneAl (Mar 20, 2015)

Here's something Amazon could do to be nice to us authors: On the top graph, include the borrows information exactly as it was before. That is, the number of downloads for which someone has read 10%. Just like the number of free downloads, this information would be irrelevant to royalties.

Besides giving us a feeling for how many books are downloaded, we'd have some continuity with the past that would let us evaluate any trends in sales.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Why do I have 100 borrows but only 200 pages read?


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Doglover said:


> I consider a proper writer to be someone who wants to write, regardless of the remuneration. I see a proper writer as someone who has to write, even sneaking off on Christmas day or hoping visitors don't appear because they would rather be writing. If someone is thinking: Oh, well, better find something else to do to make money, they are not writers.
> 
> I also think that all these people who have been having a ball with KU so far are being dog in a manger about the fairer share out. They can make the same amount of money as everyone else; all they have to do is writer more for the same payout.


I guess I'm not a proper writer.  I can name about a dozen things I'd rather do than write. I write to make a living.


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## TheGapBetweenMerlons (Jun 2, 2011)

cinisajoy said:


> Come on over. I have good coffee and don't do cheap beer.


Awesome! 



SevenDays said:


> It was similarly obscure before, when all we had access to was the number of people who passed the 10% mark.


I disagree, because the unit of measure was still books. We did have to write off knowing about people who didn't make it to 10%, but knowing about those would have been no more useful than knowing about people who buy a book and return it within 7 days to get their money back (which is information, just not as useful IMHO). With the prior system, if we did get a "borrow" then we knew that borrow equated to one person. Now we know nothing other than an ambiguous, and technically questionable, number. (Let's not forget the children's picture books that are 30-40 pages in print with a KENPC of just 1 page.)



TromboneAl said:


> Here's something Amazon could do to be nice to us authors: On the top graph, include the borrows information exactly as it was before. That is, the number of downloads for which someone has read 10%. Just like the number of free downloads, this information would be irrelevant to royalties.


+1

While that wouldn't encourage me to put my picture book back in KDP Select, it might be sufficient for me to put my fiction (for older readers) back in.


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## Bbates024 (Nov 3, 2014)

Rykymus said:


> I guess I'm not a proper writer.  I can name about a dozen things I'd rather do than write. I write to make a living.


Like being an astronaut!

I think become a full time write while stressful would be an incredibly rewarding experience.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Crenel said:


> Oh, I am. I'm a beer snob. I consider a proper beer drinker to be someone who drinks craft beers, not mega-swill. I'm also a coffee snob. I consider a proper coffee drinker to be someone who drinks coffee straight without sweeteners or anything else that masks the coffee flavor.
> 
> 'Nuff said.


Well, I drink neither beer nor coffee, so I can't argue with that.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

danpadavona said:


> Okay, but the author who wrote the 300 page novel spent 3x more time writing than you did with your 100 page novella (all things being equal), and you can easily produce 3 100 page novellas in the same amount of time.


That's not a given.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

AuthorX said:


> I'm shocked that so many do not realize how easily swindled they have been by Amazon regarding this. For those who want to live in an imaginary world where everyone reads their books all the way through, go ahead. There has been factual data released about book read-thru rates, and even the BEST books are read through on average of 70% or so. A 60% read through is good for any author... especially a KU author, where someone can check out your book with no risk.
> 
> Anyway, Amazon gave a payout amount of $1.40 or so. Long novel authors thought that this payout was too low to *"sell" one of their books *for and chose not to participate and thought it wasn't fair that it took longer for them to get a 10% read-through (WHY? Don't you get your magical 100% read-throughs all the time?!) Other authors started putting books into Kindle Unlimited that they thought were worthy of the $1.40 Payout. IMO my 50k novellas are worth about that much to me to hand over to KU and go exclusive with them. This wasn't a "glitch" in the system or "playing the system"... It was authors selling their material for a worthwhile price.
> 
> ...


