Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
Maybe it is a genre specific problem since I don't read romance, but my wife does and she hasn't been complaining either. I have found once you are in a particular group of authors the "customers also bought" is quite similar quality books mostly.
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The whole "Indie books are unedited rush jobs" is mostly a myth these days. There is an entire support industry of freelance editors and artists that Indie authors can and do rely on, the vast majority of which come from the tradpub world.
Plus, when it comes to romance, a significant number of books are reverted Harlequin titles. "Reprints", if you will. Right up to the point Torstar sold off Harlequin they had a policy of reverting out of print titles upon request so those romance authors who latched on to Indie publishing early-ish were able to recover control over their copyrights and over time get new covers and reissue their backlists. That is why Kindle Unlimited is so strong in romance.
Even when they weren't ripping off their authors through self-dealing, Harlequin paid very low royalties and rarely reissued titles so most authors netted at most a couple hundred dollars per title. (Name authors made more and got reprinted but Harlequin published a *lot* of "one and done" midlist titles.) That made the calculus of going Indie pretty straightforward: the books were pre-edited, covers only cost a few hundred dollars using stock photography, and breakeven was only a couple hundred sales away. Most books sold by the thousand. And then Kindle Unlimited came out.
As Oyster and Scribd discovered, romance readers are voracious. And a match made in romance heaven ensued: lots of content meets lots of eyeballs.
Romance titles tend to be on the shorter side so the author payouts typically run in the $1-2 range instead of the $2-and-up range of other genres. But many of these authors were getting royalties in the $0.25-0.50 range. And the ones getting ripped off got less than ten cents a copy.
It is good business for the authors, who get their names out and draw sales on the side.
So, no, Kindle Unlimited is not just for poor books and scammers. It's not even just for Indies, as a lot of Small Press tradpubs and writer coops use it to supplement their sales.
There's over a million and a half titles in there. Scammers may get press but they are a tiny part of the catalog. The only reason they "get away" with it is because they are so few in the sea of KU.
As I said above, veteran Harlequin fans will find plenty of familiar names.
For other genres, things will vary according to taste--traditional SF publishers hold on to copyrights like a dragon hoards gold--but romance is the core of KU. There is no shortage of SF&F or mysteries but it is more likely to be new voices rather than backlist. Different audience there.