# July Report is Out - KU2 is .0058



## Will C. Brown (Sep 24, 2013)

Just as predicted it looks like the payout is .0058!


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

.005779

Just a tad short of the number calculated from Amazon's email a month ago .005789


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Right about where most thought it would be. It'll be interesting to read their press release on Monday. Hopefully we get some more numbers, which I'm sure we will.


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## Drake (Apr 30, 2014)

I'm totally screwed, cut my income in half.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

It looks like I was wise to get out of KU2 when I did.  I lost money on the books that were read rather than sold.  I made more by going wide the rest of the month.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Drake said:


> I'm totally screwed, cut my income in half.


Sorry to hear that. Will you pull out or give it a bit more time?

I only got in the last week of July, so I didn't make much but it's a few dollars more than I would have had. I'm staying in for at least six months.

I took the books that were barely selling (mostly old stuff) and put those into Select. The older books are the books being read through KU and I'm pleased. I'll have a trilogy to put in shortly and I'm working on a spin off of my biggest selling series to put in as well.


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## scottmarlowe (Apr 22, 2010)

I've been out of KU since Jan 2015, yet this month I had 500 pages read of a book that's only 51 pages long. At least I know now what the payout will be for it, even though I still don't get where the 500 pages read came from.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Rayven T. Hill said:


> .005779
> 
> Just a tad short of the number calculated from Amazon's email a month ago .005789


Which suggests that they planned this rate all along and should lay to rest any lingering doubts that number of subscribers or number of page reads has anything to do with the rate that they set.


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## rachelmedhurst (Jun 25, 2014)

I sold 31 more books in July than I did in June and made £5 less than I did in June. It was expected though. I have a serial and get good read through on all six episodes. Still going to wait until my 3 month term is up before I decide what to do.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Well traditionally, this will be the highest we see. Chances are good the payout will be lower next month than this month. 

So on a 400 page KENPC, you're looking at a $2.32 payout for a full read, on a sexy short, $.23 (41 KENPC). My novellas are KENPC of about 180, for $1.04 (my books were in the old program until Jan/Feb and they received page reads this month, meaning they sat for 6 months on someone's account). The problem for me is I am able to sell my books at higher prices than most other genres, so taking $1.04 per read compared to the $3.22 royalty per sale, I don't see the volume making that up. 

Still a pass for me, I'm afraid.


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## Will C. Brown (Sep 24, 2013)

I think that I'll stick with my planned strategy of releasing new books in KU2 then going wide after 90 days. Best of both worlds. 
I just need to get back to writing.


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## HillOnLong (Oct 11, 2014)

So, let me get this straight. According to Amazon, novel writers wanted to be compensated for their longer works and that was one of the reasons for the change. Now, in KU 2.0, you need to write at least 60 000 word novels with 170 words / KENPC to earn about the same that you'd earn for a $2.99 book (assuming everyone finishes the book, which isn't even true).

Can someone explain to me how that entices the average novel writer to join KU 2.0? Let alone people who price their books higher than that and are still similar length wise.

EDIT: 170 words / KENPC


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Will C. Brown said:


> I think that I'll stick with my planned strategy of releasing new books in KU2 then going wide after 90 days. Best of both worlds.
> I just need to get back to writing.


Yep, me too.

Honestly, I don't need Amazon's income at all, and they don't really move books for me much even in KU, but the difference between a KU book and a non-KU book is enough to warrant a three month span. My sales at other vendors are very steady, so I won't be hurt by this three month span. It isn't like Amazon where you need steady releases to keep up with sales.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Mercia McMahon said:


> Which suggests that they planned this rate all along and should lay to rest any lingering doubts that number of subscribers or number of page reads has anything to do with the rate that they set.


What it suggests to me, actually, is that the number of subscribers and page reads is quite stable, month on month.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

C.S. Longhill said:


> So, let me get this straight. According to Amazon, novel writers wanted to be compensated for their longer works and that was one of the reasons for the change. Now, in KU 2.0, you need to write at least 60 000 word novels with 170 KENPC to earn about the same that you'd earn for a $2.99 book (assuming everyone finishes the book, which isn't even true).


Because that would be 50% more than you earned for that novel under KU1. Also, by modern standards, 60k is a short novel.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

C.S. Longhill said:


> So, let me get this straight. According to Amazon, novel writers wanted to be compensated for their longer works and that was one of the reasons for the change. Now, in KU 2.0, you need to write at least 60 000 word novels with 170 KENPC to earn about the same that you'd earn for a $2.99 book (assuming everyone finishes the book, which isn't even true).
> 
> Can someone explain to me how that entices the average novel writer to join KU 2.0? Let alone people who price their books higher than that and are still similar length wise.


Amazon doesn't care what novel writers want. That's just spin. Amazon ran some numbers and decided this method would either be more profitable for them (least likely) or gain them more exclusivity (more likely). If their bets turn out to be wrong, look for a revert back to the old way with some more spin like, "The old way is more fair for all involved as it keeps short story writers happy".


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Mercia McMahon said:


> Which suggests that they planned this rate all along and should lay to rest any lingering doubts that number of subscribers or number of page reads has anything to do with the rate that they set.


I agree. It is very much rob Peter to pay Paul. In the old program, you had a 41 page book making $1.34 and a 400 page book making $1.34. Now, Amazon pays the 41 page book $.23, the 400 page book $2.32, and pockets the 13 cents. Doesn't sound like much, but on a massive scale, that 13 cents savings adds up. Not to even mention it takes a reader LONGER to read 400 pages vs 41 pages, so Amazon is likely saving there, too.

I am sure the overall pot is going to be bigger than what was announced, and it will be "See, Amazon paid authors MORE, you're wrong."  But we'll see. I think it's going to normalize out to .0038 a page before we're all said and done over the next six months.

I have a few projects in mind I might try KU with (the whole 90 day release thing) only because of the nauseating ranking difference for KU vs non-KU, but it will have to be a new release I don't care about taking such a large hit in earnings as a sacrifice for better visibility on my other titles.


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## Rob Lopez (Jun 19, 2012)

As a prawn, this is good for me. I've just put out a bundle collection, which has only sold three copies, but is the most read book in KU2. Using the above figure per page, I've just made $25 this month, which is five times more than I was getting for borrows in KU1.

If I was a big seller, these stats would probably make me grumble, but sitting at the bottom of the food chain, I'm actually a little impressed. I didn't think this new system would make me better off (assuming I've done the maths right).

Happy bunny now.


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## Charnell (Mar 28, 2014)

C.S. Longhill said:


> So, let me get this straight. According to Amazon, novel writers wanted to be compensated for their longer works and that was one of the reasons for the change. Now, in KU 2.0, you need to write at least 60 000 word novels with 170 words / KENPC to earn about the same that you'd earn for a $2.99 book (assuming everyone finishes the book, which isn't even true).
> 
> Can someone explain to me how that entices the average novel writer to join KU 2.0? Let alone people who price their books higher than that and are still similar length wise.
> 
> EDIT: 170 words / KENPC


It was more so longer work writers would stop whining about short story writers making the same amount of money as them, and now all works make less.

I'm glad I pulled out of KDP Select so I don't have to worry about whether I'm going to make $XXX or $X,XXX for the month.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Congratulations, Rob! Truly! I think the KU program is fantastic for helping authors start to find their audience, and it's really awesome to hear positive stories like yours. And it's not about it being $25 or $2500, all forward progress counts!


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

scottmarlowe said:


> I've been out of KU since Jan 2015, yet this month I had 500 pages read of a book that's only 51 pages long. At least I know now what the payout will be for it, even though I still don't get where the 500 pages read came from.


Amazon's default KENPC was 500 pages, so if they didn't calculate a KENPC for you and your book was read, they said 500 pages were read. (I had this happen on a book that was read while I was updating the file.) Why they don't just count actual pages read is beyond me, but there you have it.


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

C.S. Longhill said:


> So, let me get this straight. According to Amazon, novel writers wanted to be compensated for their longer works and that was one of the reasons for the change. Now, in KU 2.0, you need to write at least 60 000 word novels with 170 words / KENPC to earn about the same that you'd earn for a $2.99 book (assuming everyone finishes the book, which isn't even true).
> 
> Can someone explain to me how that entices the average novel writer to join KU 2.0? Let alone people who price their books higher than that and are still similar length wise.
> 
> EDIT: 170 words / KENPC


My 60,000-word novels have KENPCs between 350-400 -- not 170.


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## Will C. Brown (Sep 24, 2013)

C.S. Longhill said:


> So, let me get this straight. According to Amazon, novel writers wanted to be compensated for their longer works and that was one of the reasons for the change. Now, in KU 2.0, you need to write at least 60 000 word novels with 170 KENPC to earn about the same that you'd earn for a $2.99 book (assuming everyone finishes the book, which isn't even true).


Sorta.
It seemed to me that the most vocal issue with KU1 was that authors with longer works felt that it was wrong that short 5K word shorts were getting paid the same royalty. Honestly, I think most short story writers thought it a bit unfair. My theory is that Amazon took the feedback and other internal analytics and financial info and came up with this system to address what was best for Amazon, readers, and what it thought was the best draw for writers. It's clearly been great for some writers so far.


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## 90210 (Dec 29, 2014)

Speaker-To-Animals said:


> Because that would be 50% more than you earned for that novel under KU1.


Assuming the novel is read to the end. A lot of books are never read completely through, a staggering percentage aren't...like 50+%.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> My 60,000-word novels have KENPCs between 350-400 -- not 170.


I think he meant each page is around 170 words... it's not exactly accurate, but it gets you close. So if you divided 60000 by 170, it would equal your average book's KENPC.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Will C. Brown said:


> Sorta.
> It seemed to me that the most vocal issue with KU1 was that authors with longer works felt that it was wrong that short 5K word shorts were getting paid the same royalty. Honestly, I think most short story writers thought it a bit unfair. My theory is that Amazon took the feedback and other internal analytics and financial info and came up with this system to address what was best for Amazon, readers, and what it thought was the best draw for writers. It's clearly been great for some writers so far.


Amazon does not and never has given a flying leap through a Fruit Loop about author feedback. They only care about customers. We're not customers, we supply widgets to sell. No one cares about widget suppliers.

This was done purely to stop the money gushing from the program due to the massive number of sales of shorts - erotica, romance serials, etc. People were buying dozens of those a month and forcing Amazon to pay out many multiples of their subscription fees to the authors.

If you've ever wanted to know what weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth sounds like, pay a visit to an erotica author forum this morning.


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

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Well traditionally, this will be the highest we see. Chances are good the payout will be lower next month than this month.
> 
> So on a 400 page KENPC, you're looking at a $2.32 payout for a full read, on a sexy short, $.23 (41 KENPC). My novellas are KENPC of about 180, for $1.04 (my books were in the old program until Jan/Feb and they received page reads this month, meaning they sat for 6 months on someone's account). The problem for me is I am able to sell my books at higher prices than most other genres, so taking $1.04 per read compared to the $3.22 royalty per sale, I don't see the volume making that up.
> 
> Still a pass for me, I'm afraid.


Amazon lowered the KU1 payment to make up for volume and they had the amount stabilized within a couple months. Amazon has already adjusted for the volume. There's really no need to make big adjustments since they did it last year.


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## HillOnLong (Oct 11, 2014)

Briteka said:


> I think he meant each page is around 170 words... it's not exactly accurate, but it gets you close. So if you divided 60000 by 170, it would equal your average book's KENPC.


Yup. There are a lot of variations on how many words people have for a single KENPC. Personally, I have a lot less than 170, but I have also seen people reporting way higher numbers than that.


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## horrordude1973 (Sep 20, 2014)

I actually made out ok. I did better this July than I did July 2014 under KU 1 but I also released more books this summer and a few other things. Considering I write short novellas, I think I did pretty good. My income loss was minimal if any at all.

I don't see the amount going down. I think Amazon has been looking to stabilize the payout and this is their way to do it. Dropping it further will only cause more people to pull out. With where it is at, it would be sustainable for those of us who want to stay in.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I think it's going to normalize out to .0038 a page before we're all said and done over the next six months.


I hope you're wrong, Elizabeth. If that happens, I think you'll see another mass exodus from KU, algos be da**ed. As long as it stays around a half cent, I'll be happy. Anything below that, and it isn't worth staying exclusive.


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## Will C. Brown (Sep 24, 2013)

KelliWolfe said:


> If you've ever wanted to know what weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth sounds like, pay a visit to an erotica author forum this morning.


Yeah, that's gotta be chaos this morning.


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## DanielPotter (Aug 24, 2011)

Sorry for being a newb but where is the report on the dashboard?


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

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I agree. It is very much rob Peter to pay Paul. In the old program, you had a 41 page book making $1.34 and a 400 page book making $1.34. Now, Amazon pays the 41 page book $.23, the 400 page book $2.32, and pockets the 13 cents. Doesn't sound like much, but on a massive scale, that 13 cents savings adds up. Not to even mention it takes a reader LONGER to read 400 pages vs 41 pages, so Amazon is likely saving there, too.
> 
> I am sure the overall pot is going to be bigger than what was announced, and it will be "See, Amazon paid authors MORE, you're wrong."  But we'll see. I think it's going to normalize out to .0038 a page before we're all said and done over the next six months.
> 
> I have a few projects in mind I might try KU with (the whole 90 day release thing) only because of the nauseating ranking difference for KU vs non-KU, but it will have to be a new release I don't care about taking such a large hit in earnings as a sacrifice for better visibility on my other titles.


Exactly what proof do you have that Amazon is "pocketing" extra money? That's a pretty bold accusation. No offense, but this kind of reminds me when you ran around telling everyone the announced $11 million pot was for both months -- not one -- and you were convinced you were right and kept telling people they had to listen to you because you went through all the emails and picked up on language choices that proved your point.


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

T. M. Bilderback said:


> I hope you're wrong, Elizabeth. If that happens, I think you'll see another mass exodus from KU, algos be da**ed. As long as it stays around a half cent, I'll be happy. Anything below that, and it isn't worth staying exclusive.


When was there a first exodus?


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## RyanAndrewKinder (Dec 14, 2014)

Posted this in the other thread but figured it's at home here, too.

My book is a nonfiction book of writing prompts. It is not meant to be read through in one sitting so this really stings. For July I am slated to earn $12.62 from page reads. The previous months? I averaged about $100-150 from book lends, sometimes higher.

I have an important decision to make because my kdp enrollment ends again tomorrow. Go wide or stick with it. I'm thinking the former. Amazon doesn't care about reference books with this move.


