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haertig · 05-09-2019, 05:58 PM

I wonder why Amazon decided to pay "per page read"? It's inherently impossible for them to determine that. You'd think they would pay "per book downloaded" as that is not something open to interpretation. Sure, people might download a book and not read it. But who is Amazon to care?

Amazon could simply say, "We pay authors per book downloaded, up to a maximum of 30 books per month per user". A user could still download more books than that, but if they did, the excess over 30 wouldn't count towards author payments.

I dare say this would not mess with the vast majority of users. Yes, some people can and do read more than one book per day on a long term consistent basis, but I propose that they are probably few and far between.

Amazon could also name the service "Kindle Unleashed" instead of "Kindle Unlimited" and publish a monthly maximum number of books that can be downloaded. They already have a limit of 10 for "books at the same time", no reason they couldn't make a monthly maximum too.

There are plenty of solutions to the "fraudulent book clicker" problem - Amazon seems to have chosen the least understandable and most unenforceable one.

05-09-2019, 05:58 PM	#72
haertig Wizard Posts: 1,909 Karma: 32500000 Join Date: Sep 2017 Device: PW3, Galaxy Tab A9+, Moto G7	I wonder why Amazon decided to pay "per page read"? It's inherently impossible for them to determine that. You'd think they would pay "per book downloaded" as that is not something open to interpretation. Sure, people might download a book and not read it. But who is Amazon to care? Amazon could simply say, "We pay authors per book downloaded, up to a maximum of 30 books per month per user". A user could still download more books than that, but if they did, the excess over 30 wouldn't count towards author payments. I dare say this would not mess with the vast majority of users. Yes, some people can and do read more than one book per day on a long term consistent basis, but I propose that they are probably few and far between. Amazon could also name the service "Kindle Unleashed" instead of "Kindle Unlimited" and publish a monthly maximum number of books that can be downloaded. They already have a limit of 10 for "books at the same time", no reason they couldn't make a monthly maximum too. There are plenty of solutions to the "fraudulent book clicker" problem - Amazon seems to have chosen the least understandable and most unenforceable one.