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The Kindle Unlimited per-page rate dropped slightly, down to $0.004575 per KENP page read for August, 2016 (compared to $0.00481 for July).
There have been small fluctuations, both up and down, for the past several months.
It has held fairly steady for 2016 (while up considerably from $0.04 in January).
The KDP Select Global Fund was $15.8M for August, 2016, slightly higher than each of the past few months.
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Now that Amazon pays KDP Select authors for pages read through Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime—instead of the number of borrows read to 10%—some authors are wondering:
There are many things to factor into this decision.
Let’s start with the math.
The Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC) is your book’s official number of pages as far as royalties for pages read through KU and KOLL borrows is concerned.
Amazon has set the KDP Select Global Fund at $11M for both July and August. Amazon also announced that 1.9B pages were read in June, 2015.
This leads to a projected royalty of $0.0058 per page read.
Multiply your book’s KENPC by $0.0058 to figure out what royalty you would earn if 100% of your book is read.
233 pages is the magic number for KENPC. If your KENPC is higher than 233 pages, your projected royalty for a book read to 100% is more than $1.35; if your KENPC is lower than 233 pages, your projected royalty for a book read to 100% is less than $1.35.
(Where did this $1.35 come from? That’s what KDP Select authors were paid for May, 2015.)
There are a couple of obvious complications:
What may be more relevant is to compare your royalty for sales to your potential royalty for borrows.
How do these compare?
Examples:
But there is more to this decision than just math.
Every borrow through Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime helps your book’s Amazon sales rank.
That’s one of the benefits of being in KDP Select. It helps with visibility.
Another thing that helps with visibility: All those borrows help you land on customers-also-bought lists and other Amazon marketing.
You not only lose the royalty from borrows, you also lose these sales rank and exposure benefits, if you opt out of KDP Select (and access to Kindle Countdown Deals and AMS advertisements).
Look at the full picture and weigh that against the benefits of selling on Nook, Kobo, etc. when deciding whether or not to enroll in KDP Select.
If you can wait until August 15, you will have access to real data:
Before then, you really don’t know how accurate the projected $0.0058 will be.
Amazon is paying $11M in combined royalties to KDP Select books borrowed through Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime in July and August.
They will pay out over $100M for 2015 via KDP Select royalties for borrows.
What does this mean? It’s a huge share of the e-book market.
Kindle Unlimited subscribers are unlikely to buy books that aren’t enrolled in KDP Select when they can read their choice of a million books for free.
You’re probably going to lose access to this subscriber base if you opt out of KDP Select.
And it’s a relatively indie-friendly audience.
Since KDP Select only entails a 90-day commitment, some authors enroll in KDP Select initially to take advantage of the benefits for 90 days or to test it out, intending to opt out when the enrollment period ends and publish elsewhere in addition to KDP.
If so, be sure to uncheck the automatic renewal box (and double-check this shortly before renewal) to successfully opt out. (You must also wait for the renewal date to pass before publishing your e-book edition anywhere other than Kindle.)
This strategy gives you the best of both worlds (though not simultaneously), and lets you test out KDP Select before deciding whether or not to publish elsewhere too.
You could even advertise to your audience that your book will only be in Kindle Unlimited for 90 days and after that subscribers will lose their chance to get your book for free.
Look at your numbers for the first 90 days. You might see reasons to stay in KDP Select or to opt out. The data may aid you in your decision.
The main reason to opt out of KDP Select is to get out of the exclusivity clause—to publish your e-book on Nook, Kobo, etc.
Many authors find that they don’t sell many e-books outside of Kindle. A few authors sell well outside of Kindle.
Note that iPad customers, for example, can read your Kindle e-book through Kindle apps, and anyone with a tablet, laptop, or PC can read your Kindle e-book with a Kindle app. That is, you don’t have to own a Kindle device to read Kindle e-books.
The real question is this: Does your unique book have potential to sell via other e-book retailers, like Nook and Kobo? Do you have specific marketing plans that may help improve your prospects of selling e-books outside of Kindle?
If you intend to opt out of KDP Select, you want answers to these questions. Visit these retailers, see what kind of e-books are selling in your genre or category. See how indie e-books are doing there. Find out how those indie authors are marketing their e-books.
