Amazon will pay authors based on number of e-book pages read

Wow. I have a decent amount of bbs posts that satisfy that criteria :smile:

Well, and that’s the problem. People would write really short stuff (maybe it was longer than 1000 words, but as I say, I seldom write a story shorter than 10K, and most come to 20K or over, so I never had a reason to know the lower limit). And by “write” I mean “plagiarize” or even “type gibberish.” Then get paid the same as I do for my wonderfully crafted bodice ripping stories. Annoying.

I don’t actually anticipate it having much effect on my bottom line. I’m ready for a tick downward in profits, but won’t be at all surprised if it’s a tick upwards. It’s just going to be a tick either way, from all my calculations: I ain’t going to go broke any time soon.

Hope it goes in your favor–one of the reasons I haven’t delved into the platform this affects, even though I own a couple of kindles, was perceived quality. If this can.push out a portion of the scammers I may be reading some of your works soon :slight_smile:

Yeah, if you read the KDP forums, you’re likely to be struck, first, with the realization that a lot of so called writers really lack basic reading comprehension abilities. It’s disturbing.

I agree with you. I think this is an overall good thing, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it pans out in the middle of August. Even if it doesn’t pan out well for me individually, I’m okay with that. I have a day job, I do this for fun and running-around money, and so a bit of lost profit won’t ruin my life. In the long term, I suspect it’ll have a beneficial effect on the quality of stuff that appears in KU, and if that’s the case, great. I happen to write very well (thank you, decade+ of higher education!) and so I can slug it out with the big boys once the gnats go away.

Trying to work out if this is a good deal or not. Of course first I have to actually commit to publishing my book. Though it might be a tad long at 250 000 words. Luckily it splits nicely into two.

You are wrong. It does not change how much Amazon pays authors. All authors get paid from a pool. This only changes how the pool is divide up among authors, not the size of the pool.

You are wrong. The current method is worse and does not include anything that even vaguely includes reader satisfaction. Under the old system, a 20 pages of literal non-sense would get paid if someone looked at least two pages. Now they won’t. This is obviously an improvement over the current system. If you have a better system, how about you tells us what it is?

You are wrong. The current system doesn’t pay for re-reads either.

You are also wrong in that it effects how much Amazon pays out. Amazon pays out from a pool. This does not effect the pool. The pool is simply Kindle Unlimited money minus Amazon’s cut. This will only change how that pool is distributed. In no way, shape, or form, does this effect how much profit Amazon pulls in, other in that it might make Kindle Unlimited less shitty so more people use it.

Your question is non-sense. People pay a flat rate for Kindle Unlimited. You will pay that rate regardless if you read 0 books or a thousand.

Your response is non-sense. This only effects Kindle Unlimited authors. This has no impact on how much Kindle Unlimited subscribers pay per month. It has no impact on how much Kindle Unlimited authors get collectively paid per month. It only effects how the distribution from that pool is distributed. It doesn’t change the cost of the buyer because all people in Kindle Unlimited play a flat monthly rate. They can read 0 books or 10,000 books in the month, and they will still pay the same flat monthly rate. How much the buyer reads is irrelevent to how much they pay. That is why they call it Kindle Unlimited .

There, did I cover all the statements and question made by people that clearly didn’t read the article or did read it and didn’t understand?

It involves brain implants but I am not sure going that far is justified.

Well, if it truly is a matter of just how they distribute the same fixed pool of funds, then that is a fairly reasonable way of doing it (except for the issues with reference books). This being Amazon, I just assumed they were, as usual, screwing over authors.

Don’t worry, they’ll get there.

They still have plenty of other ways of doing it, too…

Wow. Obviously you feel strongly about this. So at the risk of being told I’m wrong (hey, stranger things have happened) a few more times, some thoughts.

  • Authors whose books get read less on a page-by-page basis by virtue of their type (e.g., nonfiction, reference, instruction, etc.) will be paid less by Amazon under this new pay-by-the-page-read system. So while I’m totally wrong in the sense that you said I was, it doesn’t look like I’m wrong in the sense of the words I wrote not conforming to reality.

  • Telling me that my opinion about reader-tracking is wrong makes me wrong in the sense that you think I’m wrong. As for my better system, how about this: nobody tracks post-purchase reader behavior at all, and Amazon exercises some quality control like any other publisher. I know, I know… I’m wrong.

