Oyster shutters its ebook service

[ebusinesstutor]

Originally Posted by Atunah

Why in the heck would I pay $15 to rent 4 books? And why is that thing written in twitter spurts. Horrible to read.

Both Oyster and Scribd paid to much. A rental is not a purchase. Should be lower royalties, or whatever the call it. And certainly not payout at what 10 percent read. Its why KU had to change because of all the 20 page flyers getting payout at just a couple of pages turned until the reader figured it was crap.

Yes, this is the mistake they made. If they had instead created a pool of money from the subscriptions and then shared it amongst the authors based on how much their books are read, that would make sense.

A membership like this isn't meant to replace ebook sales, rather it is meant to provide an additional revenue stream for authors more like a library.

[John F]

Originally Posted by mitford13

This comment from Steven Zacharius, Kensington CEO, is interesting:

"KU is going to end up being only Amazon published titles or indie published books. So I don't think you can claim that it's built on sustainability. I know that many of our most popular books in KU are being removed because they were too expensive for them to be kept in KU when they had to pay publishers a full royalty. I would never be able to explain to an author or be able to calculate royalties due to an author if they weren't receiving the full amount normally due. It's a shame because I do think that the program did allow readers to experiment with many authors that they may have not read before. I also didn't see those sales cannibalizing the traditional purchase of the same title. Both were doing quite well. Romance is a very difficult category to have in a subscription service as I explained to Amazon, Scribd and Oyster when they all started."

So sounds like Amazon is actually removing some trad pub from KU, similar to Scribd's actions. According to Zacharius:
"Not all books yet, but a lot of the more popular titles that were being downloaded heavily..."

http://www.idealog.com/blog/what-oys...#disqus_thread

Is Amazon removing them, or is the publisher? Sounds (to me) like the publisher is because he doesn't want to explain the math (or is he implying that the authors can't understand.)

Maybe ask Steven for a clarification?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

A membership like this isn't meant to replace ebook sales, rather it is meant to provide an additional revenue stream for authors more like a library.

And, as the fahrenheit folks posited, serve as a promotional vehicle for author brand-building as well as fine-grained consumer habit tracking. That last item, the data collection, is something that normally *costs* suppliers money to acquire, yet tradpub still whines that they don't get it for free from Amazon when they turned down the chance to get it and be paid while getting it.

The anecdata coming out from a great many (though obviously not all) KU author-publishers is that KU raises their visibility (something recently admitted by Smashwords), increases their sales in the Kindle stores, and *pays* them on top of it. Of course they like it!

The proof of KUs viability is the steady increase in its catalog size. And a good portion of that viability comes from the fact that the BPHs are *not* in KU. Amazon bills KU as a way for readers to discover new favorite authors, risk free, not as a way to read King or Roberts or Patterson on the cheap. (Readers already know who they are, anyway.) The few tradpub titles they seed KU with are just a minor sprinkling for trial users.

Indies and selfpubs is *exactly* who Amazon wants in KU.
"It's not a defect, it's a feature."

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

And, as the fahrenheit folks posited, serve as a promotional vehicle for author brand-building as well as fine-grained consumer habit tracking. That last item, the data collection, is something that normally *costs* suppliers money to acquire, yet tradpub still whines that they don't get it for free from Amazon when they turned down the chance to get it and be paid while getting it.

The anecdata coming out from a great many (though obviously not all) KU author-publishers is that KU raises their visibility (something recently admitted by Smashwords), increases their sales in the Kindle stores, and *pays* them on top of it. Of course they like it!

The proof of KUs viability is the steady increase in its catalog size. And a good portion of that viability comes from the fact that the BPHs are *not* in KU. Amazon bills KU as a way for readers to discover new favorite authors, risk free, not as a way to read King or Roberts or Patterson on the cheap. (Readers already know who they are, anyway.) The few tradpub titles they seed KU with are just a minor sprinkling for trial users.

Indies and selfpubs is *exactly* who Amazon wants in KU.
"It's not a defect, it's a feature."

Can I add to this statement?
Amazon wants some indies but not all indies.
I know of one case and yes the author was given special options that when the author agreed to put some books in KU, both the author and Amazon took a bath on it. The borrows were there but the sales on all the author's books flatlined. The author only stayed in a month.