Copyright © 2015
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
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Now that Kindle Unlimited pays a royalty based on the number of pages read instead of the number of books borrowed and read to 10%:
Complaining and feeling frustrated isn’t a strategy for publishing success. (Turning that frustration into motivation to unite others who feel the same toward positive action, that’s different.)
What seems disappointing and frustrating to some may serve as an opportunity for others.
Suppose that you had a series of 30-page stories, where the Kindle Edition Normalize Page Count (KENPC) is 50 pages. (This is just an example.)
In this case, based on the projected $0.0058 per page, these stories would earn 29 cents per borrow if read to 100%.
Naturally, you would look at the prospective 29-cent royalty for prospective borrows and complain that you were losing 80% of your royalties. But remember, that complaint isn’t a strategy toward publishing success.
(You wouldn’t? Really? You might be right. I’ve heard several authors step up and say something like, “I stand to lose 50% with the new Kindle Unlimited policy, but I agree that it’s more equitable.”
If you said something like that, stand up and take a bow. You’re my hero! You deserve a round of applause. Applaud, everyone. The world needs more positive attitudes in the face of adversity. And fewer people who want to take advantage of that positive outlook, or who want to try to change that positive outlook.)
I hear authors complaining—now think about this—of only seeing 1000, 5000, 10,000, or 20,000 pages read in their reports. Per day.
I really don’t mean this in a condescending way, like, “Oh, poor dears.” I just want to look at this same statement from two different perspectives.
On the one hand, an author might have 10,000 pages read per day, but the author is still earning 50 cents or less per book. This author is complaining because he or she is used to earning $1.35 per book, and 50 cents or less is a huge change, especially when 100+ customers are reading your books every day.
I agree, it’s a sudden change, it’s a big loss, you deserve to feel frustrated.
(Maybe one could have seen this coming. Maybe they shouldn’t have been making $1.35 for short works all along. Let’s not open that can of worms, too. It is what it is. You can’t change what it is or how it happened.)
But there is another perspective. Imagine that you (A) are just entering the publishing scene or (B) you have some publishing experience and have been thinking about writing shorter works.
So what do you do? You start to view this as an opportunity. $60 per day sounds pretty enticing to you.
(Note that I’m speaking of short books with text. Illustrated short books are a separate issue.)
It pays per page read.
Whether you write 200,000 pages in one book, 5 books, or 10 books, you’ve still written the same number of pages, and you still earn the same amount if customers read 100% of what you wrote.
What matters are:
Authors who are used to getting $1.35 per borrow feel that the new Kindle Unlimited policy disfavors short books.
But if you’re thinking, “What should I write now?” Well, Kindle Unlimited may actually favor shorter books in many genres by favoring reader engagement.
Kindle Unlimited may very well change again.
You should consider the whole market, and how it might change, when you come up with your writing and publishing strategy.
You should also consider such things as:
Just because you see a few authors leaving (or saying that they will, or might, leave), doesn’t mean it will be easy to jump over and fill those holes.
If they were getting 10,000 pages read per day and walk away from KDP Select, just because you jump in with similar works doesn’t mean you’ll get any pages read.
Publishing is a tough market to crack. First, you have to read and understand the genre and what the audience expects. You need to be able to tell the story well. You need to be able to tell a shorter story well if you’re aiming for shorter books, and that’s not easy.
You need to write several books to have a chance of breaking through, and there are no guarantees, even when you feel that you’ve done everything right.
And, as always, you need to market your books.
And you need to be passionate about what you’re writing.
It won’t be easy. It wasn’t easy for the authors who have been successful with those kinds of books. But they learned the genre, and others can, too.
While it won’t be easy, there is potential.
It’s easy to walk away out of anger or frustration, or to try to make a statement (more of a whisper if only a few walk away, but an exclamation mark if a huge percentage do—in most categories, I haven’t observed much movement).
But if your main goal is to earn the most royalties (or to reach the most readers), walking away isn’t necessarily the best choice.
You have to weigh the benefits of staying against the benefits of leaving.
Here are some of the benefits of remaining KDP Select:
There are also benefits of leaving KDP Select:
Which set of benefits outweighs the other? That’s a tough question, and it varies from one book to another.
The problem with testing it out is that your Amazon sales rank is apt to slide considerably while you’re testing the waters elsewhere.
Another factor is marketing. Do you have ideas or strategies for marketing at other e-book retailers?
On average, about half the books will earn more money for borrows through Kindle Unlimited.
Shorter books will earn lower per-book royalties.
