Author Earnings looks beyond Kindle

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Sooner or later, the KU subscriber will *have* to go online to refill their queue. The reads will be recorded, the authors will get paid.

Anybody really interested in staying off the grid will have to skip KU. It's not terribly paranoid-friendly.

Yes, that goes without saying. And yet, the only reason I go online with my Voyage is for reasons of syncing with my phone and when I am finished with a book - regardless if I remove it from my KU yet or not. (And to get new books of course, I rather like the new typesetting)

So most of the time I am off the grid and every few days the progress gets synced.

[fjtorres]

All that really matters is that readers get books to read and Authors get paid.
And most of the current industry trends are for more money flowing to authors (collectively) and less to big publishers.

Both commendable trends.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

That was why I put Under Witch Moon in KU, but so far, I can't tell a difference. It's only been 3 weeks, however. I have had better/more reads with Under Witch Moon than with Soul of the Desert (Soul is standalone. I did it at the same time as Moon partly for comparison and partly to see if it helped visibility of the book. I wanted to do Catch an Honest Thief because it's more in the style of the Sedona series (so while it's stand alone I thought it might lead to sales of the Sedona series) but I couldn't get it off flipcart, the India site (via smashwords) because there were support issues.

All in all, the same rules of visibility apply in or out of KU: More sales/reads leads to more visibility and more sales. Amazon's algos reward sales/reads, but you have to hit a certain threshold before they kick in to help. But if that threshold ever kicked in, I suspect that it would help sales of the other books. There are a lot of authors who use "free" to try to get there, but Amazon has virtually stopped counting free downloads towards visibility in any other (paid) category. It still helps, but nothing like it used to. There's been a lot of discussion on the writer forums about ROI with ads--if the free "sales" no longer get you "paid" visibility there is a lot less value with ads for free books (very, very little). This comes at a bad time because the ad places, from what I saw of applying, are putting free ahead of paid books. I was recently turned down for an open spot and one of the reasons given was that a cheaper book was available for advertising in that spot on that day (competing with mine for the one open slot left in fantasy/urban fantasy). Since my book is scheduled to be 99 cents on that day, I assume a free book won out.

I get the value in free for readers and I do giveaways, but of course, that can't compete with the simple download at Amazon.

Also, for those interested, there is some rumor (and a bit of evidence) that the also boughts and visibility is now partially tied to whether or not a book has a "recent" review. Recent reviews also help an author "qualify" for an ad. It's crazy. I thought if I had my money, ad places would take it. But NO. Some places require 50 reviews. When Executive Dirt came out in Aug. I planned to do ads. NO ONE and I mean NO ONE would take it without 10 reviews and a 4.0 rating. I don't generate that kind of quick turnaround from readers. One place said they would do the ad if the first in the series had 50 reviews. (It has 41 on Amazon and 104 ratings on GR. Not good enough).

Shrug.

Maria,
I once saw a discussion about whether a particular advertiser works. 3 were complaining that no they saw no or less than 5 sales. Several others said they got hundreds of sales from the same advertiser. The only difference was the first set of books were not really good. The others were better written. Oh have you tried bknights on Fivver?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Maria,
I once saw a discussion about whether a particular advertiser works. 3 were complaining that no they saw no or less than 5 sales. Several others said they got hundreds of sales from the same advertiser. The only difference was the first set of books were not really good. The others were better written. Oh have you tried bknights on Fivver?

I did bknights for Soul and will again for Under Witch Moon. I was very happy with the customer service and responsiveness of the owner. No idea if the sales came from that particular ad. He is one of the few that takes ads without worrying about reviews and prices, but he does put a lot of ads in one newsletter/email so results are going to vary.

My biggest issue with advertisers (and those who post about their results) is that the advertisers don't actually share results. The writers are often GUESSING where the sales came from because they do multiple ads at the same time. And they don't know for sure where the sales come from and they don't know when Amazon's algo kick in and help (none of us do, really. We just guess, but past sales come into play as well as that day's sales).

What I'm seeing more of is that even those who did well in the past with ads are complaining about the ads being less effective (this is a natural process, of course). Part of that is buyer fatigue, part of that is seeing the same books on sale and part of it is too many sites with too few active subscribers. And when authors advertise at more than one site close together they are very likely hitting some of the same subscribers more than once (because I know when I've run signups for some of the ad places on my blog, there are some people who sign up for all of them.)

[Cinisajoy]

Well now I know one author that advertises the same book every 3 months. I think that would be a case of market saturation.
A few years ago, I was asked by a group of authors which emails I liked best because at that point I subscribed to all.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Well now I know one author that advertises the same book every 3 months. I think that would be a case of market saturation.

