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What do you think of the new KU change? (payout per page)

  • I like it. It's better than the old flat payout regardless of length

    Votes: 321 73.5%
  • I don't like it. The old flat payout regardless of length payout is better

    Votes: 116 26.5%

New KU Payout & Program Change MEGA Thread--Now with Poll! (MERGED)

128K views 1K replies 264 participants last post by  K'Sennia Visitor 
#1 ·
Email I got today:

Hello,

Today we have a few exciting announcements to share related to the KDP Select global fund. The first is that we're adding a bonus of $7.8 million to the May KDP Select global fund on top of the previously announced $3 million base fund, bringing the total fund to $10.8 million. We are also pleased to report that:

• KDP Select authors are on track to earn over $60M in the first half of 2015 from books read in Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.

• Total royalties across subscription and a la carte sales earned by KDP Select authors in the US are on track to more than double in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period last year.

• Authors have continued to renew their titles in KDP Select at rates in excess of 95% each month since Kindle Unlimited launched.

These trends give us the confidence to look forward and share that the KDP Select global fund will be in excess of $11M for both July and August.

We're always looking at ways to make our programs even better, and we've received lots of great feedback on how to improve the way we pay KDP authors for books in Kindle Unlimited. One particular piece of feedback we've heard consistently from authors is that paying the same for all books regardless of length may not provide a strong enough alignment between the interests of authors and readers. We agree. With this in mind, we're pleased to announce that beginning on July 1, the KDP Select Global Fund will be paid out based on the number of pages KU and KOLL customers read.

As with our current approach, we'll continue to offer a global fund for each month. Under this new model, the amount an author earns will be determined by their share of total pages read rather than their share of total qualified borrows. Here are a few examples illustrating how the fund will be paid out. For simplicity, assume the fund is $10M and that 100,000,000 total pages were read in the month:

• The author of a 100 page book which was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

• The author of a 200 page book which was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million multiplied by 20,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

• The author of a 200 page book which was borrowed 100 times but only read half way through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

We will similarly change the way we pay KDP Select All-Star bonuses which will be awarded to authors and titles based on total KU and KOLL pages read.

We think this is a solid step forward and better aligns the interests of readers and authors. Our goal, as always, is to build a service that rewards authors for their valuable work, attracts more readers and encourages them to read more and more often. We welcome your continued feedback and ideas about how we can further improve Kindle Direct Publishing and Kindle Unlimited.

In the coming days we'll share more details about this change. In the meantime, for further information (such as how we measure pages read) you can read more here: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A156OS90J7RDN.

Best Regards,
The Kindle Direct Publishing Team
 
#627 ·
Saul Tanpepper said:
The ostensible absence of a royalty cap (other than page count) raises an interesting new situation where a book might now theoretically earn more than the ~$7 earned at the 70% rate and $9.99 ceiling. I'm in a couple large box sets, close to a million words, which are strategically priced at 99 cents. If they were enrolled in Select, borrowed, and read through, that title could earn north of $30 at the $0.01/page rate. As little as 35 cents for a sale, as much as $30 for a borrow. Now I'm really curious how they intend to quantify page reads.

August 15 can't arrive soon enough.
You have to tell us how that works out when it happens
 
G
#628 ·
horrordude1973 said:
After my initial freakout yesterday I've had more time to sit and reflect on this.
Good. :) I've been an ulcer free KOLL/KU fan since I started self-publishing last year. That's not changing. :)

I look forward to publishing another series and a new serial. I've got a novel coming out next month, but I don't have plans for more full-length novels. Not my preference.

You do what works for you. Don't worry about what other people do or don't do.

Amazon KOLL/KU panics on author boards follow a formula. Get used to them.
 
#630 ·
Barnaby Yard said:
This assumes that KU subscribers also buy books... Do they? To be honest, I don't know, but I would assume as they are spending £7.99 a month, they would make use of that rather than buy other books on top.

By having your books in there, you are reaching all those not in it who buy books (and benefiting from the boost borrows give algorithms), but also those who only borrow.

Going wide might be better, but only if you can crack those other markets to make up for the borrow money you would be missing.
I do. :D
 
#631 ·
vanstry said:
Now as to WHY you would put a novel in KU, even though you make LESS money on it? Simple: KU readers don't buy eBooks. They don't have to.
Do you have a source for that statistic? Because this KU reader buys books. If I like an author, I binge read that author. If all of the author's books aren't in KU, I'll buy ones that aren't. My feeling is that most KU readers are voracious readers. I joined KU because I was spending $10 a month on books that were in the Kindle Daily Deals that were also in KU. So now, I pick up those books in KU and then still spend the rest of my book budget on books NOT in KU.

