Authors unhappy with Kindle Unlimited

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Personally I;m not sure about this 10% thing. Readers can check the preview. If the book drops off after that, don't buy that author again. It does seem to me that it benefits Amazon while content producers can only lose.

How do content producers lose? Reading just 10% of a book is hardly of any benefit to the reader. It's not a lost sale to the producer.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by hildea

Lot's of people state this, but I don't get that way of seeing the world. As a consumer, I definitively care about the ethics and behaviour of the companies I give money to. Partly from an ethical point of view (if I give money to someone I know use them to behave unethically, I share part (admittedly a small part) of their guilt), but mostly from a practical point of view. If I support companies which treat their employees or partners badly, I make it more likely that others who pay decent wages, care about working conditions etc. will fail. That increases the risk of myself and others I care about getting worse working conditions in the future. Also, if I give my money to multinational companies who avoid taxes instead of local companies who pay tax to my country, there will be less tax money to pay for the infrastructure I use.

And, as others have mentioned here: If the authors I love can't earn a decent wage, they may stop publishing books.

I definitively won't claim that I always research the ethics of the companies I buy from. Life's too short, and most of the big companies act badly in some ways. Also, if the price difference is too big, I'll probably fall for the temptation to save money rather than buying from the most ethical company.

But if big companies misbehave, that's ultimately going to be my problem. Yours too. We share this planet, others' behaviour affects us all.

Self-proclaimed authors are not sweat shop employees being exploited by big bad Amazon.

I care about corporate ethics and try to avoid companies and products that fall short of certain standards that are important to me. What ethical standards has Amazon violated by instituting a program that authors are free to embrace or avoid?

As for authors who can't make a decent wage abandoning writing--too bad. All of use need to deal with reality and make compromises.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

How do content producers lose? Reading just 10% of a book is hardly of any benefit to the reader. It's not a lost sale to the producer.

Because normally when a reader buys / borrows a book, they pay for all of it, whether they read all of it or 10% of it. As I understand it, the KU model is different. If the reader only reads 10%, the content-producers receives significantly less revenue.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Catlady

What ethical standards has Amazon violated by instituting a program that authors are free to embrace or avoid?

I think it's only fair to remember that Amazon controls an 80% share of the ebook market in the USA and 90% in the UK, so that definitely limits authors' real choices. But I wouldn't bring ethical standards into it, at least, not yet. IMO a writer must produce content of a high enough quality that their product is in demand.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Hasn't Amazon always offered very significant incentives to self-pubs to be exclusive to Amazon, regardless of KU? Isn't it really in your financial interest to go exclusive with Amazon? How much of your sales are with Amazon and with other retailers? Oops, lots of questions. Obviously I don't expect you to reveal your personal sales data, so the questions are somewhat rhetorical. But I am interested why you don't go Zon-exclusive.

Their initial "incentive" to go exclusive was the ability to offer a book free and a few higher payouts in some foreign markets. Free was not much of an incentive for me. I do have enough in my backlist that one free book MAY lead to other sales, but it did not appeal to me.

They also offered additional visibility (more shows) for going exclusive. THAT was some incentive. Back in those days, my sales there were VERY much on Amazon with much smaller sales on other retailers. When I didn't go exclusive, my visibility dropped, and therefor so did my sales. At that point, it was probably a mistake from a sales point of view. Philosophically, it was the right move for me. I want to control my destiny, not have to go free, not have to end up on only one retailer who, once that retailer has most of the sales, can cut my commission. Similar to what is happening now, a lot of authors feel they MUST be exclusive and must participate--but they are still seeing income drops and there is little they can do about it. What happens if Amazon decides they can start paying 35 percent across the board instead of 70 percent?

I did go from making my living writing to back to work at another job when sales dropped over a two to three year period. Right now, I sell more on Kobobooks than Amazon--that happened slowly over this past year partly because Amazon sales continued to drop for me and partly because sales continued to rise for me on Kobo. I've been building a presence on Kobo for the last two years and it began paying off this year--whereas I used to sell hundreds of books per month on Amazon, I now hit the "hundred(s)" number on kobo most months.