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## Gone Girl (Mar 7, 2015)

We miss you, Harvey Chute.


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## North Star Plotting (Jul 11, 2015)

Just awful. And completely expected. 

Their example of $0.10 was a pretty good joke though.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

RyanAndrewKinder said:


> My book is a nonfiction book of writing prompts. It is not meant to be read through in one sitting so this really stings. For July I am slated to earn $12.62 from page reads. The previous months? I averaged about $100-150 from book lends, sometimes higher.


Well that seems to counter the experiment that showed that someone jumping to a point later in the book got you paid for all the earlier pages too. Maybe Amazon fixed that glitch after kboards helpfully pointed it out.


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## Katherine Stark (Jul 30, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> My 60,000-word novels have KENPCs between 350-400 -- not 170.


How are you managing this? I was so frustrated to see my 55,000 novel have a measly 156 pages. It's over 200 pages in my standard manuscript format in Word, and would be 260 if I set the pages for print.


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

So, ultimately, you need about a 235 KENPC sized book, read to completion, to match the 1.35$ rate KU 1.0 ended on.

That's about a 40,000 word book, give or take depending on your formatting. Obviously more would be better, as it raises the potential income. 60,000 words nets you a 350 (or thereabouts) KENPC book worth over 2$ per full-read.

I was unhappy when the change was announced because I was absolutely optimized for the old system. I watched hundreds of books become effectively worthless overnight. The new system is very favorable to novels though. Favorable enough that I was able to switch it up, push out a handful of full length titles, and do as good or maybe even a bit better than I would have under the old system had things remained the way they were.

And you know what? I will admit I was wrong. I was upset because I liked the old system. I liked the big money I was earning and I liked the ease of publishing shorts and serials and novellas. I liked never having to push out a full blown novel. I wasn't seeing the forest for the trees.

In May, I published more than 40 original titles. I was working every single day. All those covers, all that writing, all that packaging and delivery and marketing. It was a LOT of work, even if I lied to myself and said that it wasn't. Sure, I made a lot of money, but I was burning the candle on both ends.

In July... Things were different. I published a handful of titles. There was still plenty of writing, but I wasn't scrambling every single day to push out a title or two. I could take it easier, I could focus on a FEW books instead of MANY. I could put more effort into my marketing and brand building. Perhaps more importantly, I could take some time off. With shorts and serials I felt like I had to work every single day to maintain my income. With novels... I took time off, I enjoyed myself, and I found it all significantly less stressful.

My income ended up "average" for me (a bit higher than May but pretty well average for my month-to-month, hitting around the 30k mark), but that's ok. I was successful, and imho, it was a better kind of success. Long-term, I am positive this will be a change in my methodology that will bring me greater levels of success than I ever attained with shorter work.

We'll see, I suppose.


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## Mxz (Jan 17, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> My 60,000-word novels have KENPCs between 350-400 -- not 170.


That's where they need to fix things. I have a 72,000 word novel and my KENPC is 385. (put 2 instead of 3)


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

The way that email read it did not clearly state $11 million for each month, it was ambiguous. People hoped that it was for both. But we had noooo guarantees. It's great you're a super duper #1 author read in KU2, but you too seem to ignore that Amazon also have an example of a penny a page in that email you say I was so wrong about.  

And if you go back to those old threads I was one of the first to say, before we even had a total page count for June it's easy to figure out. Amazon knows $2 a borrow was enough to keeps novels in under Select for prime members. All anyone had to do is guess what Amazon considers a "novel" length, so about 400 kenpc pages and divide $2 by that. Lo and behold 400 pages read in this new system is $2.32. Amazing.


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

Katherine Stark said:


> How are you managing this? I was so frustrated to see my 55,000 novel have a measly 156 pages. It's over 200 pages in my standard manuscript format in Word, and would be 260 if I set the pages for print.


I have more than ten of them and they all fall in that window. Are you actually looking at the KENPC on the price motions and advertising page and not the page number on the product page? They're not the same thing. Most of my page numbers are 170 or so on the product pages but much higher in the KENPC boxes.


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## TimWLong (Dec 3, 2013)

Color me thrilled. I took a gamble by leaving my books in KU and had almost half a million pages read in July. My 600 page book would have made $1.35 under the old system, now it makes $5.76, a hair more than a 70% royalty. Am I in the minority by being excited about the new payout system?


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> When was there a first exodus?


Amanda, I left KU last year because of the low payout for my novels. When KU2 was started, I came back. Many erotica authors left, and made very public announcements here that they were leaving. Of course, their spots were filled by hopeful longer writers, so the mass exodus was evened out.

But, not everyone sells thousands of titles each month, and a dip in payouts from Amazon on KU2 will make it again worthwhile for novel writers to consider going wide again. As long as the payout is no less than a half-cent per page, I'll leave my titles in. If it dips below that, I'll be quietly "un-checking" my box, and I believe others will, too.


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

Amazon isn't "pocketing" money on this deal. The change to KU merely changes the distribution of wealth. Novelists make more, serial and short writers make less, etc etc. Amazon's still paying out every penny they throw in the KU global fund. They aren't shaving a piece off of that.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that Amazon juiced the pot again to keep rates near the 0.0058$ range. I expect to see an e-mail soon that says they had to dump another million into the pot, because I'm assuming there were more pages-read in June than in May (the only month we have data from prior to this). Either way, we know Amazon is paying out the same kind of money they were in the old KU (give or take) and that ALL of that money is going to authors.

Amazon isn't "pocketing" 13 cents .


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

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> The way that email read it did not clearly state $11 million for each month, it was ambiguous. People hoped that it was for both. But we had noooo guarantees. It's great you're a super duper #1 author read in KU2, but you too seem to ignore that Amazon also have an example of a penny a page in that email you say I was so wrong about.
> 
> And if you go back to those old threads I was one of the first to say, before we even had a total page count for June it's easy to figure out. Amazon knows $2 a borrow was enough to keeps novels in under Select for prime members. All anyone had to do is guess what Amazon considers a "novel" length, so about 400 kenpc pages and divide $2 by that. Lo and behold 400 pages read in this new system is $2.32. Amazing.


The example email worked out to ten cents a page, not one. They also used easy math examples that were much higher when they launched KU1. I still need to see the proof where Amazon is pocketing more money that used to go to us under this new system.


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

Katherine Stark said:


> How are you managing this? I was so frustrated to see my 55,000 novel have a measly 156 pages. It's over 200 pages in my standard manuscript format in Word, and would be 260 if I set the pages for print.


Sorry, but you're looking in the wrong place. Amazon reports that "Body Check" has "Print Length: 156 pages," but that's not the book's KENPC.

Go to KDP, go to Bookshelf, click on "Promote and Advertise" and under "Earn royalties from the KDP Select Global Fund" you'll see something that says "Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC) v1.0."

My guess is you'll have a KENPC around 300.


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## Mxz (Jan 17, 2015)

Katherine Stark said:


> How are you managing this? I was so frustrated to see my 55,000 novel have a measly 156 pages. It's over 200 pages in my standard manuscript format in Word, and would be 260 if I set the pages for print.


I formatted mine the same way - in word (72,000 words, 385 KENPC). I wonder how we can change it to increase the KENPC count. I wonder if I take off the widows/orphans, keep paragraphs together, and hypens; put it on a smaller book template; and increase the space between the lines that will increase the KENPC. Or maybe it just needs to be web format.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Mitns said:


> I formatted mine the same way - in word (72,000 words, 385 KENPC). I wonder how we can change it to increase the KENPC count. I wonder if I take off the widows/orphans, keep paragraphs together, and hypens; put it on a smaller book template; and increase the space between the lines that will increase the KENPC. Or maybe it just needs to be web format.


I think you need to strip out line spacing settings to get the higher page count, although I'm sure someone who knows more than me will come along and clarify at some point.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Between two books that in the old program made $1.34 each, if the 41 page book now makes $.23 and the 400 page book makes $2.32, that's $2.55 added together. In the old program, they combined made $2.68. 

Sure, there are other borrows etc but it is 100% undeniable the people now making more money are doing so because other authors lost. Unless Amazon increased the pool of money considerably which you swear up and down they will not do. 

Oh and on stability? You just had a mass influx of books of an entirely different type which will attract a new type of reader. We heard here over and over again readers who said they would only join KU if more novels were present. We have no idea how much or little they read in a month. So yeah, forgive me that I do not agree with you that we now have a stable system. 

I don't want to argue but I think all of us have a right to our own observations and experiences.


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## Mxz (Jan 17, 2015)

Lydniz said:


> I think you need to strip out line spacing settings to get the higher page count, although I'm sure someone who knows more than me will come along and clarify at some point.


 Thanks!


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

I'm out, for now. I'll make something like 10-20% of what I made in KU1, writing mostly short stories. If even a handful of the borrows I got would have otherwise been sales, and/or I make a few sales outside of Amazon, I'll make more being out of KDP Select.

But no hard feelings for Amazon or anyone else. It makes perfect sense that the money I would have made before now goes to authors who held readers' attention for longer (i.e., with novels). So, congrats to those who are winning, and good luck with new strategies to those who are losing. At least now we have more than speculation to make decisions off of.


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## horrordude1973 (Sep 20, 2014)

I find it funny people are already dooming and glooming "oh this is fine but the pay out is going to just go down from here" lol    people also said those of us who write shorts are done for on this very forum.


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

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Between two books that in the old program made $1.34 each, if the 41 page book now makes $.23 and the 400 page book makes $2.32, that's $2.55 added together. In the old program, they combined made $2.68.
> 
> Sure, there are other borrows etc but it is 100% undeniable the people now making more money are doing so because other authors lost. Unless Amazon increased the pool of money considerably which you swear up and down they will not do.
> 
> ...


None of that has much to do with what I asked about Amazon pocketing money that used to go to us, as you stated. We still have one pot. The distribution has changed -- which no one denies -- but it is still one amount being divvied up to authors. You stated Amazon was pocketing money from the pot that used to go to authors. I want to know where your proof is on that. You can believe whatever you want. You stated something as a fact, though, that has no basis or proof.
I stated my belief that Amazon would top up by a few hundred thousand dollars yesterday. You said they would add four million. We're still waiting to find out. You predict they will drop payments down to .0038 in the next few months. I predict we are already in their comfort window of between .005 and .006. Those are opinions and beliefs. That still doesn't address Amazon pocketing money out of the pot, which you stated as fact.


----------



## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Nothing works for everybody, and the landscape changes all the time. I know I always say this, but all we can do is try things and do our best to adjust. We're small, we're nimble, and we CAN try things and adjust. 

KU1 wasn't good at all for me, as a good-selling Select author of novels, and who can't put out a long book a month, so I got out. KU2 is much better, so I got back in. For others, KU1 was a gold mine, and KU2 took that away, so they had to (or have to) get out. Soon there will be something new to adjust to. I guarantee it. 

I figured the payout would be right here. I figured from the start that they'd want to make a long book (350 pages) at a reasonable price ($3.99 or so) pay out about the same for a sale or a borrow, and I extrapolated from there. Because they wanted more novels back in the program. That was clear from their messaging.

As for what will happen next, and what adjustments we'll have to make--hoo nose.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> I am sure the overall pot is going to be bigger than what was announced, and it will be "See, Amazon paid authors MORE, you're wrong."  But we'll see. I think it's going to normalize out to .0038 a page before we're all said and done over the next six months.


.0038 a page sounds fair. I am going to keep the books I have in KU2 regardless of how low it drops.


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## kristenmiddleton (Jun 18, 2013)

Hey all! In the last year, I've jumped in and out of the program many different times and have found that I've always done a little better in the KU then going everywhere (with my fantasy horror especially).  I wanted to stay in the program just to see what this new payout would be and I'm fairly happy by it as well. My payout went up over 50% from the previous month and most of my stories are over 45k (I have about 23 books in the program). On the other hand, I have author friends that swear by Itunes, Google, and Barnes, so there are many days I'm on the fence about staying with it or leaving.  From my observation, I almost think that Fantasy and Horror do the best in this KU program and that if you can write a good romance, keep it in Itunes, etc...
Also, as far as the page KENPC counts, don't forget to email Amazon about starting your pages at the Prologue. I did that with all of mine and they seem to be pretty reasonable.


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## markobeezy (Jan 30, 2012)

KENP is cool because I get to see the needle move every damn day...Otherwise it probably won't be my retirement plan.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2015)

What a JOKE this rate is.

I am probably going to be taking my 14 books out of KDP select ASAP!


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

C.S. Longhill said:


> So, let me get this straight. According to Amazon, novel writers wanted to be compensated for their longer works and that was one of the reasons for the change. Now, in KU 2.0, you need to write at least 60 000 word novels with 170 words / KENPC to earn about the same that you'd earn for a $2.99 book (assuming everyone finishes the book, which isn't even true).
> 
> Can someone explain to me how that entices the average novel writer to join KU 2.0? Let alone people who price their books higher than that and are still similar length wise.
> 
> EDIT: 170 words / KENPC


My 622 KENPC book earned me $3.61 for pages read. It sells for $2.99 so it is working for me


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

Just got the e-mail from Amazon. They went to $11,500,000 in the global fund. A modestly small increase. 

It means total pages-read were just shy of 2 billion for July.


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## Katherine Stark (Jul 30, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I have more than ten of them and they all fall in that window. Are you actually looking at the KENPC on the price motions and advertising page and not the page number on the product page? They're not the same thing. Most of my page numbers are 170 or so on the product pages but much higher in the KENPC boxes.


Ah-ha! Thanks, I was looking at the product page. Found the KENPC and it's showing 330. That's much better.


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

bobfrost said:


> Just got the e-mail from Amazon. They went to $11,500,000 in the global fund. A modestly small increase.
> 
> It means total pages-read were just shy of 2 billion for July.


I think they added on $300,000 in June, right? That seems to fit with the amount of new readers coming in and signify that Amazon wants to keep it close to this range.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Pocketing $0.13? Where on earth do you come up with this stuff?

There is a pool, that money is paid out. It's distributed differently than it was that's all.

I'm also in the camp that thinks we've hit "normal". It took them a while to figure out where how to adjust the pot to get the payout per they wanted. They know what that is. I think future payouts will be pretty much in line with today's announced rate.

Beware of people who overstate either side of the issue (the super-pimps and the fear-mongerers). There's enough actual fact for people to make educated decisions without the hyperbole.


