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Amazon paying for pages read only
Mod
I think all of this is possible and probable for those that write the way you do, except the last two words. I could be wrong, but I would guess that if someone put out, say, a 700 page book that reads like a first draft people aren't likely to buy it. And those that do may ask for refunds or give one star reviews. In the long run, I just don't see your idea of a scam being that profitable.
I always have to add fluff to my material after the first draft.
I have mixed feelings about this. On one side, I have a series of novelettes that sell quite well, but they are also very popular of KU/KOLL. The former arrangement meant basically that I received around 3x as much for a loan than for a sale. Now, that was a good deal for me that will now disappear.
On the other hand, I have also some longer books (around 400-450 pages) and I was paid exactly the same as for the 30-60 page short stories. That was a bad deal but payout for these is going to be significantly better.
Am I going to lose or win? It depends on the page payout. I checked the figures in the notification that I received from Amazon and took them with a ton of salt. If the payout is around $0.01/page, then it's definitively a winner. If it is less, then perhaps it is time to pull out...
I also agree with Owen that this will "weed" out not-so-good authors and benefit good authors. And assuming the 75% average completion that he suggests (I'm pretty sure that most of my readers will finish my books), it would be still a good deal.
However, let's wait and see..
I'm going to hold off judgement on this one until I've seen it in action for a few months. I have a feeling none of this is actually going to work like we think it is. For one thing, there is no way the payout is 10 cents per page. Someone earlier mentioned it being more like 1 cent a page, which I think is more realistic given Amazon's track record. It might work out to half a cent a page. I wouldn't be remotely surprised. I hope everyone else is writing really long books!
The other thing is that I have no idea what they are considering a page or the start point of the readable material. Amazon is determining pages, after all, and those pages might not match up with what we think our page counts are. It's also not starting from the first page of the book, but some point inside that they consider the start of the reading material. Ideally, this would be Chapter 1 and we're all fine, but Amazon's algorithms tend to be a little sketchy when they're first launched, though I might have just had bad luck.
I do wonder if the pages will be counted by word or by some other abstract variable of length. If you wanted to artificially inflate the length of the book for the latter, you could always just add an extra line between paragraphs and break up your paragraphs a little more.
I'm interested to see how this goes. If it worked out, great! If it's a flop, then there's no harm in taking away Kindle exclusivity and actually trying out other markets.
Tanya wrote: "For one thing, there is no way the payout is 10 cents per page. Someone earlier mentioned it being more like 1 cent a page, which I think is more realistic given Amazon's track record..."If anyone is really interested I can dig up my assumptions on how that 1-cent per page number came about and what a "page" was. For this to work, Amazon would need to have a standard words/pg conversion factor and it doesn't matter what that conversion factor is, as long as it's consistent. (That's pretty rudimentary, so I imagine Amazon is aware of that.)
You are quite right that we aren't going to know how this works out for a few months. The big swinger is the mean percent read rate (and how Amazon measures that). My guess is that people tend to read less of a longer work slower, than a shorter work -- especially when they borrow it.
I think this is key. When people shell out $4-$5 for a book, they are likely to be more invested in reading it than when they saw it, thought it might be interesting, and clicked to borrow it "for free" -- meaning no additional investment.
So a 600-page book, I suspect, will have an overall read percentage that is fairly low on KU. Reading a long book is large time investment. Reading a novella isn't. A reader can polish off a 100-page novella in an evening. But a 400+ page book? Not so much.
They might read 100 pages in an evening, set it aside, say "I'll get back to it" and ... that book just paid out like a novella. Until (maybe a month or more down the line -- who knows) they pick it up again.
In my view, that's the critical factor. I assumed a 75% mean completion rate to arrive at $0.01 per page, and nominal mean page count of 225 pages per book. (I just looked up my numbers: I assumed 65,000 words as a mean word count.) My personal guess is that is high. Drop the mean percentage read number to 50% and payout goes up to closer to $0.015 per page read. Drop the average word to 50,000 words and the payout goes up, as well.
Please do note my model is so rough that no one should take it as gospel. I ran it only to illustrate the sensitivities in the new payout system has I understand it. But keep in mind that the big swinger is reading habits, which we don't know much about.
Thus, I think that before we start assuming longer works have the edge, it is wise to consider this: How many KU members actually pay attention to the book length is selecting what they borrow? How do they react to a nice, tightly paced novella vs a 500-page door-stopper?