This is the best post in this thread so far, and the one applying faultless logic to the whole thing.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Rykymus said:


> I guess I'm not a proper writer.  I can name about a dozen things I'd rather do than write. I write to make a living.


I guess so.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Doglover said:


> I consider a proper writer to be someone who wants to write, regardless of the remuneration. I see a proper writer as someone who has to write, even sneaking off on Christmas day or hoping visitors don't appear because they would rather be writing. If someone is thinking: Oh, well, better find something else to do to make money, they are not writers.
> 
> I also think that all these people who have been having a ball with KU so far are being dog in a manger about the fairer share out. They can make the same amount of money as everyone else; all they have to do is writer more for the same payout.





> "Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market."
> ~Robert Frost


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## Beatriz (Feb 22, 2011)

funthebear said:


> Exactly. We were all b*tching about it dropping below $1.50, and now we're happy with this? There's always a trade off between volume and unit price, but at some point things get devalued too much.


And writers wanted this change? Hard to believe.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

AuthorX said:


> I'm shocked that so many do not realize how easily swindled they have been by Amazon regarding this. For those who want to live in an imaginary world where everyone reads their books all the way through, go ahead. There has been factual data released about book read-thru rates, and even the BEST books are read through on average of 70% or so. A 60% read through is good for any author... especially a KU author, where someone can check out your book with no risk.
> 
> *SNIP*
> 
> I applaud Amazon for coming up with such a plan that tricks authors into thinking they are getting more per borrow and beckons novel writers to enroll their books. It was genius the way it was played out. I guarantee if they showed the number of borrows on the dashboard, Authors would be irate at the royalty per borrow that they are actually getting.


You said what I've been trying to say - only a lot more clearly. While there will be some big winners in this - more authors are being conditioned to accept less money for their work. While that's great for Amazon - it's not necessarily great for the author.


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## Julianna (Jun 28, 2015)

Telling a supplier he won't get paid until the consumer gets around to using his product is lunacy. Can't believe so many writers are buying into this nonsense.


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## Indiecognito (May 19, 2014)

Julianna said:


> Telling a supplier he won't get paid until the consumer gets around to using his product is lunacy. Can't believe so many writers are buying into this nonsense.


It's true. The whole think stinks on ice, but the good news is that it's making the decision to pull out far easier than it was a month ago.

Come autumn I will have 40 books available via other vendors. I might take a little hit for a month or two, but given the .58 cents per page payout on Amazon, it's far less of a hit than it would've been in June when there was a flat rate. I'm almost relieved that they've made it so easy.


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## books_mb (Oct 29, 2013)

TromboneAl said:


> Here's something Amazon could do to be nice to us authors: On the top graph, include the borrows information exactly as it was before. That is, the number of downloads for which someone has read 10%. Just like the number of free downloads, this information would be irrelevant to royalties.
> 
> Besides giving us a feeling for how many books are downloaded, we'd have some continuity with the past that would let us evaluate any trends in sales.


I hate that they're so secretive about the stats ... especially since that makes absolutely no sense. Giving us more stats would allow us to optimize sales and optimizing sales would mean more money for the ZON ... so they are not really doing themselves a favor. I would (figuratively) kill for some page impressions, referrers, etc ...


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Julianna said:


> Telling a supplier he won't get paid until the consumer gets around to using his product is lunacy. Can't believe so many writers are buying into this nonsense.


We are not back to that old chestnut again, are we? When someone buys your book, you get your royalties albeit 2 months later; nothing has changed. But unless that consumer has borrowed the product from the supplier, the analogy is irrelevant.


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

Doglover said:


> We are not back to that old chestnut again, are we? When someone buys your book, you get your royalties albeit 2 months later; nothing has changed. But unless that consumer has borrowed the product from the supplier, the analogy is irrelevant.


Fair enough. It's hard to believe other, legitimate subscription services, or utility companies, pay content providers on a pay per usage rate and also demands _exclusivity_ for the privilege.


