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Kindle Unlimited: the scoop threads merged... :)

192K views 1K replies 206 participants last post by  Harmonious 
#1 ·
Looks like Amazon just started (at least I've never seen it before) Kindle Unlimited: $9.99 for unlimited access to Prime books?

Anyone know how we are going to get paid for these books? Is it just like another borrow? I can't imagine it would be, or they'd loose money on the deal?

(My Select title seem to be auto-enrolled)

UPDATE: The original link has been removed, so here's a cached copy (thanks to Julie):
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6jL66Zad7zIJ:www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/ku/sign-up/ui/rw/about+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

UPDATE 2: Here's a link to the KindleUnlimited Youtube ad (thanks to Karen McQuestion):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnVNbYdo2FU

UPDATE 3: It looks like the service is really live now:
https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-eBooks/b/ref=ARRAY(0xa6e16ea0)?_encoding=UTF8&ie=UTF8&node=9578129011&pfShowFeatures=&ref_=ku_lp_rw_dp_pb&ref_=ku_lp_rw_dp_pb&tag=viglink20273-20
 
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#552 ·
I've been chatting with a lot of my readers about this.  A lot of them say it would never work for them because they like rereading my books (!) so they want to own them. Several already have subscriptions, but go out of their subscription pool to buy books they like.

I don't think this is the end of permafree. And I think for people in niche markets it might not be a make-it-or-break-it deal.
 
#553 ·
Daniel Knight said:
So it is still in Amazon's best interest to keep us happy with reasonable effective royalty rates.
It's in Amazon's best interest to make as much money as possible to satisfy the shareholders. With respect, whether you're "happy" or not doesn't matter so long as you feel compelled or even forced to keep your content available on their platform.
 
#557 ·
Daniel Knight said:
A lot of people are saying that the effective royalty rate will plummet. It could happen - but if it did wouldn't you expect indies to start leaving Select in great numbers.
Actually no. Select, aside from KOLL has been effectively worthless for years, but people keep going into it because publishing and promoting to the other channels is like really hard you guys and I get almost as much as my regular royalty on borrows.

Plenty of people are going to stay with it even when it's paying 20 cents per.

When.
 
#559 ·
Deke said:
So this is automatic if you're in KDP select? No opt out?
Correct. The Select T&Cs have been updated:

2.2 Inclusion in Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Digital Books included in KDP Select will be automatically included in Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.
 
G
#560 ·
it is up to the content producers to fight back. We should all be pulling our work out of select, although many out of fear will push it all into it - hell i may even do it myself out of fear of getting left behind.

I don't like where this is going. If as a collective voice we accept 20 cent royalty rates then that is what we deserve for not fighting back and voting with our wallets.
 
#561 ·
Daniel Knight said:
But for Kindle Unlimited to succeed - Bezos and Amazon need content. Right now that content is primarily indie published. If the program ends up driving effective royalty rates way down then wouldn't you expect indie authors to leave the program. If that happens he loses content and the program fails. So it is in Amazon's best interest to keep the effective royalty rate high enough to keep indies happy.
At $10 a month, they literally cannot do that.

That would assume 5 books a month, when some folks blast through four times that in a week. I've got friends who will be costing Amazon money on their subscription by Sunday.
 
#562 ·
Bluehorseshoe said:
Jonathan,

Readers will just jump to amazon for the 9.99 per month. THeyll go whereever they can to get content, they dont care.
The discussion by Kindle owners in Let's Talk Kindle belies this. Most have said they're not interested based on the current content.

I'm interested because of the audiobook tie-in.

Betsy
 
#563 ·
Jim Johnson said:
Correct. The Select T&Cs have been updated:
See, and it's little things like that that show the tea leaves. No warning to authors up front that the program is coming, and no way to opt out if you're in Select. Instead it's "here, deal with it". I just don't know why that kind of thing doesn't grate on people more.
 
#564 ·
This is what irks me a bit about Amazon…are they are venue for me to sell my wares, or are they a store that sells what they want on their terms? Like the Hachette situation, I'm not crazy about them dictating the price my work is sold for.  While this is a great situation for readers…heck I'm tempted to join myself…I wonder if it puts writers further away from the driver's seat.
 
G
#565 ·
Daniel Knight said:
But for Kindle Unlimited to succeed - Bezos and Amazon need content. Right now that content is primarily indie published. If the program ends up driving effective royalty rates way down then wouldn't you expect indie authors to leave the program. If that happens he loses content and the program fails. So it is in Amazon's best interest to keep the effective royalty rate high enough to keep indies happy.
Not at all, because plenty of people in this very thread have already stated they would sacrifice royalties for "exposure." The quest for exposure has done more to drive down author payments than almost anything else. Authors place far too much weight on this phantom concept of exposure without much regard as to the quality of consumer they might be exposed to. All exposure is not created equal, but plenty of people will not only happily not make money, but take a loss, in order to get "exposure" on Amazon. And it only takes a handful of authors claiming that exposure helped them become bestsellers to continue the drive of content providers.
 
