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Really wish they'd tell us what the rate per page would have been this month to try to prepare for all the letdown.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:43
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Welp. Amazon have just hosed short story writers.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:45
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I would bet those writers that were complaining about the way borrows were paid before will wish that it remained the same after their own royalty gets cut. 250 page book for $0.50 royalty? Well that's fair, we just followed your feedback, at least those erotica writers are only getting $0.05.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:48
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That's what every novelist I'm talking to is predicting. This is a way to pay short story writers less and Amazon will get to push for all novel length Kindle books to be at the $2.99 rate, no matter who it comes from.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:58
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I know it's too early to tell, but do you think people doing 4-10k word shorts should be preparing to pull out of KU?
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Jun 15, 2015 18:02
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EngineerSean posted:There's a horrible change to Kindle Unlimited borrows, I hate Amazon again now obviously. Oh sheesh, I didn't see that e-mail yet. Must go read.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:04
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angel opportunity posted:I know it's too early to tell, but do you think people doing 4-10k word shorts should be preparing to pull out of KU? I'd wait until July 1 under all circumstances. And, if I were still making a lot of money on short erotica, I'd still wait until August 15. However, I'll definitely be pulling out 200 page works if the rate is less than a cent per page.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:05
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Holy poo poo this is dumb as hell.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:06
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By the way, here is the email if you didn't receive it:quote:Hello,
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Jun 15, 2015 18:07
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EngineerSean posted:I'd wait until July 1 under all circumstances. And, if I were still making a lot of money on short erotica, I'd still wait until August 15. However, I'll definitely be pulling out 200 page works if the rate is less than a cent per page. Do you think there is a chance they will not go through with this after some backlash? I can't figure out at all what kind of money I'd get from someone reading my 23 page story. If I get 33 cents per a sale, and like 50 cents for a borrow, then I guess I'm pulling out of KU, pricing at $1.99 for my shorts, and publishing on all the other markets. I'm just REALLY, REALLY bummed because I just set up my new pen name, newsletter, etc., EVERYTHING based on KU borrow revenue. I had goals and everything in mind for how much money I could make, when I could quit my job, and now I have no idea at all what kind of income I can get from this.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:08
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Well holy gently caress.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:08
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angel opportunity posted:Do you think there is a chance they will not go through with this after some backlash? Backlash from who, erotica writers? You are hated at Amazon. You're the reason they're implementing this policy. I don't like it, but you're the bug they're trying to squash.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:09
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The reason that Charles Dickens’s books are so long is because he was paid by the word.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:12
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If everyone starts padding their word count everything is gonna be poo poo real fast on Kindle.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:15
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Hopefully once everyone has figured the math out, if it's just a brutal pay cut to erotica shorts, then all erotica can pull out of KU and go back to $1.99?
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Jun 15, 2015 18:16
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You'll also go right back to zero visibility if you do that, just as a heads-up. The search algorithm is not kind to that genre.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:18
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So, wait, if a stop-and-go reader like myself borrows a book, reads roughly half this month and half next month, is the author now screwed out of the second half of the pages? Or will those still count in the following month?
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Jun 15, 2015 18:18
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angel opportunity posted:Hopefully once everyone has figured the math out, if it's just a brutal pay cut to erotica shorts, then all erotica can pull out of KU and go back to $1.99? lol @ pricing at $1.99 remember our talk? remember average royalty rate?
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Jun 15, 2015 18:20
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Okay, well, gently caress. I just finished editing the second installment of my billionaire romance serial today. Like, literally just finished editing and opened the web browser. I'm wondering now if I should wait to publish and see how things shake out before committing to KU for these. They are shorts, in the 16-20k word range.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:33
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Paid per page read. drat. Can't wait to see the new fad of 10-15 pages of front matter for a 20 page short. Edit: now that a page read is a page read, bundles no longer cannibalize shorter works. Jalumibnkrayal fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 18:40
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Mr. Belding posted:Okay, well, gently caress. I just finished editing the second installment of my billionaire romance serial today. Like, literally just finished editing and opened the web browser. I'm wondering now if I should wait to publish and see how things shake out before committing to KU for these. They are shorts, in the 16-20k word range. Why not finish it out and convert it into a novel? That's what I'm doing with mine -- just finished ~20K for the first part, now easier to decide what to do! 
