You realize both the authors and readers have voluntarily participated, right?
and yet, 18 years of data later, their recommendations still suck.
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FTFY
Mandatory filler to make post char limit happy
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The problem is traditional publishers treat authors just as badly. No right or good answer here. I have done both. There isnāt a difference at all. Content providers are not respected. Authors need a better venue than the ones out there. I was in traditional publishing and then wanted to do something that broke from the chains of the past, but the eBook is not much better, although there are things going for it that traditional publishers still lag.
It is a real problem and when KU allows things like this to happen, it makes things worse. I donāt want to be the thereād writing in a patriarchal structure that is antiquated. I should have an outlet to do edgy and experimental things without a stigma, but when things like this happen, it is not good.
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The new phone books are here!
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I love Kindle Unlimited.
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This is because Kindle Unlimited is effectively a kludge. The Kindle wasnāt designed to support unlimited subscription services in which authors were paid per page read. Nobody had any idea that would be possible or desirable at the time. The last-page-read marker was meant to let readers stop reading on one device and pick up in the same place on another. It was never meant to be used as a total-number-of-pages-I-have-read counter.
When they needed some method of counting pages, they used the last-page-read marker as a quick and dirty solution. The problem with quick and dirty solutions is, theyāre easily exploited.
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?Ā
The metric makes sense for books read without gaming the system. It rewards authors for books people actually read, as opposed to merely download and leave unread, or read 5 pages and give up on. I tried KU. I found some decent books. But I downloaded the 10 book at a time maximum and didnāt read all of the books I downloaded to try. There is no reason the authors whoās books I didnāt read should have been paid the same as the authors whoās books I did.
Kindle Unlimited is a flat rate monthly subscription for for people who read a lot, and this metric was meant to pay based on what is read. Amazon just needs to up their system to prevent gaming it, just the way Google and pay per click advertising platforms have to.
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Sorry, no. Iāve been in the business a long time and Iāve seen some skanky things, but KU is just a funnel where slush gets dumped in one end hosed out the other. Thereās just not really a charitable way of looking at it.
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As a customer, KU is a crap shoot. Itās where I can take chances on new authors without loosing money. I donāt have any sunk costs, so I donāt feel āobligatedā to finish books that suck, and when the books are good it is like discovering gold in a creek.
Lots of the KU books Iāve read have had marginal editing, terrible covers but some good creativity. They are books I would not have bought outright, but Iām happy to support as part of a fixed cost subscription.
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Hold the money in a very brief escrow. Offer a free book credit to any reader who reports a book payable when malfeasance is confirmed. Donāt just rely on reporting, though. If you donāt have time to investigate, you can use stats to withhold funds until investigation, but donāt just start taking books down. Alternatively penalize bad faith reports.
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I have the notion you thought of a more brilliant brevity than I thought of. I mean, getting paid Net 10.3 days sounds okay, but maybe all the threads closed on page 722 and and thereās hosting to fund?
I cancelled my KU subscription after a few months because even the non-spammy books were mostly self-published and not very good. Most of the professionally published/edited books I wanted to read werenāt available via KU.
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I didnāt think a craphound would be opposed to crapflooders.
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Thatās the title to a song I just wrote!
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Thatās not really fair. Isnāt it just Sturgeonās Law at work?
@jlw has pointed to a lot of very good KU titles. Heās recommended a lot of bodice rippers that Iām not a fan of (hey, Iām not judging!) but Iām digging Z-burbia which was also recommend by Jason.
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Now weāre calling it āartisanal publishing.ā At least for things we think are āgood.ā
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I think we have found a few really great indie authors via Kindle Unlimited.
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I kind of feel like saying āfuck amazonā they sort of deserve it. Theyāve treated authors poorly, theyāve treated customers poorly when it comes to e-books.
