Author Earnings looks beyond Kindle

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Adding to this, the rank changes when the book is borrowed not when it is read.

That didn't change with the move to pages read?
Okay.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

There are several reliable reports that suggest participation in KU results in more sales rather than less. (One coming from noted Amazon bad-mouther, Mark Coker, of Smashwords. Which kinda surprised me.)

The way it works is that full reads in KU are treated as paid (discounted) reads so they count towards sales ranking and higher rankings boost visibility in the sales lists as well as in the alsobot algorithms. Both of which sales.
So, rather than substitute for sales, KU is a net booster and raising prices dramatically would probably be counterproductive.
Milleage varies by author and by book, though.

I've seen various authors speculating on this and recent discussions (Sept) seem to suggest that some authors think the algos changed sometime in Aug. But in BOTH cases, it is speculation as to how the algos were working and are working now. I think last year? there was speculation that higher prices were helping rankings more. So, for example, if I sold a book at 3.99 versus 2.99 I'd get a higher ranking on the more expensive book. If that was true, it has likely changed again.

I can state that rankings do change when pages are read. It appears to count much as a purchase at some point. Now as to WHEN that ranking changes (how many pages read) I have no idea. I don't pay that close attention and I have no way of knowing if one person is reading really fast or six people are reading with one person reading really fast and the others slowly and so on.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

That didn't change with the move to pages read?
Okay.

No it didn't. All borrows still help rank.
The only thing that changed was the way the author is paid.
Though there were some that insisted their books were read the second they were borrowed.

Note: I haven't kept up with author reactions since the 3rd week of KU2.

[conan50]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

The problem with that is that you don't want to cut out sales entirely and raising the price may mean you rely entirely on KU. When I did the countdown for Soul of the Desert (Regular price is 4.99) I sold several copies at 1.99 and less at 2.99 (KU allows you to gradually raise your price over 6 days). So far there have been no KU borrows during the ad period. The ad doesn't specifically mention KU, but anyone clicking through can see it's in the program. Authors have to balance sales and borrows. Soul is also a stand alone so it tends to sell differently than my genre/series fiction.

In short...it's a crap shoot. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don't!

Right. But I was thinking if authors are ultimately forced into KU and sales fall far behind KU reads, a higher price might make the book more attractive to KU readers than say .99 book.
Maybe someone could price their book at $1,000 and get KU readers just out of curiosity lol!

[conan50]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

There are several reliable reports that suggest participation in KU results in more sales rather than less. (One coming from noted Amazon bad-mouther, Mark Coker, of Smashwords. Which kinda surprised me.)

The way it works is that full reads in KU are treated as paid (discounted) reads so they count towards sales ranking and higher rankings boost visibility in the sales lists as well as in the alsobot algorithms. Both of which sales.
So, rather than substitute for sales, KU is a net booster and raising prices dramatically would probably be counterproductive.
Milleage varies by author and by book, though.

That makes sense.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by conan50

Right. But I was thinking if authors are ultimately forced into KU and sales fall far behind KU reads, a higher price might make the book more attractive to KU readers than say .99 book.
Maybe someone could price their book at $1,000 and get KU readers just out of curiosity lol!

I agree that the lower prices might keep some readers away. And so many authors offer the first in a series for free so it's become the "norm" to 1. expect it or 2. wait for it to go free at some point. I'm an Amazon associate and when I do a post about a book that is "regularly" $7.99 on sale for $1.99 I get a LOT more clicks and usually more buys than if a book is $2.99 to .99 cents. Free trumps everything in clicks (although I don't track downloads or use my associate code with free because we are only allowed so many free downloads against our code. If we have too many Amazon confiscates all of our earnings for the month).

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by conan50

Right. But I was thinking if authors are ultimately forced into KU and sales fall far behind KU reads, a higher price might make the book more attractive to KU readers than say .99 book.
Maybe someone could price their book at $1,000 and get KU readers just out of curiosity lol!

There is a $200 book. That is the highest Amazon allows.
Link to book.
http://www.amazon.com/Amazons-most-e...ve+kindle+book

Ps: I picked it up on free day and that turned out to be too expensive.

I think most KU readers are more concerned with the content than the price.

[conan50]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I agree that the lower prices might keep some readers away. And so many authors offer the first in a series for free so it's become the "norm" to 1. expect it or 2. wait for it to go free at some point. I'm an Amazon associate and when I do a post about a book that is "regularly" $7.99 on sale for $1.99 I get a LOT more clicks and usually more buys than if a book is $2.99 to .99 cents. Free trumps everything in clicks (although I don't track downloads or use my associate code with free because we are only allowed so many free downloads against our code. If we have too many Amazon confiscates all of our earnings for the month).

