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Jalumibnkrayal posted:July Report is up. KENPC = $0.00578. I wonder how much money they added... Just got the email. quote:The KDP Select global fund for July is $11.5M, the largest payout in the program’s history. KDP Select authors have now earned more than $100M from the KDP Select global fund since Kindle Unlimited launched last July.
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Aug 15, 2015 17:30
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1.99B total pages read.
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Aug 15, 2015 18:15
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How did people do this month under the new KU? Are you gonna stay in it?
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Aug 15, 2015 18:21
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Sundae posted:1.99B total pages read. As far as we know that could all just be one book  e: For what it's worth my meagre income was reduced to 25% of its original. That said, real life has become a nightmare these past few months so I haven't written sweet gently caress all, so it's not jumping ship on KU alone that's responsible. Probably could have kept it at close to 50% if I'd kept publishing... Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Aug 15, 2015 |
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Aug 15, 2015 18:21
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Malloreon posted:How did people do this month under the new KU? Are you gonna stay in it? I'm already out and staying out except for full-length novels. Edit: To answer the question more directly, I'm down 90%. Sundae fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Aug 15, 2015 |
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Aug 15, 2015 19:50
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I'm out for anything under 30k in words. Shorts make me more wide, but the 30k mark seems to be the break even for me.
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Aug 15, 2015 20:32
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Malloreon posted:How did people do this month under the new KU? Are you gonna stay in it?
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Aug 15, 2015 21:05
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Sundae posted:I'm already out and staying out except for full-length novels. How much did your full-length novels drop?
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Aug 15, 2015 21:36
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Honestly, they probably went up a bit. I haven't released a full-length novel in almost a year. I'd been doing serials for most of my full-length and shorts for the rest. I have three full-lengths intended to come out this fall, but I don't know what to do with them now.
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Aug 15, 2015 22:08
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My non KU stuff (almost all of it, I have like one short in KU) is up on 'zon, down at BN and Kobo, steady at iBooks. Not seeing any incentive to enroll in Select.
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Aug 15, 2015 22:20
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Sundae posted:Honestly, they probably went up a bit. I haven't released a full-length novel in almost a year. I'd been doing serials for most of my full-length and shorts for the rest. I have three full-lengths intended to come out this fall, but I don't know what to do with them now. Mind if I ask how long your serial installments are apiece, roughly? I've seen serials with each installment anywhere between 10-35K. I'm wondering what the cutoff is for when KU just isn't worth it, and if longer serials might still fare okay vs. the shorter ones. Semi-related, I told a writer friend about the new per-page payout. Her response was, "So Amazon doesn't want authors publishing on Kindle Unlimited?" I think it might not have even been a rhetorical question.
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Aug 15, 2015 22:22
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It's a loving disaster, unmitigated. If their goal was to lure in novelists, I don't know how paying them $2 for their 60k novel if they make it to the end and not actually telling them how many units they're moving is supposed to lure in anyone who was on the fence about this. Of course, somehow (either by fooling them or by paying them) they've convinced Konrath and Hugh Howey that this is the future and a change for the better, and they're going to convince a ton of other authors.
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Aug 15, 2015 23:28
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I don't know what you guys are bitching about, the new KU should have doubled your money, just like it did for Konrath. ''I have 28 novel-length works in KDP, all over 60k words. I have 17 shorter works, ranging from 8k-50k. Genres include mystery, thriller, horror, humor, erotica, and sci-fi. In June, I made $9300 in KDP sales. In July I made $10,550 in KDP sales. In June, I made $5700 in KU/KOLL borrows. In July, I made $11,600 in KENP reads.'' You're obviously not saying your Bezo mantras right.
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Aug 15, 2015 23:40
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"I haven't published a word in two years and am still making $10k/month, therefore my situation is analogous to yours because..."
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Aug 16, 2015 00:29
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EngineerSean posted:"I haven't published a word in two years and am still making $10k/month, therefore my situation is analogous to yours because..." It's funny how Konrath has spent so much time and energy decrying the old order of Publishers only to become a shill for the New Order of Amazon.
