A quick blog post on a
familiar topic: Kindle Unlimited. Mainly to draw attention to two posts, Author Earnings Report for October 2014, and Hugh Howey’s blog post about it.
The previous time I
wrote about the topic, Howey held that he might move his books exclusively to Amazon
and Kindle Unlimited. After the latest report, he’s having second thoughts. He
notes that especially those indie authors with middling sales aren’t doing very
well on KU, mainly because compensation per borrow is less than what they would make per sale. Moreover, he
finds troublesome a system that rewards those who do well while leaving others
worse off. Therefore, he might stay off KU for ethical reasons.
Howey isn’t against
KU. He encourages authors to experiment. If your books aren’t on other
platforms yet, sign up for 90 days and see what happens. You can always leave
if it doesn’t work for you. However, he questions the need for exclusivity.
Perhaps it’s time that Amazon drop it. As he says, Amazon is by far the biggest
site for finding ebooks. Giving up the demand for exclusivity won’t change
that.
Personally, I’m
keeping the books I have on KU there for now. They don’t move terribly well,
but borrows still outnumber the sales. And as Amazon announced larger fund for
this month, maybe the compensation per borrow will rise to make it financially worthwhile
to have my books there. I’ll keep you posted.
I've been doing my own KU experiment since last month. I may not be making as much royalty per KU download as I would per sale, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm losing - those KU downloads may not have been sales otherwise. Plus, the downloads of my 99cent novella's helps even out the loss. I put my full findings so far here: http://www.tracingthestars.com/kindle-unlimited-author-experience-sept-2014
ReplyDeleteLike you, I'm curious to see what October will bring with the $2 million they added to the pool...