However, many shorter books have an edge when it comes to reader engagement.
Many authors are benefiting from the new Kindle Unlimited policy.
Whether you have a short book or long book…
Whether you are experienced, starting out, or switching genres…
Regardless of your genre or category…
You should be asking how to make the most of it, how to find a proactive solution, how to find a strategy for success.
That’s the way forward.
Copyright © 2015
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
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I’m not saying that the new Kindle Unlimited policy is perfect.
I realize that it works better for some books than for others.
And it doesn’t seem to particularly favor my books.
But overall, there is much that I like about the new Kindle Unlimited policy.
I think it’s a nice improvement, a good step in the right direction.
In case you don’t already know, Kindle Unlimited now pays authors royalties for borrows based on the number of pages read.
There are several things that I like about the new Kindle Unlimited policy:
Obviously, the change to Kindle Unlimited won’t be good for all books.
What it really does is redistribute the $11M payout based on pages read instead of the number of borrows.
About half the books, on average, should do better (at least a little, if not a lot), and about half the books, on average, should do worse to some degree.
Overall, it seems fairer, and there are several qualities which I like, but it’s not perfect. It may be a good step in the right direction.
There are a few kinds of books that are losing out.
You can’t feel much pity about the short works which were intentionally designed to abuse the system.
But the well-thought out short stories, illustrated children’s books, graphic novels, and informative reference works likely to be read only in part, well, these may be a few examples of books that are disfavored by the new system, but which provide good value to Kindle Unlimited.
Engaging short reads, while they will likely earn much less than before, should make up for that somewhat by getting read to 100% more often.
Illustrated children’s books suffer from the KENPC, which counts fixed layout books literally, whereas reflowable books tend to have more pages than their print counterparts. Even worse, some children’s layouts show as two-pages per screen, which cuts the page count in half.
It’s an important issue for children’s authors and for parents who subscribe to Kindle Unlimited (since if the books pull out of Select, it may make the subscription less appealing).
It’s also a difficult issue to address. Some children’s books have much more involved, time-consuming illustrations, while others have pictures that were made with much less effort or time (sometimes, it’s also because the artist can produce high quality in less time, but other times it’s the nature of images that made the work easier). Some children’s authors also invest heavily in professional illustrators.
I don’t know what the solution is, if there is a good one. Maybe Amazon will address it in some way.
But if you’re wondering whether or not there is a mass exodus of certain kinds of books from Kindle Unlimited, I’ve been tracking the numbers and don’t see any significant movement yet.
No need to panic yet.
Amazon is surely monitoring the numbers, too, and is in a position to act if at some point there is any cause for concern. Based on the enrollment numbers, there isn’t cause to worry at this stage.
Copyright © 2015
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
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According to Amazon, nearly 1.9 billion (1,900,000,000) Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) were read during June, 2015 through Amazon Prime and Kindle Unlimited.
If the same number of pages are read during July, KDP Select authors will earn 0.58 cents per Kindle Edition Normalized Page (KENP) read.
Update: Amazon paid $0.005779 per KENP page read for July, 2015, almost identical to the forecast.
A little more than half a penny per page.
Or $1.00 for every 173 pages read.
Amazon keeps track of how many pages the customer has viewed.
So if the customer simply jumps to the last page of the book, that only counts as one page. They have to open every page for all of them to count.
Amazon starts counting from the start reading location.
Each KDP Select book has a KENPC (Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count), which may be different from the actual page count of the print edition and may also be different from the estimated page count.
It can be much different.
You don’t. You only know how many pages have been read.
If you have multiple books, click on the Month-to-Date Units Report to see a breakdown by book.
It would be helpful to know how many people borrowed our books. That way, we can figure out how many pages are read on average. This could be valuable data. Perhaps if KDP receives enough requests for it, they will supply this data…
Everybody’s pages read should be low on the first day.
Why? Because it takes time to read the books.
You know how many people usually borrow your book in one day.
You can’t expect everyone to read your entire book on the first day that they buy it.
So it’s silly to add up the pages read for day one, compare it with the number of borrows you normally get, and decide whether to opt out of the program.
Here’s my advice:
Don’t forget to check your KENPC. Your book might have more pages than you realize. I have books where the KENPC is 2-3 times the actual print page count. Things might be better than you realize.
1000 pages per day yields an estimated $5.80 per day (multiply 1000 pages read by 0.58).
