Question on Amazon/Kindle's 'free' book reads

frisco · Nov 12, 2018

I published my last book on Amazon through its CreateSpace program. I just published my latest using the new Kindle Direct program. To my understanding they are basically the same thing, however now my new book is available in Kindle format--as is my old one as well. I see it is included in the 'free' read options, and it evidently has been read a few times. My only question is do I get anything for that? I was kind of hoping to sell my book, not give it away for free through Amazon.

I've never worked with Kindle and I'm not familiar with this program. If anyone has some experience I'd love to get their take on it.

thethinker42 · Nov 12, 2018

I looked up your book, and I assume you're referring to it being in Kindle Unlimited? In which case, yes, you do get compensated for the pages read. The rate varies from month to month, usually in the range of $0.004-0.005, which doesn't sound like much, but it adds up, especially for longer books. My royalties have been, since around 2015, consistently 2/3 KU and 1/3 purchases.

The page count won't be the same as your actual page count (they have some way of standardizing page count to avoid people doing things like double-spacing and enlarging fonts to make the book "longer"). To find out your page count, go to your KDP bookshelf, click on the "Promote & Advertise" button, and scroll down to the bottom to see the number. Multiply that number by the per-page rate, and that'll tell you how much you can probably expect to make each time someone reads the whole book (but again, the rate varies).

So yes, you do get paid for pages read, and readers who don't use Kindle Unlimited can still purchase the book for its regular price.

cool pop · Nov 12, 2018

KDP nor Kindle Unlimited are new programs. Unlimited is a part of KDP Select meaning your work is exclusive and you can't publish it elsewhere in ebook. KDP is just the entire Amazon self-publishing arm. If you are in KU you will be getting less than a penny for each page read.

CJMatthewson · Nov 13, 2018

You can unsubscribe from Amazon's Select lending program though I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. Check your reports and see how many of your reads are coming from Kindle Unlimited and how many are regular sales. Personally I make a lot more from KU than I do from sales, but that is a byproduct of my genre (romance) which seems to be read voraciously by KU subscribers. Some books lend themselves to sales more though and you have to balance that. It works out well for me as I get about 25p for a full kindle unlimited read of my book (73 pages) vs 35p for a full sale, so it pays less per read but entices people who have already spent 9.99 a month on KU to check my book out, which I doubt they would pay for as it currently has no reviews from which to base an opinion.

Laer Carroll · Nov 15, 2018

I found to my surprise that I'm making as much money from "free" reads as ebook sales. In other words, going exclusively to Amazon doubled my earnings. I'm happy with that, as selling through B&N and Apple never made me very much money.

Al X. · Nov 16, 2018

Everyone has different experiences with the Select program. Right now about 40% of my sales are from outside Amazon. Unpromoted KU reads were maybe 20% to 30% at best back when all my books were in Select. The last book I put in Select as a test yielded double digit page reads during the entire 90 day period but I also think Amazon is playing games. They are known to do that.

thethinker42 · Nov 17, 2018

It can also vary between genres. Romance readers are voracious readers, and it's easier for romance authors to rack up significant reads in a shorter period than for some other genres. I recently released a mainstream suspense novel, and have noticed that the page reads are a lot slower to accumulate, something a couple other thriller/suspense writers have observed as well. Last time I looked at the bestseller lists for romance and gay romance, most of the top 100 books were in KU. On the suspense lists, not so much. So I'd say it's important to see how big KU is in your respective genre.

zclesa · Nov 25, 2018

I was just wondering about this too. A couple of months agao, I published one of my titles through KDP Select (none of the others are in it). I just looked at this month's royalties and the KU/KOLL earnings are meagre (to say the least) compared to the sales royalties. And I notice they've reduced my Ebook size to 121 pages when it's actually 177 pages in paperback and 171 in ebook. It is formatted like a proper book with a normal font size. I do leave spaces between paragraphs, because it is a non-fiction book. Perhaps they are not counting those!

I think the worst thing about KDP Select is the tie-in time. I would much prefer it if they gave you the option of a month before you could take it out of Select. I think I am going to take it out as soon as I am allowed and put it on Smashwords. Although I get barely any sales from Smashwords itself, my other books have done well through their distribution network.

