The Kindle Unlimited per-page rate was 0.004664 in December, 2019. It’s down from December, perhaps from holiday Kindle sales, but close to what it had been in October.
The KDP Select Global Fund rose to a new high of $26.2 million for December, 2019.
Write Happy, Be Happy
Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides
The KENP rate for pages read in Kindle Unlimited in July, 2019 was $0.00439.
It’s a small drop (roughly 5%) compared to June’s rate of $0.00464.
However, Amazon actually paid out more royalties overall in July than in June.
That’s because the KDP Select Global Fund rose from $24.9 million to a record $25.6 million.
Perhaps Amazon Prime Day had a small impact. If, for example, Amazon sold many Kindle ereaders, there may be new customers using their free month of Kindle Unlimited.
Whatever the reason, the per-page rate does tend to vary a bit, although it has been relatively stable for much of 2019.
Write Happy, Be Happy
Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides
For May, 2019, the KENP per-page rate for pages read through Kindle Unlimited was $0.00466.
This is nearly identical to what it was in April, and is a small improvement over March.
In May, the KDP Select Global fund climbed up to $24.6 million.
The Global fund was $24.1 in April and $24.0 million in March.
Write Happy, Be Happy
Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides
$0.004665 was the per-page rate for pages read through Kindle Unlimited in April of 2019.
This is an improvement over March’s rate of $0.00451.
$24.1 million was the KDP Select Global fund for April of 2019.
This was nearly identical to March’s figure of $24 million.
Write Happy, Be Happy
Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides
Image from ShutterStock.
Years ago, Amazon introduced KDP Select to authors who publish with Kindle Direct Publishing.
The idea was to create a huge library of Kindle eBooks from which select customers could borrow books for free. Authors are paid a royalty, but not the same royalty as for an ordinary paid sale.
Although the nature of KDP Select has changed over the years, the program has grown tremendously.
Let’s reevaluate the KDP Select decision. Is enrolling your book in KDP Select worth it?
There really is only a single drawback to enrolling a book in KDP Select, but it’s a big one: You’re not allowed to publish the digital version of your book anywhere else (like Smashwords, Nook, or Kobo) while your book is enrolled in KDP Select.
It’s also an important decision because it comes with a commitment. If you change your mind, you must wait until your 90-day enrollment period ends before you opt out. It renews automatically, so you must manually opt out of the automatic renewal. (And you must still wait until the current period ends before publishing the digital version of your book elsewhere.)
So here is the real question:
Obviously, you would need to receive some other incentive(s) that are even better than the royalties that you would earn from customers using those other brands of eReaders.
That’s what you need to do. You need to look at the incentives that Amazon KDP offers and consider whether they are good enough for your specific book to make it worthwhile to publish your eBook exclusively with Amazon.
Let’s look at what KDP Select has to offer in 2019.
The main incentive is that by enrolling your eBook in KDP Select, your book would be available to Kindle Unlimited subscribers. (It would also be available to Amazon Prime customers, but Prime customers can only borrow one book per month, whereas Kindle Unlimited subscribers can borrow as many books per month as they please.)
Does this really help?
That depends on your book, but the potential is certainly there.
But first, let me briefly describe Kindle Unlimited. I’m actually a Kindle Unlimited customer myself. Customers pay about $10 per month (in the US) to subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, and this allows them to borrow as many Kindle Unlimited books per month as they would like. They can borrow up to 10 different books at a time, but they can read more than that: They simply need to return one of those 10 books before borrowing another one.
How does Kindle Unlimited have the potential to help authors?
There may also be factors that go beyond financial considerations. There are features of Kindle Unlimited that I’m very happy to support:
The potential can be alluring. That’s what attracts authors into the program.
But that’s just the potential. Not all books succeed in the program. Enrolling in KDP Select isn’t the best option for 100% of books.
What you want to know is how well KDP Select will work for your specific book.
However, there are still a couple of other benefits that KDP Select has to offer. Let’s discuss those, and then we’ll get to the issue of weighing the pros versus the cons.