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Aug 16, 2015 01:00
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 I stopped publishing a lot this month. If I had kept up my publishing rate as I had done it in KU 1.0, then likely my daily income would be a bit higher, though still a fraction of what it was. I'm moving toward doing 50-60k word novels. I am planning to do one 6k-word erotica short every two weeks. They seem to make me about $150-$200 each, and my mailing list keeps growing. I've heard that bundles can still do really well, so every so often I can drop a bundle as well. Going wide for me has done NOTHING. Totally worthless. I think I made $700 last month on Amazon, $50 on all other stores. Further, anything not in KU can't stick at higher ranks. I can get a new erotica short around 5k ranking using all the advertising tools available to me, and it can stick sub 10k ranking for about two weeks. Provided it's in KU. If it's not in KU, it's nearly impossible to make money off of it. Putting an erotica short into KU at this point is basically giving the book away to a ton of people in exchange for ranking and visibility. The more people who read in KU, the more likely I am to have several people per day buy the book at $2.99. I barely make any money from the KU pages read, and from my experience the KU readers probably wouldn't buy at $2.99 anyway. Some of them would, but it's simply not enough. I have 550 people on my mailing list, and I was hoping that a new release at $2.99 blasted out to that many people would give something a sticky rank, but it doesn't. It gets to like 30-40k or so, then it just plummets. It takes me 3-5 hours to start writing an erotica short, make a cover for it, do the blurb/keywords and publish it. I'm hoping that if I keep doing the erotica shorts infrequently like this, that I can still just knock one out every two weeks and have it start pulling in something like $300 per short. $300 for 3-5 hours of work is decent for me. I have to just force myself to ignore the fact that it would have been like $3,000 or more in KU 1.0. My main thing I'm moving toward are the novels, and I'm hoping that with those in KU I can have them stick for closer to a month at an even lower rank. I've heard some real horror stories of people getting hosed over. Someone from another forum spent about a month writing a full-length novel, and she spent hundreds on marketing, and the also boughts on her book got bugged. So for the critical first two weeks of release, she wasn't getting boosts from also boughts, and buy the time Amazon fixed the bug, it was too late. She said it made her barely more than some of her 6k-word shorts. Amazon fucks people over and it just doesn't matter to them. Brotherly from this forum got hosed over at first too; one of his books wasn't reporting any pages read, and they eventually--I think--gave him full price for each download. He got lucky that they did this, but who knows if that hurt his rank? They'll never tell you. I am a member of two other forums for erotica writing, and everyone is really down in the dumps. A lot of people are talking about having to get a day job, or giving up, etc. I'm hoping the summer slump is especially bad right now, and I'm further hoping that I can get traction with my paranormal novels. When I first started doing this and seeing success, there was a clear path in front of me. I knew I just had to keep repeating what I was doing, and soon I'd be at like $8,000+ per month. I was getting ready to move to Germany in December. Now in KU 2.0, most people don't really know what's going on, and short erotica especially is gutted. My best case scenario now is like "boost my income from my full-time job, and hopefully if my wife gets a job somewhere and we have to move, I can do this instead of finding another real job." I'm not considering quitting my job now though just to do this full time 
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Aug 16, 2015 01:16
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AbsolutelySane posted:It's funny how Konrath has spent so much time and energy decrying the old order of Publishers only to become a shill for the New Order of Amazon. It really is funny, and his greatest argument is seriously "Well at least Amazon isn't legacy publishing!"
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Aug 16, 2015 01:29
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I know I wrote a big long post about how writers will adapt but I've never been this pessimistic about Amazon. Almost everyone's best bet is to go completely wide at this point.
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Aug 16, 2015 02:05
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So what does this mean if I'm a new writer just starting out? I've got a full-length novel of around 118k words ready to publish once I've got the cover and blurb bits down, and now I'm all confused whether to simply go with Kindle Unlimited (that's an Amazon thing, right?) or spread my words all over the Internet. Anyway, while we're on the subject, here's a new test cover and a somewhat revised blurb:  quote:On the edges of the galactic empire known as the Concord, an elf named Shara Torellon finds herself hobbled by a ramshackle ship and crippled finances. Desperate, she takes up a seemingly harmless offer from Concord Intelligence, only to find herself in far more trouble than even her most paranoid fantasies anticipated.
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Aug 16, 2015 04:39
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EngineerSean posted:I know I wrote a big long post about how writers will adapt but I've never been this pessimistic about Amazon. What changed your mind? We've had a solid hint at what the page rate would be since July 1. Did the changeover to KENPC jack you out of an All Star bonus? Oddly enough I'm about to bring my 100+ titles back into KU after being wide for 45 days. I don't think going wide is a viable option for short fiction while KU still exists. We've trained our readers over the past year to gorge on KU ("FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!"), and that's not going to change anytime soon. edit: missed a quotation mark.