Now if I had my guess Amazon wants customers on their site anyway they can get them.

[mitford13]

Originally Posted by John F

Is Amazon removing them, or is the publisher? Sounds (to me) like the publisher is because he doesn't want to explain the math (or is he implying that the authors can't understand.)

Maybe ask Steven for a clarification?

You can if you want, but in the link I posted, the interchange in comments between Shatzkin and Zacharius makes it clear that it's Amazon that's removing Kensington titles from KU.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Can I add to this statement?

I certainly don't mind.

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Amazon wants some indies but not all indies.
I know of one case and yes the author was given special options that when the author agreed to put some books in KU, both the author and Amazon took a bath on it. The borrows were there but the sales on all the author's books flatlined. The author only stayed in a month.

Interesting story.

My take on KU has generally been that it shouldn't necessarily be a place for an author to put all their works all the time. (From a business point of view I tend to see it primarily as a replacement for permafree and $0.99 sales.)
Some authors probably can afford/benefit from "full-immersion" in KU but not everybody.
A more conservative approach might be to rotate titles in and out regularly the way movie studios do at Netflix and the way Disney managed their animated classics on DVD.

Sounds like this one author had an... interesting... customer base. Good thing Amazon is responsive to issues like this and waived the 90 day commitment.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I certainly don't mind.



Interesting story.

My take on KU has generally been that it shouldn't necessarily be a place for an author to put all their works all the time. (From a business point of view I tend to see it primarily as a replacement for permafree and $0.99 sales.)
Some authors probably can afford/benefit from "full-immersion" in KU but not everybody.
A more conservative approach might be to rotate titles in and out regularly the way movie studios do at Netflix and the way Disney managed their animated classics on DVD.

Sounds like this one author had an... interesting... customer base. Good thing Amazon is responsive to issues like this and waived the 90 day commitment.

She didn't have a ninety day commitment. Like I said she got special privileges to even try it.
My take on KU is do what is best for your business.
Now as to the replacement statement, not all readers subscribe to KU. Matter of fact, I think the latest estimate is 10% of ebook readers subscribe to KU.
I don't because that is $120 a year. With the exception of the voracious readers, I don't know many people that spend that much on books a year.
My other reason is one week I might have hours to read and other weeks I might not.
KU was Amazon's answer to those readers that wanted a subscription on their ereaders so they didn't have to read on a tablet or a computer.
I am glad to see that changing the payout has brought more good authors in.
I know Atunah has subscribed and I know she is very picky about her reading.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

My take on KU is do what is best for your business.
Now as to the replacement statement, not all readers subscribe to KU. Matter of fact, I think the latest estimate is 10% of ebook readers subscribe to KU.
I don't because that is $120 a year. With the exception of the voracious readers, I don't know many people that spend that much on books a year.
My other reason is one week I might have hours to read and other weeks I might not.
KU was Amazon's answer to those readers that wanted a subscription on their ereaders so they didn't have to read on a tablet or a computer.
I am glad to see that changing the payout has brought more good authors in.
I know Atunah has subscribed and I know she is very picky about her reading.

10% of Kindle readers?
Really?
Seems very high.
(Amazon has about 40-50M Kindle accounts worldwide, last I heard.)

If it's that high Amazon is making out like a bandit.
(Given the payouts and pages read I would've expected something between 500K and 2M.)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

10% of Kindle readers?
Really?
Seems very high.
(Amazon has about 40-50M Kindle accounts worldwide, last I heard.)

If it's that high Amazon is making out like a bandit.
(Given the payouts and pages read I would've expected something between 500K and 2M.)

The payout for August was estimated at 11M.
You could be right. I was thinking of subscribers in KU countries. Not worldwide.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

Yes, this is the mistake they made. If they had instead created a pool of money from the subscriptions and then shared it amongst the authors based on how much their books are read, that would make sense.

A membership like this isn't meant to replace ebook sales, rather it is meant to provide an additional revenue stream for authors more like a library.

