Mary Newman's Blog - Posts Tagged "paperback"
Leaving Kindle Unlimited
I know I've already written my blog this past weekend, but I came to a decision today, finally, and wanted to let my followers know. I've unenrolled all my books from Kindle Unlimited (KU). Part of them will come off immediately, since their term was already up, and the others will come off as their current term runs out. I'm not going to make future books available on KU, either. This was a decision based upon several factors.
1. Amazon has changed the way the pay authors from by the book, to pages read. What they pay per page varies but seems to have dropped below half a cent permanently. For one of my books that has about 240 pages they're willing to pay me for, that's about $1 USD per book. IF the reader reads all of those pages.
2. I've recently learned that Amazon has no way of knowing how many pages a reader actually reads, only the percentage. And if a reader clicks on something in the TOC to take them to the back of the book, it gives the author credit for the entire book. That's great, you say! No, it isn't because authors are paid out of a fund. If you get lots of pages read you get a bonus, too. Scammers have honed in on this and you know the rest of the story. Less pay for honest authors who are struggling.
3. I originally enrolled my books in KU in order to build readership. Going by my stats, I don't see any correlation of those reading a book through KU and increased reading or sales on any other book. In other words, it's not doing much for my readership.
4. I've purposely kept my books under $5 for the eBook version, generally offering the first book in a series for less just as kind of a bonus for my readers. That's going to change with the newer books coming out. They'll be priced according to length. All future books will have professionally designed covers and that costs money. I don't mind not making a profit off my books, since I have a separate pension I actually live off of, but I'm not going to pay to publish without recouping a good portion of what I spend on doing so.
There's my reasoning, for what it's worth. I haven't decided if I'm going to offer my books on other sites (such as All Romance) yet, since that involves converting everything into different formats and files. It's a nightmare, plain and simple, because things don't always translate like I'd like them to do.
For now, all books are still available on Amazon as an eBook or the paperbacks are available through most major books sellers, since they're done through Create Space.
1. Amazon has changed the way the pay authors from by the book, to pages read. What they pay per page varies but seems to have dropped below half a cent permanently. For one of my books that has about 240 pages they're willing to pay me for, that's about $1 USD per book. IF the reader reads all of those pages.
2. I've recently learned that Amazon has no way of knowing how many pages a reader actually reads, only the percentage. And if a reader clicks on something in the TOC to take them to the back of the book, it gives the author credit for the entire book. That's great, you say! No, it isn't because authors are paid out of a fund. If you get lots of pages read you get a bonus, too. Scammers have honed in on this and you know the rest of the story. Less pay for honest authors who are struggling.
3. I originally enrolled my books in KU in order to build readership. Going by my stats, I don't see any correlation of those reading a book through KU and increased reading or sales on any other book. In other words, it's not doing much for my readership.
4. I've purposely kept my books under $5 for the eBook version, generally offering the first book in a series for less just as kind of a bonus for my readers. That's going to change with the newer books coming out. They'll be priced according to length. All future books will have professionally designed covers and that costs money. I don't mind not making a profit off my books, since I have a separate pension I actually live off of, but I'm not going to pay to publish without recouping a good portion of what I spend on doing so.
There's my reasoning, for what it's worth. I haven't decided if I'm going to offer my books on other sites (such as All Romance) yet, since that involves converting everything into different formats and files. It's a nightmare, plain and simple, because things don't always translate like I'd like them to do.
For now, all books are still available on Amazon as an eBook or the paperbacks are available through most major books sellers, since they're done through Create Space.
Mary Newman's Blog
I am currently migrating my blog to my website on Wordpress. New posts will generally be shared here, but the blog itself will now be on Wordpress. I look forward to hearing your comments on the new s
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