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Aug 16, 2015 05:21
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This is unreadable in the thumbnail.
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Aug 16, 2015 05:28
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CommissarMega posted:Anyway, while we're on the subject, here's a new test cover and a somewhat revised blurb: Remove "BY". We see a name on the cover, we know it's the author. Also maybe move the "Book 1 of the..." part to under the title. I like the author name to be the first or last thing on the cover. Not a fan of the font. Blurb: Shorter sentences. Your blurb is five sentences and Hemingwayapp says one is hard to read, four are very hard to read. I want to know more about Shara and her crew. I want to know more about how the eldritch horror connects to Shara's story specifically. I think you need to sharpen your hook. Also for some reason I don't like reading that she's an elf. I would be fine discovering that in the book, but it turns me off in the blurb (unless you're going with a theme where her crew is a bunch of fantasy races in space?).
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Aug 16, 2015 05:55
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CommissarMega posted:On the edges of the galactic empire known as the Concord, an elf named Shara Torellon finds herself hobbled by a ramshackle ship and crippled finances. Desperate, she takes up a seemingly harmless offer from Concord Intelligence, only to find herself in far more trouble than even her most paranoid fantasies anticipated. On the edge of Concord space, captain Shara Torellon grapples with a hobbled ship and crippled finances by taking a job that goes all wrong fast. Banished long ago, a horror from the depths of space is back seeking vengeance, armed with lost technologies that boggle the mind. Nothing is as it seems. The only thing standing between it and galactic apocalypse is Shara and her ragtag crew. Says the same thing but way more concise.
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Aug 16, 2015 06:57
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:Did the changeover to KENPC jack you out of an All Star bonus? I'm still getting two big bonuses but I haven't gotten the email yet. I pulled very nearly What I'm seeing is Amazon simply lowering the payout vastly to all authors by obfuscating the numbers. They even refuse to release data that they used to because it could be used to show how much less we're making under this new system. Consider the following: It would take a full read-through of a 40k word book to meet the same payout that one used to get under the old KU 1.0 system of measurement. That number is derived by taking 170 words and a payout of $0.0057 per KENPC. The fact is, no book has even close to a 100% read-through rate. Estimates I see are from 50% to 66% for the best books, so let's be generous and say it's 66% for all books. That means that a 60k word book borrowed through Kindle Unlimited gets the full KU 1.0 payment. However, this is a healthy novel, right? Most of the indie bestselling novels I see range between 50k and 80k words. That means that they're, on average, making right about $1.30 per borrow. But remember their language that stated that basically the reason the rate was so low was because short and serial writers were taking soooo much money out of the pot. Those writers are now making pennies on their work. I (and you as well) might be exposed to that a lot more than your average author because we have erotica in our catalogs and also because we belong to erotica forums. $1.30 was enough for me in KU 1.0 to have my novels enrolled but it wasn't enough for most novelists. They expected to lure some novelists in by changing the compensation, by basically saying "Look! Look! We're paying short authors less! Isn't that what you always wanted?" I think they did lure some novelists in with this and I can't blame those novelists for being fooled. However, it's obvious to me and I think many self publishers paying attention that this huge boom for novelists isn't happening. If payouts were still happening the way they were under KU 1.0 and with the same size pot, I suspect that the rate would be less than $1. The average page length read of a KU 1.0 work was not and is not 230 pages. Regardless of Hugh Howey (who won't post if he made more money), regardless of Konrath (whose greatest argument is that at least Amazon isn't legacy publishing) and regardless of YodaReads on KBoards (who I am legitimately happy for her success even if it came at the expense of many others), this is not a good change for authors. Once novelists realize that they're still only going to get $1.30 for their novels, they'll pull right back out. Nobody who was previously on the fence about KU 1.0 is going to continue being fooled by these figures. I'm sure my numbers aren't convincing and considering Hugh Howey and Data Guy are best buds, I kind of doubt that this will get addressed by the guy with the statistical background necessary. It actually might be kind of simple for this kind of analysis to take place, since they already felt like they had a baseline for how much Kindle Unlimited authors were making before, I just kind of doubt it will happen. edit: One last edit, a lot of the people who say how THRILLED they are about KU right now say stuff like "Under the new system I'm making $3.25 per read!!!" That's their hope of course but they have no idea. Many of these people are making far FAR less than that and I can basically pick out which ones aren't getting full reads just by their posts. EngineerSean fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 09:20
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CommissarMega posted:So what does this mean if I'm a new writer just starting out? I've got a full-length novel of around 118k words ready to publish once I've got the cover and blurb bits down, and now I'm all confused whether to simply go with Kindle Unlimited (that's an Amazon thing, right?) or spread my words all over the Internet. I agree that the font is too small. I also don't really like the white and the black in this case. Here's a 5 min mock up of the title using a larger serif font (Trajan). I think basically any of the medium/light yellows with a darker brown/orange stroke is gonna work better than the black and white. I basically grabbed 2 random colors from the middle of the image for the font color.  Also I think your name is more important than the size you are giving it
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Aug 16, 2015 12:58
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CommissarMega - want to send me a link to the background image you're working with? My wife and I have been intending to practice cover typography for a while now (she wants to start designing covers), so perhaps we can give it a go and fixing up the text. 