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## Ainsley (Dec 26, 2013)

Vicky Foxx said:


> You said what I've been trying to say - only a lot more clearly. While there will be some big winners in this - more authors are being conditioned to accept less money for their work. While that's great for Amazon - it's not necessarily great for the author.


Well there was a poll thread where people CHOSE the half penny to a penny payout as most likely. If I was Amazon why would I pay more than what au hors have already predetermined as their due? These threads are about powerlessness not taking a stand and arguing for more!

There's a bizarre element of self fulfilling prophecy to the hysteria IMO.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

AdrianC said:


> Fair enough. It's hard to believe other, legitimate subscription services, or utility companies, pay content providers on a pay per usage rate and also demands _exclusivity_ for the privilege.


Doesn't your electricity company charge you for what you use? Besides while I have read approval and disapproval and wait and see and I'm getting out, I am yet to hear a better idea.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Julianna said:


> Telling a supplier he won't get paid until the consumer gets around to using his product is lunacy. Can't believe so many writers are buying into this nonsense.


You win the internet today!

I would only add that this:

Telling a supplier he won't get paid until the consumer gets around to using his product AND _only for the portion of it they use_ is lunacy.


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## TuckerAuthor (Jan 31, 2014)

Doglover said:


> Doesn't your electricity company charge you for what you use? Besides while I have read approval and disapproval and wait and see and I'm getting out, I am yet to hear a better idea.


This. We can all complain and debate about the amount - half cent, cent, dollar - but what would be a fairer, yet logistically manageable, way to track and pay for borrows? And remember, we're talking borrowing here. Renting. It's not the same as a purchase, which many seem to be conflating in their posts. Spotify is paying approximately $0.006-0.008 per play. Look familiar? If you think about your pages as plays, and a short story or a chapter as a song that someone likes enough to listen to several times, it makes some sense. Create fans with your work and they'll come back for more.


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

Doglover said:


> Doesn't your electricity company charge you for what you use? Besides while I have read approval and disapproval and wait and see and I'm getting out, I am yet to hear a better idea.


Not the same. An electric company charges the customer (which in KU's case would be subscriber's) for what he or she uses, which is the opposite of a subscription service. I'm talking more along the lines of a telecommunications company that rents line or tower use from someone like ATT. There's no metered payout involved. I also have a hard time believing content providers would ever agree to go exclusively Netflix (or even Amazon Prime) if they're only getting paid per minute watched by the customer. It's insanity.

And you've heard plenty of ideas of what Amazon could or should do involving KU, I'm sure. If you disagree with all of them, that's fine, but the conversation should and will go on. Personally, I think a flat rate $.35 payout after 10% read, plus a per-page rate thereafter, would've been fairer to everyone.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

TuckerAuthor said:


> This. We can all complain and debate about the amount -- half cent, cent, dollar -- but what would be a fairer, yet logistically manageable, way to track and pay for borrows? And remember, we're talking borrowing here. Renting. It's not the same as a purchase, which many seem to be conflating in their posts. Spotify is paying approximately $0.006-0.008 per play. Look familiar? If you think about your pages as plays, and a short story or a chapter as a song that someone likes enough to listen to several times, it makes some sense. Create fans with your work and they'll come back for more.


We talk about how this is heading to where the music industry has gone, except that Spotify pays per play for EVERY play. Reading is a different experience, and few readers will reread a book, but if we were truly headed in that direction, then I would argue we should be getting paid for every read, every time, not just the first time.



Doglover said:


> Doesn't your electricity company charge you for what you use? Besides while I have read approval and disapproval and wait and see and I'm getting out, I am yet to hear a better idea.


In giving this model some thought, especially as it pertains to exclusivity, which I abhor, I think it would be an acceptable compromise if Amazon expected exclusivity for the first enrollment period, but not after that. Give them credit for having the largest market and for wanting exclusive material, but it would go a heck of a long way to opening up their catalog and making it much more attractive for both readers and content providers if they loosened the exclusivity requirement.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Doglover said:


> Doesn't your electricity company charge you for what you use? Besides while I have read approval and disapproval and wait and see and I'm getting out, I am yet to hear a better idea.