If a significant portion of KU members download the latter, open it, see the length, read a bit, groan and say: "I'll never get thru this," a novella will pay better.
Only Amazon has has the data to evaluate that right now. We'll just have to wait and see.
Owen wrote: "Iffix wrote: "Thankfully, this won't effect me at all, since my books are AWESOME! :DSeriously, though, it is interesting to see how Amazon encourages authors to sign up with them as a publisher t..."
I agree, Owen, on all accounts. I don't comment much on this group, but I do read and learn a great deal from you all. I was late in learning the changes to KU payouts and an author friend had to point it out to me. I initially thought, "Oh no, what's Amazon doing to us now?" But I did the math, like you, and feel like it will even the playing fields. Like others have said, readers would not pay the same for a 400 page book as they would a novella. Who would? My books range between 325-350 pages, so I do believe I will benefit and my new book coming out this summer will be even longer. I'm very pleased with the new system.
Also, reading the fine print, Amazon is planning on taking into account spacing and font sizes when estimating pages to even the playing fields. While the new system might not be perfect, it's a huge improvement over what was in place. This is called the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC).
If I do have one complaint, the fine print states that it will automatically open your book for a reader at the Start Reading Location (SRL). It states that Amazon typically sets the SRL at Chapter 1. Well, I have Prologues in both my books, if my readers miss my prologue, that will just plain suck. To avoid this, I have reformatted both my current works and re-uploaded them setting Chapter 1 - Prologue. I'm not happy about this because it plain looks funny. A prologue is a prologue, not a chapter. But until they get this fixed, it's my simple solution.
Also, to add, I think Amazon might be misleading authors about being paid .01 per page. That was their simplified version for creating an example for payouts. It depends upon the monthly fund as well as the subscribers sharing that fund. However, even at .007 per page, I will make more money per book and not feel like I'm being cheated by the system because of those publishing pamphlets. Am I happy? Mmm, I don't know, but I am happier.
Hi Brynne. The SRL has historically taken i to account prologues. I think what it is going to do is negate front matter and TOC only. I always add a start tag to the title page because I personally like starting books at the 'beginning' and I think this is what Amazon is talking about. I won't be paid when you read my copyright info.
Christina wrote: "Hi Brynne. The SRL has historically taken i to account prologues. I think what it is going to do is negate front matter and TOC only. I always add a start tag to the title page because I personally..."That is good to know. My books have always automatically opened to the Prologue in the past, however the fine print made me nervous. I wonder if there is a way we can set our own SLR? This is the quote copied from the fine print:
"Amazon typically sets SRL at chapter 1 so readers can start reading the core content of your book as soon as they open it."
I just got a message from Amazon that sheds some light on the payout to be expected, and which shows that the example they provided was vastly exaggerated.It states that the KDP Select fund for July and August will be $11 million. It also states that the KU/KOLL customers read in June around 1900 million normalized pages.
To avoid you guys doing the math, 11/1900 (we ignore the million on both sides) is around 0.57895 cents (far less than the 1 cent that we were discussing above). However, before you start screaming, let's do the math.
For simplicity (assuming the reader reads the whole book), the payout is as follows:
25-page article or short story: $0.14
50-page novellette: $0.29
100 page novella: $0.58
200 page book: $1.16
300 page book: $1.74
400 page book: $2.32
500 page book: $2.89
600 page book: $3.47
What does this mean? Well, if your 600-page book sells for $5, you'll earn the same as by selling it. For the article or 50 page novellette, assuming you sell them for $0.99, you'll earn around half what you get as a sale for the 25 pager, and 80% of the sale for the 50-page booklet. If you sell for $0.99, you'll earn MORE money from this than selling it outright as long as you have more than 60 pages.
Break-even point (meaning sale income=loan income) for each price point:
$0.99: 60 pages
$1.99: 241 pages
$2.99: 362 pages
$3.99: 482 pages
$4.99: 603 pages
$5.99: 724 pages
$6.99: 845 pages
Of course, if you have more pages than the break-even point for a given price, you will earn MORE through KU/KOLL than through a sale.
Interesting, isn't it?
Ramon wrote: "I just got a message from Amazon that sheds some light on the payout to be expected, and which shows that the example they provided was vastly exaggerated.It states that the KDP Select fund for J..."
I just got the Chart changes today on KDP. Insted of units checked out there is a graph of total pages read for each day. Being that my books are of the 650+/- range, this will be good for me. I'm glad those of us that actually write Novels will get paid for it.