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Aug 16, 2015 13:45
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People mention visibility a lot--what is the difference if you're in KU vs if you're not? You're less likely to turn up in search results, or on New & Notable, or what? Sorry if this has been answered, there's a lot of info in this thread and sometimes I have a hard time keeping up.
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Aug 16, 2015 14:53
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Blue Scream posted:People mention visibility a lot--what is the difference if you're in KU vs if you're not? You're less likely to turn up in search results, or on New & Notable, or what? Sorry if this has been answered, there's a lot of info in this thread and sometimes I have a hard time keeping up. There is a filter applicable from anywhere in the Kindle bookstore that will only show you books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, so there's that. Additionally, KU means you're in KDP Select which lets you do free or reduced price promotions, which help visibility. Finally, people are more willing to borrow a book than buy it, so that should help it gain higher rankings.
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Aug 16, 2015 15:16
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EngineerSean posted:What I'm seeing is Amazon simply lowering the payout vastly to all authors by obfuscating the numbers. Your premise is that in July, my book might have gotten two borrows that got read halfway (saving Amazon one book worth of payout)? All I see is one complete read worth of pages so I'm none the wiser. But that would require more borrows into the pool, right? I don't see how that happened organically from June->July, especially because all those six month KU subs given away at Christmas now had to be renewed. We know there were ~10% more pages read, which was very surprising. I would've figured that as we got further into summer, we would see fewer pages read. Personally, I think Amazon wants to have a small cadre of super selling authors. Idiots like me clog up their database with stories that sell once every month or something. I think we'll continue to see the payout pot get sliced by more and more All Star awards (they just added them for illustrated children's books, so that's a nice bone for that category). I think we'll see the current system continue at least for the next year, then we might get KU3 next July. If I had to guess it might be a hybrid system ($0.50 base per borrow, $0.002 per page read, increase the depth of every All Star category).
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Aug 16, 2015 16:19
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kitten posted:This is unreadable in the thumbnail. It still needs way bolder/heavier text.
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Aug 16, 2015 16:57
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Blue Scream posted:People mention visibility a lot--what is the difference if you're in KU vs if you're not? You're less likely to turn up in search results, or on New & Notable, or what? Sorry if this has been answered, there's a lot of info in this thread and sometimes I have a hard time keeping up. It's mostly about the ranking and the algorithms they use to determine rankings. There's a lot of bullshit going on with the algorithms, and many people have intuited out various aspects of how rankings work. For instance, it seems that during the first 30 days a book is out, the first ten reviews have effects on your ranking. The first review gives the biggest effect, and then diminishing returns from there. After 30 days, I don't think the rankings have a direct effect on your overall ranking (though higher ranking means people are more likely to buy it either way). There also seems to be fall-off in ranking after a certain period of time. Some people say it's 30 days, but there may even be some scaled/weighted falloff. Aside from how Amazon screws you over on search results if you're in erotica, it feels also that the algorithms for ranking punish erotica. It seems to fall off faster, mostly. Pretend you are a brand new author who doesn't know what your are doing and you just release a book cold with no marketing. If you do everything else right: releasing into one of the huge selling genres, having great cover and blurb, good keywords, and the book is good, the book will sell. If the book is really good, you may even get some reviews early on. Chances are though that by the time your reviews start trickling in, you'll have used up too much of your initial release window to get penetrate into the higher rankings. It's not good enough for a 60k-word novel to get one five-star review a week after release, which is why people always do advance review copies and try to have like 20+ good reviews on the book as soon as it's released. Erotica doesn't do ARC really. I'd say something like half of my erotica shorts get a good review within the first week. Another 25% get a good review after it's too late to really help. Which of my books never got a review? The ones that I never put into KU and went wide with straight away. Again back to the hidden algorithms, it seems that a "ghost borrow" actually helps your rank, as do the pages