Changes Afoot at Amazon

I’m not sure that I would usually write about this here, but since a lot of my writer friends are experiencing varying degrees of panic or euphoria about the email Amazon sent out regarding the new way they’re going to do payouts for their KDP Select program, specifically for Kindle Unlimited (KU), I thought I’d take a second to share my thoughts. And my thoughts are good, happy, positive thoughts.

Because it’s clear as day to me that these changes are intended to curb the tide of “dino porn” shorts, which routinely suck up far, far more of the KU funds than they have any right to. Although, yes, this does have consquences for people who write serials (which I’m about to do later this summer) and for authors when the reader doesn’t finish the entire book.

Here’s what Amazon said:

We’re always looking at ways to make our programs even better, and we’ve received lots of great feedback on how to improve the way we pay KDP authors for books in Kindle Unlimited. One particular piece of feedback we’ve heard consistently from authors is that paying the same for all books regardless of length may not provide a strong enough alignment between the interests of authors and readers. We agree. With this in mind, we’re pleased to announce that beginning on July 1, the KDP Select Global Fund will be paid out based on the number of pages KU and KOLL customers read.

As with our current approach, we’ll continue to offer a global fund for each month. Under this new model, the amount an author earns will be determined by their share of total pages read rather than their share of total qualified borrows. …

(And then they give some examples)

We think this is a solid step forward and better aligns the interests of readers and authors. Our goal, as always, is to build a service that rewards authors for their valuable work, attracts more readers and encourages them to read more and more often. ….

Okay. Some of the authors I know responded to this initiative with panic. The way they see it, Amazon is punishing authors of shorter works—serials, novellas, short stories. There is also some question about whether this could spell doom and gloom for authors of longer works if a reader doesn’t actually finish the book.

On the one hand, yes, this could cut into the profit of serial writers. I’m going to be publishing a serial later this summer myself, and this kind of makes me go “Oh, guess that’s not going to look like I thought it would look.” But I’m cool with that, because the serial was mostly a way I was going to entertain myself anyhow. And the whole earning a royalty that is higher than the retail price of the book thing was not going to last forever anyhow.

This also might seem scary if you suspect people are borrowing your books but not finishing them. But then, if they aren’t finishing them, that says something right there. I predict the rate of on-finished book payouts will be equivalent to the rate of returns that we see on our books. Because those returned books happen.

Not gonna lie. I downloaded it, read it, giggle-snorted a lot over it… I don’t want to be lumped in the same category or compete with it

Now, the reason I personally think this is GREAT is because it will stop all those people who are churning out unedited, 15 page, “dino porn” shorts from taking over the market and pulling away funds from serious writers who are attempting to write “for real.” I hope that this will deter hacks from throwing those things up all the time because it’s no longer free money. That would mean that the amount more serious writers take home each month would increase.

But here’s the other thing, my final thought, if you would. Everybody likes to hate on Amazon like they’re the Evil Empire. Like they sit around in board rooms thinking of ways to screw up the lives of indie authors who are trying to make a living like this. Nah. That doesn’t float with me. Amazon is a company. They are a distributor. They have their producers (that’s us) and their consumers (that’s readers), and it’s in their best interest to keep everyone happy.

Furthermore, Amazon wants to lure as many writers as possible into their KDP Select program. But you don’t do that by making it a miserable deal for writers. They have to maintain some sort of very attractive incentive for authors to want to join their program. Apple keeps making leaps and bounds to draw authors out of Select, so it’s not like there’s no other alternative. So my theory is that this will actually look better for our bottom lines once we see these changes in action.

And that’s what I think.