The main thing was Kindle Unlimited. It’s so much the main thing that if Kindle Unlimited doesn’t work out for you, then KDP Select probably isn’t right for you.
But there are other incentives, and if you do enroll, you may wish to take advantage of them.
Well, the one thing that you can manually take advantage of in KDP Select is one promotional tool. Every 90-day period, you can use one of the following promotional tools:
A Kindle Countdown Deal lets you discount your book (if the list price is at least $2.99 in the US) in such a way that customers can clearly see that the book is “on sale.” (If you simply change the list price on your own, customers who discover your book on Amazon wouldn’t know that the price had been “reduced.”)
This sounds good in principle, and you can get a few sales using this tool, but most authors fail to use the Kindle Countdown Deal as effectively as it can be used. Amazon actually has a landing page for Kindle Countdown Deals right here:
However, that page isn’t easy for customers to find (and the name Countdown Deal isn’t nearly as attractive as it could have been). Plus, there is no guarantee that your book would even be visible on that page.
What you really need is to either have good book marketing skills, a strong active following (of an email newsletter, for example), or to get accepted by BookBub (the most popular option, but also the most expensive), E-reader News Today, or many of the smaller services that help authors promote sale prices.
Instead of running a Kindle Countdown Deal, you could run a KDP Select free promo. The free promo makes your book free during the promotion, and unlike the Countdown Deal, you earn zero royalty during the promotion. (Well, you can technically earn zero royalty during a Countdown Deal. You need to first do the math and see what royalty, if any, you would earn during the Countdown Deal. The larger your file size, there more this may be an issue.) You also get a free sales rank instead of the usual paid sales rank during the free promo, and your paid sales rank has usually slipped considerably once the free promo ends. Unless the free promo works and creates enough interest in your book to result in several sales after the free promo.
But like the Countdown Deal, you probably get much out of the tool unless you find an effective way to promote it. Simply making your book free and doing nothing else won’t likely help much (although this had been effective years ago when it first came out).
There may be something better than these tools that doesn’t require you to do anything at all.
What is that? A boost in sales rank.
How can KDP Select help with your Amazon.com sales rank?
Every Kindle Unlimited (and Amazon Prime) borrow of your book helps your book’s sales rank at Amazon.
Even if the customer hardly reads any pages. A single borrow has the same effect as a single ordinary paid sale.
There is another way to look at it: If you don’t enroll in KDP Select, you won’t have Kindle Unlimited borrows helping your sales rank.
Sales rank helps in various ways with visibility on Amazon.
It’s not as compelling as Kindle Unlimited itself, but it is something to consider.
Every book in Kindle Unlimited that has a sales rank: That sales rank is benefiting from Kindle Unlimited borrows. Whatever the sales rank is, it would be worse without Kindle Unlimited (unless of course the book never gets borrowed at all).
(There used to be another incentive to enroll in KDP Select, but now it’s open to every book, whether it’s enrolled in KDP Select or not. Every book can be advertised with AMS via KDP, whether or not the book is in KDP Select.)
Unfortunately, this depends on things that we can’t know for sure.
First of all, how many customers would read your book through Kindle Unlimited?
Even if you knew that, you would then need to figure out how much you would earn in royalties for Kindle Unlimited borrows.
Amazon currently pays on average a little under $0.005 per “normalized” page read through Kindle Unlimited. For most books, a “normalized” page turns out to be a little generous, meaning that it probably turns out to be more favorable than what you would call a “page.” But you have to first enroll in KDP Select before you can find out what your KENPC is (that’s the official page count for your book).
$0.005 doesn’t sound like much. You would need 200 “pages” read just to earn $1.
So what really matters is how many pages will be read. There are books with tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands, or even millions) of pages being read per day. If you write highly engaging content and if your book thrives in Kindle Unlimited, the royalties for pages read can really add up.
Far more important than your book’s page count are reader engagement and the customer appeal of your book (and its cover and product page).