I’m guessing from your, ah, spirited debate on the subject that you’re a Kindle Unlimited author, and specifically one who feels victimized by other authors you regard as substandard or scammy or insufficiently epic?

Full disclosure of my own: I tried the Kindle Unlimited free trial (plus a few involuntary paid months when Amazon mysteriously and repeatedly couldn’t manage to fully process my cancellation, but hey, that’s the nature of these things). You’re right–it’s swimming in crap. My problem with it wasn’t that I couldn’t be bothered to scroll past Lesbian Vampire Futanari Sheep-Morphs Vol. XXVII to get to the good stuff; my problem was the vanishingly small amount of “the good stuff” in the first place–no offense. There are always gems in the slush pile, including (I’m sure) everything you’ve ever written or would write, but when I tried to find other books by the first fifty or so authors I already knew I liked and found nothing, I decided that acting as my own submissions editor wasn’t worth the money I’d save. $120/year buys a lot of downloads and paperbacks of books I already know I want to read, and there are too many of those as it is.

I think what you mean to say amidst all these declarations of wrongness is that what you’d prefer to have happen is what’s absolutely best for everyone. YOU ARE WR… you may find that not everyone agrees.

I am not a Kindle Unlimited user nor reader. I think it is a rip off only good for people who really like reading piles of erotica, amateurish sci-fi, or have a high tolerance for wading through crap to find a few gems before anyone else. It just happened that I have seen a few dozen of these posts on the Intertubes followed by a spew of ignorance from people who clearly just read the title and don’t understand either the current system or the new system. You pretty clearly are one of those people. You can tell by these words:

You are under the delusion that Amazon will be paying out authors less under this system. This is not true. That, or you believe that Amazon maliciously is out to get non-fiction authors and want to give fiction writers more money. I’m going to go ahead and assume you meant the former, as the former comes from misunderstanding that happens when you just read a title and draw some bad conclusions, the later is nonsense conspiracy theory that Amazon hates non-fiction and wants to give all the good monies to fiction writers.

I ignored a lot of posts that had concerns or points that came from a position of understanding what was happening. I only went after all of the posts by posters that clearly had no fucking clue what they are talking about, didn’t understand the old system, and understood the new system even less. You, my friend fell, into that category.

If you had contrasted the joys of the 10% system for achieving your ends over the page system, you might have shown you know WTF the two systems were and added something to the conversation. Hell, feel free to do so now. Tell me exactly how awesome it is that a 20 page short story that someone reads 2 pages into and then trashes because the next 18 pages are garbage gets the same amount of money as a 1,000 page book that someone reads cover to cover.

If you truly don’t have any financial stake in this, then I have a feeling that at some point you’re going to look back on what you’ve written in this internet comment thread and wonder what the hell possessed you. But maybe I’m wrong about that, too.

In @rindan’s defense there is a lot of knee jerk “I don’t know anything about this but it sounds bad” going on, and I for one appreciate the specifics.

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I was possessed by a desire to have a conversation that isn’t a circle jerk of ignorance. The only way to start that is to to point out when people are being ignorant and explain what is true and not true, which I did, very specifically. If you really find people having some good old fashion group think in complete and total ignorance to be a riveting discussion, then behold my friend, the Internet is your playground.

How to pay out authors in the Kindle Unlimited pool is an interesting question. Amazon changing their policy could have spawned an interesting discussion. Sadly, most people did what you did. Read the title, wildly misinterpreted what the new system is (usually in a manner to reinforce a preexisting belief), and didn’t give even two thoughts as to what system it was replacing. Hell, many people didn’t even bother to learn it only effects Kindle Unlimited. A few people got through the title and decided that what is going to happen is that Amazon is now charging people per page read.

What is the point of having a discussion if it is rooted entirely on ignorant feels? You wonder if I will feel some sort of shame for pointing out ignorance. I wonder if your cognitive dissonance will even let you realize that your posts were rooted entirely in failure to understand what was going on and was based on feelings formed in ignorance. I’m not trying to pick on you dude, but honestly, this conversation looks a hell of a lot like our normal every day political discourse; a circle jerk of ignorance.

I guess I could pluck up my pride and explain again why I’m not, you know, wrong, in spite of my ignorant feels and circle-jerking. (Who told you about that, anyway? The Circle-Jerk of Ignorance has strict privacy rules!) Normally I would. But I know when I’m overmatched, and I surrender the internet argument.

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