Amazon is testing “Kindle Unlimited,” an ebook subscription service for $9.99/month

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

If they don't ever see you read any of it, the author won't get paid. Although since it is a borrowed book, I assume you will turn it on to return the book and at that point, I assume they grab the data they want/need.

And yes, I should have used a better example than one or two pages because the author doesn't get paid unless the reader reads 10 percent of the book. However, flipping through the book would trigger that. I'm not sure if clicking on the "chapter" links would automatically trigger the 10 percent or if the person would have to page through enough pages.

Here's the scenario I'm asking about. I don't have a Kindle. I'd be using an app on my phone. Wi-fi drains the battery, so I mostly turn it off. Say I read the book offline, then flip back to the cover. The next time I turn wi-fi on and return the book, how can Amazon know if I read it or not?

I'm not talking about gaming the system, I'm talking about how I would actually read borrowed books.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Here's the scenario I'm asking about. I don't have a Kindle. I'd be using an app on my phone. Wi-fi drains the battery, so I mostly turn it off. Say I read the book offline, then flip back to the cover. The next time I turn wi-fi on and return the book, how can Amazon know if I read it or not?

Because the app stores the furthest page read in each book, and sends that information back to Amazon's servers when you sync.

[hardcastle]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Here's the scenario I'm asking about. I don't have a Kindle. I'd be using an app on my phone. Wi-fi drains the battery, so I mostly turn it off. Say I read the book offline, then flip back to the cover. The next time I turn wi-fi on and return the book, how can Amazon know if I read it or not?

I'm not talking about gaming the system, I'm talking about how I would actually read borrowed books.

Amazon already generates an "estimated time to complete the chapter" metric, which must be based on the amount read versus time spent. Thus Amazon could be collecting some sort of metric on how much a book is actually read versus skimmed (because once you're under a certain ratio, the book was obviously not read - no one can read an entire novel in six seconds).

How do they use these metrics to decide if a reader "read" a book to a degree worthy of payment? We have no possible way of knowing how sophisticated their models are. There's a lot of unknowns about Kindle Unlimited still - which is likely why the service was rolled out without a massive library. It's even possible that Amazon themselves considers the service in-progress.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by MumblingFumbler

I think any strategy that 'raises red flags' based on book turnover is going be a very tough one to implement, for some of the following reasons:

1) I like to browse. I check out a book, it stinks, and I return it right away.
2) I'm doing research, and I just need access to a passage in a book. I
read/quote/cite the passage, and return the book right away.
3) I'm fixing my toilet (or pruning my fruit tree, or cooking a recipe, or whatever). I have no intention of reading the whole book. I just get the information I need, and return the book right away.

There are many other cases like this. Its going to be very difficult to separate these cases from those where the reader is up to no good.

I don't see this as a problem, or as abuse. I would say this is a pefectly acceptable use case.

I think the abuse people were talking about was someone signing up for a month, checking out 10 books. Canceling the service, disconnecting the device from wifi, reading the books over 3-4 months. Then signing up again rinse and repeat.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I think the abuse people were talking about was someone signing up for a month, checking out 10 books. Canceling the service, disconnecting the device from wifi, reading the books over 3-4 months. Then signing up again rinse and repeat.

Yes, exactly that.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Here's the scenario I'm asking about. I don't have a Kindle. I'd be using an app on my phone. Wi-fi drains the battery, so I mostly turn it off. Say I read the book offline, then flip back to the cover. The next time I turn wi-fi on and return the book, how can Amazon know if I read it or not?

I'm not talking about gaming the system, I'm talking about how I would actually read borrowed books.

As was said below your post, Amazon stores data. For example, if you highlight phrases and such, that gets stored as well.

Just FYI -- SCRIBD uses a similar payment system for authors. Their "payment" requires that 20 percent of the book be read. SCRIBD so far also provides SOME data back to the author. We can see that 20 percent was read in one day (or whatever time frame). But we only get one metric. So if the person finishes the book, we can't tell. If the person nearly finishes in a day, we see 80 percent. In other words, it appears that Scribd takes one metric right after the author has reached "you qualify for payment" and let's the author know how far the reader has read at that qualifying point. So if the person reads quickly or in one sitting, we see 40 percent or 80 percent or whathaveyou. As far as I can tell, even if the person goes back and finishes the book, we don't then get any metrics updated.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by hardcastle

How do they use these metrics to decide if a reader "read" a book to a degree worthy of payment? We have no possible way of knowing how sophisticated their models are. There's a lot of unknowns about Kindle Unlimited still - which is likely why the service was rolled out without a massive library. It's even possible that Amazon themselves considers the service in-progress.