It's a balancing act. From a strictly income POV, I should have gone exclusive with a book or two back when it was first offered because of the visibility. Today? Authors are really struggling because Amazon simply isn't offering visibility or much other incentives. It's up to the author to hope/try to build their own audience (similar to trad published authors).

I have a very decent audience that I've built over the years. I love my readers and I want to make sure they can buy my books multiple places. I'd also like to make more. That didn't work out. Will it in the future? Who the heck knows?

I think it likely that author share of income is going to drop on some venues. Amazon doesn't need indies as much as early days--we did a HUGE amount of advertising of the kindle for them, essentially for free. We did word of mouth, we bought huge amounts of products, we did giveaways. But Amazon has saturated the market for the most part and knows that. They are moving on to different models.

I try to remain aware of typical business practices. When margins get tight, companies cut payouts. KU is one sign of that. KU is still being used to draw readers into a "keep paying" model. How many people forget they have an auto pay going out every month? How many get busy and let it go for a couple of months without reading? That's all money for Amazon. Subscription models are highly lucrative to a lot of business models. They aren't particularly helpful to authors UNLESS the books are read and/or bought.

So those are just some of my thoughts on the matter. Running a business is difficult--it doesn't matter a lot whether I make and sell soap or write books and try to sell them. There's a lot of things that play into creating a brand and a loyal audience. And the biggest builder of an audience is writing good books, books that are good enough readers talk about them. But that's also the most difficult path because it takes a looooong time and a lot of effort to write a book!!!

[BearMountainBooks]

Here's a post I did on "Money Matters" -- the most interesting parts are the links to trad authors where they discuss earnings. Most of it is a few years old now, but it gives you some idea of what they earned/look to earn:

http://www.bearmountainbooks.com/fav...money-matters/

This post has a couple of other author viewpoints:

http://www.bearmountainbooks.com/fav...more-on-money/

There was one more post, but I can't locate it at the moment. I'll add it here when I find it. I can't think of the title of it. I discussed more of my own earnings in it, but you get the general drift from the above post. Here it is, but again, it doesn't cover much that the other posts don't. There may be one other author listed who posted some stats (V.J. Chambers):

http://www.bearmountainbooks.com/hom...a-new-and-old/

[Rizla]

@BearMountainBooks. Thank you for that most informative reply. I wish you the best of luck with your writing.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Because normally when a reader buys / borrows a book, they pay for all of it, whether they read all of it or 10% of it. As I understand it, the KU model is different. If the reader only reads 10%, the content-producers receives significantly less revenue.

So what you're suggesting is that publishers and authors need to be enabled to behave as hit and run artists? Nothing else matters because the poor sucker's exhausted his quota for the month and the publisher/author got paid anyway?

Would you walk into a library and check out an unknown book without perusing it first? Do we start locking up the bookshelves and put up "No touching" signs to accompany the "Keep Silence" ones?

Does the reader even matter in this world view of what reading is about, or is it all about maximising revenue for the publishers and authors?

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

So what you're suggesting is that publishers and authors need to be enabled to behave as hit and run artists? Nothing else matters because the poor sucker's exhausted his quota for the month and the publisher/author got paid anyway?

Would you walk into a library and check out an unknown book without perusing it first? Do we start locking up the bookshelves and put up "No touching" signs to accompany the "Keep Silence" ones?

Does the reader even matter in this world view of what reading is about, or is it all about maximising revenue for the publishers and authors?

I am not saying much of what you seem to be attributing to me. Re: perusing a la bibliotheque, Amazon already offers a preview facility for books which is quite adequate and equivalent to perusing a book.

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

Does the reader even matter in this world view of what reading is about, or is it all about maximising revenue for the publishers and authors?

The 10% rule has little to do with readers. It is about Amazon maximizing revenue from KU. It enables Amazon to pay less to authors from the pot, at least as far as I understand it.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I am not saying much of what you seem to be attributing to me. Re: perusing a la bibliotheque, Amazon already offers a preview facility for books which is quite adequate and equivalent to perusing a book.

