Tuesday Tirade: Let’s do the math.

I took the second and third book of my trilogy out of Kindle Unlimited. Why? KU page royalties have decreased over the last year, despite Amazon raising the subscription fee from $9.99 to $11.99. That’s my Amazon aggravation for the week.

I wondered if KU readers would read the rest of my trilogy if it was not included in their subscription. I did a few email and social media surveys and the results showed that about 50-75% of KU subscribers purchase Kindle books. So, is it worth the risk to deter readers from buying my other books if I take them out of KU?

If a reader reads all 3 books in KU I make approx. $1.92If one reader reads book one in KU and and buys the next two I make $4.84I make $0.64 with a complete read-through of The View from Here.

OK. So, what is the math? $4.84 / $0.64 = 7.56

Analysis? I make the same amount of money on one read-through as I do if 7 1/2 readers only read book one. Is my thinking correct? do I only need 14% of readers to finish the trilogy to make it worth it?

My other experiment was to drop the price of book one to $0.99 to encourage readers, and even though I have sold 47 books in this 3-month period, I have only sold 6 copies of book two. Maybe it is still to early to tell.

-Leon

Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, and a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words.

My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/

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