The Author Who Cried Wolf
Since the news of the new Kindle Unlimited pay per page I've watched all the writers groups on social media whine, and moan, and groan. And I laugh.
For those who have been around a while, we've heard it all before. I can remember when I first started poking the industry with my stick to test out the waters, Kindle was just a rumor to be released in 2007. There were authors yelling about, "Long live print," "I'll never put my books in an ebook," among many other anti-kindle statements. Ebooks out sold print offically in August 2011 with help from those original nasayers.
Kindle Unlimited came out and again the uproar started. Now this one I'm still not on the Yippiee train, but I do have one title that I recenetly put up to poke with the stick.
So for those worried about their numbers, those crying wolf, here's how I see it.
A book that normally sells for 2.99 should receive 2.09 at 70% and 1.05 at 35%.
With Kindle Unlimited that same book is only getting 1.35 (which I don't like).
The new Pay Per Page is calculated by Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC v1.0). If those who are screaming did their research they would find the KENPC is on their Promotion and Advertising page:
So, the book listed is around 40k in words. For print it's around 125 content pages (removing the opening legal content, the extra space around chapters, and the back ads) KENPC in the picture above says that book is 221 pages. Snoopy dance!
The reason for the happy dance? I expected that 221 to be lower.
There are many articles spuring on the wolf criers.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/02/amazon-pay-self-published-authors-per-page-read-kindle
The Guardian was nice enough to put out that the pay amount could be as low as .006, fanning the flames of those crying wolf already.
So back to all those pretty numbers. If Kindle decided that my book is 221 pages, and they are paying .006 per page then, when the entire book is read I'll receive (drum roll?) 1.33.
Why might I be happy about losing .02?
I expect more people to read the book. I expect there to no longer be returns on these. My only concern, and at this point a simple question, which will get answered in time: What does this do to reviews? Does someone who read five pages get to put down their one star?
Only time will tell.
