The Amazon Conundrum (AKA Why Some of My Books Are in Kindle Unlimited and Most Are Not)

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, because I get these questions a lot:

Why isn’t X book available in Kindle Unlimited?
Why isn’t X book available on Kobo/Barnes & Noble/Apple/etc.?

I wanted a place to send folks where I can explain. It’s hard to get all the points across in a response to someone’s Facebook comment. Especially since I always forget how to do the darned hard returns (SHIFT + ENTER, in case you also didn’t know or keep forgetting) there.

So, here’s the scoop: 

Amazon requires authors to make their books EXCLUSIVE to their store in order for them to be enrolled in “KDP Select.”

Among other things, checking the KDP Select box puts your book into the Kindle Unlimited subscription program. For as long as it’s enrolled there, you are forbidden (yes, they enforce it) from selling the books on other stores or even your own website.

So, why do some authors go along with this?

As I write this in May of 2019, each borrow through Kindle Unlimited counts as a sale in regard to determining sales ranking and overall visibility in the Amazon Kindle store.

I’ll pause for a moment so you can debate whether that actually makes sense. When you’re a KU subscriber, you essentially get any books in the program for free with your subscription. Yes, you pay $10 a month for the service, but that money gets automatically sucked out of your account every month before you even notice. It feels like those books are free.

And yet Amazon weighs borrows the same as sales in determining sales rank.

And sales rank determines how visible your book is in the store, i.e. how many people (potential new readers) have a chance of seeing it when they’re browsing the Top 100 lists in their favorite genres.

Thus, it’s a clear benefit to authors to have their books in Kindle Unlimited. Putting aside how much they make from borrows of books (payment is on a per-page-read calculation and, for all but very long and very inexpensive books, is less than an author would make from a sale), the authors are more likely to have their books seen by readers in their target audience.

What may be less obvious is that it’s now a huge disadvantage on Amazon if you launch a new book and it’s NOT enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. You have to get let’s say 200 sales a day to rank in the Top 20 for your genre whereas the author who is enrolled can get 100 sales and 100 borrows, or no sales and all borrows, and achieve the same position–gain the same visibility.

If you’re curious, go take a look at those Top 100 lists and see how many books have that “Kindle Unlimited” tag on them. In the genres I write in, it’s almost all of them. All of the independent books. Sometimes there are some traditionally published juggernauts by authors we all know and buy. Those guys are big enough that they can overcome this disadvantage and still sell well on Amazon. Most indie authors struggle to do that.

It’s why you get situations like the one I find myself in.

I don’t WANT to be exclusive to Amazon, and I resisted that for a long time, but it became clear that I was releasing new books, and it was mostly only my regular readers picking them up. They promptly dropped off the genre lists because they couldn’t compete in sales with books that were being checked out (essentially) for free.

Yes, you can decide to just accept that you’ll only sell to your existing fans, but that’s tough for new authors without many fans yet. And even for those more established authors, there’s always attrition. Some readers won’t follow you into a new series or a new genre. Some readers just fade away with time. If you want to be a career author, you have to continuously work at getting new readers to try your books.

This is not to say that it’s hopeless and you can’t sell books if you’re “wide” in all the stores and not exclusive to Amazon. It’s to say that it’s easier to sell a lot more books on Amazon if you’re in Kindle Unlimited.

But, you may ask, don’t you lose out on a lot of sales by not being in the other stores?

In my case, I definitely lose some sales. Or at least delay them.

My current strategy is to launch new series into Amazon and then, once they’ve stopped selling as well, take them out of exclusivity and publish them in the other stores. To somewhat get around the fact that this means readers on other stores may not get the books for a year, I run a Patreon campaign where I release my books in mobi, epub, and pdf there first (before I launch on Amazon and click the exclusive box).

It’s not ideal, as most people would prefer to buy from their favorite store and have the books automatically appear on their devices, but it’s at least an option that sort of works for now. For those who are on my mailing list and know about it. The rest of the readers have to scratch their heads in puzzlement (or irritation) when they can’t find my new releases in their stores.

So, yes, even with workarounds, I lose out on some sales to readers on Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble, etc., But I’ve always made at least 80% of my income from Amazon (sometimes that creeps closer to 90%). Amazon is the largest store by far and has the most potential book buyers by far. My numbers have been like that since the beginning (eight years now), even before Kindle Unlimited and KDP Select existed.

I don’t honestly know how long I’ll play the exclusivity game. As you can imagine, it’s tough seeing your income take a huge hit by opting out, but I may get fed up at some point and just make do. Even if that means making less money and getting my books into the hands of fewer readers.

My point with this post is not to bash Amazon (though I won’t try to hide my ongoing frustration with the exclusivity setup) but to explain the situation to readers.

If X book is not in Kindle Unlimited, it’s because the author wanted to sell their books in other stores, or because they wanted to be paid a 70% royalty rather than accepting a smaller cut from a subscription service. If X book is not available on your store, it’s because the author is staying exclusive to Amazon for now because they feel they have to for the sake of their career. Amazon moves more ebooks than all the other stores combined, and, for the most part, ebooks are how indie authors make money.

I hope you found the answer you were looking for here, even if it wasn’t a satisfying one. As always, thanks for stopping by!