New Kindle Unlimited Royalties: rewarding authors for pages read instead of downloadsBeginning July 1, 2015 Amazon is switching to a new royaltiеse system. The e-commerce retailer will pay its authors royalties based on the amount of pages that are actually read instead of the number of downloads. They will receive royalties only for the first time when the book is read. The new pay-per-page model only applies to authors enrolled in the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, who have their books offered on both Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Kindle Owner’s Lending Library (KOLL) and have not opted out of these programs. Subscribers to those platforms can download books for a monthly/annual fee without paying additional charge for every downloaded book. Amazon calculates the revenue from all such downloads and splits the royalties among authors based on a predetermined formula. Until now, the e-commerce giant paid a percentage of royalties to all self-published authors each time their ebooks were borrowed via one of the above programs, as long as at least 10 percent of the book, notwithstanding length, was read by the customer. Amazon states: “We’re making this switch in response to great feedback we received from authors who asked us to better align payout with the length of books and how much customers read.” The new terms apply only to these specific subset of authors and royalties for Kindle ebook sales outside these programs are unaffected. When readers pay to download an ebook, as with the Kindle store, it is reasonable to pay authors for each purchase because they earn it. But, when their downloads are free once the customers have paid the subscription fee, as on Kindle Unlimited, there is no such thing as individual “purchases”.
Amazon has developed an algorithm, called Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC), which assures that each text will be in a standardized font, line height, line spacing, etc. and prevents authors to game the system using wide line-spacing and big margins. Amazon added that images, charts, and graphs will count towards the normalized page count. There is also a minimum amount of time required for the reader to spend on a page before it counts as read.
Fair or Unfair?
We may have to consider whether we most value quality, quantity or meaning. We only want to read books that are worth our time, are useful and help us to improve our businesses or lives. The new payment formula isn’t the perfect solution but is developed to make things equal for writers with longer works, and it has the additional benefit of rewarding writers who grab the reader’s attention. The positive effect is that short books don’t have the advantage that they used to have. Authors of longer books will be paid more, but only if their books keep the readers’ attention and are actually read. There are types of books we don’t read from cover to cover. Some customers use KU and KOLL to read specific information, related to their interest, and they almost never read 10% or more of most of the ebooks they borrow for these reasons. The result is that those authors never receive royalties for their work. The new policy doesn’t directly impact readers because they aren't paying per page. Whether they read 1 page or 500 pages, they only pay the subscription fee.
The new pay-per-page method is different from how royalties usually work and may change the landscape of royalty payments. And thus comes the question: What if Amazon applies the new formula to all its books, not just borrowed books? It’s hard to say whether or not this will be good for writers.
Ralitsa Lachezarova
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