read. So people with KU who just download your book to "read later" and never end up reading it boost your ranking. There is no investment needed from these people, and they don't have to give anything up, not even their time. If they like the title or cover and on a whim just hit "read free on KU," it boosts your rank. If they end up reading it later, it boosts your rank more. All the people on KU who slowly read your book keep the rank afloat as well. Depending on your marketing tools, you usually want to free offer something immediately on release, then spend ~$10 minimum on promotion. This is the best way to get reviews, because even people without KU can download it for free. I would usually get about 1,000-1,500 free downloads over five days on an erotica short. The free offer stuff is on its own ranking system, so I'd often get #1 rank in some erotica subcategories. This meant people browsing that category would just see my book as highly ranked and grab it for free. If you're not in KU, you can't do a free offer. So that tool is just gone. I have an okay-sized mailing list right now and some other tools/connections I've built up over time, so I don't HAVE TO rely on free offers, but when I was starting out, I did. If you are starting out now without KU, it seems extremely difficult to get initial exposure. People start new pen names, release one novel, and have it hit top 100, but these are people with a lot of experience who know exactly what they are doing. When I was wide--for about a month and a half--I started a new series on my existing pen name that never touched KU. It was $2.99 to buy only. It was kind of different than what I had been doing, but its primary kink was most directly related to my all-time best seller. I was expecting it to do really well, but each part in that book ended up making like ~$10 each over two months. All my non-KU entries into my existing, good-selling series also flopped, though not quite as bad. They basically hit 30,000 ranking at best on release, then slowly just dropped in rankings until they only sold one copy every few days. When I release on KU now, I can hit close to 10,000 ranking and stick there for a few weeks. This makes me way more money than going wide. Basically everything I built up in KU 1.0 is gutted, and I'm still trying to figure out how to make it worth my time so I don't have to totally scrap it. If you're brand new, I really wouldn't bother with short erotica though. It's still good for learning how to publish and market without wasting a month per title, but the money just is not there anymore. You basically have to give your book away and/or do crazy stuff to game the ranking system just so your book has a chance of being seen. Almost all of those tools require KU
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Aug 16, 2015 18:00
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Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply, AO. It's been a learning experience watching you. I'm planning to launch my erotic romance serial in October, and each installment is definitely on the longer end of things, as serials go. KU is a total wildcard for me right now, so I'm really wondering if it's worth it.
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Aug 16, 2015 18:36
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So if I'm a new sci-fi author with a novel-length book, I'm guessing I should somehow get a few positive reviews beforehand or in the first 30 days? I suppose I could Sundae posted:CommissarMega - want to send me a link to the background image you're working with? My wife and I have been intending to practice cover typography for a while now (she wants to start designing covers), so perhaps we can give it a go and fixing up the text. Sure, no prob. EDIT: All right, here it is. Jalumibnkrayal posted:Blurb: Shorter sentences. Your blurb is five sentences and Hemingwayapp says one is hard to read, four are very hard to read. I want to know more about Shara and her crew. I want to know more about how the eldritch horror connects to Shara's story specifically. I think you need to sharpen your hook. Also for some reason I don't like reading that she's an elf. I would be fine discovering that in the book, but it turns me off in the blurb (unless you're going with a theme where her crew is a bunch of fantasy races in space?). Gotcha, nor problem. And yeah, the story does revolve around a bunch of fantasy races in space (there's an orc, a centipedal creature and later, a possessed man among her crew). That being said, if it detracts from the hook (which I'll do my best to improve further), I can remove it. I just want readers to know what they're getting into, that's all. Malloreon posted:On the edge of Concord space, captain Shara Torellon grapples with a hobbled ship and crippled finances by taking a job that goes all wrong fast. Holy poo poo, this is awesome. May I take this wholesale? thousandcranes posted:
Thanks for the tip; I'll get to improving the cover ASAP. It does look better with a orange-yellow/gold shadowed font, I must say. As for the author name, I wasn't sure I had enough clout to make it larger, and I was afraid I'd be seen as one of those egotists who put their name as large as their novel title. Pinky Artichoke posted:It still needs way bolder/heavier text. Noted, I'll work on that too. And seriously, thanks for all the help, guys! CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 03:40
