How Amazon’s Kindle Select Borrowing Program Cheats Authors and How They Should Fix It
The problem is that a reader has to read your whole book in order for you to get paid that amount. If they read less, you only get paid based on the percentage they actually read (e.g. 50% of the 100 page book would result in a $0.29 payment for that borrow). That’s true of no other product. If you rent a movie from Amazon and then don’t watch it, they still charge you. If you buy an item of clothes you never wear, you still have to pay. If you subscribe to a newspaper you never get a chance to read, the newspaper doesn’t stop paying its columnists. To charge an author based on what a reader actually has time to read defeats the whole point of marketing. A reader buys (or through KU borrows) a product. It’s no one’s concern but theirs whether they have time to actually sit down and read it.
To stop authors from leaving the program in droves, Amazon’s going to have to do something even more drastic than their recent change…and something a little more thought through. I recommend merging their two ideas: the old and the new. Pay authors for each borrow (not pages read), but have a set scale for payment based on how many pages (according to their new KENP standard) are in the book. This scale should be stable and not change from month to month. E.g. A 500 page book might earn $2, a 250 page book might earn $1, a 100 page book might earn $0.50, etc.
Pro: This would prevent short novellas from flooding the market
Pro: Authors would be happy that they are getting paid enough to make Kindle Select’s exclusivity and loss of Amazon royalties for that borrow (rather than sale) a fair trade
Pro: Authors would get paid even if a borrower doesn’t finish their book
If you agree that Kindle Select needs to fix this problem and fast, feel free to copy the text of this post and email it to Amazon!
Awesome analysis! I totally agree. If you look at some of the blog postings on the KDP Community blog, you will see that this whole thing has stirred up the Indie Author Community. It appears that the total ebooks on KU has dropped by about 25,000 books in one 24-hour period. The erotica genre seems to one of the genres losing the most KU available books. Many commenting on the KDP Community threads feel that erotica books are one of the prime genres for which KU gets their membership subscribers. However, looking at the comments there is a common thread amongst posters that it is a losing battle to strong arm a giant such as Amazon. One thing that comes to my mind is the KDP return policy. If Amazon has the technology to know how many pages of an ebook is read, then why not apply that same technology to those ebook returns. With a 7-day return policy for 100% refund, it seems to me that it is prime for gamers to abuse.
Amen. The problem as you describe it is exactly why I refuse to list my books with Kindle Select. I am also bothered by the exclusivity; fact is, I’ve had more sales through Smashwords and Create Space than through Amazon, despite the difference in scale! Going forward, if something akin to your proposed solution were put in place – I might give it a try. With ONE book. But for now, sorry Amazon. You’ve very much lost track of just who it is you started out to be.
Amazon has just announced that starting 1 July, they will no longer be paying authors based on the number of times an ebook has been loaned and read in Kindle Unlimited. Instead, the new payment term will be based on the number of pages read.