I don't think it's comparable.

The difference is that you always use every CC of natural gas you pay for so a supplier always gets paid the full amount per unit volume sold. It doesn't sit around and gather dust in a tank and you can return it later. You are paying for natural gas per unit volume. You always use all the volume you buy.

Readers don't always read all the book when they buy it but they have the opportunity to do so. They can read it now or later or never. That's what happens when you purchase a thing.

When you _rent_ a thing, if you don't use it completely, if you don't consume it completely, for whatever reason, why should the supplier be penalized? They still have to produce that thing. There are still costs involved and livings to make. Sure, consumers don't care about the whole business end of things, and they don't care about suppliers making a living or not, but suppliers do and we have to be concerned about these things if we want to keep supplying. We have to look at programs like KU from our perspective and if it doesn't pass the sniff test, as in it is a benefit to our bottom line, we should pass it up.

Consumers WILL care if suppliers no longer can afford to produce the thing they want to buy because prices are too low and no livings are being made...


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## TheGapBetweenMerlons (Jun 2, 2011)

Electricity is a commodity.

One definition of commodity is: "A good or service whose wide availability typically leads to *smaller profit margins* and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price." (source: Merriam-Webster, emphasis added)

Are your words mere commodities? Are they as undifferentiated as carrots, or gallons of oil, or bales of cotton? I wouldn't expect a _proper writer_ to think so, whether they're in it for the words or the cash, but I'm not here to define "proper" as it applies to being a writer (or anything... well, anything other than beer/coffee drinkers, as already established).

If we use the standard of 250 words per page*, this expected payout per page makes each word worth around two-thousandths of a cent. When you make your daily goal for NaNo and you later publish that novel in Kindle Fiction Unlimited, that day's effort is worth three cents, at least in KU FU. There's some motivation for ya!

I don't mind when people read my books _for free_ if it benefits me by building my audience. My last Select-enrolled book is free right now. I don't mind when people read my books _for free_ if it ostensibly benefits society, such as through public libraries. But treating my creative work as a commodity for the primary benefit of a corporation so big that its revenue is larger than the GDP of some small countries... yeah, rational or not, I mind. When that last book expires out of Select next Friday, I'm done with Select.



Ainsley said:


> Well there was a poll thread where people CHOSE the half penny to a penny payout as most likely. If I was Amazon why would I pay more than what au hors have already predetermined as their due?


There's a difference between guessing at what is _likely_ and evaluating what one is _due_ (i.e., what one deserves) for their work. OTOH, I agree that these threads are not particularly productive and there might be more effective things that could be done to try to agitate for change (for those who disagree with the new plan).

* The 250-words/page "standard" isn't my idea, it's just what I've seen in countless places when looking for services like editing, proofreading, etc.


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## TuckerAuthor (Jan 31, 2014)

Saul Tanpepper said:


> We talk about how this is heading to where the music industry has gone, except that Spotify pays per play for EVERY play. Reading is a different experience, and few readers will reread a book, but if we were truly headed in that direction, then I would argue we should be getting paid for every read, every time, not just the first time.


It's true that most people won't reread a book after the first time, but a page isn't complete, in and of itself, like a song is. That's why I'm comparing a novel chapter, or a short story, to a song that gets listened to several times.


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

Doglover said:


> I don't care about the subject matter or the length, I care about the quality. If they can't produce quality that keeps people reading, they should find another occupation.


It's not necessarily the *quality *of a book that keeps people reading - it's what holds *a reader's interest*. Some people can't be bothered reading the classics, and others devour the penny terribles . Just sayin'.