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## Indiecognito (May 19, 2014)

Sam Rivers said:


> .0038 a page sounds fair. I am going to keep the books I have in KU2 regardless of how low it drops.


For the record and for the Amazonians who read here to see what authors will tolerate (insert waving emoticon here): .0038 a page doesn't sound nice* at all* to me. If it drops that much it'll be run away time for more than just short writers.


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## Will C. Brown (Sep 24, 2013)

Monique said:


> Beware of people who overstate either side of the issue (the super-pimps and the fear-mongerers). There's enough actual fact for people to make educated decisions without the hyperbole.


Truth.


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## Jerry Patterson (Nov 20, 2013)

Sam Rivers said:


> .0038 a page sounds fair. I am going to keep the books I have in KU2 regardless of how low it drops.


Regardless how low KU2 drops? Really? Amazon is in love with you. I'm waiting for the post that says, ".0000000001 sounds fair to me."


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think they added on $300,000 in June, right? That seems to fit with the amount of new readers coming in and signify that Amazon wants to keep it close to this range.


Yeah, they bumped by half a million this time. That falls into line pretty well with recent increases.

It also seems to show that KU is leveling off and growth is slowing down. There were past months where millions had to be added and the money kept falling. In this instance, half a million keeps things pretty steady with the only other data we know (May pages-read). So, we've had 2 months since May, or roughly 250,000$ worth of increase both months to keep the page-rate more or less similar to what it would have been at 11,000,000 in may.

I'm sure the holiday season will pick things up though, and at least my worst fears aren't realized (I was worried KU might actually be in decline over the last month or two).


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

I see they're introducing bonuses for illustrated kids' books. That's something, at least.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Historically the payout always drops over the first six months. Anyway, happy for those KU2 is working for, sympathy for those it doesn't.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

Forgive me for raising once more the point that in KU2 Amazon has the perfect tool when it comes to satisfying monthly subscribers, and authors skilled at keeping those subscribers turning pages. Authors who feel KU2 no longer benefits them will be those whose books were not long enough, their series not big enough or their storytelling skills insufficiently honed. They will voluntarily,if unhappily, leave KU2.

Novelists whose skills meet the tastes of KU2 subscribers will stay in/join the programme. By the end of the year Amazon should be left with a KU2 full of authors whose stories are highly valued by KU2 subscribers, who will tell their friends, who will subscribe to KU. Authors will be rewarded with payments which are very close to a sale royalty.

In short, Amazon, in only the second iteration of their subscriber offer, have effectively killed off current and future rivals, attracted the most skilful authors for their target market and should see that market do nothing but grow. The perfect business model.


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## Mip7 (Mar 3, 2013)

When I first published my last 85,000 word novel Amazon gave it an estimated length (by Kindle page turns) of 275 pages

When the Createspace version got linked (8x5, Georgia 9.5 text, wide margins, multi-spaced by 1.15 which is single spacing in effect) it changed to the print page count of 370

But my KENPC count I now see is 539? (Thanks _Evan of the R_!)

How does this make any sense?

But as a novel writer I'm happy. On KU1 I was making maybe $700 per month and I'm currently averaging 20,000 page reads per day. I can certainly understand how novelette writers (and those gaming the system) would be unhappy, but from my perspective justice is finally being served. Well, maybe over-served if my 370 page book is counted as a 539 page book.

Might be time to write an epic fantasy series! Of course, by the time it's done everything may flip flop again....


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Yeah wouldn't be so sure Amazon has killed off anyone.  we've been hearing since 2011 bn was dead. It's not. Apple just started bringing their a game by making iBooks the default reader on their os and many are seeing gains there. I am slowly but surely building a second Amazon in terms of earnings with my other venues added together. By the time I have 50 titles to my name, I don't want any vendor the majority of my earnings. 5 year plan.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Jamie Warren said:


> Regardless how low KU2 drops? Really? Amazon is in love with you. I'm waiting for the post that says, ".0000000001 sounds fair to me."


There is a grand tradition of self published authors knowingly undervaluing their work in order to help Amazon. It's a very strange but real trend, and you better believe Amazon took these people into consideration when they moved into this new model.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

I have two books in KU and as I mentioned in another thread how you FORMAT your book will change your KENCP. That means a person who writes a 55k book might have a KENCP of 300 and another person who formats their book differently but still has 55k words for the readers to read gets a KENCP of 450 or 500 i.e. its the exact same length, but they are PAID DIFFERING AMOUNTS even though this is all supposed to be on length, right?  

I reformatted my book and jumped up 50 pages.  There were NO MORE WORDS ADDED and the reader will STILL be getting the same amount to read yet I would have been paid LESS if I hadn't reformatted and I know that I'm still at the low end of the scale for what KENCP I should be getting. 

We've got to remember that this isn't "fair" at all.  It's absurd actually.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Yeah wouldn't be so sure Amazon has killed off anyone.  we've been hearing since 2011 bn was dead. It's not. Apple just started bringing their a game by making iBooks the default reader on their os and many are seeing gains there. I am slowly but surely building a second Amazon in terms of earnings with my other venues added together. By the time I have 50 titles to my name, I don't want any vendor the majority of my earnings. 5 year plan.


I hope you and others who believe that Apple is stepping up their game are correct. Because I do believe that B&N is dying (not dead, I still sell there) and Kobo and Google Books still are not showing enough life and innovation to challenge Amazon (although Kobo tries with promos, etc).

To me, Apple is a player who could make things interesting. Still have yet to see any hard data that they are making inroads, but I am hopeful.


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## Katherine Stark (Jul 30, 2015)

X. Aratare said:


> I reformatted my book and jumped up 50 pages. There were NO MORE WORDS ADDED and the reader will STILL be getting the same amount to read yet I would have been paid LESS if I hadn't reformatted and I know that I'm still at the low end of the scale for what KENCP I should be getting.


Would you mind sharing what exactly you changed in the formatting? Are you doing it in Word, Calibre, editing the raw data, the .mobi?


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Yeah wouldn't be so sure Amazon has killed off anyone.  we've been hearing since 2011 bn was dead. It's not. Apple just started bringing their a game by making iBooks the default reader on their os and many are seeing gains there. I am slowly but surely building a second Amazon in terms of earnings with my other venues added together. By the time I have 50 titles to my name, I don't want any vendor the majority of my earnings. 5 year plan.


Killed off subscription-based competitors: I should have been clearer


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

KU 2.0 has accomplished a lot of things:

1. Greatly slowed down the rate that books will be released into the market. (Far less novellas and short stories)

2. Made KU essentially for long fiction authors. (non fiction and childrens... 90% of those books no longer are worthwhile in KU)

3. Destroyed the profitability of erotica

4. Pumped every bit of the money that people lost into any books that are longer than 250 KENPC



It's gonna be harder to enter the writing game now, and while I think some long authors with a few books and not a big following are excited now, I doubt they will be for long. Erotic and "Working Writers" are simply going to change directions. You guys think they were gaming the system, but really they were just busting their ass. You'll all be competing against their longer novels in every genre now. Most people's average page reads per book will go down in time because there will be far more longer books hitting the market by the workhorses. Everyone is going to have to work harder, write more and release more books to sustain their income. Mark my words.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Katherine Stark said:


> Would you mind sharing what exactly you changed in the formatting? Are you doing it in Word, Calibre, editing the raw data, the .mobi?


I don't do my own formatting. I have someone do it so I can't answer your question on this. However, I did tell him what Edward Talbot said worked for him, which was I believe to eliminate line spacing(?). Anyways, literally your formatting can increase (and decrease) your KENCP. I think because Amazon decided to do this hokey black box thing instead of oh, I don't know, word count, we all need to be keenly aware of this.

Look it would be one thing if Amazon truly were paying based on length, but why in God's name should one author be making $2 a book while another author of the same size book is only making a $1.40? And btw, Amazon's help desk people will claim there's not a problem despite being shown again and again its true. So, honestly, I don't trust this new KU at all because its unfair on its face among people in the program.

EDIT: Also, Katherine, no one knows for sure what kind of formatting works the best yet (well maybe someone has figured it out) but Amazon won't even acknowledge that formatting does the trick. If I find out anything more I'll let people know.


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## horrordude1973 (Sep 20, 2014)

AuthorX said:


> KU 2.0 has accomplished a lot of things:
> 
> 1. Greatly slowed down the rate that books will be released into the market. (Far less novellas and short stories)
> 
> ...


I write horror novellas and saw very little if any drop in income. I release a new novella a month. Everyone keeps ringing the death knell for me but I'm still here and doing just fine. Not sure what all this hate is for short book writers. And yes I do bust my ass and am always releasing new stuff.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Maximizing KENPC:

Single spacing. You get PENALIZED if you do double or even 1.5 spacing. Yes, that adds physical pages, but it lowers your KENPC.

Add a 1em paragraph margin BEFORE each paragraph. For some reason this doesn't seem to work with full or post-paragraph margins. 

Add more chapters. Each chapter break = an additional page.

For long books, this can add a TON of pages.


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## miahart (Jul 12, 2015)

I hate line spacing anyway. It looks ugly and unprofessional to me. Like a book is laid out in bullet form. It`s a surprise actually, I thought adding extra "dead-space" would bump up the page count.


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## horrordude1973 (Sep 20, 2014)

miahart said:


> I hate line spacing anyway. It looks ugly and unprofessional to me. Like a book is laid out in bullet form. It`s a surprise actually, I thought adding extra "dead-space" would bump up the page count.


Thats odd. I usualy double space mine. It always looked cleaner and less bunched up to me.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

thesmallprint said:


> Forgive me for raising once more the point that in KU2 Amazon has the perfect tool when it comes to satisfying monthly subscribers, and authors skilled at keeping those subscribers turning pages. Authors who feel KU2 no longer benefits them will be those whose books were not long enough, their series not big enough or their storytelling skills insufficiently honed. They will voluntarily,if unhappily, leave KU2.
> 
> Novelists whose skills meet the tastes of KU2 subscribers will stay in/join the programme. By the end of the year Amazon should be left with a KU2 full of authors whose stories are highly valued by KU2 subscribers, who will tell their friends, who will subscribe to KU. Authors will be rewarded with payments which are very close to a sale royalty.
> 
> In short, Amazon, in only the second iteration of their subscriber offer, have effectively killed off current and future rivals, attracted the most skilful authors for their target market and should see that market do nothing but grow. The perfect business model.


This is an odd post that assumes "KU subscribers" prefer really long works. That's just a random assumption you've made.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2015)

Briteka said:


> Amazon doesn't care what novel writers want. That's just spin. Amazon ran some numbers and decided this method would either be more profitable for them (least likely) or gain them more exclusivity (more likely). If their bets turn out to be wrong, look for a revert back to the old way with some more spin like, "The old way is more fair for all involved as it keeps short story writers happy".


THIS. I'm with Amazon for the convenience, and I will remain with Amazon for the convenience. That's *my* choice.

However, even though I'm an optimist, I'm also a realist. Amazon will do whatever the f*ck Amazon wants to do, and frankly, I knew that going in.

I don't trust Amazon, but then again, I don't trust any of them. That said, I've chosen to be a self-published author, and I can either deal with the way it is OR I can sell my books off my website and/or out of the trunk of my car. Period.


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## miahart (Jul 12, 2015)

horrordude1973 said:


> Thats odd. I usualy double space mine. It always looked cleaner and less bunched up to me.


It`s not odd. It`s a matter of taste.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

jakedfw said:


> Maximizing KENPC:
> 
> Single spacing. You get PENALIZED if you do double or even 1.5 spacing. Yes, that adds physical pages, but it lowers your KENPC.
> 
> ...


I've passed that along to my formatter. I must start a thread for ideas on formatting here, because this is just crazy and people shouldn't be penalized because they don't know the formatting tricks.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

gorvnice said:


> To me, Apple is a player who could make things interesting. Still have yet to see any hard data that they are making inroads, but I am hopeful.


Apple is claiming a substantial increase in iBooks downloads to mobiles since the launch of the larger format iPhones. On the presumption that this is not just a transference of those who previously downloaded on iPads that would suggest that Apple is starting to get better at persuading its millions of iPhone users to take a look at iBooks.

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/the-rise-of-phone-reading-1439398395-lMyQjAxMTI1NjE4MzExNzMyWj


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

KU borrows will work out just fine for me.

For a full read of my novel _HUNTER_, at 668 normalized pages, I now get $3.86.

For _BAD DEEDS_, at 756 normalized pages, I get $4.37.

That sure as heck beats the $1.35 I was getting for each borrow that had to be read 10%. Now, I get compensated on pages read even below that 10%.

KU is definitely a better deal now for long-form fiction authors. For short-form fiction authors, your mileage will vary.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Briteka said:


> This is an odd post that assumes "KU subscribers" prefer really long works. That's just a random assumption you've made.


Amazon is tailoring the content to incentivize the kind of subscribers they want while eliminating the content of choice for the type of subscribers they don't want. Thus they end up with a subscriber base who prefer longer works.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

I am meh about this payout. I figured it would be close to $0.0056 and given that I have no idea what my KENPC is because I'm not in KU and can't know, there is no reason for me to risk going all in.Plus, I am doing better wide than I ever did exclusive, thanks to two Bookbub promos and putting the first book in my 4 series permafree.

My thinking is that, long term, I want to cultivate an audience on iBooks and Kobo who are willing to pay $4.99 a pop for my books and $9.99 a pop for my boxed sets. I see those retailers as having legs enough to compete with Amazon long term. I don't want to cultivate a group of readers who want to read 10 novels a month but only want to pay for one. That seems like a slit-your-own-throat strategy, even if it makes great money for some in the short term. That may be amazing for Amazon, because they know those readers buy lots of other stuff in the Amazon store, and it may be amazing for the most voracious readers long term, because they get to read $100 worth of books for $9.99, but I don't think it is good for authors in the long term, despite the few mega-bestsellers.

My background before I became a full-time author was in systems planning -- emergency planning. I looked at risks and vulnerabilities in the health system to large disasters and small disruptions. My tendency is to look system-wide for the big picture and in my thinking, I'm still trying to figure out Amazon's game with KU. 

Amazon has so much Big Data that it understands the system in a way that no one has ever understood it before. That's scary, only because knowledge is power and Amazon does not share its knowledge obtained through Big Data. 