Betsy
 
#632 ·
Betsy the Quilter said:
Do you have a source for that statistic? Because this KU reader buys books. If I like an author, I binge read that author. If all of the author's books aren't in KU, I'll buy ones that aren't. My feeling is that most KU readers are voracious readers. I joined KU because I was spending $10 a month on books that were in the Kindle Daily Deals that were also in KU. So now, I pick up those books in KU and then still spend the rest of my book budget on books NOT in KU.

Betsy
I have KU and I buy books all the time. I know many others who do as well. I use KU to check out new authors I haven't read before and I buy books for authors I know and like. Many of my readers tell me the same. Or since I release so many books they get it on KU first to read it, then buy it later when they have the money. Without some hard data saying KU useers don't buy books is meaningless
 
#634 ·
I'm think I'm happy about this change. I have plans for the next year laid out that have to be tweaked now, but my primary output is novel length 70k to 100k works. I can understand how many, particularly short story writers, are distressed by this new payout. I had planned to put out multiple shorts for the purpose of KU but now I will bundle into collections. It is too early to see the actual $ per page but I went into Select for exposure. When my novel is priced at 3.99 and my borrow to sale rate is 3-1, I took it as an expected hit for increased exposure. I loved when my 12k short story collection was borrowed... but I figured that wouldn't last. In my case, I think this will work out better.

I was reading an old post by Russell Blake (His "sale loads of books" post). I thought about how now short fiction worked well due to KU and how this was example of how things change... But for the last few days his advice to write novels and just novels, kept bouncing in my head... I feel like this might be why.

This is my first time seeing a sudden change in the landscape... expect the unexpected. Got it. ;)
 
#635 ·
horrordude1973 said:
I have KU and I buy books all the time. I know many others who do as well.
Me too, and I've discovered new-to-me authors through KU and bought their books. The couple of other KU subscribers I've asked have also reported buying books in addition to borrowing.

As to the whole short vs. long debate. Of course quality matters. Even though I favor longer reads, I'd rather read a good short story than a mediocre novel, although in my case I wouldn't read the mediocre novel. I have no qualms about abandoning anything the minute I'm bored. However, as a big fan of Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series, I can tell you I'm not paying the same for one of his short stories as for one of his novels. I really don't care if it takes him twice as long to craft the short story. As a reader what I care about is how long the story is going to entertain me, and a novel is going to do that many times longer than a short story.
 
#637 ·
horrordude1973 said:
I see a lot of bashing of the novella and short story authors here and ringing of our death knells how we are about to be "hosed" and we are "done for"
Can you link to the "hosed" and "done for" posts? I couldn't find them.
 
#638 ·
Ainsley said:
Exactly. I don't see how this is that bad a thing for shorter works.
It's not*. It might be a bad thing if you've shifted your strategy to writing shorter works because you expected to always get the same payout as longer ones. Who this unequivocally hurts is the authors of any length who can't keep readers engaged. And I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.

*picture books, children's books, etc excepted, of course.
 
#640 ·
Speaker-To-Animals said:
The comparison is between the earlier KU program and the new KU program. $2.50 > $1.35 so the new program is better for novels.

Whether it is good or bad for a particular book is far more complicated and always has been. Simply saying you make more from a sale ignores the fact that some borrows would never convert to sales. The actual equation is a little different though. How many of those borrows would ever have been sales? How much higher is your book in the rankings because of those borrows and how many additional sales does that result in?

Example: I can think of one author I discovered in KU. I read everything she wrote. She has since dropped out. I bought her next release so she made $2.09 which is greater than $1.35 so she made out better dropping out, right? No because she's released three books and I have passed on two that I absolutely would have read with KU, so she's actually lost $1.91. She's also not hitting the top 10 in category either which means she's not getting as much exposure. Now, she might still be right. I might give in and buy the books. But it's not as simple as the buy/borrow amounts in straight comparison.

The actual calculation or more accurately guess-timation we need to make is whether borrows + sales due to greater visibility from borrows > Amazon sales converted to borrows + 3rd party sales.
Good points. Reaching readers has been a major value of KU for me. Doubt there's any other way I could have moved as many ebooks with so little promo on new pen names. And I doubt most of those readers would be buying most of my books if they weren't in KU; I'm new and don't have the budget for major promo.