#566 ·
Josef Black said:
And of course Jeff is smart, he's seen indies willingness to line up and supply books at any cost. He's got his 600K catalogue to play with, he doesn't have to offer indies sweetheart deals. We've proven our loyalty to Amazon and willingness to accept their terms.

I hope I'm wrong. But I can't see how Amazon can subsidise unlimited if it ends up being a sizeable proportion of their kindle market. And the maths say 50-70 cents a copy. Anything over that relies on readers not consuming an average of 10 books or Amazon subsidising the service against their clear (by trad negotiations) pressure to start making a profit to keep wall street happy.
Firstly, your premise seems to be contingent on indie authors being unable or unwilling to leave Select if Kindle Unlimited turned out to be bad for them. If effective royalty rates plummet to the levels you suggest, indies will leave the program - the content will dry up, and the program will collapse. Indie authors are smart people and are not locked into Amazon.

Secondly, your math is predicated on your own speculation about how many books the average reader will read. As Lisa pointed out earlier and I have repeated a couple of times, Scribd, another subscription service for which we already have data, only sees 2% of their users read more than 10 books a month - which suggests using 10 books a month for the average reader is probably wildly off.

I understand and even share your concerns, but remember that as an indie you still have plenty of power, and Bezos knows this. His business plan still depends on keeping the content creators happy. I expect that Amazon knows breakage for the subscription system will be high, which will give them plenty of room to keep paying $2+ per borrow.

Would I prefer it was a royalty based on price? Of course. But my first instinct is that it won't end up in the doomsday scenario you are predicting.
 
#567 ·
#568 ·
Jonathan C. Gillespie said:
See, and it's little things like that that show the tea leaves. No warning to authors up front that the program is coming, and no way to opt out if you're in Select. Instead it's "here, deal with it". I just don't know why that kind of thing doesn't grate on people more.
They are letting you jump ship from Select early so you don't have grounds to sue them though.

May I recommend Smashwords or Draft2Digital?
 
#569 ·
Jonathan C. Gillespie said:
See, and it's little things like that that show the tea leaves. No warning to authors up front that the program is coming, and no way to opt out if you're in Select. Instead it's "here, deal with it". I just don't know why that kind of thing doesn't grate on people more.
Well...Amazon does largely cover themselves within the T&Cs:

2 Agreement Amendment. The Program will change over time and the terms of this Agreement will need to change over time as well. We reserve the right to change the terms of this Agreement at any time in our sole discretion. We will give you notice of the changes by posting new terms in place of the old at http://kdp.amazon.com/ and http://kdp.amazon.co.jp/ with a revision date indicated at the top or by sending an email to the email address then registered for your Program account.
Those terms might grate on a person, but if that person signed up for it, knowing what's in the T&Cs...
 
#570 ·
EC said:
Too much speculation. August will bring our earliest indicator so there's no point stressing out about it.
No, I'd say a fairly healthy amount of cynicism. Amazon have launched a new business model on us that has the potential to change a lot of our business dynamics and they have been remarkably tight lipped on the most important aspect - exactly how much we get paid to participate.

I was never stressed about KOLL. We all knew that it was limited to 1 borrow a month. so if you had 6 books out and a reader borrowed your first then they'd either have to wait a month for the next or buy it. The amount of borrows floating around the system was capped and the payment rate was reasonable for most books but didn't affect the sales of books higher up the food-chain.

I don't think we can apply scribd's read rates to amazon, for one thing they are a new entrant and have a tiny pool of readership and content compared to Amazon. Its know than Kindles earliest adopters and biggest users are the 'whales' of book reading. Many of them may well have been in scribd, but bear in mind those 600K titles aren't on scribd - they were locked into exclusivity with Kindle. Now they've got access to 600K titles.

A good example, I got a review and mail off someone who had read my first five novellas. he had been planning to save them for his holiday but read the first and ended up reading them all in one sitting and was waiting for the next. it probably took him less than 6 hours to read those. Had that been unlimited he could have consumed 6 'borrows' in one sitting and one day. My mum is retired and can easily go through a book every day or two. This isn't even factoring in Novellas - if people are reading 1-2 novellas a day they could be doing easily 30-50 borrows.

