Author roulette

So another month rolls by and the Kindle Unlimited payout for authors drops again.
  • August - $0.00513992 per page read
  • September - $0.00506979 per page read
  • October - $0.0048099 per page read
Under the 'Kindle Unlimited mark 2', Amazon having changed its payout regime to pay-per-pages read a few months ago, it seems that past performance is indeed a guide to the future. Slow erosion of values. Judging by the noise out there in author forums you'd be justified in thinking that yet another round of authorial head-scratching is underway.

The question is, how does this make commercial sense? If Amazon wants to build a subscription-based ebook borrowing programme, they require not only customer loyalty, but author loyalty. Ah yes, profit, you say. There are plenty of prophets (profits?) of doom out there. The pricing war with the Big 5 publishing houses grinds on, sales of eBooks are dropping (invisible to me) and Indies all over are making hay, grabbing an increasingly large slice of the market.

For a viewpoint on borrowing programmes 'killing' single eBook sales, see the Smashwords Blog (so basically, if you use KDP Select, you are supping with the devil. Lots of good discussion though) If you think book sales are shrinking, the excellent Author Earnings Report is a great place to start.

As for me? I'm going to keep my head down and write my next book.

Comments

  1. Lorilyn RobertsDecember 1, 2015 at 4:55 AM

    I'm with you, Marc. I'm just writing my next book and not spending money on advertising or putting any more books in KDP Select. I keep building my Twitter following and writing my blog. Makes the most sense to me as an Indy author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. marcsecDecember 2, 2015 at 12:12 PM

    I'm still earning enough from Select that I'm staying in for the time being, and exploring other avenues of branching out such as translation and audiobooks. Maybe I'll start a line of T-shirts :-) ha ha. Just finished and uploaded Dragon Thief this morning so feeling accomplished!

    ReplyDelete

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