If this book averaged 4 borrows per day in the past, it was making about $5.40 in previous months. We want to compare the new estimated $5.80 per day to the old estimated $5.40 per day, but don’t do this until your number of pages read per day stabilizes, or you’ll be disappointed.
If you had based this off the 200 pages read on the first day in my example, it would have looked like this book was losing money in the new system, but that’s not how it looked after it stabilized.
On average, about half of the books will see improvement to some degree, while about half of the books will see a loss to some degree. It will be good for some, bad for some.
But you have to wait until your data stabilizes before you can tell how it’s working out for you. Good luck.
Copyright © 2015
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
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As of July 1, KDP Select books will be paid for the number of pages read—rather than by the borrow—for Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime borrows.
Authors can now visit KDP to learn what the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC) is for each of their KDP Select books.
The KENPC tells you how much you will earn if a customer reads 100% of your book.
My ‘Detailed Guide’ self-publishing books weigh in at over 600 pages each with KENPC, which is quite amazing considering they have a little over 200 pages in print at 8″ x 10″.
My 4-book self-publishing boxed set has 2039 pages according to KENPC, while it has 628 printed 8.5″ x 11″ pages.
Fixed layout books, such as those made with the Kindle Textbook Creator or Kindle Kids’ Book Creator, have exactly the same KENPC as the actual page account (after accounting for the start reading location).
As the page counts seem fairly generous across the board with conventional Kindle e-books, it seems that fixed layout books may be somewhat disadvantaged by the KENPC.
Note that it’s called KENPC v 1.0. That version 1.0 suggests an intent to improve it with more versions over time.
Maybe one of the changes will help put illustrated children’s books on a more equal footing. At least, that’s one issue several children’s authors have raised regarding the change in Kindle Unlimited policy.
The sales reports will soon show how many pages have been read through Kindle Unlimited (rather than how many borrows have been read to 10%; that 10% mark no longer matters with the new Kindle Unlimited policy changes effective July 1, 2015).
This will be a cool new stat: the number of pages read. (But it would be meaningful if the reports also showed how many books were borrowed. Feel free to suggest that to Amazon.)
What is your KENPC?
The KDP Sales Dashboard now shows two separate charts: one shows sales and freebies, like before, while a new chart shows the KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages) Read.
The Month-to-Date Unit Sales report shows the KENP Read per book.
This will make the stats more engaging. If you used to only see a couple of borrows per day, now you will see pages read changing throughout the day. The trick is to not fall into the trap of checking your reports more frequently.
Unfortunately, the reports no longer show how many books are borrowed, only how many pages are read. (If you would like this feature that could make your pages read stat more meaningful, send in a request to KDP. Visit KDP and look for the Contact Us button in the corner.)
Copyright © 2015
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
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Kindle Unlimited is changing its policy effective July 1, 2015.
Books borrowed through Kindle Unlimited will now be paid by the number of pages read.
Following are 15 questions and answers about this policy change with Kindle Unlimited.
(Of course, this change only affects borrows through Kindle Unlimited. Ordinary sales are unaffected.)
The change doesn’t directly impact readers, but there may be indirect effects.
Amazon will use a KENPC (Kindle edition normalized page count), which will probably differ from the page count listed on the product page.
You won’t know what your book’s KENPC is until July 1. Then you can find it on the Promote and Advertise page from your Bookshelf.
Amazon will count pages read from your book’s start reading location. (Pages that are reread will only count the first time they are read.)
Longer books have more pages, so if a customer reads the whole book, it will pay a higher royalty than a short book.
However, it doesn’t really matter whether you write ten 50-page books or one 500-page book. Once a customer reads all of it, you get paid for the same 500 pages.
What Amazon has really done is remove the advantage that some short books used to have.
If authors of short books compare their new royalties to their old royalties, they are likely to see a significant drop.
However, that’s in the past. The current program treats both short and long books on a more equal footing, rather than giving short books a significant advantage.
Images will count toward a book’s KENPC, so this should help books that have illustrations, photographs, and charts.
How many words one image will be worth is unknown at this point.
What really matters most is content engagement.
That is, does the writing compel most readers to continue reading to the end, and then to want to read more of your books after that?
It doesn’t matter how long the book is. Whether you write four 50-page books or one 200-page book, you get paid the same so long as readers read all of the pages.