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Jun 15, 2015 18:42
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:Paid per page read. drat. Can't wait to see the new fad of 10-15 pages of front matter for a 20 page short. The help page for the new scheme says they'll start counting at the beginning of the main content, so padding the front matter shouldn't work.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:52
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angel opportunity posted:I'm just REALLY, REALLY bummed because I just set up my new pen name, newsletter, etc., EVERYTHING based on KU borrow revenue. I had goals and everything in mind for how much money I could make, when I could quit my job, and now I have no idea at all what kind of income I can get from this. Just a heads-up: That PM I sent you re: ability to make certain amounts of $$$ each month from shorts just completely went out the window. Ignore everything I said until at least August 15th, given this new change.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:58
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Even before this I was thinking of throwing in one of my sweeter shorts, the one that tanked as a "sweetener" at the end of my novella. It's similar in tone to my novella, if I get the pages read it shouldn't really make a difference once these changes come through. It also makes anthologies and bundles a lot more attractive.
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Jun 15, 2015 19:00
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Back matter is going to matter a lot more now. Start adding previews to all your books, guys. Front matter won't matter since they start counting pages at chapter 1, but that count keeps going through the back matter. So when someone reads the first three chapters of your next book, or whatever, you're getting paid. And there's no penalty if someone reads only 230/300 pages; it's all about total pages read. Then they'll buy book 2, skim thru those chapters, and wham. Double payment?
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Jun 15, 2015 19:01
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Holy poo poo, that's a slap to the face for erotica authors. I wonder what the hell is going to happen.. KDP is about to get decimated and people are going to be cranking out 300 page turds that's 40% two-word conversations. Can you imagine page after page ofquote:"What do you want?" said Jerry. I was tossing up having a crack at a romance novel and I was finding it hard to justify taking the bigger risk on that when a 5-10k short is much faster and easier to put out and comes with less risk. Now that decision is made for me... I wonder who's going to try to pick up the market in erotica shorts since Amazon is so determined to rid themselves of that porn money. Everybody prepare yourselves for a flood of 10-book 500-page pulp romance series with cliffhangers out the wazoo Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 19:10
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EngineerSean posted:lol @ pricing at $1.99 I was confused and thought $2 got the 70% royalty, so I guess I meant $3...
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Jun 15, 2015 19:14
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Sundae posted:Just a heads-up: That PM I sent you re: ability to make certain amounts of $$$ each month from shorts just completely went out the window. Ignore everything I said until at least August 15th, given this new change. I'm crying 
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Jun 15, 2015 19:15
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As much as I will miss the cash from borrows of my stories, I can't blame Amazon for doing this. It makes sense. Mostly, it entertained me that I made more money from people who were too cautious about my work to pay 99 whole cents for it than I ever did from people who thought they might enjoy it. Haaaaaa. (Side note: If you wanna talk about cautious readers, I've had this one customer who has "bought" every one of my stories and then returned them. I believe it's only one customer because it's a different story every time, with no repeats of this buy-and-very-quickly return. I think he's just going through the whole collection.) Icon-Cat fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 19:30
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I'm going to write Lost in book form and make millions (or more likely, tens of dollars). Explosive, amazing, jaw-dropping beginning where you go "how is he going to resolve all those things!!!!" and then by page 300 or so you realise I don't have a way to wrap it all up, that I don't care about wrapping it up, and it doesn't matter because I've already got your money.
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Jun 15, 2015 19:30
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Well this sucks balls. I guess the only hope is that people pull out of KU when they realise there's no more free porn, and Amazon are forced to panic revert their stance.
