I am interested to see how this will play out. I publish very short pieces of fiction and make a tidy sum off of them, not enough to live off of but enough to cover my mortgage each month. My stories are long for their genre, averaging about 20k words, with plots and a bit more literary polish than some of the stuff I’ve read. Currently, I get about $1.30 per download (if the downloader reads more than ten percent of the story, that is). A sale nets me about $2.00. I lose money in downloads but make up for it in volume, which is fine. With the new system, it’s hard to say if I’ll make more or less. If it’s two cents a page, which is a popular estimate on the KDP forums, then I’ll make money, assuming some reasonable definition of “page.” If it’s less than that, I won’t. We won’t really know until the reports come in on August 15.
This change is in response to the “scamphlet” thing, where people write the bare minimum (I want to say it’s 1000 words, but I don’t know, 'cause I have never written that short in my life) and opening and flipping through a page of it triggers the “read” flag, getting them $1.30 or so each time. It may also be an attempt to curb in erotica, which tends to be short. But that’d be foolish, since erotica is Amazon’s money-maker.
