Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

History Repeats Itself: KDP Select Is Amazon.com's 'Payback For Playback'

Posted by Soulskill on from the what's-old-is-new dept.

New submitter brennanw writes "Anyone who was active on mp3.com during the late 90s/early 2000's will find Amazon.com's KDP Select awfully familiar: authors who make their works exclusive to Amazon compete for a pool of money. Any time someone 'borrows' one of their books, they get a cut of a monthly sum (700K in January, 600K for February) based on how many of their books were checked out vs. how many other author's books were checked out. This is almost identical to the 'Payback for Playback' service MP3.com provided musicians a little over a decade ago. Payback for Playback effectively destroyed the original MP3.com artist community, and I don't think KDP Select is going to be much different for the self-publishing community that is growing on Amazon."

17 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Such a dumb move by Jackdaw+Rookery · · Score: 2

    Authors are going to get less from this. Even if it works, 600K is not that much, what happens when the pool runs out?

    1. Re:Such a dumb move by ynp7 · · Score: 5, Informative

      They don't pay out based on the retail price of the "borrowed" book so the pool isn't going to "run out." The payout is your percentage of "borrowed" books times the monthly fund amount, like this:

      [your borrowed books] / [total borrowed books] * [monthly fund]

      Amazon has stated that the program will receive at least $12 million in funding for 2012. Whether that means that they'll provide at least $500,000/month or if they'll dip lower (considering they're up to $1.3 million already) later has yet to be seen.

      One point that the original article seems to be missing is that KDP Select titles can only be borrowed by people who a) are Amazon Prime subscribers and b) own Amazon Kindle devices. While this doesn't completely inoculate the service from the sort of "gaming" that he refers to on MP3.com, that's a much higher barrier to entry than signing up for an account and downloading a file for free. Additionally, each account can only borrow one book a month and only the first borrow for each title from an account counts toward the bounty.

    2. Re:Such a dumb move by uigrad_2000 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      One point that the original article seems to be missing is that KDP Select titles can only be borrowed by people who a) are Amazon Prime subscribers and b) own Amazon Kindle devices. While this doesn't completely inoculate the service from the sort of "gaming" that he refers to on MP3.com, that's a much higher barrier to entry than signing up for an account and downloading a file for free.

      So, the idea is that one fan can no longer download your book 50 times, so that will stop the fraud. Well, it doesn't stop the fraud, it just makes the fraud more creative.

      Kings of Chaos is a game built around this very principle! Each player gets a unique link that they share with their friends, and every time it is clicked on, you get more troops for your army. Each of your friends can only click on your link once every 24 hours.

      So, people form giant guilds (thousands in a guild), and they all store their links in a "recruiter" (search the page for it). Then you spend an hour each night using the recruiter. For every link that you click on in the recruiter, it increases how often your link is shown to others.

      It's rather amazing how much effort people put into a game that really has no point (ie. KOC). KDP Select appears to me to be KOC again, but it's no longer a game, and real money is given out. I fully expect it to be a complete disaster.

      --
      Free unix account: freeshell.org
    3. Re:Such a dumb move by inflex · · Score: 3, Informative

      It would be a dumb move if that was the only financial pool authors could draw from - but it's not; it's only there for the lending/borrowing. Sales via the normal channels are still sales that you obtain money from directly - it's the best of both options. The KDP-Select "free" days are a nice addition, it gives you a chance to release a new book with minimal barriers of adoption - though the uptake rates are dropping significantly from the original "tens of thousands per day" when KDP-Select free was announced - however, it's still useful for a product launch.

      We recently moved a couple of books to KDP-Select strictly for the free days and it has helped (easier than managing coupons!), though after 90 days we're putting our books back to normal KDP and then sharing the eBook editions out via LightningSource/INGRAM.

      http://elitadaniels.com/ - Fantasy - Vampires - Zombies

  2. Why destroyed? by Zardus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What did the PfP program do that was so bad to mp3.com? Honestly curious.

    --
    You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
    1. Re:Why destroyed? by Seraphim1982 · · Score: 5, Informative

      People basically had bots (or a bunch of their friends) play their songs over and over allow them to rack up large play numbers.

      I believe Amazon charges a significant fee to use their borrowing service (IIRC you need Amazon Prime) and puts limits on the number of books you can take out in a given period of time, so this shouldn't be an issue with them.

