Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Amazon and other publishers are not selling words (or characters or pixels), they are selling titles, books.
|
But KU isn't *selling* books.
You don't get a permanent license.
And you don't pay per book.
There's no reason why the rules of selling should apply. And they aren't doing discrete lends like video stores, either. Rather they are using the "Netflix model".
You pay for access to the library--whether you use it or not.
What Amazon is doing is changing how they allocate the revenue generated to a finer-grained metric. Before, a title was considered to be read once the subscriber reached the 10% marker. Now they are moving to a more precise measurement of usage and allocating the pool money based on it.
Remember, the payment to authors isn't fixed but rather it floats.
The pool size for each month is fixed ahead of schedule and the payout will vary depending on subscriber usage. A lot of authors object to that uncertainty and stay out of KU.
But for those that join, the uncertainty is part of the deal.
KU is as much about generating attention as it is about delivering money, so it is as much a marketing mechanism as a revenue source. Author payment is in cash and visibility; before, the system favored short form overwhelmingly over long form in both visibility and cash.
Now it is more balanced but visibility still favors short form.