Even if you knew how much your book would earn in royalties from Kindle Unlimited borrows, you would also need to know how much your book would have earned from sales on Nook, Kobo, Apple, etc.
Kindle is the dominant eBook market. If you’re among the few authors with a really good idea and solid marketing plan for how to drive sales to other platforms, that would be a strong incentive to not enroll in KDP Select.
If you have a good idea for how to appeal to Kindle Unlimited, that would be a strong incentive to enroll in KDP Select.
Otherwise, would you rather take your chances with Kindle Unlimited, or take your chances with other retailers?
The only way you can really know for sure is to try it both ways and compare.
Actually, you can try it both ways.
But not at the same time from the beginning.
You could enroll in KDP Select for 90 days. If it’s not going as well as you like, you could opt out before the 90-day term ends. (Be sure to do this successfully.) Once you successfully opt out and once the first 90-day term is up, then you could publish with other retailers.
(Some authors enroll in KDP Select for an entirely different reason: They don’t want to learn how to reformat their eBooks for other retailers.)
Whatever you choose to do, I hope it works out well for you. Good luck.
Write Happy, Be Happy
Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides
Image used under license from Shutterstock.com.
Maybe you’ve written a book. (That’s amazing, by the way.) Maybe you’re thinking about writing a book.
Or maybe you’ve self-published before, and you’re wondering if the option you used is still the best option for you. After all, book publishing is dynamic.
The best place for you to publish depends on which type of book you’ve written and which marketing ideas (if any) you have in mind (or you’re willing to try with earnest).
99.9% of self-published authors should be thinking one main word: AMAZON.
However, there are different ways to go about making your self-published book available on Amazon.
Even if you get most of your sales from Amazon, there are other ways to help supplement the sales that you draw from Amazon. And there are a few self-published authors who are highly successful with other sales channels.
That depends. First of all, there are different types of books that you can publish.
Where should you self-publish your e-book?
Where should you self-publish your paperback?
There is yet another way that you can publish a book: You can make an audio book. For this, I recommend using the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) to make your book available at Audible.com, Amazon, and iTunes.
Now let’s come back to that critical e-book question: Should you enroll your Kindle e-book in KDP Select?
If you enroll your e-book in KDP Select, you can’t publish your e-book anywhere else. (But you may still publish a print book anywhere you want.) The benefits of enrolling in KDP Select include:
The main question is this:
That’s basically what it boils down to. There really is no way to know without trying. One option is to enroll in KDP Select for 90 days and see how it goes. (This gives you an extra 3 months to learn how to format your book for Nook, Kobo, Smashwords, or wherever else. Formatting is a little different for other platforms than it is for Kindle.)
And I mean it. I wish every author success with their publishing endeavors.
My advice is to think long-term. However many sales you make this year, strive to make more sales next year. Keep writing, keep publishing. Enjoy your writing and you’re sure to enjoy the experience.
Learn how to do a little marketing, and try out new marketing ideas periodically. Think long-term with your marketing. The best place to start is with a free blog. I recommend WordPress’s free dot com site. Since you love writing, you’ll surely enjoy blogging. I do. 🙂
Copyright © 2017
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The KENP per-page rate for Kindle Unlimited held steady in April, 2017.
The KENP per page rate for April, 2017 is $0.00457, which is nearly identical to the rate for March, 2017, which was $0.00460 per page.
The KDP Select Global Fund also held steady in April, 2017.
The Global Fund is $17.8M for April, 2017, which is slightly up from March, 2017, for which the Global Fund was $17.7M.
Copyright © 2017
Image from ShutterStock.
The Kindle Unlimited KENP per-page rate for December, 2016 is $0.00524.
That makes three months in a row that it stayed above half a penny per page.
Amazingly, the per-page rate didn’t drop during the holiday season. That’s great news.
At the same time, the KDP Select Global Fund has risen from $16.3M to $16.8M.
It’s a nice trend that the global fund continues to rise, while the per-page rate is holding steady at a plateau above half a penny per page.