There probably is a flag that gets triggered once a normal page-by-page progression exceeds 10%. Kindle software obviously tracks time between page "turns" and knows to deprecate unusually long ones, unusually short ones, and leaps forward and back. Otherwise the reading speed estimates wouldn't be too useful.

And yes, KU is probably in gamma testing.
There have been reports that the original plan was for a fall launch but they moved it up once KU was outed.

[Atunah]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Here's the scenario I'm asking about. I don't have a Kindle. I'd be using an app on my phone. Wi-fi drains the battery, so I mostly turn it off. Say I read the book offline, then flip back to the cover. The next time I turn wi-fi on and return the book, how can Amazon know if I read it or not?

I'm not talking about gaming the system, I'm talking about how I would actually read borrowed books.

I have actually wondered about this too. I also have a Scribd subscription and like you I don't keep my wifi on on my device. I don't leave wif on on my e-ink kindles either. I can read a whole book easy before I get around turning it on. I wondered with Scribd how they can tell how I read.
Now I wondered the same with KU. I have been reading a book between a kindle and my nexus kindle app and didn't turn on wifi at all, just used the goto to find where I left off. So when I finish the book I might wifi sync, I might not. I sometimes only turn on wifi once a day, depending on what I am waiting on.

So I assume they must have some algorithm build in that records how you read, pages changed and all that on both of the services. Since they have to send out payment to authors based on some percentage, it must be triggered somehow. Otherwise my reading to them would look like only one entry, finishing the book. If I have the books already downloaded to the device, the wouldn't know when I started, how long or anything.

I could read a book, finish it and delete it from the KU program without turning on wifi. They must have some way to tell I actually read it and not just downloaded and then delete or some authors will abuse that system quickly.

I just signed up for the trial so I see how it goes. I really like the immersion reading on my Nexus. I am not big on audio books, but this way seems to help me get used to them and its seamless.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

If KU is not worth it to you now, it won't be worth it if they expand selection. The majority of books going to be like it is now - and books you want will always be just a small percentage. The publishers in KU right now do not have ALL their books in KU, not even certain authors.

That's not a fair statement. If KU adds more publishers that have the books that I want to read, then why would I not want to consider signing up. That's the whole point. Their current selection isn't good enough for me. The other services don't necessarily have a publisher's complete catalog available either. They want you to use the service to explore and find new authors and then purchase additional books that are newer releases, for example, and not in the service. I'm never going to read all 500,000+ books that Oyster or Scribd has available either. I just have to find enough to justify the cost of participation.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

That's not a fair statement. If KU adds more publishers that have the books that I want to read, then why would I not want to consider signing up. That's the whole point. Their current selection isn't good enough for me. The other services don't necessarily have a publisher's complete catalog available either. They want you to use the service to explore and find new authors and then purchase additional books that are newer releases, for example, and not in the service. I'm never going to read all 500,000+ books that Oyster or Scribd has available either. I just have to find enough to justify the cost of participation.

Fair enough. It sounded to me that nothing interests you right now. If they add maybe 100 books that you do like since they got a new publisher to participate, then how are you going to know? It may not happen in huge steps, but little by little.

You can always look for what you want to find. If you look long enough for something worthwile to read, you will find. If all you do is look through your wishlist, and nothing pops up as you would have expected from others saying so, then you might wrongly assume nothing worthwile can be found at all.

Yes, I looked myself first and noted the lack of bestseller authors. Gave it some time and started looking at it the other way around - look what is there and if would be nice to read. And there is that for me - even seen that a lot of books already bought are part of KU.

Do the same with free library? Probably could do - except free is never free. I still pay for it. Imagine a library is not free, but has to be self sufficient. What would the cost be to the people using it if the only money comes from them?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Fair enough. It sounded to me that nothing interests you right now. If they add maybe 100 books that you do like since they got a new publisher to participate, then how are you going to know? It may not happen in huge steps, but little by little.