Yes, I also have the chart today, but I got also the message from KDP, so I did the math... It looks as if on almost all my books I'll get almost the same for a loan as for a sale, and in some cases even more...That's good news...
Ramon wrote: "Yes, I also have the chart today, but I got also the message from KDP, so I did the math... It looks as if on almost all my books I'll get almost the same for a loan as for a sale, and in some case..."Agreed. Being that Amazon is a business and is not steeped in benevolence, I wonder why the change?
Jack wrote: "Ramon wrote: "Yes, I also have the chart today, but I got also the message from KDP, so I did the math... It looks as if on almost all my books I'll get almost the same for a loan as for a sale, an..."I think the point is to discourage the novella movement that was gaming their system, and removing the benefit of those who literally wrote like a ten page book on DIY sink fixtures and made what everyone else made.
Or maybe it's to add to the benefit so more people go with select and Amazon gets more exclusive titles?
G.G. wrote: "Or maybe it's to add to the benefit so more people go with select and Amazon gets more exclusive titles?"I know in my sub-genre, and a lot of romance, the select titles are almost all novellas, some nearly microscopic. I think they want to encourage high page count. As a customer, I'm overjoyed cause I'm about out of my favorites. Plus, and I speak only to the romance genre in general, as a reader, it's slim pickins. I'm so not a picky reader. In a crit, I will go all out to find the good, strong points of a draft, so when I say I've found books for the first time in my life that I regretted reading, I want you to take my full meaning. I think the unlimited needs something to give everyone a chance, but also something to encourage quality for reputation's sake. One way to do that may be page count.
G.G. wrote: "Or maybe it's to add to the benefit so more people go with select and Amazon gets more exclusive titles?"There might be also part of that - I was earning so little on my longer books that I was pondering about leaving KDP altogether if it had more than 100 pages... On the other side, my short SF stories (40-80 pages) were earning so much more than the actual sales that I would have been stupid to withdraw those...
Ramon wrote: "To avoid you guys doing the math, 11/1900 (we ignore the million on both sides) is around 0.57895 cents (far less than the 1 cent that we were discussing above)..."Thanks for posting that! Regarding that 1-cent per page number above, a clarification is in order, since I was the author of that.
At that time, since Amazon had not yet release their method, I assumed a normalized page count based on a roughly the number of words per page for a “standard” paperback. However, Amazon’s normalized page count is a much different number.
For example: Our first book is 178 pages, print length. The KU page count is 378. That is 2.12x more “pages” that the print version. That is consistent across all our books. So the 1-cent per page figure I estimated above for my normalized page count needs to be divided by 2.12 to get the figure for the KU page count.
So making that adjustment, my estimate would come out 0.472 cents per page. The estimate based on Amazon’s numbers 0.57895 cents per page. Thus, my “1-cent per page” estimate was low by 23% (a factor of 1.23).
So the payouts quoted above are ~20% better than my original estimate would have produced.
And be sure to check you works' KU page count and use that, not the print length.
This has been mentioned above, but I think it's bears repeating: this change does not encourage higher page counts. It pays for pages read, not pages written. The assumption that people will read more of a longer book is not supported. Six 100-page novellas might well yield more page read than one 600-page novel, because people maybe more likely to finish a 100-page novella than they are a 600-page novel. Do not assume long books necessarily result in more pages read. There is no evidence for that yet. Many people do not finish longer books. A few months will start to reveal the answer.
It's best to keep an open mind: pages read, not pages written. This does not encourage authors to write longer books. It encourages authors to write books that reader wants to read more of, whatever the length.
Mod
Owen. Once again, the voice of reason.
I'm with Owen on this. There is simply more work in a book, than a short. I am currently writing a short. It looks like heading for 50 - 60 pages. It has been much less work than my book, 375 pages. I don't mind that it will earn less.
This is only for kdp select. You still set your price for a sale.
There
We have to write good books, that hold the readers attention. Short or long.
I would like to know how many books are borrowed and how many books are unfinished etc.
Anthony wrote: "I would like to know how many books are borrowed and how many books are unfinished etc."I'd love to know this as well. For ourselves, the number of KU loans we had in June should be a reasonable approximation of the number we will have in July, so we can roughly estimate the overall percentage completion rate per book. Given that we have one fairly short book and two much longer ones, that will be interesting, though of course it applies only to our case.