Copyright © 2017
Kindle Unlimited rates (in dollars) for KENP pages read in 2016
In 2016, Kindle Unlimited began by paying just over $0.004 per KENP page read, but finished strong, paying over $0.005 per KENP page read in the final months, showing a steady increase over the last four months.
Here is a breakdown by month, from January, 2016 thru November, 2016 (in dollars):
| January | 0.00411 |
| February | 0.00479 |
| March | 0.004779 |
| April | 0.004957 |
| May | 0.004686 |
| June | 0.004925 |
| July | 0.00481 |
| August | 0.004575 |
| September | 0.00497 |
| October | 0.00519 |
| November | 0.005375 |
The KDP Select Global Fund showed continued growth throughout the year (the following figures are in millions of dollars):
| January | 15 |
| February | 14 |
| March | 14.9 |
| April | 14.9 |
| May | 15.3 |
| June | 15.4 |
| July | 15.5 |
| August | 15.8 |
| September | 15.9 |
| October | 16.2 |
| November | 16.3 |
This means that Amazon is paying approximately $186,000,000 in royalties for Kindle Unlimited (and Amazon Prime) pages read in 2016, just for KDP Select books (the traditionally published books in Kindle Unlimited evidently receive a separate payout), and that’s on top of the royalties that they receive for sales.
Actually, Amazon paid even more money because on top of the $186,000,000 they also pay All-Star bonuses (when I inquired, KDP informed me that the All-Star bonuses are paid separate from the global fund).
Paying nearly $200 million in royalties for borrows (primarily) through Kindle Unlimited, this is a very significant share of the royalties paid for e-books.
The KDP Select Global Fund continues to rise (now over $16 million per month), and the per-page rate has also steadily risen the past four months. This data suggests that Kindle Unlimited is growing stronger. Of course, the number of e-books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited also continues to rise (across most categories) significantly.
Copyright © 2016
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
Click here to view my Goodreads author page.
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(Please also take the survey at the bottom of this post, regarding how your KENPC has changed. You can view the results after you take the survey.)
As of February 1, 2016, Amazon changed the way that they calculate KENPC for pages read for KDP Select books borrowed through Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime.
To check your KENPC v2.0, go to your KDP Bookshelf and click the Promote & Advertise button.
According to Amazon, on average the change is within ± 5%, but some books are outside of 5% (I’ve heard a couple upwards of 30%).
Many authors are reporting the changes in their KENPC on Kindle Boards, the KDP community forum, and all over the internet.
I have several books, and most of mine are virtually unchanged.
But while I’ve heard from others whose KENPC remained the same, only a few authors are reporting an increase, while several authors are reporting a drop of 5% or more (like 10% to 15%) or occasionally much more (like 20% to 30%).
Perhaps authors who see a large drop are more likely to show up to a community forum and provide feedback, or are more likely to blog about it.
It’s a general rule that people are more likely to take time to express a complaint than to take time to offer praise.
If we believe Amazon’s report that on average the change to KENPC is less than ±5%, then a drop of 10% or less shouldn’t happen to the majority of books.
If your KENPC remained the same, if anything it seems like KENPC v2.0 should help you out a little.
If your KENPC increased, you should jump for joy.
But…
You should look for a proactive solution to your situation. I will offer a couple of suggestions.
If complaining relieves a little stress, well I suppose there is a little good in that. But just complaining, that’s probably not going to solve your problem. (Discussing the problem with others and thinking about the issue critically, however, might lead to a helpful solution.)
If your KENPC v2.0 is exactly 1 page, but used to be multiple digits, it may be a mistake. At least two authors have reported that their novels’ KENPC were reduced to 1 page. That’s most likely just a glitch in the system. If that happened to you, contact KDP support and cross your fingers. (This is a good reason to check your KENPC. Make sure it didn’t happen to you.)
First, you should project what impact this change might make on your royalties.
How significant is this number to you? (Suggestion: Compare it to your overall royalties.)