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

If the technology had existed to track page reads on physical books (or usage of any physical object), we probably would have had usage-based payment systems like KU hundreds of years ago. As the technology is adopted to measure usage, it tends to move to this model, as we've seen with music, movies, and TV.

There's some parallel with Uber and all the taxi drivers complaining, or outright rioting, about it. There's an inbuilt human desire to keep things the way they are, especially for those who are hurt by progress. Yet throughout history, progress chugs along anyway.

Personally, even though my writing income will probably drop by half because I write a lot of short stuff, I don't see much point in complaining. KU 2.0 is objectively better than KU 1.0. It sucks for those caught under the wheels of progress, but I doubt fighting it will do any good. And it's worth pointing out again that the average author makes the same total income as they did last month. At least we've got that going for us; I doubt the average musician's income is unchanged in this post-Spotify world.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Phronk said:


> If the technology had existed to track page reads on physical books (or usage of any physical object), we probably would have had usage-based payment systems like KU hundreds of years ago. As the technology is adopted to measure usage, it tends to move to this model, as we've seen with music, movies, and TV.
> 
> There's some parallel with Uber and all the taxi drivers complaining, or outright rioting, about it. There's an inbuilt human desire to keep things the way they are, especially for those who are hurt by progress. Yet throughout history, progress chugs along anyway.
> 
> Personally, even though my writing income will probably drop by half because I write a lot of short stuff, I don't see much point in complaining. KU 2.0 is objectively better than KU 1.0. It sucks for those caught under the wheels of progress, but I doubt fighting it will do any good. And it's worth pointing out again that the average author makes the same total income as they did last month. At least we've got that going for us; I doubt the average musician's income is unchanged in this post-Spotify world.


The squeaky wheel gets oiled.

That's why it's important to complain. Why do you think KU 1.0 was changed? It was either customers complaining or other authors complaining or the financial guys in head office complaining, but change doesn't come without some stimulus.

You can always choose to lie down and let the world roll over you, but then you get squished. If you complain, at least you get the satisfaction of making a large noise as your last breath is being squeezed out of you... 

But you're right. Complaining with out adaptation means death. So yes, adapt.


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## Guest (Jul 3, 2015)

drno said:


> At this moment in Kindle Unlimited day 2:
> Kindle ebooks: 1023161
> Kindle short reads: 354490
> Kindle singles: 443


At this moment in Kindle Unlimited day 3:
Kindle ebooks: 1018216
Kindle short reads: 354071
Kindle singles: 444


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

Sela said:


> You can always choose to lie down and let the world roll over you, but then you get squished. If you complain, at least you get the satisfaction of making a large noise as your last breath is being squeezed out of you...
> 
> But you're right. Complaining with out adaptation means death. So yes, adapt.


Fair enough. I just find it odd to complain about a system that was bound to be converged upon, and is clearly an improvement over the old system, overall.

My kind of complaining is to figure out how it can be further improved. The lack of transparency is probably the worst part about this (we can't see how many borrows we have, even though that data is clearly available? Really?), and demanding exclusivity continues to be ridiculous. Remove those limitations and I'll be even happier to be losing money to this new reality that technology is so delightfully transforming.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Hey gang,
All this arguing is reminding me of "How should you price your craft project?"
There were several distinct camps.
One was you should charge $10 an hour if you are a beginner and $50 an hour if you deem yourself to be an expert.
The second camp was you should charge exactly 3 times supplies.  Never more and time doesn't matter.  You could have a pot holder made of quivet and a blanket made of red heart and both would cost the same.
The third camp was you should charge a penny a stitch.
The minority camp was charge what you think it is worth. Caveat here: it is a help if you know how long it will take you to make something.

Care to guess which camp actually made money.

The inherent problems with the first 3 camps.  
First camp: Unless you are making very small projects, no one is going to pay that for a project.
Second camp: 3 times supplies doesn't always add to up to even a penny a day.
Third camp is Ok that drilling rig that has less than 100 stitches would be worth a dollar.  The supplies cost that much. Heck the frame cost $2.
The last camp took everything into account. Supplies + time + what will the market pay.  
Ask me about the vases.  Two stayed the same but the third one went up.  