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Jun 15, 2015 19:48
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Amazon are forced to panic revert their stance. There is a zero percent chance this happens. Amazon revenue in 2014: $89.88 billion amazon ebook estimated revenue, 2014: $500M-1B. Even if you add the estimated $4B in kindle hardware revenue (that includes tablets, which aren't just ereaders), you're looking at less than 5% of amazon's revenue. KU is a small piece of this. Fate Accomplice fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 19:53
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Sundae posted:Why not finish it out and convert it into a novel? That's what I'm doing with mine -- just finished ~20K for the first part, now easier to decide what to do! Oh I will. I will probably still release the serialized version too. I've wanted to write a serial for awhile, and honestly this system is fair. I'll do for serials with a hfn ending and then release them as one piece and then evaluate whether to do another "season".
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Jun 15, 2015 19:57
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Crap, so I was just winding up to start churning out cruddy romantic erotica in the short format- given the changes to KU, am I right that my best chance at monetizing the same would would likely be to screw short-form stuff entirely, and try to do 1 100k novel a month instead of 5-10 10-20k shorts?
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Jun 15, 2015 20:04
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Omi no Kami posted:1 100k novel a month Are you a wizard?
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Jun 15, 2015 20:07
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Omi no Kami posted:churning out cruddy Hmm I might have found a problem...
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Jun 15, 2015 20:08
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ok well at least I guess that'll kill a lot of the erotica discussion in this thread anyway :-p
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Jun 15, 2015 20:15
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I'm betting this will come in line with the standard rates from royalties and the associated pricing. And it's to force people to the 99c, $1.99, $2.99 price plan. Short story 10k words: 99c - 30% Royalty means about 33c a sale- KU will give a 30 to 40c payout. Novel: 60k Words + - $2.99 - 70% royalty at $2.99 means about $2 a sale - KU will payout between $1.80 and $2.75 depending on length. Novella: 17k to 40k words - It doesn't really work with the royalty system, some go for $1.99 some for $2.99. - KU will payout somewhere between 0.80 and the current payout depending on length, I'm guessing around $1 for 30k words up to $1.50 for 50k words. That'll push people towards KU for stories that would previously have a hard time battling between the 30% and 70% royalty rate. I think this is about pushing novels towards the $2.99/$3.99 price point for Kindle Books, which would be a huge plus for Amazon. It'll see an uptake in KU novels but they still won't attract the very big names unless their borrows can guarantee bonuses, but more of the middling ones might join.
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Jun 15, 2015 20:16
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Malloreon posted:There is a zero percent chance this happens. A lot of people are currently making a living out of this, and I don't see them giving up without a fight. It might be the shakeup that starts driving people back to Smashwords etc but it's not the end of the world, it's just going to get tougher.
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Jun 15, 2015 20:19
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:Hmm I might have found a problem... Well not bad cruddy, but I think there's a big difference between "I wrote this, edited it, sent it to an editor/proofreader for a second look, then combed back through it to tighten it up and deal with any glaring issues my reader found" and "This is a story I'm hugely passionate about, I've put this through five major edits for content and multiple subtle tweaks, I need to re-read it once or twice and then I should be just about ready for a final edit". Blue Scream posted:Are you a wizard? Not until I put on my robe and wizard hat- I do write pretty quickly though. I work as a technical writer right now, and while that's a far cry from fiction, I can churn out about 2k/hour pretty consistently. The bare minimum I'd need to get a rough draft every month is around 3500/day, so it seems like 100k/month is reasonably realistic if I can spare two hours/day for writing and 4-5 hours/week for marketing and market research. I may've been off on something fairly major though, for the authors who support themselves through this, is KU a primary source of monetization? I had been under the impression that people focused more on marketing for sale than for borrowing, but especially given the large number of works that romance fans go through, that might be a silly assumption.
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Jun 15, 2015 20:27
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