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KU 3

57K views 332 replies 117 participants last post by  Linn 
G
#1 ·
Just got this, and don't see a post yet, delete if I missed it please
Hello,

Today we are releasing our next iteration of Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count - KENPC V3.0. This release makes a number of improvements to how we determine the length of books relative to one another and how we measure pages read. We expect payouts to the vast majority of authors to be largely unchanged as a result of these updates. In addition, we will pay at least $18 Million from the KDP Select Global Fund in July.

We are constantly working to improve our programs and increase the fairness of how we allocate the KDP Select Global Fund. Our goal remains to build a service that rewards authors for their work while continuing to attract more readers and encouraging them to read more and more often.

As always, we welcome feedback and ideas about how we can improve Kindle Direct Publishing and Kindle Unlimited. You can contact us here: https://kdp.amazon.com/contact-us. To learn more about KENPC V3.0, go here: https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/AI3QMVN4FMTXJ.

Best Regards,
The Kindle Direct Publishing Team

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#27 ·
Joseph M. Erhardt said:
Obviously KDP is NOT going to admit to any shortcomings in the KU 2.0 system, so the fuzzy description is deliberate. Whether anything worthwhile has changed remains to be seen, viz.: 1) The page-skip vs. pages-read issue; 2) The exit point issue; 3) The problem with scam books and stuffed books

Unless these issues have been addressed, this is just applying lipstick to a pig.
For GoT fans, it's applying Dornish lipstick to a pig :D
 
#28 ·
Wow! Talk about on the ball. Email hasn't even been out 5 minutes, and already two pages on a thread.

Looking it over, it is nice to see Amazon trying to make things more fair. From my understanding from reading the KU 3.0 on the KDP page, shorts, or any book length up to 3,000, are only paid once. I don't think reading a short over and over, and some of my readers do like to read certain parts over and over ;-), is going to give more pages reads. Sounds like it will only still be counting once. But large stuffed books may be over, and they are counting per customer. Sounds like the pirates might have to hook up more devices to keep up. I mean, they'll figure a way to get around it, but at least Amazon is doing something.

 
#30 ·
No changes to my KENPC numbers as far as I can see (though on one particularly short pen name book, it does warn me that the SRL may mean I get much lower than the KENPC figure for readthroughs, which is nice).

The email is a bit vague, probably deliberately. I went back almost all-in to KU in June after a long time away. July's reads were good to me, so I'll see how this pans out, and what effect, if any, this change has on the page rate for July... the 15th is going to be an interesting day for a lot of writers, I suspect.
 
#32 ·
alawston said:
No changes to my KENPC numbers as far as I can see (though on one particularly short pen name book, it does warn me that the SRL may mean I get much lower than the KENPC figure for readthroughs, which is nice).

The email is a bit vague, probably deliberately. I went back almost all-in to KU in June after a long time away. July's reads were good to me, so I'll see how this pans out, and what effect, if any, this change has on the page rate for July... the 15th is going to be an interesting day for a lot of writers, I suspect.
My guess is it'll take some time to roll out the new changes. There are 6 million (?) books on Kindle Press, and how many in KU? Having to recalculate KENPC for every KU book is a big job. Probably quite a few books haven't been touched. My bet is Amazon will crunch through most of them by Monday.
 
#33 ·
Stewart Matthews said:
My guess is it'll take some time to roll out the new changes. There are 6 million (?) books on Kindle Press, and how many in KU? Having to recalculate KENPC for every KU book is a big job. Probably quite a few books haven't been touched. My bet is Amazon will crunch through most of them by the Monday.
Possibly, but all the books I checked had KENPC v.3.0 in front of them, so I have to assume mine have been done.
 
#34 ·
Jim Johnson said:
Yep; I suspect they're cracking down on the folks that use links at the start of books to jump to the back of the book to make it look like they've read the whole thing and register all the pages read. Given that Amazon has the ability to tell how far we've read in a book, it wouldn't surprise me that they can track which pages in a book have been read/accessed and which haven't or been skipped.
it's a start. doesn't solve click farms and whatnot, but definitely makes their job at scamming a lot more tedious.
 
#36 ·
I'll just throw in the usual reminder that if everyone's page counts change by the same amount, we all get exactly the same payout per book as we did under KU 2. Even if everyone's page counts got cut in half. Exact same amount. It's a pot that split up, not a set per-page payout.

(I know there are nuances, but that's still basically how it works, so I really don't care at all if my page counts go down (or up). It's an arbitrary number that really only matters if you're trying to find loopholes to get more than your rightful share.)
 
#37 ·
Jim Johnson said:
Yep; I suspect they're cracking down on the folks that use links at the start of books to jump to the back of the book to make it look like they've read the whole thing and register all the pages read. Given that Amazon has the ability to tell how far we've read in a book, it wouldn't surprise me that they can track which pages in a book have been read/accessed and which haven't or been skipped.
It is simply not possible for Amazon to determine the exact number of pages read. Why? Because we can read with internet connection turned off.

Let's say I go to the beach with no internet connection and read 300 pages. Then I turn my internet back on when I'm home and Amazon will see that I left off at 300 pages. But what if, when my internet is off, I skip from chapter 2 to chapter 10 and still end up on page 300. When my internet is back on I'll still be at page 300.

Because we can read on kindle devices with no internet, it is simply impossible for Amazon to accurately determine the number of pages that have been read and not skipped over.
 
#40 ·
I have seven books in KU right now, one seems to have dropped about 10% (a romance novel that's my most-borrowed), one has gone up to about where it was under KU 1.0 (a fantasy novel), the others have stayed the same. But I also moved everything to Vellum recently and that could've change my KENPCs then.
 
#42 ·
David J Normoyle said:
Not necessarily. The kindle device could record pages read while offline, and report all the data whenever the kindle goes online again.
Clearly for the past several years that has not been the case. Kindle devices have not been capable of doing that... because it hasn't done it at all under 2.0.

Maybe new devices can do that. Brand new ones that are just coming out. But obviously old ones up unti now can't do that because the system has never fully counted page reads.
 
#45 ·
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#47 ·
I think it's time I consider pulling out. The page-reads haven't been spectacular for a while, but it's been getting steadily worse for the last two months. While this new change doesn't make a lot of sense to me, it doesn't seem a great change, either. And since one gets 'locked in' for 3 months once joining, and my 'out date' is almost here, seems logical to do it now, rather than wait another three months to see what this all turns out to be.
Since D2D now has Overdrive getting out of KU3 makes sense. I just got an e-mail this morning to that effect and immediately put all my books in overdrive. Now my books will show up in local libraries which is what I have always wanted.
 
#48 ·
great_gazoo said:
Clearly for the past several years that has not been the case. Kindle devices have not been capable of doing that... because it hasn't done it at all under 2.0.

Maybe new devices can do that. Brand new ones that are just coming out. But obviously old ones up unti now can't do that because the system has never fully counted page reads.
Agreed that they haven't accurately counted pages in the past. We have no idea if devices are capable of it, just that it's likely not trivial. I'm just pointing out that the lack of a constant internet connection doesn't make accurate page counts impossible.
 
#49 ·
So far seems like business as usual on my books.  Page lengths seem to be unchanged, and page reads are in line with prior days.

Fingers crossed this dissuades the stuffers, scammers, and click farmers, but the cynic in me knows they'll just keep digging until they find some new loophole.
 
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