If you're thinking about publishing a book or ebook on Amazon you'll want to read this first- Starting July 1st of 2015 Amazon has changed it's payment policy for self published authors that have enrolled in their Kindle Direct Publishing Select program (KDP Select) that is drastically affecting all children's books and novels or books with less than 323 pages. After using the KDP Select program for almost 3 years happily, these new changes were so shocking to me (and my wallet!) that I un-enrolled ALL my children's books from the program, and am debating about taking all my books off. Let me explain what the program is, how it works, and how the changes affect authors.
What the KDP Select program is-
Basically if you publish a ebook on Amazon, they will format your book to work for Kindle. So when you sell a book, buyers need to have the Kindle app to read it.
The KDP Select program is for buyers that already have a Amazon Prime account. It works basically like a library- with your Amazon Prime membership you are allowed to download 1 book that is enrolled in the KDP Select program at a time. The Kindle app will upload the book back before you download another book- so just like your public library, but in a digital format.
It's a great program that lets readers read a book before committing to buying it.
How it USED to work for Authors-
Up until July 1st 2015, each month the KDP Select program had a budget. (July 2015's budget was $11.5 million) At the end of that month the budget was split up according to the total amount of books downloaded in the KDP Select program. Each download then received a specific amount that would be paid to the author.
So for easy numbers sake, lets say the monthly budget was $10 million. And lets say that month there were 10 million books downloaded, that would mean that each download would be paid $1. As an author, if your book was downloaded 5 times you would get $5, if it was downloaded 1,000 times you'd get $1,000. You with me still? okay.
So for me personally- writing children's books that are 13 pages long, this has been a great program. In fact, I made more royalties if someone downloaded my books from the KDP Select program rather than buying it. If someone purchases my book for $0.99 I get $0.30 royalty. However, the average amount per book per download since December 2012 that I have got per download is $1.94. So you can see there was a benefit for both the reader and the author.
However, as of July 1st 2015 THIS is the new Amazon payment policy for Authors-
Now instead of paying Authors per download, they are paying per PAGE READ! And it's no where near the same dollar amount. As of this first month my royalties are .6 of a PENNY per page- so barely over half a cent per page. Apparently they have their own little program that determines what a "page" is so Authors wont start manipulating the system by using bigger fonts, double spacing etc. (Although I'm not sure how that works on books like mine that are children's books and have few sentences per page) Their program also determines how long a person will need to stay on the page to read it in order for it to count.
This is clearly for the benefit of long novel Authors- but it drastically cuts everyone else out of their royalties they've been receiving for years like myself.
As an example, one of my books had 10 downloads in July. Under the old system and going by the average payment of $1.94 per download, that would mean for that one book my royalties would be $19.40 (give or take a few dollars). Do you want to know what my royalties under the new policy was? It makes me furious to even think about it- $0.76 - you read that right, 76 CENTS!!! So my royalties went from close to $20 to less than $1!
SHAME ON YOU AMAZON!!!!
So their big argument was that Authors of long novels were complaining that they weren't receiving the royalties they felt entitled to- and that all books downloaded should not be treated equally. Ok, I can see the argument. But let's look at it logically-
The average novel is 240 pages long. According to the new payment policy that would mean the royalty for a 240 page book would be $1.44.
Correct me if I'm wrong but $1.44 is LESS than the average royalty of $1.94.
So that mean this new policy not only screws over children's book authors such as myself, but EVERYONE that writes a book that's less than 323 pages.
So basically Amazon has bowed down to the demands of the small percentage of authors that write books with more pages than the average.
Oh, and FYI- here's how many pages are in some books you may recognize:
Harry Potter
1- 223 pages
2- 251 pages
3- 317 pages
4- 636 pages
5- 766 pages
6- 607 pages
7- 607 pages
Twilight
Twilight- 498 pages
New Moon- 562 pages
Eclipse- 629 pages
Breaking Dawn- 754 pages
So Unless you are planning on writing a hit novel series with over 323 pages per book, and/or are a well known author already don't plan on making much in royalties.
Because it's not hard enough being a unknown book author already :/
Once again, SHAME ON YOU AMAZON. Since 2012 I have been a part of the KDP Select program and have happily promoted it both on this blog and to every author I network with.......... no longer. Now in fact I will do the opposite. Unless the policy changes, then I will reconsider depending on new changes.
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