I'll agree it's speculation and a worse case scenario, only time will tell what the aggregate borrows number ends up, but 10 seems like a very low amount since one of my readers alone ploughed through 6 books in a day or so. I could easily do the same, so that is why I'm going with 10 a month. I could do probably 1 full length book and 2-3 novellas a week and easily be doing that number which brings me back to the 50-70 cents number.

I'm not speculating for a 'tin-foil hat oh noes the world is ending' - as a business person I want to know what the bottom line is 'most likely' to be - since Amazon haven't been forthcoming with that number the best we can do is run the scenarios based on best, worst and middle cases and determine how that would affect us both in and out of the scheme.

Do i stress over it? of course to a certain extent. I have a plan that relies on XYZ and it has suddenly been upended by a major retailer introducing a new model that could change the dynamics of the business I work in. Its prudent to think 'is this good for me?' or 'is this bad for me?' and work out a game plan based on various outcomes in advance.

What I don't like is the fact Amazon isn't prepared to nail its colours to the mast and say 'this is our scheme and we're prepared to underwrite the risk by ensuring you get 2.50 or 3.00 per borrow. They have transferred the entire risk onto our shoulders.

Worse case scenario is that select authors wake up to find they are getting 35 cents a borrow and their sales collapse in the space of the next two months.
Best case scenario is that select authors make out like bandits and get a huge cash windfall.
Likely scenario is that there is a gradual shift from paid sales to unlimited borrows and Amazon let the KOLL rate gradually decline 10 cents a month so there isn't a sudden shock outpouring of select authors, but there is a measurable decline in earnings over the mid term.

All speculation. But the entire of wall street make billions on speculation by making the smartest bet they can with information to hand coupled to their best guess, I'm no different, I want my books best placed to get the best ROI i can, thus I'm reading everyones opinions on this thread because honestly speaking Amazon has left us in the dark and it is such a big event that we are bound to feel a little WHOA JIM about it for the next few days, months until we see what happens.

I don't think the sky is going to fall in, but then I don't think this is suddenly all going to give us James Patterson's bank balance. As usual I suspect it will be somewhere between a gradual decline and getting the usual shaft off our business partners at the behest of their shareholders.

We're mere authors after all, we only write the damn books that powers their gravy train. No reason to expect we should profit the most from that fact is there beyond the fact they'd have blank paper to sell without us.
 
#571 ·
Jonathan C. Gillespie said:
It's in Amazon's best interest to make as much money as possible to satisfy the shareholders. With respect, whether you're "happy" or not doesn't matter so long as you feel compelled or even forced to keep your content available on their platform.
And how do they make money if indies pull their content (which is what would happen if royalty rates plummeted)? How are indies compelled or forced to keep content in Select?
 
#573 ·
Vaalingrade said:
Actually no. Select, aside from KOLL has been effectively worthless for years, but people keep going into it because publishing and promoting to the other channels is like really hard you guys and I get almost as much as my regular royalty on borrows.

Plenty of people are going to stay with it even when it's paying 20 cents per.

When.
You contradicted yourself. You said KOLL has been worthless but you still get almost as much for a borrow as a regular royalty.

Why would people stay with it if goes down to only 20 cents, when they can get more outside of Select (on Amazon) or through other channels? Given the number of people who are already shying away based on this theoretical drop in royalty rate I think a lot of indies would then leave select.
 
#574 ·
Deke said:
This is what irks me a bit about Amazon...are they are venue for me to sell my wares, or are they a store that sells what they want on their terms? Like the Hachette situation, I'm not crazy about them dictating the price my work is sold for. While this is a great situation for readers...heck I'm tempted to join myself...I wonder if it puts writers further away from the driver's seat.
They're a store that sells what they want, on their terms. They always have been.

The only place a writer is fully in the driver's seat is when you're selling direct, from your own car trunk or website or otherwise hand-selling your stuff direct from you to your reader. Pretty much anything else requires following someone else's terms and conditions in order to sell your wares.
 
#575 ·
I hate to say it, but I think this is going to be a disaster for a lot of smaller fish.  They seem to have a pretty impressive amount of name-brand content enrolled in this.

From the perspective of non-fiction authors, price was a real competitive advantage.  A new Kindle user might want a book about fly-fishing.  An indie author's $2.99 guide to fly-fishing was worth the impulse purchase, as the alternative might have been a $9.99 guide to fly-fishing from some establish outdoor living brand. 

If they're both free to the KU subscriber, these customers are going to opt for the name-brand every time. 

It'll work the same way for fiction.  A new Stephen King is available next to an unknown author's horror story?  They're both free?  Guess where the audience goes.

This is the "end of days" change in Amazon's business model that I've been sweating for a couple of years now.  :(

 
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