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CommissarMega posted:Holy poo poo, this is awesome. May I take this wholesale? Go for it, all yours. It's just a template, though. You know your story best. EDIT: Jalum's advice here is also spot on. Fate Accomplice fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 04:26
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So I know it's mostly doom and gloom around here (and for good reason, really) BUT I just wanted to share some a little success story. I know August isn't over, but this is officially my first 5-figure month! Here's the problem though (and there's always a problem no matter what): I have no idea how it happened. Last month, I released a book. It got good reviews, maybe something like 50+ 4/5 stars on Amazon. I put it up for free for two days and it just suddenly took off, hit a peak rank of something like 230 in the paid store. I did almost no paid promotion aside from using free days. I had another book running for free for 5 days, all pointing toward the new book. I think a lot of it had to do with getting on also-bought lists for other popular books. Colleen Masters put out a new book and I was lucky enough to get on her also-boughts (still am). But I'm not sure if that's what drove the awesome sales, or if it was something else. Basically, it's a total mystery, and I want to figure out how to replicate it. Which leads me to this week. I just released another book with 50+ 4/5 star reviews on Amazon (4.7 average, I think this is actually a better book overall) but it's not selling nearly as well as the other book did. The keywords are similar (since they're both stepbros) and the cover I think is actually better. But it's just pulling mediocre numbers at this point. I put it up for free for two days, like the other one, but it didn't give away nearly as many as I hoped. I have the successful book on free promo now with the end matter pointing to the newest book, so I'm hoping that kickstarts things for me. I know you guys can't give me step by step advice on what to do. I'm mostly just bitching/venting, because I want to make this thing work. Now that I've had a taste of success, I really don't want to go back.
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Aug 17, 2015 13:56
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the brotherly phl posted:Which leads me to this week. I just released another book with 50+ 4/5 star reviews on Amazon (4.7 average, I think this is actually a better book overall) but it's not selling nearly as well as the other book did. The keywords are similar (since they're both stepbros) and the cover I think is actually better. But it's just pulling mediocre numbers at this point. I put it up for free for two days, like the other one, but it didn't give away nearly as many as I hoped. I have the successful book on free promo now with the end matter pointing to the newest book, so I'm hoping that kickstarts things for me. Some differences I noticed: The new cover is arguably better, but it's different. Your other ones were desaturated with a bright bold title. The new one is also showing the model's face and he's looking at the audience. Your prior ones didn't do that. The old one had an organized crime connection advertised right on the cover. The new book is a different twist, and maybe that new twist just isn't as popular. Also, the old one's title seemed to strike at the core of the relationship between the protagonist and her love interest. It didn't hurt that it had a strong sexual component as well. Blurb wise, your old story had a strong emotional impact because he's her bodyguard, her protector. In the new one he sounds like a burden recuperating from an injury. quote:I know you guys can't give me step by step advice on what to do. I'm mostly just bitching/venting, because I want to make this thing work. Now that I've had a taste of success, I really don't want to go back. You have to keep your attitude centered and be prepared for volatility. I went from having $300 days in June to $0.80 days in August. Your introspection is good though and I know the exact feeling. I had one story take off like wildfire, and nothing I could do could duplicate it. Sigh.
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Aug 17, 2015 15:06
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:You have to keep your attitude centered and be prepared for volatility. I went from having $300 days in June to $0.80 days in August. Your introspection is good though and I know the exact feeling. I had one story take off like wildfire, and nothing I could do could duplicate it. Sigh. Thanks, Jalum. That's some really good feedback. I think you're totally right--the extreme sports thing is a little less popular, and I don't think I'll write a third (I'm already half way thru a second, so I'm a little too committed to turn back now). I'm leaning toward another overtly sexual title--I feel like that was really eye-catching and helpful. I also think the protector aspect was big, something reviewers commented on, so I'll probably try and bring that back. Thanks! I'm trying to remain positive, I mean, I'm still making good money.