I read that back before the 80's and the boom in hardback books, libraries made up a majority of the hard back sales for many books. The book industry has had massive changes over the last 40 years and author revenue streams have changed quite a bit since the days of authors making most of their money selling stories to magazines.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by mitford13

I know that many of our most popular books in KU are being removed because they were too expensive for them to be kept in KU when they had to pay publishers a full royalty. I would never be able to explain to an author or be able to calculate royalties due to an author if they weren't receiving the full amount normally due.

Do we know if trad pubs like Kensington are paid the same way self pubs in KU are? This quote almost makes it sound like perhaps they're being paid more along the lines of the way Scribd pays out (full amount of royalties normally due).

[mitford13]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Do we know if trad pubs like Kensington are paid the same way self pubs in KU are? This quote almost makes it sound like perhaps they're being paid more along the lines of the way Scribd pays out (full amount of royalties normally due).

I've always understood that trad pub borrows are treated the same as a sale, for the most part. They've never been part of the monthly pool that gets split up among the KDP KU authors.

This was in Publisher's Lunch when the program first started:

"...The company had previously offered Hunger Games for borrowing through the Kindle Owners Lending Library, though they did so without any specific permission from Scholastic, which was paid full price on each lend. Scholastic spokesperson Kyle Good confirms to us that it is “the same situation” for Kindle Unlimited — Amazon informed Scholastic they would be including the books in this program and “they have the right to do it” under their current contract, though there was “no new negotiated deal” specifically covering this usage. As with KOLL, Scholastic will get paid their full wholesale price every time one of their ebooks is opened by a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.

Other wholesale-basis publishers who declined Amazon’s offers to authorize participation have reported the same thing as Scholastic: That Amazon told publishers the etailer has the right to include ebooks in the initiative without permission, as long as they pay for each open as a regular sale. Offers made to publishers to directly authorize participation were similar to the way existing subscription programs such as Oyster and Scribd operate, where the publisher is paid full price after a certain specific percentage of any book is read."

http://lunch.publishersmarketplace.c...ffer-probably/

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by mitford13

I've always understood that trad pub borrows are treated the same as a sale, for the most part. They've never been part of the monthly pool that gets split up among the KDP KU authors.

This was in Publisher's Lunch when the program first started:

"...The company had previously offered Hunger Games for borrowing through the Kindle Owners Lending Library, though they did so without any specific permission from Scholastic, which was paid full price on each lend. Scholastic spokesperson Kyle Good confirms to us that it is “the same situation” for Kindle Unlimited — Amazon informed Scholastic they would be including the books in this program and “they have the right to do it” under their current contract, though there was “no new negotiated deal” specifically covering this usage. As with KOLL, Scholastic will get paid their full wholesale price every time one of their ebooks is opened by a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.

Other wholesale-basis publishers who declined Amazon’s offers to authorize participation have reported the same thing as Scholastic: That Amazon told publishers the etailer has the right to include ebooks in the initiative without permission, as long as they pay for each open as a regular sale. Offers made to publishers to directly authorize participation were similar to the way existing subscription programs such as Oyster and Scribd operate, where the publisher is paid full price after a certain specific percentage of any book is read."

http://lunch.publishersmarketplace.c...ffer-probably/

Those titles were never part of the core business model but were more like sweeteners added to the mix to draw in the tradpub-focused. Seeing them phased out after 18 months doesn't say anything definitive about KU economics; maybe they can't afford them--maybe they can but choose not to. The bulk of the catalog has always been Indie, not tradpub, as critics have always pointed out.

Which means the removal of some, or all, full price tradpub titles could just as easily mean Amazon thinks KU is big enough and strong enough it doesn't need them anymore. Certainly there is no big wave of complaints or cancellations coming from subscribers, is there?

[peterwardgd]

Sorry for going off topic but i've never seen the word shutters used that way before. Is it an american thing? You also use the word 'shuts' right? colour me curious.

[ShimSham]

Originally Posted by peterwardgd

Sorry for going off topic but i've never seen the word shutters used that way before. Is it an american thing? You also use the word 'shuts' right? colour me curious.

I was wondering the same thing. Shutters sounds rather odd, and brings up images of windows in my mind.