Most advertisers have a 90 day rule and a lot of authors just recycle things every 90 days. One of the issues is that for the most part, only the first book in a series does terribly well in ads. Some ad places won't even take anything BUT first in a series. Authors and ad places need to step up on this issue and recognize that No, other books in a series won't do as well, but there's still a market for them. Ereaderiq used to do a type of ad where you did a main book and then up to 3 others were mentioned. It was PERFECT for series. But he's now partnered with booksends for ads and that type of ad is no longer available (and the price of an ad has doubled). My blog and probably bknights is the only place I know of where anyone can advertise a series and get all the books mentioned (or one or whatever). I'm seeing a few more sites let the author pick secondary "ads" like "get your Goodreads link added for 5 dollars more" and things like that so maybe someday it will happen. Probably.

[Fbone]

Has Amazon released the KU payout for September?

[AnemicOak]

I don't think so. IIRC they usually release that info on the 15th of the next month (or at least that's when Nate posts it on his blog), so maybe tomorrow.

[BearMountainBooks]

Someone asked about the payout for Sept:

Well the per page payout is 0.00507 this month (sept).
0.00007 down from August.

(I didn't get this myself or verify it. It's copies from kboards.)

The trend here is down. Not by a lot, mind, but even to down. I read that as Amazon is at least happy with the status quo and feels no need to urge more writers into the program or change anything.

[Cinisajoy]

Can I guess Amanda is still rocking select?
Thanks for letting us know the payout.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I read that as Amazon is at least happy with the status quo and feels no need to urge more writers into the program or change anything.

The discovery aspect of KU hinges in large part on the pool of stories in KU being a subset of the full Kindle ebookstore. Amazon still makes the bulk of their ebook money off sales, after all.

The trick to KU is to make the payout attractive enough to draw in a good supply of content but not good enough to draw in traditional publishers.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The discovery aspect of KU hinges in large part on the pool of stories in KU being a subset of the full Kindle ebookstore. Amazon still makes the bulk of their ebook money off sales, after all.

The trick to KU is to make the payout attractive enough to draw in a good supply of content but not good enough to draw in traditional publishers.

They'd be thrilled to have trads in--at these low payouts. Of course, for most indies, some payout is better than none.

For those interested, Kobo has rolled out some new promo things for indie authors. They will be doing some paid ad placements as well as continuing various discounted/coupon opportunities.

Kobo also sent out a HUGELY LONG and I mean HUGELY LONG survey this morning via their group who signed up to do surveys. They were all questions about how I shop and pricing and how much I spend on ebooks. (This is an opt in thing. I've opted in, but I'm thinking of opting out because they never offer coupons for these long surveys and questions and gads. Who has time to sit and answer a 20 minute survey???) The surveys at least show they are aware of the competition and looking to find out how people think they shop and where they shop. It will give them an idea of how many people use price over selection and that sort of thing.

[Cinisajoy]

Fjtorres,
The thing is there have been some traditional books in there. But I would bet that it is a totally different pay scale from the small press and the indies.
Truth be told, there are some authors on Amazon that cannot discuss their pay due to the "non-disclosure clause".
I know of one that gets paid 2 different scales and another that gets at least 3.
The first is both self-published and an imprint.
The other one is self, traditional and in Kindle worlds.
Make that I know a few in the second category.

[Atunah]

I'd be pleased as a button if they could get some of the big 5 into KU. But they already have trade publishers in there of smaller scale.

I am loving KU this time around much better as a subscriber than last year. I had cancelled and came back in right when they announced the new payout.

At a quick glance I found over 8000 publisher books in KU. Open Road Media being the most generous there. There is also Kensington, Zebra which is a imprint of Kensington, Sourcebooks, Endevour Press, Rosettabooks, Crimson Romance and of course all of the Amazon imprints and I have read some great books with them.

Percentage wise, I still read a majority of books that are trad published. Don't think this will change anytime soon as there just aren't enough indies that write in the genres I read. And I won't give up authors that I know and like and that just write great. But I do get a lot of them from the library since many of the prices have gone up. Still some good sales though from them for me to snap up.

I do read indies, but just a smaller portion of my reading. I don't count back list titles under that indy list as they were formally published. That has been my most favorite part, reading some old favorites again, or some I never had a chance before, for being out of print. And if an author puts those out on their own, even better. But I still count those as trad published for reasons

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

They'd be thrilled to have trads in--at these low payouts. Of course, for most indies, some payout is better than none.

That assumes Amazon is not focused on a long term game.

If Amazon is focused on a long term game then it is far more important to train upcoming generations of readers not to associate the books that they love with publishing houses.