Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon has a new plan to keep self-published authors honest: they're only going to pay them when someone actually reads a page. Peter Wayner at the Atlantic explores how this is going to change the lives of the authors — and the readers. Fat, impressive coffee table books are out if no one reads them. Thin, concise authors will be bereft. Page turners are in.
This isn't going to affect the majority of books. It's strictly for the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Online Lending Library portions, where customers can read the book without buying it. Simply don't make your books available through those programs, or limit them to initial books in a series or those likely to hook readers into wanting more of your works. Basically juggle the benefits of KU/KOLL exposure generating additional sales vs. the potential cost in royalties.
As is usual, the headline and summary are sensationalized at the expense of truth: Amazon isn't doing this for all Kindle books. They're doing it only for self-published Kindle books (i.e., not ones from actual publishing houses, which comprise the majority of books most people actually read), and even then it's not for books that are actually purchased: it's for books read as part of the Kindle Owners' Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited programs, which basically allow you to rent/check out participating books for "free" if you are in one of those programs (the former requires an Kindle reader or tablet from Amazon plus a Prime subscription, and the latter requires a monthly fee). Books people actually buy are unaffected, as are the vast majority of books in general even if they're rented. This is still an interesting model, but it's not as extreme as I thought from the Slashdot posting. I guess it would kind of be like Pandora negotiating a significantly lower royalty on songs that are skipped within the first few seconds.
R.Mo
This is for the kindle "unlimited", so only borrows not buys. People were borrowing popular books, but never reading them. They also suspected that a reddit/forum brigade was borrowing without reading, so that a particular author could get money for a shitty book.
The only downside is a technical book where people are borrowing it only for 1 or 2 chapters.
We're getting all worked until over a summary that doesn't actually explain what's going on.
This is specific to Amazon's subscription services (e.g. Kindle Unlimited), and only affects how Amazon divvies up the fixed pool of money Amazon already allocates to reimburse authors whose works are being read as well art of those subscription systems. It used to be per-book; now it's per-page.
#DeleteChrome
This only applies to books read through the Kindle lending program where the author's all receive a part of the monthly pooled money based on the lending behavior. It is true of course that a 200 page book can provide as much value as a 500 page book to a particular reader. But let's assume that the author's effort is more for the 500 pages versus 200 pages (not always the case but probably true much of the time). This seems like a fairer way of distributing the Kindle lending money to me. I don't know anything about the lending program but hopefully authors have control over whether they participate or not.
Given that the new terms are voluntary and limited to just KU, this will likely be fine for everyone. What the above summary missed was that the new payment terms only apply to the books authors put into Kindle unlimited, and not to the entire Kindle Store. http://the-digital-reader.com/... Amazon made the change to encourage authors to submit longer works to KU. The old terms were based on per ebook read, not page. That favored short works over longer works.
Except that this policy doesn't apply to "purchased" e-books. It only applies to the Kindle Lending Library.