It seems to me that Amazon has assessed the book business as having two realities: books read by voracious readers and books read by the average reader. The average reader is willing to pay more for a book because they read fewer. Trade books in B&M bookstores and sold online are still going to be a big deal for these readers. They tend to be willing to pay a higher price. The voracious reader LOVES eBooks and eReaders and subscription services - AND indie authors, who offer books for sale at a much reduced price vs. legacy published books. Before subscription services, they read a lot and would read even more, but the price of legacy print and eBooks was high enough to be a disincentive. Subscription services are a way to feed those readers. For Amazon, KU is a way to draw those readers into the Amazon store. They would have spent 10x more on books before. Now that they pay only $9.99 a month, they can spend that excess cash on toasters and wrenches. Cha-ching! 

Remember what big daddy Mr. Bezos said of suppliers: "Your margin is my opportunity." The crazy thing is that indie authors win either way. Our books are cheaper because we have lower or no overhead, and so we can still make a decent living selling books at half or a quarter of what legacy publishers charge.

Guess who has the big margin? Indie authors. We are Jeff's opportunity...

I saw an indie book that is 450 pages long priced at $2.99 that would net that author $2.093 for a sale. A comparable legacy published book would be at least $9.99. If the KENPC was nearly 600, the author might make MORE in KU than on a sale... 

I can see how KU 2.0 will be a game changer for some longer-form authors or serial authors with huge output and high read through.


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## AisFor (Jul 24, 2014)

Sorry if I've missed something in the thread, but Amazon may still add more money to the pot, yes?


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> Amazon is tailoring the content to incentivize the kind of subscribers they want while eliminating the content of choice for the type of subscribers they don't want. Thus they end up with a subscriber base who prefer longer works.


Or Amazon is doing no such thing and is simply attempting to grab the most exclusivity possible.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Ariana said:


> Sorry if I've missed something in the thread, but Amazon may still add more money to the pot, yes?


They already did it. They added half a million to it.


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## Sophrosyne (Mar 27, 2011)

Wow, this sucked for me. So, 1/2 a penny per page. So not worth it. I make half of what my sales royalties are on 330 page books.

To get the same royalty on a borrowed book, you need to write books 600 pages and above. 

Once my contract ends with Select, I think I'll probably pull all my books out.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

Sela said:


> I am meh about this payout. I figured it would be close to $0.0056 and given that I have no idea what my KENPC is because I'm not in KU and can't know, there is no reason for me to risk going all in.Plus, I am doing better wide than I ever did exclusive, thanks to two Bookbub promos and putting the first book in my 4 series permafree.
> 
> My thinking is that, long term, I want to cultivate an audience on iBooks and Kobo who are willing to pay $4.99 a pop for my books and $9.99 a pop for my boxed sets. I see those retailers as having legs enough to compete with Amazon long term. I don't want to cultivate a group of readers who want to read 10 novels a month but only want to pay for one. That seems like a slit-your-own-throat strategy, even if it makes great money for some in the short term. That may be amazing for Amazon, because they know those readers buy lots of other stuff in the Amazon store, and it may be amazing for the most voracious readers long term, because they get to read $100 worth of books for $9.99, but I don't think it is good for authors in the long term, despite the few mega-bestsellers.
> 
> ...


I think this is a very smart analysis.

Long-term, what kind of reader do you want as your core audience?

Just like TV shows try and court different demographics, everyone wants to have those who have extra money to spend as part of their audience. Because discount buyers will drop you first thing if they decide to tighten their purse strings or if you raise prices.

Whereas those with disposable income are much more likely to be happy to pay for their entertainment.


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## Rob Lopez (Jun 19, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Congratulations, Rob! Truly! I think the KU program is fantastic for helping authors start to find their audience, and it's really awesome to hear positive stories like yours. And it's not about it being $25 or $2500, all forward progress counts!


Thanks Elizabeth. Something had to go right this month.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Monique said:


> They already did it. They added half a million to it.


Amanda had to get paid.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## S.G. Dean (Jan 25, 2014)

Jamie Warren said:


> Regardless how low KU2 drops? Really? Amazon is in love with you. I'm waiting for the post that says, ".0000000001 sounds fair to me."


LOL! 

Personally, as both a prawn and a long novel writer, these last two months in KU has been my best ones so far. While I'm not enthused by earning half a cent per page, having a 977 KENPC novel has more than made up for it. That being said, if the per page price drops too far I'll be out of KU and going wide again faster than anyone at Amazon can blink.

IMHO, you've got to set standards for yourself, regardless of what kind of writer you are (long fiction, short fiction, mixed, etc.) otherwise, you give Amazon and any other vendor the right to bully you and rob you blind. As an author, only you can decide where you draw the line, but you should draw one for your own sake. If you don't you'll only have yourself to blame when you crash and burn.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

RyanAndrewKinder said:


> Posted this in the other thread but figured it's at home here, too.
> 
> My book is a nonfiction book of writing prompts. It is not meant to be read through in one sitting so this really stings. For July I am slated to earn $12.62 from page reads. The previous months? I averaged about $100-150 from book lends, sometimes higher.
> 
> I have an important decision to make because my kdp enrollment ends again tomorrow. Go wide or stick with it. I'm thinking the former. Amazon doesn't care about reference books with this move.


I'm in the same boat with you, Ryan. My nonfiction is shorter and the current payout is nowhere near the value of the information. My saving grace, so far, is that my books don't get borrowed nearly as much as they sell, so there is not as much impact on the bottom line. If that should change in the future, and my books start getting borrowed a lot, I may have to pull out and go wide.

Best of success whatever you decide. I know it's a tough decision.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

Mercia McMahon said:


> Apple is claiming a substantial increase in iBooks downloads to mobiles since the launch of the larger format iPhones. On the presumption that this is not just a transference of those who previously downloaded on iPads that would suggest that Apple is starting to get better at persuading its millions of iPhone users to take a look at iBooks.
> 
> http://www.wsj.com/article_email/the-rise-of-phone-reading-1439398395-lMyQjAxMTI1NjE4MzExNzMyWj


I can testify that Apple is a major player, although I'm only one writer. But, yeah, I've done very well there, and this month has been, by far, my best month yet there.


----------



## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

gorvnice said:


> I think this is a very smart analysis.
> 
> Long-term, what kind of reader do you want as your core audience?
> 
> ...


I edited my original post because I realize that for some authors, the KENPC is such that the payout under KU 2.0 will equal or even be _better_ than the payout they receive for a sale.

We could get into a whole discussion about price and value and where the book industry is going, but that's for another thread...


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## writerbee (May 10, 2013)

X. Aratare said:


> I've passed that along to my formatter. I must start a thread for ideas on formatting here, because this is just crazy and people shouldn't be penalized because they don't know the formatting tricks.


That would be fantastic! I do all my own formatting b/c I can't afford (yet) to farm it out, and I've been seeing stuff about how formatting can make a difference in KENP, and wondering what to do. I already use single-space but did not know about the 1em-para margin. (Actually, I don't know what a 1 em para margin is...;-p)

DMac


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

With two 100K word novels at near 700 KENPC, KU2 is obviously good for me. My sales and borrows are still very low - 10,000KENPC for July. But that more than doubles my borrow income from June. I can't attribute it all to KU2 but I suspect at least some of it is.

My shorter works are now all out of KS and will probably remain out of KS. Two of those are series books (one 35K and one 50K) words and I'll be releasing a third one in the 75K range later this year. That one I might make more on in the short term with KU but I am going to leave the series out and use it as the opportunity to go wide.

I like the idea of having a couple longer books in and then the other books out. That could change in the future.


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## IntoTheCloset (Feb 22, 2015)

Two reads of my short story equals 8 cents in the bank, not bad.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Thank you Phoenix for posting the graph. You've left off everything from November 2014 to now where it's been flat. So yeah, I still say the borrow rate drops until the amount of titles in alarms Amazon and then they goose the pool so everyone jumps back in. If you don't see a cycle there, I can't help you. 

Amazon knows what percentage stays in and gets out at each tier. I can predict whatever I want and I think we will see lows of $1.50 - $1.60 for a 400 page kenpc before things "stabilize" because there was already a ton of authors willing to take $1.34 for their novels.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Amazon knows what percentage stays in and gets out at each tier. I can predict whatever I want and I think we will see lows of $1.50 - $1.60 for a 400 page kenpc before things "stabilize" because there was already a ton of authors willing to take $1.34 for their novels.


Or authors who were willing to take 1.34 for the time being and trust Amazon to fix the piranha-fest that was KU1


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

Sophrosyne said:


> Wow, this sucked for me. So, 1/2 a penny per page. So not worth it. I make half of what my sales royalties are on 330 page books.
> 
> To get the same royalty on a borrowed book, you need to write books 600 pages and above.
> 
> Once my contract ends with Select, I think I'll probably pull all my books out.


Under the old payout, you were getting 1.30-ish per borrow, and you stayed in Select. Under the new payout, you're getting 1.65. So you're pulling out of Select why?

Edited to clarify: I'm not saying don't pull out, if that's what you want and you have a strategy. But from the info in your post, it sounds like you're doing bad math, and I'd hate to see you make the leap based on that.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

KelliWolfe said:


> Amanda had to get paid.


+1, LOL!


----------



## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Briteka said:


> There is a grand tradition of self published authors knowingly undervaluing their work in order to help Amazon. It's a very strange but real trend, and you better believe Amazon took these people into consideration when they moved into this new model.


A grand tradition? Seriously? I do not know a single author who has said, "Hey, I want to do something nice for Amazon, so I am going to undervalue my work to give them a boost." I don't know where you are seeing this "very real trend."


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## danpadavona (Sep 25, 2014)

In June, KU worked out to 41.7% of my total royalties.
With KU2 in July, KU increased to 50.9% of total royalties. 

I'm satisfied with those results, though June was influenced by a successful countdown sale, skewing my royalties toward paid sales. Overall, I think it's a wash for me. (I write novels mainly).


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

UnderCovers said:


> If your book isn't being borrowed, why aren't you wide already? The only reason to stay in would be the increased ranking you get from "borrows". If you're not getting that ranking boost, why not get your book out there to other retailers?


No, actually, borrows are not the only reason to be in Select. Select offers other marketing tools that I use to achieve my sales. The free days and countdown deals are attractive to me and have worked to my advantage. That said, if my borrows start to outweigh my sales and start to heavily impact my income in a negative way, that would certainly change things.



UnderCovers said:


> KU is not the only way to sell books. We've just been brainwashed into thinking it is... And now it's time to wake up.


Well, technically, KU isn't the way to sell _any_ books, because KU is a lending program. Select, on the other hand, is _one_ option for selling books. I work in the marketing industry. It's my day job, and I have been in marketing in one capacity or another for around thirty years, give or take a few. I'm well aware of the many avenues available, and made an educated decision to go with Select. I can assure you, I have not been brainwashed, but I do appreciate your concern.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

vlmain said:


> A grand tradition? Seriously? I do not know a single author who has said, "Hey, I want to do something nice for Amazon, so I am going to undervalue my work to give them a boost." I don't know where you are seeing this "very real trend."


I doubt authors are setting prices to "help" Amazon, but instead to take advantage of Amazon's reach in terms of being a bookseller. We are lucky that we have low overhead and get a bigger chunk of the price of the book, so we can make a living off fewer sales than a trad pub author whose books sell at a higher price. This price advantage makes indie authors attractive. It also gives us a wider margin and as Jeff has said, it's that margin that makes us attractive to retailers. It's also that margin that will be contested and the arena on which we will battle...

For me, the best strategy in the long term is to cultivate an audience who is willing to pay the price you set for your books that gives you the return you are expecting. My books have been priced at the top of the indie tier since I started and I am doing very well with that pricing strategy. My readers are willing to pay that amount and I am doing what I can to increase my audience and expand it. I could probably make short-term bank in KU based on my series read through percentages, but I would be risking the audiences I have built on other sales platforms. Not worth it in the long run. Instead, I want to build a personal Bookbub -- a mailing list with the names and emails of people who want to buy my books when I have a new release. That to me is the smartest strategy. Apple isn't going anywhere and is eyeing the book market with increasing interest so I see that they will be the platform to directly compete with Amazon.

Competition in the market is a good thing for everyone.

I'm talking big picture here, and meta, however, I understand that in the short term, KU and exclusivity to Amazon is working for a large number of authors. It worked for me for the first 2 years of my career and made my career so I would never discourage new authors from trying KU. It has great visibility tools and voracious readers. In the end over the long term of an author's career, I think going wide and building that mailing list is the best long-term strategy.

But if KU 2.0 works for you, I say make hay while the sun shines!

If indies have any advantage, it is that we determine our own ship's destiny, in as much as we control the oar and sail. We don't control the ocean or the wind, though, but at least we can respond quickly


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Sela, you have to be one of the most rational people here. I wish you'd post more.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Of course you can predict what you want. But _historical_ payout data isn't subject to opinion. Obviously, I grabbed a graph I could find quickly done by someone else that included the 6 months after KU1 launched. But to be thorough:
> 
> $1.33 - Oct
> $1.39 - Nov
> ...


Great data. I think what some people fail to remember is that the first few months of KU1 were marked with explosive volume the program never saw before. The per borrow average HAD to drop to the new level to adjust for volume. They've already adjusted for that volume this go around. I agree there will be tweaks, but I think this is pretty close to the level Amazon wants to pay.
The $500,000 top off (not $4 million) seems to suggest that page reads are somewhat stabilized along with subscriptions. Each month should cause the pot to increase, although I doubt we are going to see multi-million jumps from month to month barring some big change.


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## Katherine Stark (Jul 30, 2015)

jakedfw said:


> Maximizing KENPC:
> 
> Single spacing. You get PENALIZED if you do double or even 1.5 spacing. Yes, that adds physical pages, but it lowers your KENPC.
> 
> ...


Thanks for this. I always double-space and had no idea it was penalized. That's bonkers.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

My $0.02.  So far this has been a valid experiment for me.

I pulled back from wide around July 10 to give KDP Select a chance, as the majority of my books are 80K+ novels.  July was looking soft for me in the other markets so I figured it would be a decent time to conduct a 3 month trial and see what's what.

Based off of historical data and my current trend, I calculated what I needed to make to consider this a pass/fail, i.e. a break even number.  I then prorated that for the days of July I missed being in Select.  Now, I will preface the rest by saying that traditionally Amazon has been the vast majority of my sales - typically 80% or greater.  So we're talking decent cash here, but not princely sums. 

That being said, from my first 20 days in Select, KU (alone) made me over three times the amount I had set for my full month break even.  This month is currently trending higher if we assume a similar payout (especially since I'm not missing a third of it .  