The previews are extremely limited. Table of contents, preface, acknowledgements and a handful of pages from chapter 1. There is no reader who would check out a book from the library based on that amount of perusal. They're useful for checking out the formatting, not so much for the content IMO.

The 10% rule has little to do with readers. It is about Amazon maximizing revenue from KU. It enables Amazon to pay less to authors from the pot, at least as far as I understand it.

I disagree. Since there is a shared pot, it's about maximising payouts for deserving authors whose books are read through, by minimising payments to those whose books were not deemed good enough by the reader.

Competent authors should welcome such a system. Hit and run artists would not.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

Competent authors should welcome such a system. Hit and run artists would not.

Many a "competent" author (some pretty big names) are now adding content to the front of KU matter that was not there before--TOC, quotes from other authors, quotes period, preface material so that the reader has incentive to read past 10 percent. They are also taking what was a single book and breaking them into MORE books--especially non-fiction. When an author used to make 5 dollars for a book and is suddenly making 1.35 per borrow, it can be a huge problem. I'm not advocating stuffing material in the front, but it's happening. I'm not advocating "serials" where books are split into 3 and 4 pieces to maximize payouts, but it's happening too. I won't name names, but some of the authors are traditionally published and self-published. They are midlist or above with some of their trad books. But their income has changed/been threatened so they must change with the times.

As a reader, I'm not onboard with having to read multiple volumes. I have hated serials (where part of a book is published and then a second half) but I've even seen at least one major publisher do it--for "early" readers, they made the first half of a book available for a nominal price. Then they put out the rest of the book as one volume later. It apparently worked for some people because they wanted the early bits. I avoided the book and it was normally something I'd have at least sampled, but I don't like the practice and don't want to support it. (I should note that at least one reader accused me of putting out a "Teaser" short story, but that wasn't my intent. I viewed the short as a full story and did not intend to write more. That changed, but my intent was not to tease anyone into buying anything and it was presented as a short story when I sold it. There was no follow on to trick anyone into buying).

When a person's livelihood is threatened, the models are going to change. Again, I am not saying authors should do this, but they are doing it--and it may or may not work out for them.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Rizla

@BearMountainBooks. Thank you for that most informative reply. I wish you the best of luck with your writing.

You're welcome and thank you!

[Tarana]

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.

While I agree with you, you have to first look at who the audience is that is selecting the subscription model long term and what are they now NOT buying because they have a subscription? Are they buying something else? I agree with you - people who have favorite authors will still purchase their books, but will that substantially reduce other books that they may have otherwise purchased as well?

I think it will go the way the Whispersync audiobooks are going. As contracts are expiring, copyright owners of audiobooks are not allowing their audios to be substantially reduced in price as loss leaders any longer. $12.99 instead of $1.99. I think the same thing will happen with large groups of KU titles as their contracts expire.

All that said, I've found that the offerings for science fiction and DECENT mysteries/crime novels are pretty limited. But it does have Lord of the Rings with Whispersync and I've been enjoying that!

[mystika1]

I generally download samples before buying a book. To me, the 10% rule on Amazon unlimited is basically like getting a sample of the book you are interested in. Authors don't get paid for samples do they? In that viewpoint, why should the unlimited plan be different? Just thinking out loud.
😶

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by mystika1

I generally download samples before buying a book. To me, the 10% rule on Amazon unlimited is basically like getting a sample of the book you are interested in. Authors don't get paid for samples do they? In that viewpoint, why should the unlimited plan be different? Just thinking out loud.
😶

No, we don't get paid for samples and in fact cannot even tell how many samples have been downloaded (I think Smash tries to share that data, but other retailers do not).

I think the 10 percent is probably there because Amazon meant for readers to be able to sample--but if I recall correctly, the samples on Amazon for purchase books are only 5 percent. It's a little hard to tell, but the sample I just downloaded for a book (Trad) that I was considering was pretty dang short--I liked what I read, but it wasn't quite long enough to really convince me. I find this to be a problem frequently with samples.