There’s been a lot of chatter in the writing world lately about Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s subscription program for readers. For books to be available through this service, they have to be exclusive to Amazon i.e. not for sale on any other digital portals. Some authors love KU and some hate it—I figured the best plan was to find out for myself.
So, as of today, my four time travel romances and romantic comedies are enrolled in KU, as is the boxed set of those same books. Over the next 90 days (which is the minimum term of exclusivity) I’ll find out whether KU works for me and my books or not.
If you’re a KU subscriber, check out my enrolled books!
Deborah Cooke & Her Books 
I’ve been thinking about Kindle Unlimited. Do authors like it? How do they get paid? Per read or a flat fee? I would hate to think of authors losing money! I tend to get most of my books as ARCs so KU may be unnecessary, but it’s a big change!
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KU has changed how they pay authors. Originally, authors were paid a flat fee for every time a book was borrowed by a KU subscriber. The amount of the fee varied each month – essentially, there was a certain sum assigned and it was divided by the number of borrows, so there was some fluctuation each month. (The Public Lending Right works this way, too.) It tended to be between $1 and $2 for each read. Depending on the list price of the book and its popularity amongst KU subscribers, this could work out to be a good deal or a bad one for an author. Some authors found some books earned more money in this program. Some didn’t.
Now KU payments are based upon the number of Kindle pages read by the subscriber. (I’m sure you all know that your e-reader reports back to the portal on not just what books you’ve bought but which ones you’ve read, and how much of each you’ve read. It’s tied in to how it knows to open where you stopped reading.) Again, some authors find this wonderful and some don’t. The only way to find out whether I like it is to try it! I’ve heard that the math works better for longer books, which makes sense if payment is by the page, so wanted to put a boxed set into the program. The thing with Kindle Unlimited is that books have to be exclusive to Amazon for at least 90 days to be enrolled in the program. So, to put the boxed set into KU meant removing all four books from other portals as well as the boxed set. I put them all in KU. We’ll see how it works for me.
Kind of a long explanation, but I hope that makes sense!
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It does! Thank you for explaining!
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