I can't say whether this would be good or bad compared to KU1. I was never in it.  I also know that I consider long term to be wide distribution.  For the short term, however, this definitely has my attention.


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## Randall Wood (Mar 31, 2014)

Monique said:


> There's enough actual fact for people to make educated decisions without the hyperbole.


This will be like setting fire to my own pants while typing this and drinking Everclear, but I totally disagree with Monique. 

Nobody knows anything. I see a lot of arguing over numbers that everyone is pulling out of their...head. I fail to see any actual facts, just a few educated guesses and some wild algebra.

Whats that you say? Amazon added money to the mythical pot to equal the exact figure everyone on this board agreed would be the fair/unfair payout!?!

I'm shocked.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Cassie Leigh said:


> Amazon's default KENPC was 500 pages, so if they didn't calculate a KENPC for you and your book was read, they said 500 pages were read. (I had this happen on a book that was read while I was updating the file.) Why they don't just count actual pages read is beyond me, but there you have it.


Because with a magic bullcrap number instead of actual pages, they can 'adjust' that number later to increase their profits.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Randall Wood said:


> This will be like setting fire to my own pants while typing this and drinking Everclear, but I totally disagree with Monique.
> 
> Nobody knows anything. I see a lot of arguing over numbers that everyone is pulling out of their...head. I fail to see any actual facts, just a few educated guesses and some wild algebra.
> 
> ...


You just won in my book.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

My book sells for $4.99. In KU, I made $2.30 instead of $3.49 (70%). Nope, KU is not for me. I wouldn't sell enough to make it into the bonus category which is where I'd have to be to make money, so I'm out when my time is up. I would have to sell below $3.99 to break even and $2.00 to make a profit. 

Not willing to drop the value of my work. I sell better at $4.99 than I ever did at $2.99.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Randall Wood said:


> This will be like setting fire to my own pants while typing this and drinking Everclear, but I totally disagree with Monique.
> 
> Nobody knows anything. I see a lot of arguing over numbers that everyone is pulling out of their...head. I fail to see any actual facts, just a few educated guesses and some wild algebra.
> 
> ...


LOL

Lots of people know lots of things.  Some less than they think they do and some more. 

My post was directed at those who fear-monger (for their own benefit) or the opposite. We have a lot of evidence for how the payout is going to behave. Of course, we can't read Amazon's mind and their super-sekrit objectives might shift and we'd never know.

We have decent sense of what a page-read will pay. It does require some guesstimating on an individual basis to decide if in or out is best for that person.

I will agree that there are plenty of people pulling numbers (and wild hypothesis) out of their ... heads. A few have suggested some pretty wild things, those are the ones I'm telling people to ignore.

No one knows what tomorrow will bring, but we do know what yesterday brought. Do your best to plan accordingly.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> You just won in my book.


Oh, you!


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## Dom (Mar 15, 2014)

Sela said:


> I saw an indie book that is 450 pages long priced at $2.99 that would net that author $2.093 for a sale. A comparable legacy published book would be at least $9.99.


But would net the author less, right?

With your talk of high indie margins, it sounds like you just made a case for KU to me.


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## Katherine Stark (Jul 30, 2015)

Domino Finn said:


> But would net the author less, right?
> 
> With your talk of high indie margins, it sounds like you just made a case for KU to me.


Industry-wide standard for royalties on e-books is 25%, yes. So a traditionally published author earns $2.49 off of a $9.99 e-book.

Royalties on print books are often much lower. :/


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## S.G. Dean (Jan 25, 2014)

thesmallprint said:


> Forgive me for raising once more the point that in KU2 Amazon has the perfect tool when it comes to satisfying monthly subscribers, and authors skilled at keeping those subscribers turning pages. Authors who feel KU2 no longer benefits them will be those whose books were not long enough, their series not big enough or their storytelling skills insufficiently honed. They will voluntarily,if unhappily, leave KU2.
> 
> Novelists whose skills meet the tastes of KU2 subscribers will stay in/join the programme. By the end of the year Amazon should be left with a KU2 full of authors whose stories are highly valued by KU2 subscribers, who will tell their friends, who will subscribe to KU. Authors will be rewarded with payments which are very close to a sale royalty.
> 
> In short, Amazon, in only the second iteration of their subscriber offer, have effectively killed off current and future rivals, attracted the most skilful authors for their target market and should see that market do nothing but grow. The perfect business model.


In that light, their current bussiness model is fiendishly brillant. Pure Amazon. If Amazon were a Villain it would be the AllFather from Brides of the Kindred or maybe the Emperor from Star Wars. I can't decide which.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Sela said:


> If indies have any advantage, it is that we determine our own ship's destiny, in as much as we control the oar and sail. We don't control the ocean or the wind, though, but at least we can respond quickly


Absolutely. Excellent post.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

Nope. Not happening with me, thank you, except to keep my m/m romance reading for the time being while I work on full-length m/m romance novels, which will go wide. I hate to even put the m/m serialized ones in there but I need to keep those readers reading me. Temporary loss, but easy to write quickly and then work on bigger novels wide, while working on Caddy Rowland novels that always were wide. 
Already unpublished the first serialized m/m romance and will make it a 3 book full length trilogy, the 2nd serialized is still in with the last two...once they expire all will go wide, along with the boxed set. I'm doing nothing to promote it now because onlyl 2 episodes are in KU (haven't expired and I haven't bothered to cancel them) Hmm...come to think of it I WILL Cancel them if the boxed set is ready before they expire. I will put in a new m/m serialized, because as I said I need to keep those readers interested.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

vlmain said:


> A grand tradition? Seriously? I do not know a single author who has said, "Hey, I want to do something nice for Amazon, so I am going to undervalue my work to give them a boost." I don't know where you are seeing this "very real trend."


The day Amazon announced KU2, the top selling short story author on Amazon did a massive tour, including stops on KB, and claimed this exact thing.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Briteka said:


> The day Amazon announced KU2, the top selling short story author on Amazon did a massive tour, including stops on KB, and claimed this exact thing.


Just because someone who sells a lot of stories says something, doesn't make it accurate.

Indie writers and publishers started lowering their prices because we realized we can afford to and we can attract more sales. Higher royalties, more sales, more money. Does it benefit Amazon to have more titles at affordable prices? Absolutely. But the decision to lower prices, in my opinion, is more self-serving. It benefits _us_ to do it. I don't know anyone who would sacrifice income to benefit Amazon. We do it because when Amazon succeeds, we make more money.

Edited after syncing brain with fingers


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Out of 7M books borrowed, of the 1M or so that have been All-Stars, the majority have consistently been longer-form works. I think it's fairly safe to extrapolate a *general* reader preference from that. There will, of course, be readers in the tail on either side of the bell curve, but I think the data is pretty clear.


Explain to me how the all star program works.


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

I'm VERY VERY pleased.  For a variety of reasons, I'd decided to move everything into Select a couple months before KU2 was announced.  I'd just about completed that move when the announcement came out. Since my books are long, I suspected the move would be positive. I didn't expect it to be this positive.  My sales on Amazon are unchanged, but the return on KU2 borrows is greater than what I was earning on B&N (where sales had been sliding for some time) + iTunes + Kobo + Smashwords.  And now I only have one sales report to track.  I am a very happy camper.

For July. For August...?  Sales and borrows for August are going up and down in synch in a pattern I've never seen before, but...we'll see. For now, Select was a great decision for me.


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## jillb (Oct 4, 2014)

The earnings for the last book I have in KU have halved as well. I'm out at the end of the month but will put new releases in KU for 90 days to help give them some legs.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Given Amazon's love of churn and desire for everything to be new and shiny, I wonder if that's not exactly the kind of thing they're hoping for.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2015)

Katherine Stark said:


> Industry-wide standard for royalties on e-books is 25%, yes. So a traditionally published author earns $2.49 off of a $9.99 e-book.


But that assumes the author received 25% of gross, whereas I thought most industry contracts were for net?

I don't know the deal the Big 5 have with Amazon, but if we assume a 70/30 split, a $9.99 e-book returns $6.99 net. Of which the author share is $1.75 BUT remember the agent takes 15% before the author is paid. So a $9.99 trad published e-book returns $1.48 to the author.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

Cool. I get *$3.69* for a book I retail at *$3.99* = 637 PAGES

I get *$2.95 *for a book I retail at *$2.99 *= 509 PAGES

Not so cool. I get *$0.10* for a short story I retail at *99c.* (Not by choice. I'd sell at $0.49 if I could) 18 PAGES. 5/6,000 words most of my shorts.

I'd already made the decision not to write any more shorts, but I'll leave the 14 I have in KU for the free days to drum up trade for the full length books.

Now I just have to put more effort into getting people to borrow and read my full length books, 'cause my borrows are crapola


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

Someone had the foresight and generosity to encourage writers to write in the erotica genre. I write across genres, so I jumped in in October of 2014, and made a nice stipend, and brought some readers to KU and kept them with my shorts, and I made money to support my writing habit. As I stated I was making four figures for five months straight. 

Since October I made more money from my adventures into erotica and erotic romance than I did with my romance novels and novellas. Nothing is wasted in life I always say. I wrote over eighty five erotica and erotic romance shorts, and I’m still writing and publishing them in KU, nevertheless, in July my income fell below half.

I have always placed my books wide and when Amazon announced the change, I began taking my erotic and erotic romance shorts out and publishing them on other channels. And so far I’ve made up almost half of the income I lost. 

When I began writing shorts, I discovered that if you box your work too soon, you may ruin your sales, therefore, I waited, and now I have loads of shorts I’m boxing and getting a fair number of reads. Remember, I started in October 2014 writing erotic shorts with a new name and three followers, and I have much more now once I discovered the subgenre conducive to my voice, however, I don’t have enough readers to make up for the money that was lost.

Having enough followers is the key.  You can have twenty novels and if you can’t get anyone to read your books then what’s the point, and it takes time to build a readership if you are new, and have a new pen name.  In the meantime, now, you can starve to death waiting on KU2 to give you a few cents for your time and hard work. And if you think it's easy writing short, making different covers, getting your work edited, try it you may learn something about yourself.


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## countwordsmith (Aug 13, 2015)

vlmain said:


> Indie writers and publishers started lowering their prices because we realized we can afford to and we can attract more sales.


I disagree with this as my reason. I've been a full time writer since before Amazon thought of Kindle. Higher prices were the norm. Then I started seeing fellow authors lowering their prices. Some were brand new, and they did it to undercut the better known names, to give themselves a chance. (I don't blame them--much. Lol.) Then the better known names (indie I mean) started lowering theirs because they saw they were losing readers to the decent writing newbies.

I personally lowered my prices when readers started shouting for lower prices because truckloads of authors were now giving away novels for $0.99. This was before the box set craze. I also saw my direct peers doing it, and felt peer pressured big time. I gave in, and then it spread like wildfire.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Well, I've never been so unhappy to have been right. I've been figuring at .00578, and I was within a few cents of my estimate. Sadly, that meant a loss of 3/4ths of my income for last month.

Not a happy camper, but this is the situation. I've rebooted my plans for this year, and will focus on longer works with what short stuff I can get done. I'm pretty sure it will still benefit me to put everything into KU for one cycle, just for the boost in rank and the exposure. I don't have a lot of things out, since I've basically had to restart, so I need all the help I can get. I've got old stories to get wide, so I'll see how they do on other markets.

On the bright side, I've already made more this month than I did last. A little bit of business strategy that's brought me more sales, which does make me a happy camper!


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

I did some very fast calculations....  

As base:  My novellas are priced at $1.99, my novels at $3.99, which means sales bring in $0.6965 and $2.793, respectively.  

Edited to add: I tried other prices for the full length books and $3.99 worked out the best.  I started wide on every platform I could get on, and that price seemed to play the same on all of them. This move to Select was my first time going with one platform only.

For KENPC, the novellas range from 130 to 148 pages, the novels from 528 to 678 pages.

Using the $0.005779 figure per page read, borrows are bringing in between $.75 and $.86 for the novellas and between $3.051 to $3.918 for the novels.  In ever single case, I'm better off with the borrows.

Now here's a conundrum....the longest book, at 678 KENPC, is also my best seller....and my worst performing borrow.  Yet I will earn $1.10 more per borrow than I will for a sale. I'd LIKE to increase borrows.

This is the only time in my life I can think of where a change I made worked out so much better financially than expected.  I'd moved to Select with the primary goal of simplifying my life (and because sales were weak or declining on the other platforms), fully expecting my earnings to go down. Instead, they went up. Maybe it's time I bought a lotto ticket (too bad they don't sell them in my state!).


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Domino Finn said:


> But would net the author less, right?
> 
> With your talk of high indie margins, it sounds like you just made a case for KU to me.


It would make the case for going indie to me over legacy.  Because of our lower overhead, we can charge less and still make a decent amount per sale.

I'm only quoting what Jeff Bezos has said about suppliers. Indies are suppliers. He's got his eye on our margins.  Good to keep in mind when you, as a small business person (indie author IOW) are doing your business plan.


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## scottnicholson (Jan 31, 2010)

These comparisons of what a book would earn on a sale versus a theoretical borrow are hilarious. So are debates on "value" or "worth," since even the value of money is not a constant. Why does anyone assume that someone who borrowed your book would have bought it if it wasn't available (to them) for no additional cost? And that's not half as funny as thinking Amazon did any of this because of writers.

And why am I posting on Kboards? Go home, Scott, you're drunk.


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## Salvador Mercer (Jan 1, 2015)

X. Aratare said:


> I have two books in KU and as I mentioned in another thread how you FORMAT your book will change your KENCP. That means a person who writes a 55k book might have a KENCP of 300 and another person who formats their book differently but still has 55k words for the readers to read gets a KENCP of 450 or 500 i.e. its the exact same length, but they are PAID DIFFERING AMOUNTS even though this is all supposed to be on length, right?
> 
> I reformatted my book and jumped up 50 pages. There were NO MORE WORDS ADDED and the reader will STILL be getting the same amount to read yet I would have been paid LESS if I hadn't reformatted and I know that I'm still at the low end of the scale for what KENCP I should be getting.
> 
> We've got to remember that this isn't "fair" at all. It's absurd actually.


May I ask what you did to 'reformat'? My 115k book is only getting 478 pages and KDP finally responded after a month and said it was correct. I plan on reformatting as well as I'm sure the line spacing has something to do with it.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

scottnicholson said:


> These comparisons of what a book would earn on a sale versus a theoretical borrow are hilarious. So are debates on "value" or "worth," since even the value of money is not a constant. Why does anyone assume that someone who borrowed your book would have bought it if it wasn't available (to them) for no additional cost? And that's not half as funny as thinking Amazon did any of this because of writers.
> 
> And why am I posting on Kboards? Go home, Scott, you're drunk.