Now apparently Amazon has decided rather than one set price (camp two) (see example) which they were doing, they have now decided that a camp three would be smarter.  (stitch/word)
Note neither of these take time or quality into account.
I guess the good side is, it is only on borrows and the creator can be in camp 4 for sales and decide what is best for them.
And if it is not feasible, you do not have to use the borrow program.

I do wish Amazon had given more notice so the authors that are hurt by this would have had time to make alternate plans.

Yes, I think writers and crafters are pretty much the same just different mediums.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Sela said:


> Consumers WILL care if suppliers no longer can afford to produce the thing they want to buy because prices are too low and no livings are being made...


I think this is where you are wrong.

There will always be suppliers, and Amazon knows it.

I've already said it a few times. IMO Amazon will make KU into the bargain bin for the voracious reader who's looking for his "fix" in whatever genre s/he prefers.

Amazon doesn't care who makes the widgets, and new writers may very well think it's a fair deal to trade money for exposure.

As long as Amazon can attract new writers to make widgets, the trend in the payout will be downward. (You didn't think $0.0058/page was the bottom, did you?)


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

AdrianC said:


> Not the same. An electric company charges the customer (which in KU's case would be subscriber's) for what he or she uses, which is the opposite of a subscription service. I'm talking more along the lines of a telecommunications company that rents line or tower use from someone like ATT. There's no metered payout involved. I also have a hard time believing content providers would ever agree to go exclusively Netflix (or even Amazon Prime) if they're only getting paid per minute watched by the customer. It's insanity.
> 
> And you've heard plenty of ideas of what Amazon could or should do involving KU, I'm sure. If you disagree with all of them, that's fine, but the conversation should and will go on. Personally, I think a flat rate $.35 payout after 10% read, plus a per-page rate thereafter, would've been fairer to everyone.


Actually, no I haven't heard any better or even alternative ideas. All I've heard are complaints from people who think their books won't get read all the way through - well they know what to do about that - and more complaints from people who were doing all right with very little effort. What ideas have I missed? Do tell. Personally I think it would have worked to grade the rate by word count, so if you have a work of 10,000 words it will get 10% of what a work of 100,000 words would earn.


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

cinisajoy said:


> Hey gang,
> All this arguing is reminding me of "How should you price your craft project?"
> There were several distinct camps.
> One was you should charge $10 an hour if you are a beginner and $50 an hour if you deem yourself to be an expert.
> ...


The answer is always - charge what the market will allow


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## Mike_Author (Oct 19, 2013)

Rykymus said:


> I guess I'm not a proper writer.  I can name about a dozen things I'd rather do than write. I write to make a living.


Man that was refreshingly honest to read. A helpful counterpoint to the ubiquitous comments I see on writing forums which imply that we should just do it for the love of the craft.

I actually sit somewhere about half way between these two sentiments. I love writing. My single greatest strength is writing. The more writing pays the bills and feeds my family, the more time I get to allocate to it over some other income generating activity. If I had a choice between earning $100k in an office with great perks etc or $80k writing, I would choose writing, if I could afford to get by on $80k.

I am watching this new development with considerable nervousness until I see what it does to my monthly earnings (my books don't tend to be particularly long - the longest one I have was around 60k words, but many are significantly less). I will then work out a plan on how to adapt or change my strategy.


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## Guest (Jul 4, 2015)

At this moment in Kindle Unlimited day 2:
Kindle ebooks: 1023161
Kindle short reads: 354490
Kindle singles: 443

At this moment in Kindle Unlimited day 3:
Kindle ebooks: 1018216
Kindle short reads: 354071
Kindle singles: 444

At this moment in Kindle Unlimited day 4:
Kindle ebooks: 1018484
Kindle short reads: 354176
Kindle singles: 445


----------

