So About that Amazon Thing...

Okay, so today's post is going to be very "inside baseball." If the publishing biz doesn't interest you, skip it, but I've seen so much talk about Amazon's new pay-per-page system this week -- and so much staggering misinformation -- that I feel compelled to offer up a quick burst of clarity.

To quote Alien 3, "This is Rumor Control, here are the facts."

Amazon offers readers a subscription-based service called Kindle Unlimited. For a monthly fee, you can download and read any book enrolled in the program; in other words, it's Netflix for books. Publishers decide, on a per-book basis, whether or not to enroll in the program. (Being in KU requires you to be exclusive with Amazon, which is why none of my books to date are enrolled: that'd mean I'd have to pull my titles off of every other storefront. The Harmony Black series, however, will be in KU.)

Kindle Unlimited authors are paid out of a pool of cash, determined by Amazon every month. I believe the pool is set by rolling a handful of random polyhedral dice, and comparing the results to a heavily edited Rolemaster critical-hit chart. (97: The pool is $1 million. 98: The pool is $2 million. 99: You trip over an invisible turtle and die.)

Up until now, earning a share of that pool was determined by a customer reading 10% of your book. Someone hits that mark, boom, you get a cut. It's not hard to see the instant problem there: if you publish a 10-page short story, you're getting a share pretty much the second a reader opens the text. If you've written a 900-page doorstopper, you aren't counted in until the 90-page mark -- and you make the exact same amount of money as the short-story writer.

Not only was this system deeply unfair to Leo Tolstoy -- who I believe commented about this on Twitter -- it disincentivized novelists from joining the program and incentivized certain people who, er, made a "career" out of throwing metric tons of garbage onto KU; unedited short-story scraps, nonfiction pamphlets that are barely more than Wikipedia cut-and-paste jobs, and so on. The result: a troubled program.

Under the new system, KU writers will be paid by pages read. To boil it down, if you wrote a ten-page short story and somebody reads it, you get ten shares of the money pool at the end of the month. If you write a 900-page doorstopper and somebody reads it, you get 900 shares. Novelists actually have a reason to join the program now (a good enough reason? That's an excellent question, but beyond the scope of this article), and the KU Pamphlet Gold Rush is pretty much over.

(As an aside, let me say right now that some of the handwringing over this has been hilariously dumb. I have seen, not once but three times this week, allegedly sane writers spouting some variation of "Now all that will matter is keeping readers turning the pages! All books will be potboilers with a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter and no resolution, just to make sure the reader clicks all the way to the end!". Okay, first, no. Second, shut up. Third, readers aren't stupid, stop treating them like they're stupid. What keeps a reader turning pages? A gripping story, great characters, and craft. Fourth, compelling readers to read to the end of the book is, was, and always will be, our freaking job. This is not a new and surprising concept.)

"But Craig," you might be asking, "what if a writer we like has books both for purchase and in KU? If we're interested in supporting our favorite author -- who may or may not be a dashingly roguish gentleman who has a new series coming out this Winter, just saying -- what's the best way to ensure he continues being able to afford food and electricity?"

I can't speak for any writer but myself, but here's how I see it: my stories are available in lots of formats. Ebook, paperback, audio, chiseled stone tablets, etc. I don't make the same amount for a sale in every format, but I do get paid, and I think readers should choose the format they most enjoy experiencing. Some people carry a library on their Kindles, some people swear by the feel of paper in their hands, some get their fiction on the go via audiobooks, and there's no wrong way to do it. I think I can speak for most writers when I say I'm just thrilled to entertain you, any way I can.

The best way to support a writer is to spread the word. Write a review, tell your friends, and share the cool new books you've discovered. That's how we find new readers, sell more books, and keep the lights on. So we can write more books. So we can find new readers. So we can write more books.

Now I have to get back to work. Writing a book.