Here's the logic train: Like any smart business, Amazon cares about the bottom line. To increase the bottom line, it is looking at growth so that one day it will be The Everything Store. To achieve that, Amazon intends to make Amazon the choice of online shoppers by providing the best selection, price and customer service. It used books as its entree into the online retailing world because readers are better educated and tend to have higher incomes and credit cards. Among all readers are the voracious reader group. They read A LOT. They are like addicts. How to really please this group? Subscription service with an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of books. So KU was not only a response to Scribd and Oyster, it was also a way to feed the hungriest readers.

The pricing structure of KU 1.0 was not working because it gave an incentive to authors to cut up their books into chapters, write short works and for the scammers to scam with scraped content that constituted a read with a single open page. With its access to Big Data, Amazon knew how much it was paying out to authors of those cut-up books, short erotic works, and scraped content shorts vs. what it was paying to authors of longer works. There were probably a lot of complaints from readers as well as authors. If Amazon listened to ANYONE, they listened to customers. Customers prefer longer books. Under the old system, authors of longer books had some of their sales cannibalized. Authors like me, who pulled out and went wide. My sales fell after KU 1.0 was introduced because my natural audience (hungry erotic romance readers) went into KU and could read books for a flat fee instead of having to pay for each one. I can't say which borrows would have been sales, but I can look at my own data and see before KU 1.0 and after KU 1.0, both in terms of sales and rank.

KU 2.0 is the response to KU 1.0's flaws.

Amazon is first and foremost about keeping customers happy because from happy customers all else follows.


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## Salvador Mercer (Jan 1, 2015)

Boyd said:


> That's bad  I just pub'd a 47k book and it's 265 pages. I'd tell them melarky or use the new(est) vellum to reformat.


Yeah, I'm going to reformat and get rid of any line spaces since I finally got a reply after a month. I have no doubt my KENPC will go up once I do.


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

Katherine Stark said:


> Industry-wide standard for royalties on e-books is 25%, yes. So a traditionally published author earns $2.49 off of a $9.99 e-book.


Sorry, but this is wrong. Industry-wide standard is 25%, but of net or net receipts. Under agency at 70%, that's 25% of the 70%, thus 17.5% on the price of the ebook, or $1.75 on a $9.99 book.


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## Katherine Stark (Jul 30, 2015)

Evan of the R. said:


> Sorry, but this is wrong. Industry-wide standard is 25%, but of net or net receipts. Under agency at 70%, that's 25% of the 70%, thus 17.5% on the price of the ebook, or $1.75 on a $9.99 book.


Gah. Sorry. Thanks for the correction.  And if you're agented, subtract 15% from that $1.75.


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## AveryCockburn (Jul 5, 2015)

Salvador Mercer said:


> May I ask what you did to 'reformat'? My 115k book is only getting 478 pages and KDP finally responded after a month and said it was correct. I plan on reformatting as well as I'm sure the line spacing has something to do with it.


My 90K novel is 593 pages, and I use Scrivener to format. My delivery cost per sale is $0.09, which is on the high end, but the extra amount I earn on borrows dwarfs the penny or two I lose on each sale.

--

I'm happy in KU2. On Amazon.com (i.e., US only) in July my full-length novel earned 5.5 times the revenue on borrows as it did on sales. My novella earned twice as much on borrows as it did on sales.

In a genre like mine, with voracious readers who are eager to try new authors but not necessarily willing to pay $4-5 to do so, KU2 makes great sense. I don't like exclusivity in principle, but if it means I reach more readers AND earn more money, it's hard to find a reason to give that up.


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

My book, the 1st in a 4 book series just released (romance). All books are around 5500 words. I put all in KU. But now I'm wondering if that was smart.

I have been ranking pretty high (#7 in Hot 100s and #17 in a category) but actual sales are about 8-10 a day. Is the fact that it is in KU the reason for the high ranking?

I'll working on my next set of short read romances. Considering whether to keep them out of KU and go wide. I guess I'll wait and see how the first set does. But from this thread, I won't see much.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

I have two novellas in KU currently. KENP for both is more than twice the pages reported on the product page. I would make more for a borrow and full read through than for a sale. 

Sales are glacial as are borrows, but they are under a new pen name and I have not written the next instalments yet. I'm keeping them in KU 2.0 and will slowly build up the instalments and then do a promotional push. 

I really really wonder about KENP. Has ANYONE figured out how they calculate it? 

My longest novel is 125,000 words and clocks in according to Amazon at 340 pages. Same formatting as my two novellas. If KENP = 2.25x, then my novel would have a KENP of about 762. A full read through would net me $4.34, which is currently 85c more than what I would make on a sale. KU 2.0m would likely be good for me, but I would have to give up the income on other retailers, which is now too much to do.

Never say never, though and if my sales fell significantly on other retailers for some reason, I would definitely consider going into KU 2.0 as long as the 90-day term remains.


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

LOVE LOVE LOVE your book covers!



AveryCockburn said:


> My 90K novel is 593 pages, and I use Scrivener to format. My delivery cost per sale is $0.09, which is on the high end, but the extra amount I earn on borrows dwarfs the penny or two I lose on each sale.
> 
> --
> 
> ...


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

Katherine Stark said:


> Gah. Sorry. Thanks for the correction.  And if you're agented, subtract 15% from that $1.75.


Glad to help.

Also, the "industry-wide standard" is definitely changing - it _was _like that, but it's not going to be like that forever, and in some cases it's already no longer like that.

Just this month I got offered a trad publishing contract that agreed - per my demand - to a 50% split on e-book net receipts. Not 25%.

Keep pushing, pals.


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

BUT, if you didn't get full reads, you wouldn't get the $4.34. But with a buy, who cares how much they read.
I still have more questions than answers with KU.



Sela said:


> I have two novellas in KU currently. KENP for both is more than twice the pages reported on the product page. I would make more for a borrow and full read through than for a sale.
> 
> Sales are glacial as are borrows, but they are under a new pen name and I have not written the next instalments yet. I'm keeping them in KU 2.0 and will slowly build up the instalments and then do a promotional push.
> 
> ...


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

Salvador Mercer said:


> May I ask what you did to 'reformat'? My 115k book is only getting 478 pages and KDP finally responded after a month and said it was correct. I plan on reformatting as well as I'm sure the line spacing has something to do with it.


What worked for me as I had a similar problem to my 112k long novel, was changing the font to times font 12 and then converting it to mobi with calibre and then uploading it. Instead of 512 I know get 723.


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## AveryCockburn (Jul 5, 2015)

PatriceWilliamsMarks said:


> LOVE LOVE LOVE your book covers!


Thank you so much! My artist is Grady at Damonza. He just sent me drafts for the next book's cover, and he's outdone himself again! 



PatriceWilliamsMarks said:


> BUT, if you didn't get full reads, you wouldn't get the $4.34. But with a buy, who cares how much they read.


You should care a lot how much they read. It's true that a sale is money in the bank. But if someone buys a book and never gets around to reading it, that means they never write a review, they never tell their friends about it, and they never buy your next book.

As someone who both buys and borrows books (from KU and the local library), I tend to put borrows at the top of my to-be-read list. Even if it costs me nothing to keep it, there's something satisfying about finishing a book and being rewarded with a new borrow.

(Edited to combine replies. Eventually I'll learn to do this right the first time.)


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## WRPursche (Feb 18, 2011)

I wrote this on another post elsewhere regarding KENPC. I'm fairly confident that the KENPC is calculated as follows: Characters+spaces/1000 + page breaks.  In other words, if your book (in Word for example) has 100,000 characters plus spaces, it will be 100 KEPNC.  Add additional pages for page breaks.

There is some evidence that:
--adding double spacing (actually anything other than single spacing) REDUCES KENPC (because they don't want people padding the KENPC by line spacing)
-- adding images (e.g. chapter heads) increases KENPC very slightly
-- adding a tiny space before a new paragraph may increase KENPC slightly (but people are getting inconsistent evidence of this).

So word count is basically not specifically germane (other than how it affects total characters). By using characters, Amazon has basically found a way to really equalize/adjust for fonts, etc. It's actually a pretty good approach if you think about it.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

Sela said:


> I have two novellas in KU currently. KENP for both is more than twice the pages reported on the product page. I would make more for a borrow and full read through than for a sale.


My latest release is about 25 KENP longer than the listed page count. :-(


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## grendelguy (Apr 28, 2014)

I was pretty happy with my 30,000 pages read for the month. It's not a substantial change from the KU1, but it's nice to know people are actually reading the YA series.

NOT happy with the most recent Booksends promotion, which didn't net much of anything.

DID see a huge # of pages read immediately after Fussy Librarian promotion.

And as always, a solid 150 downloads from BKnights.

Salvador: Good luck on Kindle Scout! I nominated your book and wish you the best!


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

PatriceWilliamsMarks said:


> BUT, if you didn't get full reads, you wouldn't get the $4.34. But with a buy, who cares how much they read.
> I still have more questions than answers with KU.


That's true but when I check my read through, I can estimate how many full reads I already have for those readers who go all the way through to the final book in the series. It can range between 78% to 100+% in a given month so if I sold 1,000 copies of Book 1, and 850 of book 2, and 850 of book 3, I can guess that 850 read the whole way through book 1 and 2. I can extrapolate back and guesstimate how many (what percent) read the entire series through by looking at the final book in the series. It's very rough but the only way I can think of predicting how well an author will do in KU 2.0 since Amazon ain't tellin'.

Of course I care how many people read the entire book. I write series and want to keep as many readers for as many books as I can get. Satisfied readers = money in the bank for me.


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## Salvador Mercer (Jan 1, 2015)

JalexM said:


> What worked for me as I had a similar problem to my 112k long novel, was changing the font to times font 12 and then converting it to mobi with calibre and then uploading it. Instead of 512 I know get 723.


Thanks, I'll try that as well as anything else


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## John Van Stry (May 25, 2011)

Sela said:


> Amazon is first and foremost about keeping customers happy because from happy customers all else follows.


^^^^ THIS ^^^


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## Mxz (Jan 17, 2015)

jakedfw said:


> Maximizing KENPC:
> 
> Single spacing. You get PENALIZED if you do double or even 1.5 spacing. Yes, that adds physical pages, but it lowers your KENPC.
> 
> ...


Thanks!


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

Salvador Mercer said:


> Thanks, I'll try that as well as anything else


I forgot to mention I was in the 300s before I changed the font and font size. When I changed that I went up to 512 and then I changed the file I uploaded, that's when it went to 723.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

JalexM said:


> I forgot to mention I was in the 300s before I changed the font and font size. When I changed that I went up to 512 and then I changed the file I uploaded, that's when it went to 723.


What did you do? Bigger fonts?


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

It doesn't really matter what industry standards are. Most of us are indies. We don't have to deal with what an agency or publisher takes. If we price right we make close to 70% some places, 60% other.

Those who say you need to charge ridiculously low prices to make a living are wrong. Sorry. There are indies who charge $4.99 and up for a full-length novel, go wide and make a living. 

Do whatever you feel is right for you, but please don't tell me I have to charge a low price for my novels in order to survive.


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

HSh said:


> What did you do? Bigger fonts?


I used book antiqua at a size of 10 which I used on my paperback. Of course amazon says it didn't matter what font you used.
Then I went to times with a 12 size font. But the biggest change was when I turned it into mobi before uploading it


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

Sela said:


> Amazon is first and foremost about keeping customers happy because from happy customers all else follows.


If KU was about customers at all, they'd drop the exclusivity requirement. After all, they don't advertise "exclusive titles" anywhere to KU subscribers, and dropping the exclusivity agreement would give subscribers the biggest variety of books to choose from.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Briteka said:


> If KU was about customers at all, they'd drop the exclusivity requirement. After all, they don't advertise "exclusive titles" anywhere to KU subscribers, and dropping the exclusivity agreement would give subscribers the biggest variety of books to choose from.


BAM.

You win the internet tonight.


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## devalong (Aug 28, 2014)

Sela said:


> I have two novellas in KU currently. KENP for both is more than twice the pages reported on the product page. I would make more for a borrow and full read through than for a sale.
> 
> Sales are glacial as are borrows, but they are under a new pen name and I have not written the next instalments yet. I'm keeping them in KU 2.0 and will slowly build up the instalments and then do a promotional push.
> 
> ...


_Blood and Fire_ is 124k and has a KENP of 695.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

horrordude1973 said:


> I write horror novellas and saw very little if any drop in income. I release a new novella a month. Everyone keeps ringing the death knell for me but I'm still here and doing just fine. Not sure what all this hate is for short book writers. And yes I do bust my ass and am always releasing new stuff.


I didn't make a dime.. becuase I pulled all my old stuff and am totally retooling my author career. But I am a member of a few writers forums. Novella length stuff is still doing well for a lot of people. Not super shorts.. but stuff in the 20k and up category. Especially in genres where people have gotten used to or just simply prefer Novellas. But Novella length zombie books, PNR (Shifters), and erotic romance.. seem to be doing ok still. Especially if the author has a decent sized catalog. YMMV.... and I need to get back to work. I have so much stuff on the back burner and this news makes me want to get busy. I missed out the first time.. not missing out this time around!


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

I'm a happy camper with what is coming for me. It makes my August total look wonderful.

Edited: My original conclusion was wrong. I just didn't look far enough.


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## ZamajK (Jun 8, 2014)

At least the suspense and anxiety over the rate is finally over.
Now go write novels everyone!


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## Ted Cross (Aug 30, 2012)

TimWLong said:


> Color me thrilled. I took a gamble by leaving my books in KU and had almost half a million pages read in July. My 600 page book would have made $1.35 under the old system, now it makes $5.76, a hair more than a 70% royalty. Am I in the minority by being excited about the new payout system?


 I don't think you are. It's just that novel writers who have been gouged under the old system are not as vocal as those who were hurt by this change.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Ted Cross said:


> I don't think you are. It's just that novel writers who have been gouged under the old system are not as vocal as those who were hurt by this change.


A lot of novel writers left under the old system. I took my novels out of KU1, because of the loss I was taking on each borrow. I went wide (but wrote two shorter novella/novels and left them in). Being wide gave BookBub another tick in the box to feature me, which they did (after 18 months of trying to get in). Would I have gotten a BB ad in a very competitive genre had I not gone wide? Not until I had a lot more reviews.