You can always look for what you want to find. If you look long enough for something worthwile to read, you will find. If all you do is look through your wishlist, and nothing pops up as you would have expected from others saying so, then you might wrongly assume nothing worthwile can be found at all.

Yes, I looked myself first and noted the lack of bestseller authors. Gave it some time and started looking at it the other way around - look what is there and if would be nice to read. And there is that for me - even seen that a lot of books already bought are part of KU.

Do the same with free library? Probably could do - except free is never free. I still pay for it. Imagine a library is not free, but has to be self sufficient. What would the cost be to the people using it if the only money comes from them?

I pay somewhere around 12 dollars a month in my water bill for my library--whether I use it or not. So, you are right. It isn't really free, but we pay for it in some bill or other.

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

As was said below your post, Amazon stores data. For example, if you highlight phrases and such, that gets stored as well.

Just FYI -- SCRIBD uses a similar payment system for authors. Their "payment" requires that 20 percent of the book be read. SCRIBD so far also provides SOME data back to the author. We can see that 20 percent was read in one day (or whatever time frame). But we only get one metric. So if the person finishes the book, we can't tell. If the person nearly finishes in a day, we see 80 percent. In other words, it appears that Scribd takes one metric right after the author has reached "you qualify for payment" and let's the author know how far the reader has read at that qualifying point. So if the person reads quickly or in one sitting, we see 40 percent or 80 percent or whathaveyou. As far as I can tell, even if the person goes back and finishes the book, we don't then get any metrics updated.

I recently downloaded a bunch of Scribd book and read them offline while on a road trip (10 hours in car = 3 YA books finished in one day). Does that mean the author gets no metrics on them at all? Presumably Scribd can still tell when I finally connect to wifi that I've read them at some point during the week?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Joykins

I recently downloaded a bunch of Scribd book and read them offline while on a road trip (10 hours in car = 3 YA books finished in one day). Does that mean the author gets no metrics on them at all? Presumably Scribd can still tell when I finally connect to wifi that I've read them at some point during the week?

My answer is based on observations only, but in that case, what I *think* the author would see is a start date and then an end date with near 100 percent showing. My impression is that SCRIBD grabs the metrics once a day, so in your case, it would grab a start date during the first day. Then when you returned them, or turned on wifi, that would be the end date with 100 percent--whatever you read, along with the payment data.

In the case of someone sampling my book (which has happened once) I saw it was read 7 percent. I get something like 30 cents for the "sample" -- and by the next day the reader hadn't read past that, so SCRIBD sent the 30 cents, minus smash cut, etc. Start and end date were right next to each other. I assume that if the reader ever goes back and reads more (this is how I was reading on SCRIBD. I sampled a bunch of books, stored them in my library and then gradually went in and read some. But the backlight bothers the heck out of me so I stopped after the first month). Anyway, if that reader ever goes back and reads more, it would count as a different "sale" -- say they read the required 20 percent to trigger the full book payment. I'm not sure WHAT I'd see--but I think it would be a new start date and a new end date and the full payment--possibly minus the 30 cents.

In other words, the data is not all that detailed. Just enough is provided so that we understand why we might make 30 cents versus a full payment. Amazon doesn't have any data metrics--we either get paid or don't.

It's a little confusing because if someone starts the sample, turns off wifi and reads it, but then doesn't check back in for some time, it's going to trigger a small payment and then possibly the "full" payment later.

Not that I'm complaining. I think it's a great thing and I'm happy to be on board.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I noticed that Amazon is padding the count in the KU library with free public domain titles

And 102,000 foreign language titles.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Here's the scenario I'm asking about. I don't have a Kindle. I'd be using an app on my phone. Wi-fi drains the battery, so I mostly turn it off. Say I read the book offline, then flip back to the cover. The next time I turn wi-fi on and return the book, how can Amazon know if I read it or not?

I'm not talking about gaming the system, I'm talking about how I would actually read borrowed books.

I would have a similar issue except I would have to convert to epub to read on my Sony. Amazon would think I never read the book and the author wouldn't receive their royalty.