Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla
I think it's this 10% rule that makes the difference. Simplicity states that if a book is borrowed/purchase, the author gets paid. Period. That's how purchasing or borrowing a book works. Amazon have changed the rules. Add to this that some authors are reporting a drop in revenues AND the 10% rule seems to favor Amazon (i.e. because of it, they pay out less), then it is natural to scrutinize this change.
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The ten percent rule isn't really the issue. The real issue is that many authors were able to sell and price books at 2.99 and up. With the KU program, they only make 1.35 per sale--instead of 2, 3 or 4 dollars. There are many popular authors who were making more per sale.
Not only does KU somewhat constrain some book buyers to a smaller selection (meaning, it hurts those of us not in KU because many readers will stick with the KU selection, certainly at first) those authors who are borrowed cannot benefit from their popularity--ie they can't raise prices or see additional income.
Keep in mind that when I say "can't raise prices" most of us are still pricing below 5 dollars. We aren't gouging or greedily attempting to make millions. It's that many of these authors had an income of X--and suddenly with KU, they no longer have that income. Like anyone else, we need a fairly steady income just to meet bills.
FWIW, I have seen my sales at Amazon plummet -- but my sales at Kobo and Smashwords are the same to slightly better over the past year. BUT again, I don't know if that is a visibility problem at Amazon where they just aren't giving visibility to indies, to me in particular or if it has to do with KU.
One thing that DID change for me over the last year for certain: When you do a search on my name, WITHOUT my middle initial, which is how most people search, my author page/link no longer comes up on Amazon--someone else's page shows up. My books show up, but not my author link. Maria Schneider the jazz artist also gets much more prominent displaying than she used to (she's quite famous). She always showed up in the search, but now she is the ONLY Maria Schneider to show up UNLESS a person specifies books.
A year ago, a simple search yielded at least one of my books, the jazz stuff and a few other authors. Now it's rearranged and not to my benefit. This is what I mean when I say I am not sure KU can be blamed for all the loss of income. I have read that Amazon is much more interested in paid placement than in the past and the searches have definitely changed.
I regard it all as business decisions. They are never static. They will try new things and different searches. That's just the way it is.