    2. Re:Why destroyed? by brennanw · · Score: 5, Informative

      The main thing to understand about PfP was that it was a fixed pool of money that never changed. It was one million dollars a month, which is nothing to sneeze at, but in the beginning (before they required you be a premium member) there were a LOT of artists on MP3.com who were eligible, and that one million dollar pool started looking pretty shallow. So in order to increase their returns, some artists began to game the system:

        - get their fans to download PfP songs over and over again to maximize their count
        - coordinate with other artists to pool their fans, increasing downloads for both
        - a few tried to start PR campaigns against some of the more popular PfP artists in an attempt to reduce their downloads

      Essentially by putting all these artists in a fixed pool, it turned a community of allies into a community of competitors, and it got pretty nasty. There wasn't much left of the original community once that started.

      --
      Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
    3. Re:Why destroyed? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 2

      The blog entry says that it effectively ruined the musician community that had been surrounding MP3.com by turning them all against one another in order to increase their own share of the pie. Previously, they had apparently had a rather good community with decent camaraderie, but once they were splitting the money based on the number of downloads they had, it resulted in the artists encouraging their fans to repeatedly download their tracks, colluding with other artists to pool their fan bases so that their share of the pie would be bigger, and engaging in smear tactics against successful artists in order to reduce that artist's share of the pie.

    4. Re:Why destroyed? by ynp7 · · Score: 2

      While there's some chance that may happen in some degree with KDP Select, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that it will happen here because it happened with MP3.com. The main reasons being:

      1) Customers must be Prime subscribers with Amazon Kindle devices to participate.
      2) Each customer can only "borrow" one title a month.
      3) Only the first time a customer "borrows" a title does it count toward the bounty.

      Considering that the one copy of my book that was borrowed in December only netted me $1.70, I can't really see how it'd be profitable to game that system considering the minimum price of entry is $160 ($80/year for Prime, plus $79.99 for lowest end Kindle device).

    5. Re:Why destroyed? by biovoid · · Score: 2

      I was active in the MP3.com scene both before Payback for Playback (we called it P4P not PfP), during P4P and up until the demise of MP3.com. While there were musicians who were gaming the system (and it was fairly obvious who they were), it by no means destroyed any communities, nor turned artist against artist. I was lucky enough to earn over ten thousand dollars during P4P without any gaming (up to US$3k during my best month), and I know several other artists who did much better, and just as honestly. Those who gamed the system generally weren't part of the community to begin with, as their forum posts mainly amounted to spam.

      After MP3.com, most of the electronic music community moved onto Artist Server (back then ElectronicScene), a site developed by an MP3.com artist called Sonic Wallpaper. It still has a big electronic slant, but now caters to all genres. While I haven't been a part of it for years, both the site and community are still going strong at ArtistsServer.com, and browsing through the forums I remember many of the names fondly.

      P4P did not destroy communities like the article makes out. I won't pretend that it had no effect - it did create an edge of commercialism. But it was the sale to Vivendi Universal that destroyed MP3.com, not P4P.

  3. Dead Tree Exclusivity by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Aside from the kickback ( is that legal or does it get into the anti-competitive arena? ) aren't dead tree books exclusive to one publisher?

    While i would like choice of format as much as the next guy, the precedent has been around for a LONG time.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  4. As a KDP Select Author... by Sasayaki · · Score: 5, Informative

    As a KDP Select author (I wrote Lacuna: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006RZNR3Y), I have to say I'm a huge fan... and the borrows are just a nice perk.

    Essentially what happens is this. Amazon puts $X in an account, your payout is that sum divided by total borrows, times by your borrows. So if there's $500,00 in the pool, and 500,000 borrows total, and you have six, you get $6. The cost of your book or its popularity don't matter.

    HOWEVER... not everyone can borrow. The only people who can borrow are Amazon Prime members ($79 a year), and they can only borrow one book a month. Prime's main attraction for most people is the ability to get free priority shipping (as I understand it). The book borrows are just a perk and from what we've seen so far most Prime members aren't even using that feature.

    Over January there were a lot of borrows because Amazon gave anyone a one month free trial of Amazon Prime. That's why they upped the amount from $500,000 to $700,000 in January. For reference, the borrows in December paid out about $1.70, which equated to a pretty good deal for those who publish at $0.99 since the 35% royalty meant those people were getting $1.70 per "purchase" rather than 35 cents.