I have titles that get 30 to 50 percent sales, at least for some weeks, and others that get more than 90% borrows. I experimented with taking some bundles out of KU to see if there'd be a significant improvement in sales. Sure, I'm making more on each unit, but I'm making less per title on those and I'm losing a lot of exposure for the links in the backmatter because they reach far fewer readers.

I'm not excited about the change, but based on the sell-through on most of my series and serials, readers are going through my books start to finish and picking up the next one.

I'm in agreement with HorrorDude that short lengths won't necessarily be at a disadvantage. Volume may take on greater importance, provided that the work is compelling.
 
#641 ·
Length has nothing to do with the worth  of a thing. The amount of money and time the author spent has nothing to do with its worth either.

Your book, no matter the length, is worth exactly what someone will pay for it. Readers care that the book is something they want to read and that their time won't be wasted.

This is a meritocracy in that if you write books people want to read and can't put down, you will likely be rewarded. That was true before KU and will continue to be true after this change. Maybe more so, since now your books will have to be good enough to keep people reading or you won't get paid inside that system.  Which means people writing 50 page stories that get fully read because they are awesome will still earn more than someone writing 500 page novels that lose most readers in the first 20 pages.

Your books are worth what people will pay. Finding that sweet spot of maximizing readership and income is the hard part.

A short story that has demand for it is, technically, worth more than a novel that has no demand, because people will pay for one and not the the other, and therefore the one will out-earn the other. That's reality.

So yeah, I imagine a lot of the serials will make less than before, but probably still more than a lot of people loading in novels that don't get read at all. :)

 
#642 ·
Saul Tanpepper said:
Who this unequivocally hurts is the authors of any length who can't keep readers engaged. And I'm not so sure that's a bad thing
Exactly! I don't write novellas. I'm not sure I know how to and I take the view that a good story takes as long as it takes to be told.
So I'm basically in favour of this change. It doesn't mean that I'm guaranteed to make any more money out of it but the potential is there IF I can keep the reader engaged to the end of the book. If I can't do that then it's a reflection on my storytelling ability rather than any changes that are made to KU.
 
#643 ·
What I want to know is, how will they handle slow readers? What if a person borrows a book, then reads two or three pages a day, over 80 or 100 days? How will Amazon handle the royalty? Will we see the same book come up in our borrowed column over a three month period, and get paid for the pages read during that period? Or will we only get paid for the first month and lose the rest?

What if someone borrows a book, reads half, returns it, then borrows it again 2 months later and reads the second half? Will we get paid for the second borrow? After all, we didn't get paid for the second half of the book the first time around and we are now being paid per page rather than per borrow.
 
#644 ·
horrordude1973 said:
I see a lot of bashing of the novella and short story authors here and ringing of our death knells how we are about to be "hosed" and we are "done for"
MyraScott said:
Can you link to the "hosed" and "done for" posts? I couldn't find them.
horrordude1973 said:
I've seen at least 4 or 5, not gonna comb through this entire thread to look for them now
I found several writers of children's books or shorter forms who themselves used those terms, but not other people. I have found a little bit of us vs them in this thread, which I'd prefer not to see. I've also seen references to KU content providers who produce "scraped" content or who have taken longer works and chopped them into smaller pieces just to take advantage of the current pay structure; I didn't read those comments as directed at authors who do write original works in shorter forms.

If I missed something, I apologize. Let's, going forward, respect the hard work of your fellow members.

Thanks,

Betsy
KB Mod
 
#645 ·
David Chill said:
The principle remains. For other than picture book publishers, writers who keep readers reading to the end will benefit the most from this new system.
I couldn't agree more with this statement. I do believe there are delicate intricacies involved with publishing and promoting that are being discussed here, but once the reader opens your novel and you get them to keep turning pages you should be fine. Keep them turning pages, right?

Now I haven't read through all (as of now) 28 pages of this thread, but this is more of a payout thing rather than exposure thing right?
 
#646 ·
My guess is it's just like current borrows. If you pull a book OUT of KDP select and it gets reads the next month, you are paid at the following month's payout, not the payout in which the book was clicked.

So hypothetically, as a reader takes longer to read your book, if it spans over a change in the month, then you will get paid one rate for the pages read in say July and a different rate in say August, because the pool of money and total pages read in any given month change.
 