Rewarding content engagement is a good thing, surely.
You’ll be able to see the number of pages read in your report.
That’s cool. That’s helpful data that we’ve never had before. Knowing how many pages your customers are reading can help you assess how engaging your content is.
A few authors who are on the fence about this policy change are staying in it initially just for this new data.
Will you be able to see both the number of books borrowed and the number of pages read? I hope so, but this is unknown at this point. (Feel free to place a request with KDP.)
Evidently, you’ll get paid for the pages read each month (even if the customer temporarily stops reading your book and begins reading another, finishing your book later).
There is a neat effect here. Suppose you have a 300-page book. Starting in July, every month 100 customers begin reading your book, but read at a rate of 50 pages per month.
You’ll get paid for 5000 pages read in July, 10,000 pages read in August, 15,000 pages read in September, 20,000 pages read in October, 25,000 pages read in November, 30,000 pages read in December, and 30,000 pages read every month after that.
(Obviously, it’s not realistic that the same number of customers will borrow your book each month and all read at the same rate. It also assumes that every customer will read your complete book.)
But this shows the potential for growth that longer books have.
You can find the example here.
In the example, Amazon assumes a $10,000,000 payout and 100,000,000 pages read.
The payout may be closer to $11,000,000. That part seems reasonable, but was reduced to $10,000,000 to get round numbers.
The 100,000,000 pages read is probably not realistic. With that figure, Amazon would pay about 10 cents per page read.
Amazon probably chose these numbers so they could use nice round numbers in the example, not because it was realistic.
When KDP Select was first announced back in December, 2011, Amazon used a $5 royalty in their example, but in the first month KOLL paid less than $2. So it’s not uncommon for Amazon to overestimate in their example. (It probably has good marketing value for them, too.)
The top books and top authors will be awarded based on the total number of pages read through Kindle Unlimited, based on the KENPC (see Question 2).
Nope.
It used to make sense to not include the boxed set in KDP Select because you make more money when customers borrow them individually. (The boxed set must still be exclusive to Amazon if any of the individual volumes are in Select.)
Now it virtually doesn’t matter. If customers read the whole story, you get paid the same whether they borrow the boxed set or the individual volumes.
Not if they’re smart!
Will people read pages just because they’re there? (And even if they do, will they want to read your next book?)
Pages are more likely to be read if they’re engaging.
If you can add engaging content, well, that’s not quite padding, is it?
You should write (A) what’s most likely to sell, (B) what’s most likely to get read, and (C) what you’re a good fit to write.
If you write shorter books, you get paid less per book than if you write longer books, but through Kindle Unlimited, either way, it’s how many pages get read that really matters.
If you write a long book, but little of it gets read, those extra pages don’t help.
If you write a short book that gets fully read quite often, the pages will add up.
What length is more likely to sell and then more likely to engage the customer varies widely depending on the genre, category, and specific target audience.
There is no single size that optimizes success across the board. (Some lengths are also much harder to write well than others.)
That’s the ten million dollar question! Nobody knows.
Amazon paid $10,800,000 in May, 2015, which led to a KOLL payment of $1.35 per book.
When a Kindle Unlimited customer borrows a book, how many pages does that customer read on average?
That’s the real question. If most of your Kindle Unlimited customers read more pages than that, you’ll probably see an improved per-book royalty. If most of your Kindle Unlimited customers read fewer pages than that, you’ll probably see a diminished per-book royalty.
And if your book is 5 pages long, you’re probably not going to be a happy camper no matter what.
Amazon will pay out more than $100 million dollars in royalties for KDP Select borrows (both Amazon Prime and Kindle Unlimited combined) in 2015.
That’s a huge share of the 2015 e-book market. If you walk out of KDP Select, your book is missing out on this market.
But if you stay in KDP Select, your book is missing out on the Nook, Kobo, Apple, Smashwords, etc. market.
Which market is better for your book? Good question! It varies from one book to another.
Some authors try out KDP Select for 90 days. If unhappy, they opt out. Occasionally that pays off; sometimes it ends up being worse; sometimes it doesn’t make much difference.
The only way to know is to try.
But if you opt out of KDP Select, your sales rank at Amazon may slide (as some authors have experienced) because those KDP Select borrows will no longer help. (Presently, you have more help than you realize, since you get a bump in rank when customers borrow your book but don’t reach the 10% mark.)
Copyright © 2015
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
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