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Aug 17, 2015 15:19
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:Your premise is that in July, my book might have gotten two borrows that got read halfway (saving Amazon one book worth of payout)? All I see is one complete read worth of pages so I'm none the wiser. But that would require more borrows into the pool, right? I don't see how that happened organically from June->July, especially because all those six month KU subs given away at Christmas now had to be renewed. We know there were ~10% more pages read, which was very surprising. I would've figured that as we got further into summer, we would see fewer pages read. I've been on the road for the last couple days so I haven't been able to fully type out a response. The premise is basically as you put it, that if you're writing 50k word novels, on average you would be paid more by the old system than you would on the new system, because even though nominally your rate per full read is 20% higher, you're not getting an 80% read rate. You're not. As for the amount of borrows going up "organically" from June 2015 to July 2015, here's a historic look at the amount of borrows. I have included the monthly total as well as the numbers per day, as sometimes the difference between 28 days and 31 days in a month can make the numbers look bizarre. Aug 2.6m - 0.08/day Sep 3.3m - 0.11/day Oct 4.13m - 0.13/day Nov 4.64m - 0.15/day Dec 5.06m - 0.16/day Jan 6.15m - 0.2/day Feb 5.6m - 0.2/day Mar 7.2m - 0.23/day Apr 7.2m - 0.24/day May 7.8m - 0.25/day Jun 8.3m - 0.27/day The smallest increase is from January to February, less than 1%, but most other months are substantial. There's a number of factors that went into this and one major one is the opening of new markets, but that hasn't happened now for a few months. Obviously I don't have figures for July, they stopped releasing that data (as I stated above). However, I can look at the payout amount for each month in much the same way. Aug 4.7m - 0.15m/day Sep 5m - 0.17m/day Oct 5.5m - 0.18/day Nov 6.5m - 0.22/day Dec 7.25m - 0.23/day Jan 8.5m - 0.27/day Feb 8m - 0.29/day Mar 9.5m - 0.31/day Apr 9.8m - 0.33/day May 10.8m - 0.35/day Jun 11.3m - 0.38/day Jul 11.5m - 0.37/day Notably, July is the first month since the inception of the program that they paid out less than they did the month before. It's about 3% less. Your rebuttal seems to count on the fact that Amazon saw a decrease in reading between June and July. Your reasoning is that it's exactly six months after Christmas, in which they sold discounted Kindle Unlimited subscriptions with the purchase of a new eReader, which I think is pretty flimsy. They've been advertising this program all over Facebook. Obviously there are exceptions (just lost a job, cancelled subscription for a month for a summer vacation, whatever) but the average person who was enrolled in this program in June who was not also enrolled in July was someone who was, by and large, not using the program as much as an average user and decided that, while it was nice to get thrown in with a new eReader, doesn't want to pay $10/month to keep up with it. I'm going to balance this one out with something that I think is even more important: On Prime Day, they were selling 6, 12, and 24 month subscriptions to Kindle Unlimited for up to 40% off. The readers who really loved the program re-upped then. This was in mid-July but if the fund is that susceptible to Amazon's special deals then we should have seen movement in the other direction at that time. A 3% drop is hardly the Armageddon but when compared with historic and consistent increases of 10% per month, a 3% drop in the other direction is a pretty jarring change. If you were in charge of a company that faced these kinds of changes of numbers, your shareholders would be calling for your head, or at least a number of reasons that's a lot less flimsy than "but but but Christmas" I have one month of data and my own numbers but I suspect that this will become more and more clear in the coming months. Novelists will not be happy that they are actually being paid less under this new system than under the old one. Shorts writers should be rioting but it hardly shocks me that some authors can't adapt to life outside Kindle Unlimited, I feel like I can't do it myself. You are welcome to repost this wherever.
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Aug 17, 2015 20:22
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Does anyone here do self-hosted ebooks? It seems to me that if you're not doing KDP Select, and you're doing your own marketing, it would be a pretty trivial thing to create a system where someone can buy the book, put in their email-to-kindle address and pop it right into their Kindle library with only one more step than just slapping in your CC number. Admittedly, it's far more cumbersome for the end-user than an Amazon one-click buy, but it seems like it would be worth it to be able to control your own marketing, pricing, bundles and SEO while keeping 100% of your revenue. If you already have a mailing list call to action in your book, you can drive traffic out of the Amazon ecosystem to your own site. Alternatively, since KU seems hell bent on loving over serials and short content, it seems like this approach would make a lot of sense for those writers. You could even set up a subscription service to blast your email-to-kindle list with content as soon as it's ready. Anyway, I'd love to hear from someone who this is working for, or someone who tried something like this and decided it wasn't worth it.
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Aug 17, 2015 21:00
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Self-hosted sales don't boost my ratings and thus improve my visibility so...
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Aug 17, 2015 21:10
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