#647 ·
Amazon isn't trying to stop the scammers. If they wanted to, they could. It isn't worth their time...yet.

Will this make it more difficult for scammers? I think possibly. However, the smart ones will adapt, and maybe even make more. The dumb ones will give up and look for some other get-rich-quick scheme.  Frankly, either way, I don't care. It's effect on my business is negligible at best.

I agree that length does not determine value. I also agree that a short story is not of less value than a long one. Value is determined by the reader, not the writer. All I want is to get paid the same 'per word' for my work as everyone else. I get that some people might take a year to write a 10k short, while others might crank out 4 - 100k novels in that same year. However, the fact that it took one person longer to write those 10k words does not make them worth more per word, or per story. I shouldn't be penalized because some people take longer to write, or because some people choose to write short stories instead of novels.

I don't which anyone to lose revenue, but guess what? Those of you who were writing shorts because they paid better in KU were milking a poorly designed system. Good for you, but so sorry, the free-ride is over.

Also, so many people recommending 'go-wide'. I did. I lost $15k a month for months. Even worse, the subscription rate to my mailing list dropped by 50%, and that mailing list is what gets me into the top 10 of all of Amazon every time I release a new novel. I'm back in Select/KU, and I'm not going anywhere for quite a while. So when you blindly shout 'go-wide', I just laugh and shake my head. Fact is, no matter how much you want it to be, it ain't right for everyone.
 
#648 ·
Our Amazon sales dropped 90% because we dropped out of Select and KU last year.

I wrote about Amazon only a couple of months ago. Our last KU author pulled her stuff from Select back in December, I believe. Her formerly steady sales went to zero and have stayed there ever since. Her book pages have been savaged. Categories disappeared. Ranking through the floor. It's almost as if her Amazon book pages were turned off by flipping a switch. She sells practically nothing now. She is our best-selling author.

The reality is this: Amazon is turning into Spotify, and you aren't Taylor Swift.

What Amazon promised was a high royalty (up to 70%) and a big audience. Now they are delivering neither. They are willing to build an infrastructure to count, page by page, how many words into a book our readers travel (while concealing the actual identity of that reader, of course, gotta keep that leash tight), but remain unwilling to tell us how many people actually see our book pages on their site. Now why is that?

Is it because they don't want the average author to know Amazon isn't delivering the audience they promised?

Can we give up a couple of pennies a book and get some visibility? How about growing the pie, Jeff? You've got the audience. Maybe spending a little less time shaving Lincoln's beard and a little more time putting the right books in the hands of the right readers will solve your "how many ants can we fit in this tiny little cage" problem. Why is this a problem for you? Let me break it down for you Jeff:

Amazon has the most refined marketing machine known to man, yet for some reason they can't match readers with books even if we pay them. Why?

Proof? Simple. Ask the average middle grade author how their numbers look on Amazon. My guess is (since I work with a room full of them) they'll tell you they would make more money if they loaded their work in a wheelbarrow and rolled it up and down Venice Beach on a Tuesday evening in October.

Those of us willing to look past this "solve a puzzle, win a prize" business model know two things. One, Amazon has utterly abandoned (on your behalf) any pretense of being a book seller. SELLING books leads to wealth, and we can't have wealthy authors getting all uppity in the bread shop. So instead of selling books and being able to say "I sold a million books" it's borrow-rent-a-grabby books, which can't be quantified any more because nobody sold anything. And Amazon can unilaterally decide on a minute-by-minute basis how much money you actually make. The most mud-soaked sharecroppers in the most miserable medieval hole ever known to man would be appalled.

Amazon is gradually taking control and ownership away from you and keeping it for themselves. The KDP self-publishing deal has been getting steadily worse for years and years.

Meanwhile, Kindle Unlimited is you competing with yourself.

What I know is this: our guild made more money in 19 days out of our own store than we did in four years on Amazon.
 
#650 ·
Hi,

OK had a little time to think things out. Since I write longer books this seems like a mostly good change for me. But I do have some shorter fiction too.

Based on this change I'm going to adopt the following strategy for some of it. Currently I have to wizard at law books out, and a third underway. They're all about 40 k which is short for me. They were out before KU came in so are also out in other sellers. Because of this my newest plan is to put out the new book, and keep the old books in kindle as well as smashwords etc but not in kindle select or KU. However, I'll compile the books into one 120 k book as well which will go into KU. That way my books go wide and also I get the best royalty from KU.

Reasonable strategy?

Cheers, Greg.
 
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