What I'm saying is, people shouldn't choose KU2 on the payout alone. There are so many other factors involved. Visibility. Whether you want Amazon to show you some recommendation love (which they are less likely to do if you're not in select). The payout amount is just one factor.

I'm still undecided what to do with my two books in KU2. I like to have a foot in the Amazon door with one series, while my other series is wide. That seems like the best of both worlds. But, I want to get a BB ad on my KU series, and I don't think that's going to happen unless I'm wide. (Check their featured books on their website, most (but not all) are wide). I have to weigh up potential earnings in KU against potential earnings wide, and other opportunities when I'm wide (such as BB). For that reason, I've unchecked my auto-enroll box. KU2 is not enough, for me personally, to stay in. But, if I had a new novel length series, I'd definitely be considering it.

KU is a tough call to make. Everyone has to look at their own work and decide what's best for them and their career.


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## Ted Cross (Aug 30, 2012)

D-to-the-C said:


> A lot of novel writers left under the old system. I took my novels out of KU1, because of the loss I was taking on each borrow. I went wide (but wrote two shorter novella/novels and left them in). Being wide gave BookBub another tick in the box to feature me, which they did (after 18 months of trying to get in). Would I have gotten a BB ad in a very competitive genre had I not gone wide? Not until I had a lot more reviews.


The book I keep trying to get into Bookbub is The Immortality Game, which is wide, but I keep picking only Amazon when I submit to Bookbub. I assumed the cost would be much higher for each other platform I selected. Am I wrong about that?


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Ted Cross said:


> The book I keep trying to get into Bookbub is The Immortality Game, which is wide, but I keep picking only Amazon when I submit to Bookbub. I assumed the cost would be much higher for each other platform I selected. Am I wrong about that?


Ted, they don't charge per platform, they charge per category. Tick all the boxes you can! You need to make your book as attractive to BB as possible. They want a good deal for their subscribers; that means iBooks and B&N users too.


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## Ted Cross (Aug 30, 2012)

D-to-the-C said:


> Ted, they don't charge per platform, they charge per category. Tick all the boxes you can! You need to make your book as attractive to BB as possible. They want a good deal for their subscribers; that means iBooks and B&N users too.


That's great to know, thanks!


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

D-to-the-C said:


> But, I want to get a BB ad on my KU series, and I don't think that's going to happen unless I'm wide. (Check their featured books on their website, most (but not all) are wide). I have to weigh up potential earnings in KU against potential earnings wide, and other opportunities when I'm wide (such as BB).


I just got my first Bookbub (coming on 8/27) for a book that is in KU, had only 12 reviews, was released 4 years ago, and is at least slight dated in that it revolves around the 2012 Mayan prophesy. Several other authors on this board have gotten multiple Bookbubs for KU books. I find new books that are in KU on their newsletter regularly. So while it is possible that you have a better chance without being in KU, I don't know that the data truly supports this conclusion.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

edwardgtalbot said:


> I just got my first Bookbub (coming on 8/27) for a book that is in KU, had only 12 reviews, was released 4 years ago, and is at least slight dated in that it revolves around the 2012 Mayan prophesy. Several other authors on this board have gotten multiple Bookbubs for KU books. I find new books that are in KU on their newsletter regularly. So while it is possible that you have a better chance without being in KU, I don't know that the data truly supports this conclusion.


It depends what category you're trying to get into. Some are more competitive than others.  Also, I wasn't saying THIS WILL HAPPEN, I was just mentioning what had happened to me and my reasons for my choices. Everyone has to make their own decisions based on their own experience and goals.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

As KU2 is concentrating on producing page-turners, perhaps it will become mutually beneficial for BookBub to feature more strongly and more often books in KU2.  I wonder if Kenp/page-reads will eventually become a qualifying factor for getting a BB deal?


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

D-to-the-C said:


> It depends what category you're trying to get into. some are more competitive than others.


Mine is a thriller


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

JalexM said:


> I used book antiqua at a size of 10 which I used on my paperback. Of course amazon says it didn't matter what font you used.
> Then I went to times with a 12 size font. But the biggest change was when I turned it into mobi before uploading it


OK, thank you for this! I tried changing nothing but uploading a MOBI instead of Word file. It increased my novella's payout by about 30 cents, making it a bit better for me, more reasonable. On the other hand, it lowered the page count showing on Amazon page by 16 pages.

Seriously p*ssed off right now. 

This is not a decent way of counting words. I now have to go and re-upload everything I can as MOBI instead of Word. So I get a few extra cents per book instead of 20-50 KENPC more than my current page count.

And I may have to experiment with the spacing that other people have mentioned soon. I feel like I'm trying to stop a leak in a wall with my finger. This is not a fair way to count pages. This is not right.

The [expletive]ing file size should not be the deciding factor making me earn 1/3 less for a read-through. It should be fair.

And you know what? When they do [curseword] KENPC Version 2, we'll have to jump through hoops to upload something else differently or lose pages. Yeah. I'm ticked off. I wanted to enjoy my Sunday, not rush around uploading files that have been undervalued for the last [expletive]ing month or more.


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## AveryCockburn (Jul 5, 2015)

Briteka said:


> If KU was about customers at all, they'd drop the exclusivity requirement. After all, they don't advertise "exclusive titles" anywhere to KU subscribers, and dropping the exclusivity agreement would give subscribers the biggest variety of books to choose from.


This is an excellent point. Perhaps they don't do this because of those few superstars' books (both self-published and traditionally published) who are allowed to be in KU without exclusivity. Or are they not making exceptions anymore?


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## CaraS. (Jul 18, 2014)

I have not taken the free month of KU yet...and one reason is there are few trad published novels. I am assuming that is due to exclusivity, but with some exceptions. As a reader, I am sure I am not alone in that reason.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

I was one of those authors who were selling really well before KU 1.0 and who saw a drastic decline in income after KU 1.0 and the algorithm tweaks. Yes, I was doing better than most, and my 40% decline in income still left me with more monthly income than most indies make in a year, but believe me, it was still hard to see that drop. Not only that, but my books all fell in rank and lost visibility like overnight. 

So I did the panic thing and went all-in to KU with my books. I was in wide distribution through D2D but didn't have great traction on the other retailers before but I had some regular sales and taken together, the other retailers were about 20 - 30% of my income. When I went all in to KU, the increase in borrows offset my loss of income on other retailers -- but only just. KU 1.0 was not a good deal for me because my sales fell and borrows increased but due to my pricing structure ($4.99 for full-length books) the borrows did not make up for the lost revenues in sales. 

I pulled everything out except for two serials in January and February. I put everything back on every platform, put the first novels in my three series permafree, had new releases over the spring and summer and two Bookbubs, and finally got traction on iBooks and other retailers once more. Apple noticed my sales and has promoted me twice, which led to even great sales and visibility.

After losing that income as a result of Amazon tweaks to its programs and the resulting collateral damage to my business, and after all the work it took to get back on other retailers and gain traction, I feel quite negative towards going exclusive with the Zon despite all it had done for my career before. That period -- the winter of my discontent so to speak -- opened my eyes to the power Amazon has over us. It bothers me how little we are like partners to them in this business and so the whole episode cemented in my mind the fact that no one but me is looking out for my business. Certainly not the other retailers. It was easy to love Amazon when their programs benefitted me, but when they hurt me, the veil was lifted from my eyes.

We aren't partners, Amazon and I. The introduction of KU 1.0 and algorithm tweaks to give added zip to KU books showed me how small and powerless I am in the publishing world and how easy it was for Amazon to do some policy tweak that could mean my business fell drastically. I have to look out for me and not rely on any one retailer for my daily bread, but on the sweat of my brow and going wide to protect my business from The Zon's vicissitudes. The Zon was a great ride for the first two years and I credit its amazing ability to sell books and please customers for my career. I could probably make serious bank in KU 2.0 but but could it offset the business I have built on other platforms? More than that, would it make my business more secure in the long run? That is not clear to me.

I now look at Amazon with a hard heart and clear eye. I don't want to go exclusive in case in 6 months Amazon decides to do some other tweak that sends my income crashing. Going wide for me at this time in my career seems like the tortoise and hare dilemma. I guess I want to win the race and right now, for me, at this point in my career, KU seems like a short-term gain for potentially long term pain.

I realize that for a lot of authors, Amazon KU makes sense. I think for them, KU is a great option, but for me at this time, not so much.


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## 10105 (Feb 16, 2010)

I made about $4.30 on four titles in KU in July. Those are the only titles I have in KU. Considering that those titles have been making zero since forever, I can honestly say my income has way more than doubled. For those titles, that is. That's almost two gallons of gas. For now.

Since my wide series generates about the same income from non-amazon channels as it does from amazon, I'm not ready to take it to Select. It'd have to quadruple income to break even. Can't afford the pay cut.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

I made the right choice in pulling most of my stories out. I made more on other sites with my short erotica than I would have made with this payout. I will say the bundles I left in did okay with this, so I guess I got the best of both. Still, I probably won't leave the bundles in after ninety days. I agree with Elizabeth. This is probably the highest we'll see and my bundles are priced from 3.99 -4.99, so it's probably best to go wide and collect my royalties.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

Sela said:


> I was one of those authors who were selling really well before KU 1.0 and who saw a drastic decline in income after KU 1.0 and the algorithm tweaks. Yes, I was doing better than most, and my 40% decline in income still left me with more monthly income than most indies make in a year, but believe me, it was still hard to see that drop. Not only that, but my books all fell in rank and lost visibility like overnight.
> 
> So I did the panic thing and went all-in to KU with my books. I was in wide distribution through D2D but didn't have great traction on the other retailers before but I had some regular sales and taken together, the other retailers were about 20 - 30% of my income. When I went all in to KU, the increase in borrows offset my loss of income on other retailers -- but only just. KU 1.0 was not a good deal for me because my sales fell and borrows increased but due to my pricing structure ($4.99 for full-length books) the borrows did not make up for the lost revenues in sales.
> 
> ...


One thing I've noticed is that the other sites don't seem to have these algo tweaks as often. My sales on Barnes and Nobles rise or hold steady or only slightly decline. On Amazon my graph is crazy. I'll sell 20 books in one day, then flat line for days, then sell 40 in one day, all for no apparent reason. This alone makes me weary of ever being exclusive to them again. Short erotica or long erom. It doesn't even matter. I need other income to offset the bad days with them. It also just seems ridiculous to wait every month for them to tell me what I'm getting paid. Even in the old KU I counted each borrow as a dollar to come up with a minimum, knowing it'd be more, but not knowing how much, so I just rounded down. What other site makes you do that. It's hard to plan your bills, much less your entire career around a system like that.


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## Maxime LICH (Aug 13, 2014)

Probably a lot of short novels authors will pull out, because they will loose 2/3 their previous income with KU1. Then go to other publishers, or else if stay Amazon suppliers, withdraw out new KU2. Only sell, and increase price to compensate their borrow KENPC losses...Because pay a meagre 0,0057 per page is not fair. I think Amazon will see a big decrease in the number of novels they offer to readers...


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## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

Will C. Brown said:


> Just as predicted it looks like the payout is .0058!


What is that? less than 1 cents a page?


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

TimWLong said:


> Color me thrilled. * * * Am I in the minority by being excited about the new payout system?


I don't know if we're in the minority, but I'm thrilled too. Ever since the speculation about .0057 per KENPC page read began, I've been trying everything I know to keep from counting on, expecting, or believing in that amount. It seemed way too good to be true. So here we are, and yes, I'm delighted.

The first book I ever put in Select was the romance published last September, and I did it just to get it in KU. The big question, of course, was whether borrows would cannibalize sales of my $4.99 book. For that book I was sure the answer was definitely not. Its first month sales were the best I ever had and borrows were about equal in number to sales. It seemed clear being in KU was garnering new readers, and the borrow payout was a nice bonus.

So I tried one of my older books in KU, and the answer was the reverse. Total of sales and borrows was about what sales had been before. Considering a $3.99 sales price and a payout of maybe $1.34 per borrow, I was ready the yank that book right out at the 90-day mark and not put any of the other older books in.

Now KU2. For my long books, a completely read borrow pays more than a sale. No worry about cannibalization. Maybe I should worry about percent of full reads, but I don't, and the earnings just in July and August will exceed what my books earned from non-Amazon vendors in my best _year _wide. And I still have one book that's not in. And life will be so much easier without dealing with B&N, Smashwords, _et al._


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## VEVO (Feb 9, 2012)

Maxime LICH said:


> Probably a lot of short novels authors will pull out, because they will loose 2/3 their previous income with KU1. Then go to other publishers, or else if stay Amazon suppliers, withdraw out new KU2. Only sell, and increase price to compensate their borrow KENPC losses...Because pay a meagre 0,0057 per page is not fair. I think Amazon will see a big decrease in the number of novels they offer to readers...


It went down by about 6000 when KU 2.0 started on July 1st. It has been increasing since July 7th.

1,023,681 (7.1)
1,021,552 (7.2)
1,018,819 (7/3)
1,019,125 (7/4)
1,019,018 (7/5)
1,018,591 (7/6)
1,019,260 (7/7)
1,020,861 (7/
1,024,944 (7/9)
.
.
1,028,068 (7/13)
1,029,178 (7/14)
1,030,518 (7/15)
1,031,409 (7/16)
1,032,743 (7/17)
1,033,785 (7/1
1,037,417 (7/22)
1,040,148 (7/24)
1,042,150 (7/26)
1,044,336 (7/27)
1,045,212 (7/2
1,051,346 (8/01)
1,053,041
1,054,254
1,058,532 (8/9)
1,061,687 (8/12)
1,063,972 (8/15)
1,065,063 (8/16)


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

I love seeing the numbers, thanks VEVO.  Obviously we are not having a mass exodus nor are we likely to have one as long as payouts and borrow numbers remain the same (or Apple offers a non-excusive subscription service or something). It's my opinion that over time, what Amazon has done will attract more novel length writers into Select - I am guessing this is one of the reasons they did it, but it's still just speculation.

That said, the overall numbers in Kindle Unlimited are not nearly as important as the tiny subset of authors with books in the top 10-20K ranking. If books keep pouring in, but there is a net loss of authors at the highest levels then this will not be positive for the future of KU. And we don't really have any way of evaluating this other than anecdotal evidence which could support an argument either way, as anecdotal evidence tends to be able to do.

