Tag Archives: Kindle Unlimited trends

Jan 16 2016

Kindle Unlimited Pages Read & Global Fund Trends from July, 2015 thru December, 2015

KU Trends Jan 2016 GF PR

KINDLE UNLIMITED FOR DECEMBER, 2015

First, let’s look at the Kindle Unlimited payments for December, 2015. Then we’ll look at trends for the past six months.

What did Kindle Unlimited pay for pages read in December of 2015?

Kindle Unlimited paid $0.00461 per KENP page read in the United States in December, 2015. That’s a 6.3% drop compared to $0.00492 per page in November.

However, this was compensated as…

The KDP Select Global Fund was $13.5M for December, 2015. That’s a 6.3% increase.

The KENP pages read continue to drop somewhat, while the KDP Select Global Fund continues to increase significantly.

This suggests that:

  • More readers are joining Kindle Unlimited and/or on average they are reading more pages.
  • More books are having more pages read each month, on average.
  • Kindle Unlimited is continually increasing its share of the total e-book market.
  • But while Kindle Unlimited readers and pages read are on the rise, they payment per page has been dropping.

The holiday season may have impacted both the payment for pages read and the KDP Global Select Fund.

According to a December 1 press release, Amazon had a record Black Friday weekend for the sale of Amazon devices, over 3 times the previous year. Amazon had several new devices out and really pushed them.

So perhaps Kindle Unlimited subscriptions and pages read were both pushed upward considerably during December, and if so, perhaps the payment for pages read will settle down a little in the near future.

Another important figure to keep in mind is that over 40,000 books are added to Kindle Unlimited each month. There are now approximately 1.2M books in Kindle Unlimited.

More books means greater selection, which may help to attract more customers. (Indeed, the Global Fund trends suggest this is happening.)

The competition probably helps more than it hurts, e.g. through customers-also-bought lists. When customers finish one Kindle Unlimited book that they enjoy, they tend to search for another like it.

KINDLE UNLIMITED BREAKDOWN BY COUNTRY

Here is a breakdown of how much Kindle Unlimited paid per page read in various countries:

  • United States: $0.00461 per page (US dollars). That’s a drop of 6.3% from November’s payment of $0.00492.
  • United Kingdom: £0.00306 per page (British pounds). That’s also a drop of 6.4% from November’s £0.00327.
  • Germany: €0.00389 per page (Euro). That’s a drop of 8.5% from November’s €0.00425.
  • France: €0.00429 per page (Euro). That’s a drop of 6.3% from November’s €0.00458.
  • India: ₹0.1008 per page (Indian rupees). That’s a drop of 6.2% from November’s ₹0.1075.

It pretty consistently dropped about 6.3%.

KINDLE UNLIMITED PAGES READ TRENDS JULY THRU DECEMBER, 2015

The following graph and table show the trends in Kindle Unlimited payments for KENP pages read from July, 2015 thru December, 2015.

KU Trends Jan 2016 PR

  • $0.0058 per page in July, 2015
  • $0.0051 per page in August, 2015
  • $0.0051 per page in September, 2015
  • $0.0048 per page in October, 2015
  • $0.0049 per page in November, 2015
  • $0.0046 per page in December, 2015

KDP GLOBAL SELECT FUND JULY THRU DECEMBER, 2015

The following graph and table show the trends in the KDP Select Global Fund from July, 2015 thru December, 2015.

KU Trends Jan 2016 GF

  • $11.5M in July, 2015
  • $11.8M in August, 2015
  • $12.0M in September, 2015
  • $12.4M in October, 2015
  • $12.7M in November, 2015
  • $13.5M in December, 2015

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

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.

  • 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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May 16 2015

What Did Kindle Unlimited Pay for April, 2015?

KU Trends 3

KINDLE UNLIMITED FOR APRIL, 2015

In April, 2015, Kindle Unlimited paid $1.36 per Kindle Unlimited borrow read to 10% (and all Amazon Prime borrows). Looking at the graph above, Kindle Unlimited appears to have leveled off at about $1.40. (But there is a more fascinating number, which I’ll throw out in a few paragraphs.)

$1.40 doesn’t look like much compared to $2 in the days of Amazon Prime only (i.e. no Kindle Unlimited), and if you have a book priced $2.99 or higher, $1.40 is small compared to your royalty for purchases (in most cases).

That’s not the way I look at it. I was getting few borrows when it was Amazon Prime only, and my borrows have shot way up with Kindle Unlimited (without a corresponding sacrifice in sales). I’m earning much more with $1.40 per Kindle Unlimited borrow than I was when I was receiving $2 per Prime borrow.

But the more interesting number, in my opinion, is $9,800,000.

Amazon added a whopping $6,800,000 to their initial commitment of $3,000,000, bringing the KDP Select Global Fund up to nearly $10 million for April, 2015.

KU Trends 3b

The graph above is a good sign for Kindle Unlimited readers and KDP Select authors, in my opinion.

It means that the audience for Kindle Unlimited books has grown substantially and continues to grow.

The KDP Select Global Fund is increasing significantly because there are more Kindle Unlimited subscribers and more books being borrowed and read to 10% through the program.

Amazon paid $9,800,000 in KOLL royalty shares for April, 2015. That money goes to authors who had books enrolled in KDP Select.

Many KDP Select books are benefiting from this increasing payout. Obviously, not all books are, but many are. The potential is there, and many authors are benefiting from it.

The cost is exclusivity. But here’s the question: With the KDP Select Global Fund steadily rising from $2,000,000 to $9,800,000 over the past 9 months, would your book earn more money from Kindle Unlimited than it would from other retailers. It’s always been a tough question that can vary from book to book and author to author (and can only be truly known by trying it both ways), but it seems that the pool for KDP Select books is growing (it’s increased fivefold in 9 months).

Another interesting trend involves the number of books in Kindle Unlimited (about 100,000 of those are from small traditional publishers and are not part of KDP Select):

  • There are 963,814 books in Kindle Unlimited as of May 15, 2015.
  • There were 864,164 books in Kindle Unlimited as of February 17, 2015. This number has risen 12% in 3 months.
  • 43,407 new Kindle Unlimited books have been published in the last 30 days. (That’s about the same figure from February 17.)
  • 87,910 new Kindle e-books have been published in the last 30 days. Nearly 50% are enrolling in KDP Select.
  • There are about 3,000,000 Kindle e-books in all. About one-third are in Kindle Unlimited (whereas about one-half of new releases are opting in).
  • 334,615 of the Kindle Unlimited books are considered short reads (which, by the way, go up to 100 pages). That’s 35%.
  • 13,458 of the books published in Kindle Unlimited in the last 30 days are short reads. That’s 31%. The ratio of short works entering into Kindle Unlimited is actually decreasing, since 31% is less than 35% (contrary to popular myth—we now have proof that it’s not being flooded with short books, but that the percentage of short books in Kindle Unlimited is going down).

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

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

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