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KINDLE UNLIMITED BORROWS
Amazon KDP now shows the number of pages read (KENP read, or Kindle Edition Normalized Pages read).
The KDP reports no longer show the number of books borrowed through Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime.
Although it’s nice to see the number of pages read, this data would be more meaningful if we knew how many books were borrowed.
That way, if you saw 200 KENP read in your report, you would know if 1 person read 200 pages or if 4 people each read 50 pages.
There is a way to get more information, though not quite as much as you might like:
- Visit your Sales Dashboard at KDP by clicking Reports.
- (Note the blue circle with the question mark at the top right. It doesn’t work presently, but it may be a sign of more information to come.)
- Scroll down to the very bottom and click the Generate Report button.
- Open the spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel (for example).
- Scroll down to the very bottom of the spreadsheet.
- Note that there are three tabs: (1) Royalty Report (2) Orders Report (3) KU-KOLL Unit Report.
- Click on the middle tab, Orders Report.
- This shows the breakdown of KENP read per book per country per day. (It also breaks down your sales.)
Unfortunately, the third tab (KU-KOLL Unit Report) stops after June 30. It sounds like what you want, but it’s not for July.
The middle tab (Orders Report) provides a helpful breakdown. But it’s inconvenient to get there, and it still doesn’t show you quite what you want.
Maybe this will improve. I’ve heard from hundreds of authors who would like to see the number of borrows in the reports.
But it doesn’t help to tell me. Visit Amazon KDP and click on the Contact Us button in the corner. It took a long time and a large number of requests, but reporting has changed in the past and we have pre-orders—authors have requested these features for years and they finally came. If you want something, ask for it. Otherwise, how will they know what you want?
Why doesn’t the report show the number of borrows?
There are a few theories for why the reports don’t show the number of Kindle Unlimited (or Amazon Prime) borrows.
Perhaps they just forgot or didn’t realize its importance. That seems doubtful. But perhaps.
Maybe most customers don’t start reading the book after they download it, and Amazon doesn’t want authors to freak out when they see several borrows, but zero pages read.
But that has an easy fix: Don’t show all borrows; just show borrows where the book has actually been opened.
However, what if many customers only read a few pages and discard the book. It could happen, since there really is no incentive for Kindle Unlimited customers to check out the Look Inside. Since they can read for free, they might just download it and skip the middle man.
It might not be a sign that the book is bad. It might just be a matter of taste. Oh, I didn’t realize this was a mystery. Oops! A mere 3 pages read.
Knowledge is power, though. If we see that most customers are only getting partway through our books, wouldn’t we feel inclined to try to make our books more engaging?
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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