KOLL SEPTEMBER, 2014

Kindle Unlimited paid $1.52 per download read to 10% in September, 2014.

This is nearly the same as August, 2014, which was $1.54.

Both are down significantly from $1.81 for July, 2014 (which was a partial month of Kindle Unlimited), and are down from the usual $2 or more from the Amazon Prime days (but customers can only borrow one book per month through Prime).

Update: Kindle Unlimited payments dropped further, down to $1.33, for October, 2014. It’s back up tof $1.39 for November, 2014. It’s further up to $1.43 in December.

To me, the big number is $2,000,000. KDP started the KOLL global fund at $3,000,000 for September, and added another $2,000,000 to prevent KOLL from paying less than $1.50 per borrow.

This shows two things: (1) Amazon doesn’t want the KOLL payment to drop too low and (2) Kindle Unlimited is still very active. The second point shows that there is a significant Kindle Unlimited market presently.

Books with list prices of $2.99 or more draw a greater royalty through sales, but it’s quite possible that many customers who are reading books through Kindle Unlimited wouldn’t have purchased many of those books otherwise. There is some trade-off. Opting out of KDP Select opens up other opportunities at Smashwords, Apple iBooks, Kobo, Nook, etc., but will ‘your’ book sell well through those channels and will it make up for leaving KDP Select? It’s a tough call. And it’s possible that Amazon sales will go down if opting out of Kindle Unlimited (as Kindle Unlimited has a positive impact on sales rank).

Every book is different. I’m keeping my books in KDP Select. My sales ranks seem to have dropped somewhat, yet overall my monthly Kindle royalties have steadily risen from July onward. This shows that many more Kindle e-books are being read as a result of Kindle Unlimited. (Sales themselves have improved slightly for me, and the borrows make for nice gravy.)

Read Tuesday

Imagine a Black Friday type of event just for book lovers.

You don’t have to imagine it. It’s called Read Tuesday, and it’s free: www.readtuesday.com.

Halloween Reading

Looking for some spooky books to read this Halloween month?

https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/scary-books

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2014 Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

• Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
• Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
• Boxed set (of 4 books) now available for Kindle pre-order

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.