To get a global average, an estimate of the mean length of the books in KU would have to be determined, and that would require a random sample of 500+ books, I suspect.
Is anyone bored? ;-)
Owen wrote: "To get a global average, an estimate of the mean length of the books in KU would have to be determined, and that would require a random sample of 500+ books, I suspect. "Well, if you're interested, I can get you the length of all my 13 books... However, the length alone might not be meaningful. You might have a 60-page book that has been loaned 100 times and a 600 page book that has been loaned 1 time (so the 60-page book might actually earn 10 times that of the 600 page book). So I think a weighted assessment would be more useful.
One interesting thing is that in my KDP control panel the pages read have started to appear... in the individual Amazon sites, and for each book. This will allow to get statistics for each book and country. We might perhaps find out that a book is read completely in one country and only a few pages are read on average in a different one? I'm already thinking about data mining algorithms... :)
Ramon wrote: "However, the length alone might not be meaningful. You might have a 60-page book that has been loaned 100 times and a 600 page book that has been loaned 1 time (so the 60-page book might actually earn 10 times that of the 600 page book). So I think a weighted assessment would be more useful..."That absolutely right. I'm hoping Amazon will restore the units borrowed per market. Then we can assess how well our books are doing.
The overall average completion rate isn't very useful, except as it gives a rough measure of our overall performance. It probably too much to ask that Amazon produce mean completion rates by length for each quintile (or something similar). They haven’t been big on stats thus far.
Owen wrote: "The overall average completion rate isn't very useful, except as it gives a rough measure of our overall performance. "You're right, Owen, but as I stated, I'm seeing pages read at each Amazon site for each individual book. That should give (after a couple of months, so as to be statistically meaningful) a measure of performance. If Amazon adds to that the number of loans (and not only the number of pages), then that measure is really going to be very useful...
Ramon wrote: "If Amazon adds to that the number of loans (and not only the number of pages), then that measure is really going to be very useful..."Maybe if we bug them enough. I'm planning to wait a couple of weeks, and then ask.
And I bungled that sentence. What I meant was, an overall average completion rate provides a rough benchmark to gauge the overall performance of each of our books.
If the average completion rate across KU came out at say 65%, and a book of our had an 85% read rate, that might suggest we're doing a better than average job of attracting the right readers. Or it might not, if there is a strong correlation between completion percentage and length or genre or... And there's the fact that people who borrow books have different levels of investment than people who buy them and ...
But I digress. Still -- data. Data is good. : )
Mike wrote: "True - if you're not in the "biz" like us, you don't think in those terms. But I think people would get used to it eventually and find it useful.Incidentally I'm struck by how few words there are..."
I completely think in word count. 5k per chapter minimum 10 chapter book. People aren't learning the craft or their genre anymore. Romance has set wordcount targets per marketing preferences, so I write to those and pray. My novels work out to be 330 pages on the KU plan. That could mean my payout should be good, but, most importantly, I gave my reader what they want. A novel of the right size with all the elements romance readers want, main conflict, secondary conflict, length, etc. It's just part of writing a novel. That's not what KU is currently producing, but I think they know that's what they need to remain sustainable.
Mod
One of the nicest things about being Indie published is that one doesn't have to think within such confines. My word count is usually based on how many words I need to tell the story right. 5K? 10K? 30? I never really know starting out if a story is going to be a short story or novel, novella or novelette.
Jolie wrote: "People aren't learning the craft or their genre anymore. "
I am going to ask that you refrain from phrases like this. We're here to support one another, not complain about the work others are doing. Many of us here do know the craft and do know how to write.
I understand you enjoy working within the confines of an established genre and word count. That is fine. For you. But, understand that for many of us, the appeal to being an Indie author is not having to work within such confines so we can focus on the story itself.
Owen wrote: "Data is good."But Lore is evil.
Hi folks, just joined the group, specifically looking for discussions like this about payment for books enrolled in Kindle Select available in KU. I may be wrong, but not all authors are compensated the same. Here's a link to an article about it at Digital Book World.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/...
Any comments?
Susan wrote: "Hi folks, just joined the group, specifically looking for discussions like this about payment for books enrolled in Kindle Select available in KU. I may be wrong, but not all authors are compensat..."
The issue of how authors are paid in KU is covered fairly thoroughly if you start at the beginning of this thread. That article has also been discussed here. Keep in mind that article is old and now obsolete. (I also believe the author was confused on important points, but that is moot now.)