That doesn't seem fair that Amazon can take your earnings. Is that to keep you from posting links to the free books?
It seems the whole thing with pricing is in flux. I can see a $7.99 book getting people excited when it drops to $1.99 or free. I don't think anyone gets excited anymore when the price drops on a $2.99 book, but I could be wrong.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by conan50

That doesn't seem fair that Amazon can take your earnings. Is that to keep you from posting links to the free books?
It seems the whole thing with pricing is in flux. I can see a $7.99 book getting people excited when it drops to $1.99 or free. I don't think anyone gets excited anymore when the price drops on a $2.99 book, but I could be wrong.

Oh yes, the voracious readers get excited over any price drops.
3 books vs 1 book. Which would you choose if you go through books like water?

[conan50]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

There is a $200 book. That is the highest Amazon allows.
Link to book.
http://www.amazon.com/Amazons-most-e...ve+kindle+book

Ps: I picked it up on free day and that turned out to be too expensive.

I think most KU readers are more concerned with the content than the price.

OK, someone has tried that already
There seems to be a flood of fiction ebooks right now, it is getting more difficult to find worthwhile Independently published books.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by conan50

OK, someone has tried that already
There seems to be a flood of fiction ebooks right now, it is getting more difficult to find worthwhile Independently published books.

What genre do you like?
I might can find you some indies.

[conan50]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Oh yes, the voracious readers get excited over any price drops.
3 books vs 1 book. Which would you choose if you go through books like water?

Years ago I grabbed lots of free and low priced books, now very rarely. I don't go through tons of books each month though.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by conan50

OK, someone has tried that already
There seems to be a flood of fiction ebooks right now, it is getting more difficult to find worthwhile Independently published books.

I might be able to suggest some too if you reveal the genre you like.

Most books do okay on sale--there are some readers who are very attracted to 99 cents so when a 2.99 goes down, they do grab it. And it can really depend on the genre. Cozy readers have different price point tolerances than fantasy readers. Non-fiction readers have different expectations on pricing as well.

Yes, basically Amazon doesn't want affiliates to list free too often. When they started allowing free, all kinds of affiliates were driving a ton of traffic on freebies--then people were shopping as long as they were there and that costs Amazon money because it creates a habit of, "I'm going to my favorite blog to check for freebies instead of going direct to Amazon to buy stuff." So they'd enter via the "freebie" book and find 6 other books and Amazon has to pay commissions on those.

No, it's not terribly fair. Amazon is the one that allows free so why shouldn't we advertise it??? But yanno. They are nearly the only one in town when it comes to affiliate stuff too. I'm an affiliate at a number of other places and none pays as well as Amazon.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I might be able to suggest some too if you reveal the genre you like.

Most books do okay on sale--there are some readers who are very attracted to 99 cents so when a 2.99 goes down, they do grab it. And it can really depend on the genre. Cozy readers have different price point tolerances than fantasy readers. Non-fiction readers have different expectations on pricing as well.

Yes, basically Amazon doesn't want affiliates to list free too often. When they started allowing free, all kinds of affiliates were driving a ton of traffic on freebies--then people were shopping as long as they were there and that costs Amazon money because it creates a habit of, "I'm going to my favorite blog to check for freebies instead of going direct to Amazon to buy stuff." So they'd enter via the "freebie" book and find 6 other books and Amazon has to pay commissions on those.

No, it's not terribly fair. Amazon is the one that allows free so why shouldn't we advertise it??? But yanno. They are nearly the only one in town when it comes to affiliate stuff too. I'm an affiliate at a number of other places and none pays as well as Amazon.

Google, Kobo and B&N all do free. Amazon just price matches to free.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by conan50

That doesn't seem fair that Amazon can take your earnings. Is that to keep you from posting links to the free books?

That policy was a change implemented several years back because there was an enormous number of websites that only existed to indiscriminately list free Kindle books, mostly by using the Amazon store APIs. Those websites weren't reviewing the books or anything, just raking in cash for doing nothing that added value.

The issue is that Amazon pays affiliate fees on anything bought by a customer coming in via external link redirect for several minutes (15?,30? I forget) to give affiliates credit for all the purchases made by a customer they send over, not just for the linked product (and to give credit even when the customer bought a different product). The options were to not pay affiliate fees to on anybody coing in on a link to a free book (not fair to review sites, especially if a book was temporarily free) or to cap the affiliate fees for sites linking to free ebooks. A compromise.

The "free ebook links" websites are a lot less common these days.

Period piece:

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pag...ntry-1.1640024

Btw, Nook had the same problem with free ebook affiliate fees, even earlier, and solved it by ending affiliate fees for ebooks.