I think it does depend on the type of book, but I'm guessing that for a non-fiction book, KDP Select is probably not the best way to go. I will have to see what happens when I take it out of Select.

Al X. · Nov 25, 2018

zclesa said:
I was just wondering about this too. A couple of months agao, I published one of my titles through KDP Select (none of the others are in it). I just looked at this month's royalties and the KU/KOLL earnings are meagre (to say the least) compared to the sales royalties. And I notice they've reduced my Ebook size to 121 pages when it's actually 177 pages in paperback and 171 in ebook. It is formatted like a proper book with a normal font size. I do leave spaces between paragraphs, because it is a non-fiction book. Perhaps they are not counting those!

I think the worst thing about KDP Select is the tie-in time. I would much prefer it if they gave you the option of a month before you could take it out of Select. I think I am going to take it out as soon as I am allowed and put it on Smashwords. Although I get barely any sales from Smashwords itself, my other books have done well through their distribution network.

I think it does depend on the type of book, but I'm guessing that for a non-fiction book, KDP Select is probably not the best way to go. I will have to see what happens when I take it out of Select.

Right. The type of person needing a reference book or a documentary isn't likely to be trolling the KU selection of entertainment books.

As an update, so far this month my sales through D2D is almost equal to my Amazon sales. The genre is fiction, action adventure.

thethinker42 · Nov 25, 2018

zclesa said:
And I notice they've reduced my Ebook size to 121 pages when it's actually 177 pages in paperback and 171 in ebook. It is formatted like a proper book with a normal font size. I do leave spaces between paragraphs, because it is a non-fiction book. Perhaps they are not counting those!

I'm guessing the spaces between paras is probably coming into play with yours. They're not going by the actual page count, but a standardized page count that makes everyone's pages count the same, regardless of the font, line spacing, etc., used in the final ebook. So presumably they go by words/lines and figure it out from there, which means any significant spaces are not going to be counted.

Al X. · Nov 25, 2018

thethinker42 said:
I'm guessing the spaces between paras is probably coming into play with yours. They're not going by the actual page count, but a standardized page count that makes everyone's pages count the same, regardless of the font, line spacing, etc., used in the final ebook. So presumably they go by words/lines and figure it out from there, which means any significant spaces are not going to be counted.

It is puzzling. Font, size and spacing is largely out of the author's control in an ebook. Just for sh*ts and giggles I pulled a couple of my books stats off Amazon, and determined the words per page from the word count and assigned print length (ebook print length, not the paperback version) and 342 words per page and 241 words per page, respectively. Both are formatted identically. That is quite a discrepancy.

I do not know, however, if the 'print length' is the same as the KU page count.

thethinker42 · Nov 25, 2018

Al X. said:
It is puzzling. Font, size and spacing is largely out of the author's control in an ebook. Just for sh*ts and giggles I pulled a couple of my books stats off Amazon, and determined the words per page from the word count and assigned print length (ebook print length, not the paperback version) and 342 words per page and 241 words per page, respectively. Both are formatted identically. That is quite a discrepancy.

I do not know, however, if the 'print length' is the same as the KU page count.

They have to standardize it somehow. Early on, people were using larger fonts (either larger size or just fonts that took up more space), double-spacing, wider margins, etc., in order to make their books longer. So Amazon came up with some method that calculates a "page count" for the purposes of calculating KU reads, and makes sure a 20K novella doesn't pay more than a 50K novel, for example. I assume it's based on the dimensions of a Kindle screen, but I don't know for sure.

I just went and checked several of my books, comparing pairs of books that were roughly (within 1K) the same word count. The KU page count is pretty consistent from one to the next, with variations of maybe 10 pages between two books of similar length.

Question on Amazon/Kindle's 'free' book reads

frisco

practical experience, FTW

thethinker42

Abnormal Romance Author

cool pop

It's Cool, Miss Pop if You're Nasty

CJMatthewson

Laer Carroll

Aerospace engineer turned writer

Al X.

thethinker42

Abnormal Romance Author

zclesa

Al X.

thethinker42

Abnormal Romance Author

Al X.

thethinker42

Abnormal Romance Author