There is another thread here under "Help" (I think) that also addresses this question.
Edit: Found it: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Thanks, Owen. However, my point was that Amazon pays Indie authors and traditional publishers (not authors) differently. I don't believe anyone is privy to the terms that the Big Five publishers negotiate with Amazon re payment for their titles in KU (or the royalties they pay their authors for them, but that's another issue). Trad publishers distribute their books in many places, not exclusively on Amazon, which means they must opt their titles INTO the KU library. And Amazon wants those titles. Thus, I cannot imagine Amazon paying said publisher a measly six cents/page or some such number, for someone reading, oh, John Sanford's latest
novel.
Susan wrote: "Thanks, Owen. However, my point was that Amazon pays Indie authors and traditional publishers (not authors) differently. I don't believe anyone is privy to the terms that the Big Five publishers ne..."You're correct, but most trad publishers, and none of the Big Five, are in KU. As to the royalties, for an author of a true novel (more than 55K words) the payment ain't bad.
Susan wrote: "Thanks, Owen. However, my point was that Amazon pays Indie authors and traditional publishers (not authors) differently. I don't believe anyone is privy to the terms that the Big Five publishers ne..."I think you mean 0.6 cents a page -- 6 cents would get us $66 every time someone finishes one of our books! : D As it is, KU pays us (based on June's numbers) $6.60 when a reader finishes one of our books. On a sale of that book, we get $2.80. So we are pretty happy (if the June numbers reflect July's payout).
As BR notes, I also haven't seen books from the Big 5 in KU, so don't no who was/is getting those deals. But Amazon obviously treats the Big 5 differently. And the Big 5 treats their authors differently. Amazon makes the deals it feels are in it's best interest. So do the Big 5. And so do authors. That isn't a question of "fairness", just business.
I've never heard of John Sanford, so I can't comment on what his books might be worth, but I will say that we'd have to raise our ebook price to almost $10 to get on a sale what KU (might) pay us for one read. That is way above market price for our ebooks. We might be able to get $4.95, but that's high and overall, I'm pretty sure we'd lose money if we did that.
Now one of the issues that was brought up before as unfair was the some publishers were alleged to get a full 70% of the purchase price (and amount equal to the royalty), while we were getting $1.35, regardless. Now if the book sold for $0.99 that was a very good deal: much better then $0.33 per sale (hence all those scam publications). But some deemed it unfair, because they believed some publishers were getting 70%. But with the new system, a book might be worth 165% of the purchase price -- not the 70% royalty. Now that 70% royalty is equal to reading ~40% of our book. (If people were only reading 40% of our books, I’d think we need to do better.) What deal do people imagine publishers might be now be getting? The same 70% that was brought up before? The same deal we get? One can imagine anything, but where is the proof?
And as a practical matter, why is Amazon apparently willing to shell out $6.60 on a book that gets $2.80 when sold, and where they don't make any money on that transaction? (Since they only get paid by subscription fee.) So we don't consider roughly half a cent per page measly, we consider it astounding. I'd be surprised if Amazon can keep this up -- I don’t know why they didn’t cap the payout at the 70% royalty value (that would seem to make sense) -- but I'll take it while it lasts (if even gets started, that is; we don’t know the number of page reads for July). I hope others benefit as well. I do realize that not everyone will benefit that much and I do know a huge number of deserving books don't get the readership they deserve. But still: wait and consider the numbers when judging the program.
I'm embarrassed to say that I'd missed out on the change, and only found out when I checked my sales units and saw 311. As you can imagine I was ecstatic, thinking that I had become a word of mouth success. Next stop, the world!Looking up the terminology quickly disabused me of that notion. Never mind - it was wonderful while it lasted.
Owen said << I've never heard of John Sanford, so I can't comment on what his books might be worth, but I will say that we'd have to raise our ebook price to almost $10 to get on a sale what KU (might) pay us for one read. That is way above market price for our ebooks. We might be able to get $4.95, but that's high and overall, I'm pretty sure we'd lose money if we did that.>>Who is "I" and who is "we?" The editorial "we?" Your publisher?
FYI, John Sanford is a NY Times bestselling author of crime fiction. And you are correct. His books are not in the KU program. The 24 books in his "Prey" series range in [Kindle] price from $4.99 to $6.00 or so. I don't know how much he gets from the publisher.
