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KENP: PAYMENT FOR PAGES READ

Amazon KDP is paying $0.005779 per page read for KDP Select books in July, 2015.

The payment for KENP is right on the money: almost exactly the expected $0.0058 per page read.

(The prediction came from the $11M KDP Select Global Fund divided by the 1.9B pages read in June, 2015.)

Here are a few examples of how to interpret the payout for KENP:

• A book with a KENPC of 225 pages earns $1.30 when read to 100%. That’s what it takes to earn the same as in previous months. (But remember, a print book with 150 pages or so might have a KENPC of 225 pages. The way that a ‘page’ is defined is fairly generous, except for fixed-format books.)
• A book with a KENPC of 100 pages earns $0.58 when read to 100%.
• A book with a KENPC of 400 pages earns $2.31 when read to 100%.
• A book with a KENPC of 700 pages earns $4.04 when read to 100%.
• Just multiply your KENPC by 0.005779.

Of course, not all books are read to 100%.

The new payout appears to favor longer books, but only when you compare the new payout to the old payout.

If you forget how it used to be and ask yourself, “How long a book should I write?” it really doesn’t favor longer books. Whether you write 300 pages as a single book or 6 books, you get paid the same amount per page read.

The only difference between short and long books is reader engagement. In which case are you more likely to get more pages read?

Paying per page, the new system really favors reader engagement.

There were 1.9B pages read in June, 2015, which led to a prediction of $0.0058 per page, and now in July we find that the actual payout is almost identical to the prediction.

What does this mean?

• Evidently, there wasn’t much abuse of the new system (or most of the attempts were caught red-handed). The old system suffered from ways to abuse the system, whereas the new system requires actually reading pages (and Amazon can surely catch attempts to fool the system). If there were significant abuse, the payout should have been significantly affected, but it wasn’t.
• The coming months will tell, but I take this as a positive indicator. Authors now expect to earn approximately $0.0058 per page when they enroll their books in KDP Select. With this strong expectation now reinforced by the first payout, I don’t expect this to change significantly in the future. Amazon has long paid about $1.30 to $1.40 per borrow, which translates to $0.0058 per page with the new system. This seems to be a steady-state solution. If you feel otherwise, all you need to do is wait a few months and time will show whether or not this is right.

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2015

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
• 4-in-1 Boxed set includes both volumes and more
• Kindle Formatting Magic (coming soon)

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