Kindle Lending Library to end Jan 4, 2021

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Online eRetail making their own rules and cheating content providers compared to traditional sales and royalties (shops and libraries) is an absolute fact.

Aside from the incendiary vocabulary, “cheating” and “absolute fact” , why do you persist in the fallacy that digital media must be treated the same as real media for the purposes of sales and royalties? To the extent I can understand your logic, it’s circular at best.

that is abusive tracking of users and not how it should work.

Again, loaded phrasing to disguise the lack of argument. Another conclusion by fiat.

for loans in UK or Ireland have the SAME rules as real libraries, ie pay for simultaneous copies at content provider's library rate AND pay the national agreed per borrow royalty.

Capitalization won’t make digital books into physical books, either. Nice try.

[haertig]

Quoth, despite you getting Issy'd, I enjoy reading your posts and opinions. As I do for just about everybody here, even those I disagree with or think differently from.

I've learned a lot in this thread, and most of it is contrary to what I originally believed. For example, my thoughts on simplistic payment plans were given pause when others informed me of how many cheaters, and different ways of cheating, there are at play here. I still believe that spying on pages read is wrong - this is dragging the customer into the Amazon vs. author battle - but I no longer believe my initial thoughts of "pay per buy/borrow" are workable. Because of the cheating publishers. And I don't have a better solution at present.

[murraypaul]

On the 'cheating' point, the latest figure I could find for the Irish Public Lending Right payments was 4.39 euro cents per loan as of November 2020. [1]

The latest KU payment information I could find for the UK was from September 2020 and was GBP£0.0032 per page. [2] I'm not sure how that would compare to the Irish rate, so I'll assume it is the same.

Converting that to euro, that is 0.3561 euro cents per page.

So as long as someone reads more than 12 pages of your book through KU, you would be paid more than if a paper copy had been borrowed through a public library. If someone reads a 123 page book in full, you would be paid 10 times as much as the PLR would have paid out.

How exactly is this a massive scam whereby Amazon is cheating authors?

I've double-checked these figures, as I didn't believe the results and assumed I was off by a factor of 10 here, so please shout at me if you spot a mistake.

1: https://www.bl.uk/plr/plr-news
2: https://rogerpacker.com/kindle-unlim...al-in-october/

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

On the 'cheating' point, the latest figure I could find for the Irish Public Lending Right payments was 4.39 euro cents per loan as of November 2020. [1]

The library ALSO buys the books.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The library ALSO buys the books.

Which is a one-off cost, for a book that then lasts years.

KU works out much more profitable for books that have a steady level of popularity.

The books that you lose out on are the ones that have a surge of initial demand, so the library buys lots of copies of, but then little demand after that. And as the publisher/author can choose which books to put in KU and which not to, I would expect them to take account of that when making the decision.

It is swings and roundabouts, some books are better of one way, some the other. It certainly doesn't seem to be the massive swindle you seem to think it is. I'm honestly still expecting someone to point out a arithmetic mistake, as KU seems a lot better that I expected it to be.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

KU works out much more profitable for books that have a steady level of popularity.

Then why aren't big name authors on KU? I know some have contracts with publishers. But the biggest of the big control their publishers, not the other way around. If they wanted out, they could get out. Wouldn't they jump ship to KU if that were more profitable for them?

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by haertig

Then why aren't big name authors on KU? I know some have contracts with publishers. But the biggest of the big control their publishers, not the other way around. If they wanted out, they could get out. Wouldn't they jump ship to KU if that were more profitable for them?

The more profitable comment was a comparison with traditional paper book library lending, not saying that KU lending is more profitable than just selling eBooks. If you are a big name, you will have a large audience prepared to buy your next book sight unseen.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

And as the publisher/author can choose which books to put in KU and which not to, I would expect them to take account of that when making the decision.

IN many cases if you don't want Amazon to loan the book you have to not publish on Kindle. There are different rules depending on Publisher size and so called royalty selected.
Also Publishers set library edition copy price on other platforms. Amazon gets it free.

Amazon purely decides the rules unless you are one of the big publishers.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Quoth

IN many cases if you don't want Amazon to loan the book you have to not publish on Kindle. There are different rules depending on Publisher size and so called royalty selected.

You choose KDP, your books do not go to KU, you choose KDP Select, they do.
How are you forced to enter your books in KU?

Also Publishers set library edition copy price on other platforms. Amazon gets it free.

The directly equivalent service is Kobo Plus, which works the same as Kindle Unlimited.

[MGlitch]

If we’re going to snipe over word choices can we stop with digital media vs real media. It should be physical media as being digital makes it no less real. Unless we’re all hallucinating reading the ebooks and audiobooks we read. I’ll let y’all decide which you think is more likely but my money is on digital media being every bit as real as physical media.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

If we’re going to snipe over word choices can we stop with digital media vs real media. It should be physical media as being digital makes it no less real. Unless we’re all hallucinating reading the ebooks and audiobooks we read. I’ll let y’all decide which you think is more likely but my money is on digital media being every bit as real as physical media.

Wow, strange bedfellows, to be sure. Another Festivus miracle.

Real as in not virtual is an accepted definition and the meaning was clear in its context. Frankly, I tend to think it’s helpful myself, as there’s that tendency to conflate real and virtual and think that what applies to one necessarily or ought to apply to the other. Using “real” is a reality check, so to speak.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by issybird

Wow, strange bedfellows, to be sure. Another Festivus miracle.

Real as in not virtual is an accepted definition and the meaning was clear in its context. Frankly, I tend to think it’s helpful myself, as there’s that tendency to conflate real and virtual and think that what applies to one necessarily or ought to apply to the other. Using “real” is a reality check, so to speak.

Be that as it may within the confines of this discussion “physical” versus “digital” is by far the better word choice. Since “real” has other implications.

As I said if we’re going to snipe over word choices then best to use the best choice rather than one which is merely acceptable. You felt the need to call out “cheats” for instance, while it’s usage in context is acceptable, it doesn’t even require that Amazon has done anything other than stack the odds in their favor and presented a possible but improbable scenario to success for an author who signs on with them.

I don’t happen to agree that Amazon is the terrible evil company some make it out to be. But I couldn’t help but point out the irony of someone remarking several times on word choice and phrasing who also used questionable choices themselves.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by issybird

Wow, strange bedfellows, to be sure. Another Festivus miracle.

Real as in not virtual is an accepted definition and the meaning was clear in its context. Frankly, I tend to think it’s helpful myself, as there’s that tendency to conflate real and virtual and think that what applies to one necessarily or ought to apply to the other. Using “real” is a reality check, so to speak.

Personally, I prefer physical vs. electronic. Too many folks seem to take the opposite of real as being imaginary. Pbooks and ebooks are both real.

[Fat Abe]

I was planning on giving a Kindle to a recent college graduate who has no money due to student loans. The lending library feature will be sorely missed. My interests have shifted to technical subjects, not usually covered by more popular book titles.

[mitford13]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

I was planning on giving a Kindle to a recent college graduate who has no money due to student loans. The lending library feature will be sorely missed. My interests have shifted to technical subjects, not usually covered by more popular book titles.

If s/he were going to use KOLL they must have Prime. If they have Prime there is still lots available via Prime Reading. And there are usually 1-2 cheap subscription opportunities for KU throughout the year, around .99 for 1-3 months. Not to mention public libraries have far better offerings than the 12 max checkouts/year KOLL.