I'm not complaining about about the switch to page counts. I write a crime fiction series, 5 novels out so far, plus a Boxed set of Books 1-3, and my page count total this month as of today was 7,000 or so. But I will withhold my opinion about KU downloads vs royalty payments for sales until after I actually get a payment and see what I get.
Mod
Who is "I" and who is "we?" The editorial "we?" Your publisher?
FYI, John Sanford is a NY Times bestselling author of crime fiction. And you are correct. His books are not in the KU p..."
That's a good approach to take, and remember people that the system will probably continue to evolve as time goes on. It's just the nature of the beast unfortunately.
Susan wrote: "Owen said >Who is "I" and who is "we?" The editorial "we?" Your publisher?FYI, John Sanford is a NY Times bestselling author of crime fiction. And you are correct. His books are not in the KU p..."
"I" is me. "We" in this case is myself and my co-author. Thanks for cluing me into who John Sanford is (I don't get out much).
I see you have some quite well-regarded books. I hope the program does well for you.
Can someone explain this to me? How this will work? Are we going to get paid for every page someone is reading? And how much? I cant access internet easily since my country is at a stop right now and cant understand the whole deal.Thank you. I
Nina wrote: "Can someone explain this to me? How this will work? Are we going to get paid for every page someone is reading? And how much? I cant access internet easily since my country is at a stop right now a..."Nina: Yes we get paid for each page read, according to Amazon's Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count. You can find that value thru your KDP bookshelf. It is close to twice the number of pages of a paperback, so 200-pg paperback will have Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count of about 400.
The amount we are paid per page read is not determined yet. It depends on the total number of pages read in the month, and how much money Amazon gives to the program. Amazon has said they expect to give at least $11 million for July. If the number of pages read in July is about the same as the number of pages read in June, the payment will be around half a cent ($0.0058) per Kindle Edition Normalized Page read.
Best of luck where you are.
I finally got the KENPC for all my books (it seems Zon is a little slow right now). My novels range from 60K words to 92K words, and the conversion rate ran from 177 words/page to 204 words/page. That means a full read would run from $1.82 to $2.75 per read, actually a little less excluding front matter, etc., for books I have listed for $2.99. I can live with that a lot better than $1.34 a borrow. For a two-book bundle that I'm selling for $3.99, the royalty would be $5.23. This is all based on the estimated .0057 payment per page. We'll see what it finally turns out to be.
I expect that the monthly KDP report will make a breakdown by book and pages. I don't expect that they include te number of loans, but they could surprise me.In the meantime, I have a clear winner regarding loans: One of my novels has been getting an average of 893 KENP pages/day for the last week. Assuming $0.0068 per page, that's $5/day, or equivalent to 2 daily sales... If that is sustained, I won't complain. If that score is repeated for all my books, I might throw a party.
Now, some food for thought: We all know that loans did have "some" weight on the ranking. I wonder whether Amazon now will also change the ranking algorithm to calculate this weight not based on the number of loans but rather on the pages read?
Ramon wrote: "I expect that the monthly KDP report will make a breakdown by book and pages. I don't expect that they include te number of loans, but they could surprise me.In the meantime, I have a clear winne..."
For us (assuming that estimated number), we've already made more on KU this month than we did last month (again estimated based on KU statements). If that keeps up, we'll be partying as well. Time will tell.
So far, I can't discern any effect of rank, but given the weighting and the way past days factor in, I'm not sure I could (I couldn't before). If they do, I wonder how they'd do it -- just page reads or percent completion? One of our books has ~350 normalized pages. The other two have ~1000. Since sales rank does not consider price or length for KDP (as far as I know it doesn't consider price -- this disputed for other products), it would seem that percent completion would be the metric. But maybe they would go with the weighing that was used before, possibly with some different threshold?
Has anyone asked Amazon this?
Okay, one of my original concerns, that page count can be manipulated, might just be valid. Looking over my books, there seems to be something of a discrepancy between word count, print pages, and KENP with regards to two of my books and the only reason I can see would be font size. Interestingly, what doesn't seem to affect the size is paragraph indention. My first series was all uploaded with 5 point paragraph indention and I've yet to go back and reformat. Here's my stats to compare. For all of my books, the front matter is negligible, maybe 300 words at best and should not affect anything this much:The Eyes of The Sun:
KENP - 457
Print Length- 308
Word count - 103,700
Uploaded with - 10 point font 5 point first line paragraph indention, however, the original file was uploaded with 12 pt font and the 'print length' never changed after uploading another edition with the smaller font.
