Authors unhappy with Kindle Unlimited

[Catlady]

From the New York Times: Amazon Offers All-You-Can-Eat Books. Authors Turn Up Noses.

Authors are upset with Amazon. Again.

... a new complaint is about Kindle Unlimited, a new Amazon subscription service that offers access to 700,000 books — both self-published and traditionally published — for $9.99 a month.

It may bring in readers, but the writers say they earn less.

[fjtorres]

Nate the Great has a caveat about the issue:

http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/1...t-ebook-sales/

[Quexos]

There's a similar deal where I live but with movies. For 18 euros/month you can go see any and every movie you want on the big screen including avant-premières and special events. Been around for almost 10 years and there doesn't seem to be any issues with it.

[Phogg]

The subscription model appeals to some people who only read a book once. It pretty much competes with libraries.

A bigger problem in monetizing books is the sheer amount of content coming out - which Nate addressed. For the last few years I have been reading (in addition to rather than in place of my other genres) a whole lot of superhero fiction. That stuff used to not get published much, even when it was decently written.

The gatekeeper function of publishing houses is gone. I will continue to point people to indies and fund editing and cover art through kickstarter. I don't want less content, and sites like goodreads help me fin authors who write stuff I like versus things I don't. Reading has never been better.

[frahse]

"Fools names like fools faces often appear in public places."

It isn't so easy to publish a song, and much less easy a movie, but a "fool" can put out a book very quickly. So there are a lot more books.

The question is 2 fold. Are the number of reads per book going down or has the "money pie" begun to be divided by larger numbers of readers. That would affect the prominent authors more.

[pwalker8]

Not terribly surprising. Amazon's KU goes after the same type of reader that the indie go after, i.e. the reader who is less interested in specific authors or specific books and more interested in a more generic "stuff to read". I'm also willing to wager that we won't see authors with the major publishers having the same problem simply because 1) ebooks are still a small portion of the overall revenue stream for them and 2) their readers tend to be more focused on the specific author. No stats to back those theories, but then again, few people have any real accurate stats for the over all publishing and ebook market. They are very hard to come by. It's mostly individual authors reporting and estimates.

[pidgeon92]

Perhaps some day we'll have a thread called "Authors are really happy about _________."

Nahhhhhhhh.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Not terribly surprising. Amazon's KU goes after the same type of reader that the indie go after, i.e. the reader who is less interested in specific authors or specific books and more interested in a more generic "stuff to read". I'm also willing to wager that we won't see authors with the major publishers having the same problem simply because 1) ebooks are still a small portion of the overall revenue stream for them and 2) their readers tend to be more focused on the specific author. No stats to back those theories, but then again, few people have any real accurate stats for the over all publishing and ebook market. They are very hard to come by. It's mostly individual authors reporting and estimates.

Actually, indies cater to far more than people who just want generic stuff.

Indies fill the market for who really like subgenres that were sporadically catered to (at best) by the legacy publishers. Previously they bought every book that came out within that subgenre and reread them a lot. They were few and far between.

During the "between" they read other things.

Now, they don't have to. Not only do they not have to, they can search through a huge selection of offerings and narrow the ones they buy to authors who not only write within the subgenre but match their desired writing style and tone as well.

The pie is indeed being cut in more pieces.

And I am gleefully doing my level best to promote my favored subgenres.

[harriska2]

This is a great conversation. I like the point made that books are much easier to put out than music or movies - it requires less people and likely less money. I also like the thought that there are more genres and subgenres available - sort of like the "Long Tail."

[pwalker8]

Bad books are easier to put out. I read a books review last week were it was mentioned that the author will typically do something like 50 revisions on a piece of prose before it's ready to go. I don't know that all successful authors revise that much, but there is a reason that most only put out anywhere from a couple a books a year to a book every couple of years.

Just as a note, music has gotten a lot easier to put out. It's relatively inexpensive to build your own sound studio these days. Making money from that music is the issue. For a while, people were talking about the new music revolution putting the record studios out of business, but that hasn't happened.

[mr ploppy]

Change always upsets a few people who can't adapt to it. Amazon had no choice but to copy Scribd and Oyster or lose their most active readers. They don't pay much, but they still pay more than the pirate sites they are trying to replace. And like the pirate sites, it takes a bit more lateral thinking to make the most from them. Short stories, adverts for longer (non-free) books at the front, copyright and other filler material at the front.

Either way, it's here now so people will have to learn how to work around it. Pulling your books out of it won't replace all those lost sales. Nobody who's paying for a subscription is going to pay extra for books that aren't part of that subscription, they'll just choose something else to read instead.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Nobody who's paying for a subscription is going to pay extra for books that aren't part of that subscription, they'll just choose something else to read instead.

Not sure that's necessarily true. Just because someone pays for a subscription doesn't mean they won't have favourite authors that they want to read and are willing to pay for. The question comes down to whether there's enough books, and enough of the right books, they want to read in the subscription catalogue.

[pdurrant]

John Scalzi made an interesting point about the Kindle Unlimited subscription model.

With KU, ebook sales are a zero sum game for authors - one author's success means less money for other authors, since authors aren't paid a fixed sum per read, but a proportion of a fixed monthly pot of money.

This sort-of makes sense, since Amazon has a fixed amount (per subscriber) coming in to pay authors with from the KU subscriptions. But is it a good deal for authors?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

John Scalzi made an interesting point about the Kindle Unlimited subscription model.

With KU, ebook sales are a zero sum game for authors - one author's success means less money for other authors, since authors aren't paid a fixed sum per read, but a proportion of a fixed monthly pot of money.

This sort-of makes sense, since Amazon has a fixed amount (per subscriber) coming in to pay authors with from the KU subscriptions. But is it a good deal for authors?

In a sense, writing has always been a zero-sum game, in that many people will decide to buy a book, and the book they choose to buy is the "winner" compared to all the "losing" books they don't buy.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In a sense, writing has always been a zero-sum game, in that many people will decide to buy a book, and the book they choose to buy is the "winner" compared to all the "losing" books they don't buy.

Only in the broadest possible sense. There is, I think, a qualitative difference in the KU model.