You may have noticed people (mainly authors) getting their knickers in a knot over the latest Amazon KDP update over this past week. In today's post we'll take a look at what's changing and what it means for authors publishing through the KDP program.
So what's new?
This is what KDP announced this week:
"We’re always looking at ways to make our programs even better, and we've received lots of great feedback on how to improve the way we pay KDP authors for books in Kindle Unlimited. One particular piece of feedback we’ve heard consistently from authors is that paying the same for all books regardless of length may not provide a strong enough alignment between the interests of authors and readers. We agree. With this in mind, we’re pleased to announce that beginning on July 1, the KDP Select Global Fund will be paid out based on the number of pages KU and KOLL customers read.
As with our current approach, we’ll continue to offer a global fund for each month. Under this new model, the amount an author earns will be determined by their share of total pages read rather than their share of total qualified borrows. Here are a few examples illustrating how the fund will be paid out. For simplicity, assume the fund is $10M and that 100,000,000 total pages were read in the month:
• The author of a 100 page book which was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
• The author of a 200 page book which was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million multiplied by 20,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
• The author of a 200 page book which was borrowed 100 times but only read half way through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages)."
For further information (such as how they measure pages read) you can read more here: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A156OS90J7RDN.
KDP also said that "Authors have continued to renew their titles in KDP Select at rates in excess of 95% each month since Kindle Unlimited launched". Will this still be the case with the new system or will authors start to opt out? I personally don't see this new update as a bad thing. It makes no difference to the reader. They borrow the book just like they did before. The changes are only for us authors... and it could mean more royalties.
They are simply switching from paying Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Kindle Owners' Lending Library (KOLL) royalties based on qualified borrows, to paying based on the number of pages read. More pages read = more royalties for the author.
Before once a customer read more than 10% of your book, or a Kindle Owners' Lending Library customer downloaded your book, you received a share of the KDP Select Global Fund.
Are you enrolled in the KDP program? Why/ why not? Do you think this new system will be better?