Bluebeard's Children
KNEP - 384
Print length - 249
Word count - 105,171
Uploaded with - 10 point font 5 point first line paragraph indention.
Kind of Like Life:
KNEP - 404
Print length - 214
Word Count - 74,054
Uploaded with - 11 pt font 3 pt paragraph indention
All of my other book were uploaded at the 11 pt font with 3 pt paragraph and seem to follow the same formula as Kind of Like Life, which is the formula that Owen noted: KENP is roughly twice the approximated print length from the Kindle edition sales page.
I have to wonder why my first series is so wildly different.
Christina wrote: "Okay, one of my original concerns, that page count can be manipulated, might just be valid. Looking over my books, there seems to be something of a discrepancy between word count, print pages, and ..."That's odd. The words/pg (KENP) should be near constant, if it's really normalized. Those numbers you have yield: 227, 273, and 183. That is wide variance.
Our 4 books show: 164, 163, 162, and 178. (That last might be explained by the print edition and the current kindle edition being edited slightly differently, and I don't have the current KDP file.) This is what I'd expect. Our KDP editions are uploaded without the font size specified and indents in percent.
The KENP should be based strictly on word count. This suggests that something is interfering with the word count for certain ebooks. As we are only about a week in and it sounds like some people are just seeing their KENP now (ours were up there to first day), I wonder if there will be an adjustment for some book's KENP to bring them in line with a true normalized value.
I take it no one has contacted KDP about this?
Christina: have to checked the KU start point on these? If that got badly messed up, that would explain it also.
I'm going send an inquiry to kdp with these numbers. Like I said, even the print length seems weird for the word count. The series is also the only books I don't have a print edition on as well. I'll let you know what I hear from them.
Owen wrote: "Susan wrote: "Owen said >Who is "I" and who is "we?" The editorial "we?" Your publisher?FYI, John Sanford is a NY Times bestselling author of crime fiction. And you are correct. His books are not..."
Thanks Owen, and if you like crime thrillers, John Sanford is one of the best!
Ramon wrote: "I expect that the monthly KDP report will make a breakdown by book and pages. I don't expect that they include te number of loans, but they could surprise me.In the meantime, I have a clear winne..."
Good question, Ramon. Time will tell.
Christina wrote: "I'm going send an inquiry to kdp with these numbers. Like I said, even the print length seems weird for the word count. The series is also the only books I don't have a print edition on as well. I'..."One note on print length on a KDP edition, though I'm not sure it's germane. On one of our books, the second kindle (clearly stated) is a different length than the print edition, because contains a glossary and one doesn't. But Amazon has never adjusted the "page count" for the second KDP edition, even though it is almost 20% shorter than first KDP edition.
BTW: I downloaded all three books. They all start where they should on my paperwhite except Bluebeard's Children, which goes to the page before. Bluebeard's Children also display with a much smaller font. The other display with the default font (and the same as ours). Since that is the one with the KENP = 273, the formatting is messing up their page count, or so I would guess. I hope they give you some answers. (I think I'm going to ask as well.)
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It's true -- everyone does write differently. We are exactly the opposite. We expand our work to enhance it, because we leave out critical stuff all the time and smooth out the flow (we write every choppily).
But the main point is this: "skip an important quality enhancing size reduction" is a subjective judgement. We think we are enhancing our work -- some readers disagree. You think that is a quality enhancing size reduction -- some readers disagree. Now we are back to subjective judgements and tastes and the readers will voice their opinions.
So to say "lower quality" is not possible: that's subjective. To say "more income" is based on the unsupported assumption that just because there are more pages, readers will read more. Readers will read what they want to read, based on their tastes: more or less. To say less work does not follow because authors can always put in less work: they can skip editing, stint on the cover, not bother to think thru the ending, etc.
It's readers who have the final say. Authors respond to readers (if they want to have commercial success). Trying to impose our personal views on how writing "ought" to be done, and then assuming other authors will contravene our purely personal and subjective views to "game" a system and lower "quality" in an attempt to get more money in counterproductive.
I think I'll put it this way: What is your goal as an author? Is it to just to make money or to be read? If you actually want your work to be read, doesn't it make sense to be rewarded for the degree to which your work actually is read? Doesn't that give a substantive measure of the very thing you became an author to accomplish?
I know people will differ on this and authors will consult their best interests (as they perceive them), as they should. But that is how we see it.