Realize that this projection is based on previous per-page rates. If the KENPC has dropped for most books, on average (that’s a big IF), it’s possible that the per-page rate will go up a bit. But it’s probably not realistic to expect the per-page rate for February to go up by more than 5% (unless other factors contribute to the change), since on average the KENPC hasn’t changed by more than 5%. But you can’t bank on the per-page to increase. It might not.
The main thing you can control is whether or not to uncheck the auto-renewal box for KDP Select (and then you must still wait for the enrollment period to end before you publish your e-book elsewhere). If you’re losing money because either (A) your KENPC has dropped significantly or (B) the per-page rates have dropped significantly (but remember, we don’t “know” what the per-page rates might look like following this change), then the big question to ask is…
Could you make more money by publishing with Nook, Kobo, Smashwords (or Draft2Digital), Apple, etc. than you are bringing from borrows through Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime?
That’s a tough question to answer, and varies from book to book. I know authors who have opted out and quickly returned, but I also know a few authors who found success outside of KDP Select. It helps if you have a marketing plan to reach customers who read books on Nook, Kobo, etc. (but it’s not easy to do).
A few other things to consider:
I’m afraid the only surefire way to “know” how your book would do outside of Kindle is to try it out. It might work out, it might not.
But there probably is a magic number, where if your royalties for borrows drops too much, you’ll be willing to try it out.
If you had an extreme drop in KENPC, like 20% or more, and you really want out of KDP Select, you might consider contacting KDP support. Amazon usually provides an opt-out clause when there are significant changes to the terms. While most books are seeing smaller changes, if you experienced a steep change, you might be able to persuade support that you weren’t prepared for such a drastic change, and ask if you could please opt out immediately. Well, it can’t hurt to ask, if that’s what you want.
One other thing you might do is see if you can learn why your KENPC dropped. It may not be easy. You’ll need data from other authors. Besides just comparing KENPC’s, you’ll need to find out about the nature of the book. For example, are there many quotations or short paragraphs in books that saw a significant drop in KENPC (I’m not suggesting this is the case; I’m saying you would need to think of possible explanations and test them out; this is just one you would want to test). One trick is you also want data from authors’ whose KENPC increased, to see if the same theory will explain all of the data.
But even if you succeed in learning why the KENPC changed the way it did, it may not be possible to use this knowledge to increase your KENPC. There probably isn’t a simple solution, if KENPC v2.0 successfully prevents people from gaming the system. But if there happened to be some factor that penalizes books for some particular feature and you happened to learn what that was, well you could benefit from that.
Many books tend to see a drop in both sales and borrows once they reach a certain age on the market, and the solution is usually to keep writing and publishing, and learn effective marketing strategies. Whether or not you remain in KDP Select, writing and publishing more books as well as marketing are the keys to long-term success.
(My KENPC’s are almost identical to what they had been, so I feel fortunate. As I said, not everyone’s KENPC has dropped, and I’ve even heard of a few increases.)
The KDP Select Global Fund for February is $12M.
No matter how Amazon calculates KENPC, determines KENP pages read, or how much Amazon pays per page in February, Amazon is still paying out at least $12M in royalties for books borrowed through Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime.
So this does not appear to impact profits for February.
The KDP Select Global Fund has steadily increased from $11.5M to $13.5M from July thru December of 2015.
The KDP Select Global Fund has committed $12M for February, which makes sense, as December and January are likely to benefit more from holiday Kindle sales.
But there are some things that we don’t know:
Here’s my own personal opinion: KENPC v2.0 was introduced to help prevent authors from gaming the system, and it unfortunately affects everyone’s books in different ways.
(It’s also possible that Amazon is losing money on Kindle Unlimited, at least directly. This program might be a loss leader. Once customers get in the habit of coming Amazon, they start buying other products at Amazon, too.
That’s an important consideration. The main thing Amazon probably wants to do with Kindle Unlimited is keep both readers and authors engaged. Amazon may make much more profits by getting both readers and authors in the habit of visiting Amazon regularly than it could make by adjusting KENPC or per-page rates.)
Have multiple books? You can take the survey once for each book.
Copyright © 2016
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
Click here to view my Goodreads author page.
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