Amazon has
recently changed its Kindle Unlimited program, in terms of its payouts for
writers. From July 2014 to July 2015,
the program paid a writer a percentage of a total financial pool, based on the
number of borrows a particular book received.
The new program makes that payment contingent on the number of pages read
by borrowers of a particular book, divided by the total number of pages read by
all borrowers.
Some sample
calculations will make this easier to understand. In the table below, “Book A” is a particular book
by a writer:
July 2014
to June 2015 Payment System
Book A Borrows in Month X 100
Total Books Borrowed in Month X 7,000,000
Pct. of All Borrows that were Book A 0.00143%
Total Dollars in Writer Payment Pool $10,000,000
Total Dollars allotted to Book A $142.86
Dollars per Borrow for Book A $1.43
July 2014
to June 2015 Payment System
Book A Borrows in Month X 100
Number of Pages in Book A 200
Total Book A Pages Borrowed in Month
X 20,000
Total Books Borrowed in Month X 7,000,000
Average Pages in Books Borrowed in
Month X 200
Total Pages Borrowed in Month X 1,400,000,000
Pct. of All Pages Borrows that were
Book A 0.00143%
Total
Dollars in Writer Payment Pool
$10,000,000
Total Dollars allotted to Book A $143.86
Dollars per Borrow for Book A $1.43
As you can
see, nothing changes if “Book A” is the same length as the average book in the
Kindle Unlimited pool. (For the sake of
argument, we will say that average length is 200 pages, or 100,000 words at 500
words per page, a fairly standard length for a novel).
But, if Book
A varies from that length, things change considerably, as shown below:
Format Words Pages Pay
per Book
Short Story 10,000 20 0.14
Novelette 20,000 40 0.29
Novella 30,000 60 0.43
Novel 100,000 200 1.43
Epic Novel 250,000 500 3.57
Now, the
short story is penalized, while the epic novel is rewarded (note that these calculations
assume that books are read to the end, though Amazon’s payout schedule takes
into account only pages actually read).
For the record, I doubt that Amazon will actually let short stories fall
below some threshold value, say 30 cents (equivalent to 30% of a 99 cent book).
Clearly,
Amazon is incentivizing writers to shift out of shorter works and into longer
works. Many writers have been using Kindle
Unlimited as a showplace for short works, since the payoff is the same as for
novels, under the old payment schedule.
It paid to put up short works, even to break up novels into shorter,
multiple documents (serialize). Under
the old system, you got $1.43 per borrow, regardless of length (using the
sample calculation). Now, it will take
10 borrows of a short story to reward the author to the same extent as one
borrow of a novel.
Why is
Amazon doing this? I suspect that the
short story frenzy had run its course, and it wasn’t attracting new readers to
Kindle Unlimited. Probably the more
voracious, experimental reader, perhaps those with public transit commutes were
drawn to shorter formats. But, to expand
the audience of readers, Amazon wanted to get more novels into Kindle
Unlimited, since the novel is still the preferred form of most readers.
1. “One interesting wrinkle of the
program is that any book downloaded and “read” would be worth the same amount
of money to the author/publisher, regardless of length. So, a 25 page (10,000 word) $0.99 short story
ebook would pay the writer as much as a 500 page (200,000 word) $3.99 epic
length novel…it would probably be more profitable for the writer/publisher to
have short books downloaded by subscribers, but have longer books purchased by
non-subscribers.”
That’s basically what happened – writers put short works in
KU, and even cut up longer works for KU (i.e. serialized). However, many kept their novel length works
out of KU, so that they could be on multiple platforms (Kobo, Apple, etc.).
2. “One wonders how long Amazon will
maintain the 5 days out of each 90 days that a writer/publisher can offer books
for free, if enrolled in KDP Select…It seems to me that it would be to Amazon’s
advantage to drop “free” in the near future, as that would encourage
cost-sensitive voracious readers to sign up for Kindle Unlimited…Note that if
Amazon does abandon “free”, it will probably be done incrementally, in stages over
a year or two.
We are still waiting to see how this will play out. So far, there is no indication that Amazon
intends to drop free promotions.
3. “Another interesting aspect of Amazon
Unlimited is that, as of the date of the writing of this blog (July 21, 2014),
none of the “big five” publishers have signed on to the program (Penguin/Random
House, Harper-Collins, Hachette, MacMillan, and Simon and Schuster). That primarily leaves books produced by the
mid-size publishers to independent/self-published writers.”
As far as I know, that’s still true.
4. “Amazon, as
always, will be watching their data carefully, refining their algorithms and
adjusting their business strategies in the manner that they feel best
advantages them.”
Clearly, they have done just that.
5. “As for our little venture,
Dodecahedron Books will enrol some of our shorter fiction in Amazon Unlimited,
hoping it gets some downloads and drives some business to the longer books,
like the Kati of Terra series and the Witches’ Stones series. Other than that, it is a matter of observe,
write, publish and try to enjoy the ride…”
We did enrol quite a few short stories in KU and they had
some decent success, both on their own and in helping to introduce some readers
to our longer fiction. Indeed, we
eventually enrolled that longer fiction in KU, as well. Our novel to short story ratio of borrows was
54:46, so assuming that things stay the same (though they never do), we will
actually do better under the new payment regime.
In conclusion, I would just reiterate
what I said last year about our relationship with Amazon:
Observe, write, publish and enjoy the
ride.
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And here’s an XKCD comic showing how
short form writing can be exquisite, even if Amazon is encouraging us to write
longer works (you have to pay careful attention to this one):