The other thing is that it will take some time for Amazon to really know if they are getting what they want. Top authors who left during the past year and have gained some traction going wide are not likely to switch back now and possibly not even at all. The sad truth is that given some time, Amazon doesn't really need those authors to switch back. They just need to replace them, and there is always a steady stream of quality authors coming along. That may take some time, and they probably would be best served in this regard if they keep royalty rate pretty stable for a year or so. Whether they will or not. . .anyone's guess.


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## VEVO (Feb 9, 2012)

edwardgtalbot said:


> I love seeing the numbers, thanks VEVO. Obviously we are not having a mass exodus nor are we likely to have one as long as payouts and borrow numbers remain the same (or Apple offers a non-excusive subscription service or something). It's my opinion that over time, what Amazon has done will attract more novel length writers into Select - I am guessing this is one of the reasons they did it, but it's still just speculation.
> 
> That said, the overall numbers in Kindle Unlimited are not nearly as important as the tiny subset of authors with books in the top 10-20K ranking. If books keep pouring in, but there is a net loss of authors at the highest levels then this will not be positive for the future of KU. And we don't really have any way of evaluating this other than anecdotal evidence which could support an argument either way, as anecdotal evidence tends to be able to do.
> 
> The other thing is that it will take some time for Amazon to really know if they are getting what they want. Top authors who left during the past year and have gained some traction going wide are not likely to switch back now and possibly not even at all. The sad truth is that given some time, Amazon doesn't really need those authors to switch back. They just need to replace them, and there is always a steady stream of quality authors coming along. That may take some time, and they probably would be best served in this regard if they keep royalty rate pretty stable for a year or so. Whether they will or not. . .anyone's guess.


It would be a disaster for indie income if a large % of best selling indie authors who are wide now suddenly going exclusive with KU.

The Global Fund is growing but growing slowly. With more best selling authors to divide up the pie, KU income will take a dip for everyone (on average).


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

VEVO said:


> It would be a disaster for indie income if a large % of best selling indie authors who are wide now suddenly going exclusive with KU. The Global Fund is growing but growing slowly. With more best selling authors to divide up the pie, KU income will take a dip for everyone (on average).


It would be a disaster for some individual authors to be sure. I think the exclusivity requirement alone will prevent a mass influx, though.


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## Briteka (Mar 5, 2012)

VEVO said:


> It would be a disaster for indie income if a large % of best selling indie authors who are wide now suddenly going exclusive with KU.
> 
> The Global Fund is growing but growing slowly. With more best selling authors to divide up the pie, KU income will take a dip for everyone (on average).


The price per page wouldn't go down. It's controlled by the amount of pages people read, and as long as there is enough content in KU to keep readers reading (as there is now), then an increase in material isn't going to drop the payout. It would make KU more competitive, but you're already competing with those same books right now in regards to sales. I guess some people would see the loss of using KU to inflate rankings as a bad thing, while I would see it as a positive. At the same time, those people will also gain income from all the other vendors on earth.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

edwardgtalbot said:


> The other thing is that it will take some time for Amazon to really know if they are getting what they want. Top authors who left during the past year and have gained some traction going wide are not likely to switch back now and possibly not even at all. The sad truth is that given some time, Amazon doesn't really need those authors to switch back. They just need to replace them, and there is always a steady stream of quality authors coming along. That may take some time, and they probably would be best served in this regard if they keep royalty rate pretty stable for a year or so. Whether they will or not. . .anyone's guess.


It's no different than if I get mad at AT&T and switch to Verizon. AT&T doesn't care because there will always be someone mad at Verizon who will switch to them.


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## Hoop (Nov 22, 2014)

This is amusing as can be.
For the past year, you have all been raving about erotica writers, authors with short stories, authors who chopped up their novels into multiple parts, and people who were publishing 20-page "pamphlets".
The phrases bandied about were everything from "cheaters" to "scammers" to "gaming the system", and that's not even getting close to how heinously erotica authors were talked about and treated.
If you weren't mainstream and writing at least novellas, you were dirt. You were the reason the payout was so low. You should be chased out of KU, somehow. You weren't in it to be a writer, you were just trying to get as much money as possible. (As if that was somehow wrong.)

Now look at all of the people in this thread discussing modifying their existing files, changing font sizes, increasing line spacing, changing file types.. all so you can game the system and get as much money as possible. In other words, cheat.

While you're at it, you might want to smile and wave to the Amazon reps who watch this board, looking for authors who openly discuss how they cheat the system, and loopholes that Amazon needs to close.


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

I don't think adjusting is cheating. I'm not in KU because I don't have to be, but with that said, if my income goes down I'd consider it. But why bother with any of this? The only long-term solution is to create your own platform. I recently had a convo with D2D about a book that iTunes rejected for... something. I don't even remember. But I do remember my response. My fans don't care where they buy the book, my fans are not loyal to a distribution outlet. If it's on Nook first and they want it, they buy it there. If it's on iTunes first, they buy it there. If they're not in a hurry, they wait.

I released a book last Friday with no announcement and no marketing and sold 1000+ copies in three days. People find me, and they find me because they're _fans_. The only thing that matters in ALL of this is your fans. Find THEM and they will find YOU.

If KU is how you find them, great. But that's all it should be. A tool. Because Amazon WILL change it and the authors who will survive with little to no adjustment to their income are the ones who are prepared. Everything you do as an author should be a step forward. KU is stagnation at best and free-falling at worst. So if you're doing well in there, don't count on it lasting. Because it won't. If there is one rule I've learned it's that this business is never the same from week to week. With that said, I'm not really anti-KU. I made $100K+ last year from them in two months. But I got out when it ran its course and used what they gave me in order to move forward.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

The point is the hypocrisy. People who did what Amazon told them in July '14 were cheating scum. People who are doing it now are awesome, smart and oh so pretty.


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## Jessie Jasen (May 30, 2015)

PeanutButterCracker said:


> I don't think adjusting is cheating. I'm not in KU because I don't have to be, but with that said, if my income goes down I'd consider it. But why bother with any of this? The only long-term solution is to create your own platform. I recently had a convo with D2D about a book that iTunes rejected for... something. I don't even remember. But I do remember my response. My fans don't care where they buy the book, my fans are not loyal to a distribution outlet. If it's on Nook first and they want it, they buy it there. If it's on iTunes first, they buy it there. If they're not in a hurry, they wait.
> 
> I released a book last Friday with no announcement and no marketing and sold 1000+ copies in three days. People find me, and they find me because they're _fans_. The only thing that matters in ALL of this is your fans. Find THEM and they will find YOU.
> 
> If KU is how you find them, great. But that's all it should be. A tool. Because Amazon WILL change it and the authors who will survive with little to no adjustment to their income are the ones who are prepared. Everything you do as an author should be a step forward. KU is stagnation at best and free-falling at worst. So if you're doing well in there, don't count on it lasting. Because it won't. If there is one rule I've learned it's that this business is never the same from week to week. With that said, I'm not really anti-KU. I made $100K+ last year from them in two months. But I got out when it ran its course and used what they gave me in order to move forward.


I'm sorry but I must ask (if you don't mind)--what genre do you write in?


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## Maxime LICH (Aug 13, 2014)

Amazon Kindle is now a restaurant where you order a steak, you eat only 50%, and don't pay the remaining part... New wave !


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Maxime LICH said:


> Amazon Kindle is now a restaurant where you order a steak, you eat only 50%, and don't pay the remaining part... New wave !


Actually, it probably should be that way in restaurants. Get served a lousy steak, you should only have to pay for what you eat. The quality of food might get better that way.

As for KU2, my steaks it serves tend to be eaten fully, with perhaps the fat left aside.

Its all about writing what people want to read. Write something people cant put down, and they read it all.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Hoop said:


> This is amusing as can be.
> For the past year, you have all been raving about erotica writers, authors with short stories, authors who chopped up their novels into multiple parts, and people who were publishing 20-page "pamphlets".
> The phrases bandied about were everything from "cheaters" to "scammers" to "gaming the system", and that's not even getting close to how heinously erotica authors were talked about and treated.
> If you weren't mainstream and writing at least novellas, you were dirt. You were the reason the payout was so low. You should be chased out of KU, somehow. You weren't in it to be a writer, you were just trying to get as much money as possible. (As if that was somehow wrong.)
> ...


Quoting for truth. It's amazing how bad it got, to the point people were cheering Hugh Howey on for dissing other writers, many of them contributing members here, lumping everyone in with the people who actually were scamming Amazon.

How wonderful they were all gone now! Except, they aren't, they're just finding new ways to get money. Amazon went to a standardized format for a reason, folks.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> Its all about writing what people want to read. Write something people cant put down, and they read it all.


Imagine yourself saying that with a straight face. Every time I see someone post this, it reads like either a joke, or some piece of new-found wisdom rather than something writers should have already been doing. Guess what? My short stories are read all the way through, too. They aren't any less worthy than anything you or anyone else here writes. I never gamed the system, just worked with the parameters Amazon set. Just like long-form writers are doing now. When they aren't busy trying to figure out how to game the new system.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

she-la-ti-da said:


> Imagine yourself saying that with a straight face. Every time I see someone post this, it reads like either a joke, or some piece of new-found wisdom rather than something writers should have already been doing. Guess what? My short stories are read all the way through, too. They aren't any less worthy than anything you or anyone else here writes. I never gamed the system, just worked with the parameters Amazon set. Just like long-form writers are doing now. When they aren't busy trying to figure out how to game the new system.


I typed it with a straight face.

I wasn't commenting on the length of anything, just about it being read all the way through.

Using the steak analogy works for a steak the size of the whole plate, or one which is a small button in the middle of it. In this case, size doesn't matter, only how much of it is eaten.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

she-la-ti-da said:


> How wonderful they were all gone now! Except, they aren't, they're just finding new ways to get money. Amazon went to a standardized format for a reason, folks.


Yeah, except that they did a lousy job of it, leaving room for these "But if I increase this spacing or that margin, or use this software, I get higher KENPC" posts. Uploading one format over another, or exporting from one or another piece of software, changes the KENPC, and I've tested it extensively with well over a dozen people, a handful of those with several titles each.

I'd LOVE it if the N in KENPC actually stood for _normalized_, and we could stop talking about how to increase KENPC and go back to discussing craft/business, but as it stands now, it completely doesn't.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

KDP says they are still working on getting it to actually "normalize." They are calling it KENPC 1.0. 
I wish it would be truly standardized as well. Character counts, word counts, whatever. Something simple. But I'm guessing they'll get there. 
I just don't worry about it. Chances are, I'd tweak whatever and end up with something lower.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

Rosalind James said:


> KDP says they are still working on getting it to actually "normalize." They are calling it KENPC 1.0.
> I wish it would be truly standardized as well. Character counts, word counts, whatever. Something simple. But I'm guessing they'll get there.


I think they will, too. But in the meanwhile ... ugh.



> I just don't worry about it. Chances are, I'd tweak whatever and end up with something lower.


Have DEFINITELY seen this as well.


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

Rosalind James said:


> KDP says they are still working on getting it to actually "normalize." They are calling it KENPC 1.0.
> I wish it would be truly standardized as well. Character counts, word counts, whatever. Something simple. But I'm guessing they'll get there.
> I just don't worry about it. Chances are, I'd tweak whatever and end up with something lower.


This is me. These are not the things I worry about. I upload once (the same way I always have) and move on.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> This is me. These are not the things I worry about. I upload once (the same way I always have) and move on.


Yup. It is what it is. As far as writing what people want to read, some people want to read my work and read it all the way through and others don't.


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## JRHolmes (Mar 6, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> This is me. These are not the things I worry about. I upload once (the same way I always have) and move on.


Though you and Rosalind are very productive writers, so it doesn't pay to struggle with fine-tuning formatting for KENPC. Those who struggle with maximizing the KENPC are likely also those who are much less productive.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

lilywhite said:


> Yeah, except that they did a lousy job of it, leaving room for these "But if I increase this spacing or that margin, or use this software, I get higher KENPC" posts. Uploading one format over another, or exporting from one or another piece of software, changes the KENPC, and I've tested it extensively with well over a dozen people, a handful of those with several titles each.
> 
> I'd LOVE it if the N in KENPC actually stood for _normalized_, and we could stop talking about how to increase KENPC and go back to discussing craft/business, but as it stands now, it completely doesn't.


I'm seeing this on another forum, with the experiments with this, that and the other thing. I find it fascinating, and have tried a couple of simple things, but I don't see that it's helped much, if at all. Maybe with novella lengths and longer, it might make a difference, but I'd rather just write the stuff and get it out. I'm way behind already due to the writer's block, so I don't want to spend much time messing with it, knowing Amazon will change things up again soon and it will all be for nothing.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

TimothyEllis said:


> I typed it with a straight face.
> 
> I wasn't commenting on the length of anything, just about it being read all the way through.
> 
> Using the steak analogy works for a steak the size of the whole plate, or one which is a small button in the middle of it. In this case, size doesn't matter, only how much of it is eaten.


All that would do is get people to order the monster all-you-can-eat dinner, eating their normal portion of food, and then only have to pay for that amount. That would leave the restaurant with a huge plate of food to throw away. So, not a very apt analogy, but whatever.

I'm sure you had a straight face. The people who seem to be unable to not dig at short story writers are perfectly serious. The thing is, we are writers, just as you are, but somehow we are lacking and are fair game for the snide remarks about writing stuff people want to read.

Except, it was obvious that people did want to read shorts, but it costs Amazon money for people to read loads of shorts and the writers to get the same amount as a novelist. But, people weren't reading that many novels. KU was perfect for them, they got what they wanted.

I'm not saying it was "fair" for long books and short to be paid the same amount. I thought it was a dumb idea from the beginning and believed some sort of tiered system would have been better, but I don't run Amazon. All I could do was write and publish the books I wrote, and make the best business decisions I could.

The fact that KUv1 benefited me as a short story writer wasn't "gaming" the system. It was working within the parameters that Amazon itself set up, and if you think for one minute they didn't know how it would turn out, you don't know much about Amazon.

And nothing stopped any novelist from writing a short story and benefiting from the same situation, except this prevailing idea that all writers with short works are somehow scammers and thieves.

I'm waiting for KUv3 to roll out, because I don't think Amazon is going to pay out more for pages read than a sale would bring for very long. That's not sustainable either. My feeling is that we'll see that tiered system, or something based on sale price (a percentage of sale price, which is how I believe Scribd does it) perhaps even a limit on payout per page.


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