    Rumour is that Amazon felt that $1.70 was still too low, that's why the pool in February is $600,000 (up from $500,000) even though the free month has expired. Since we're expecting a lot fewer borrows this month, it's anticipated that borrows are going to be worth a lot more. My own borrows have dropped off a fair bit even though sales have picked up.

    All that said... the main benefit of Select is not the borrows. The borrows are just a nice perk. The main benefit is the KDP Free Days... you get 5 days per 90 days where you can set your book as free ($0). Doing so gives you a huge publicity boost since in every way (aside from pay, and paid rankings), Amazon treats these as paid sales. That means that if you push a lot of free books you get on the "movers and shakers list" and for people who bought your free book and something else, your book has a good chance of appearing on that other books "Customers Who Bought This Also Bought..." list, which is a fantastic way to get a lot of publicity.

    KDP Select has been a huge boon for unknown authors and in fact has encouraged the community over at www.kindleboards.com to grow substantially; there is now a massive so-called "MEGA THREAD" regarding KDP Select free days results and it's one of the most popular threads around.

    For reference, I usually sell about 1-2 copies of Lacuna: Demons of the Void a day. Post free-days I get a massive boost, usually in the order of 10-50x more sales, usually 2-5 days after the free periods end as that's when Amazon does their "also boughts" recalculation.

    KDP Select is awesome and the exclusivity of it doesn't matter to me since Amazon is the 300kg gorilla in the eBook market. It's important to note that the exclusivity does NOT apply to paperback versions of the same book, and in fact in the "Welcome To KDP Select!" email you get they actively encourage you to use various non-Amazon paperback publishing services.

    All my works (including some shorts published under a pen name) are all in KDP Select and for the moment I'm sticking with it. The borrows are just a nice little garnish... the real benefits, especially for lesser known authors, lies elsewhere.

    --
    Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
    1. Re:As a KDP Select Author... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 3, Informative

      Here's another author with a similar experience.

      Unlike payback for playbacks, Amazon's got a solid monetization plan behind KDP. It's also difficult to game too.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    2. Re:As a KDP Select Author... by inflex · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Except the big gain of the KDP-Select, the free days as you say, are already starting to lose its impact. We see each other on KB (Hi, I'm MrPLD) and we can see it falling away in front of us. We pulled ~2000 freebies last week over 3 days, but when it originally came out people were getting 10,000+, now more and more people are only seeing 50~200 freebies.

      Sooner or later, we're all going to have to go back to the traditional way of getting our readership, we're running out of "pricing as marketing" strategies, unless we want to start paying readers $1/book (and yes, it will happen, I'm fairly sure).

      I'm off the auto-renewal after 90 days on KDP, the free days were a nice thing, but I do wonder in some ways if Amazon isn't trying to make the independents destroy their own kind with this strategy [cynical hat on].

      http://elitadaniels.com/

  5. Um, it's not free this time by p88h · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The money is for the books being borrowed by paying customers (Prime members); and one per month at that, so while it's still possible to game the system, it'd be rather tricky.

  6. Exclusive to one distributor isn't that new by brokeninside · · Score: 3, Informative

    All of the national book chains have long had "exclusive to x" lines. Granted, it's been more common for distributors to do exclusive editions but exclusive titles are not all that rare. Usually, but not always, the exclusive titles are of poor quality: cook books, how to books, coffee table books, et cetera.

  7. On the question of attorney consultation by dtmos · · Score: 2

    In case you think authors should hire a contract lawyer, let me tell you the vast bulk do make less than they would have made by working the same hours flipping burgers.

    While it's certainly true that the vast bulk of authors do make less than they would have made by working the same hours flipping burgers, there's still significant money involved. It's the hours it takes to write a book that brings down the hourly rate.

    My first visit to a contract attorney turned a profit for me. He reviewed the draft contract sent by the publisher and (because he knew what was usual and customary in the industry and I, a first-time author, did not) doubled the royalty percentages it offered. The modified contract was accepted without comment by the publisher, and the increase in first year's royalties alone, due to the attorney's work, more than paid his fee.

    In addition to this, the attorney added clauses that stipulated what would happen in cases I had not considered -- for example, what would happen if the book were published in non-traditional media (only a theoretical possibility at the time, but most of my sales now) and how I would be compensated if the publisher bought the rights to the book, but never published it. Things like that.

    In my opinion, people who sign business contracts without the advice of an attorney are taking a huge risk. Ask Eric Weisstein, author of Mathworld, about the dangers involved when an author signs a contract without consulting an attorney first.