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KDP Select

Jul 20
Love3

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription plan screws self-published authors

By Blog, Industry

Amazon just announced its Kindle Unlimited subscription plan for ebooks, and boy, does it look great for readers and traditionally published authors. Readers get access to hundreds of thousands of titles for a low monthly price of $10. If you’re a big-name publisher, traditionally published author, or an author published through an Amazon imprint, the terms are great for you, too, according to Publisher’s Marketplace. As long as a reader reads just 10% of your book, you get 100% of what you would get as if the book were a standalone download . Competing subscription plans, such as the one offered by Scribd, don’t come close.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Wait a minute. What’s the payout for authors and publishers who are using Amazon’s exclusive self-publishing platform, KDP Select?

Well, you are out of luck, because Amazon’s terms aren’t nearly as generous. I quote from the email Amazon out to KDP members last week:

KDP authors and publishers who enroll their books with U.S. rights in KDP Select are automatically enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Inclusion in Kindle Unlimited can help drive discovery of your book, and when your book is accessed and read past 10% you will earn a share of the KDP Select global fund. For the month of July we have added $800,000 to the KDP Select global fund bringing the total to $2 million.

In other words, self-published authors in KDP Select are getting paid … who knows? It’s certainly not the 100% enjoyed by traditional publishers and authors on Amazon imprints. It can’t even come close to the 70% that all KDP authors (including those who are not in KDP Select) normally get for a single digital purchase of their book, because the “global fund” simply isn’t big enough to cover subscription reads and the free reads that are part of other KDP Select promotions.

So we have a situation in which one group of authors is getting the gold standard — 100% of what they would get as if they sold the book individually. And then there are the self-published authors in KDP Select, who are providing the bulk of the current Kindle Unlimited catalogue. They are getting some lesser fraction and cannibalizing full-priced digital downloads to boot. On Kboards, some of them have begun to mildly object to this unfair treatment, which surprises me. Self-published authors are getting screwed and they should be vociferously protesting the second-class treatment and terrible terms offered by Amazon.

KDP Select has other issues, too. As described in “Is KDP Select worth it?”, I dropped out of KDP Select after running some experiments and finding paltry sales and reimbursements, and a negligible rankings boost. I also object to the monopolistic exclusivity requirements — authors in KDP Select cannot publish their book on any other platform thereby limiting the ability of their books to reach audiences on those other platforms. The new subscription plan and its lopsided reimbursement plan gives me another reason to steer clear of the plan — and warn other self-published authors to consider doing the same.

Image: The email I received from Amazon about the Kindle Unlimited subscription program:

Kindle Unlimited terms for authors

Apr 03
Love0

Is KDP Select worth it?

By Blog

KDP Select

(UPDATED) KDP Select is a promotional tool within Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program. It’s optional, but for those who do opt-in to KDP Select, it offers several benefits to self-published authors.

The biggest: the ability to create “free” promotions for self-published books (in my experience, 5 “free” days per quarter), which leads to higher ranking within Amazon’s categories, which in turn results in more prominence across Amazon.com and (theoretically) more sales. There are some other benefits, including higher royalty rates in secondary markets, small payments for “borrows” on the Kindle, and the Amazon Countdown program.

But there’s a catch: KDP Select requires participating authors to promise not to distribute their work on other platforms, such as Apple’s iBookstore or Google Play.

While many authors will say, “So what? I hardly sell any ebooks for the iBookstore/Nook/Google Play/etc.,” giving in to KDP Select supports Amazon’s monopolistic ambitions by removing content from competing platforms. In this post, I’ll talk about KDP Select and why I believe it is ultimately bad for authors.

If you sign up for KDP to self-publish your books, it’s easy to be tricked into signing up for KDP Select, owing to prominent, cleverly worded sign-up forms that litter the KDP interface. But remember that it’s optional. If you join KDP, you don’t need to sign up for KDP Select. Indeed, I urge you not to sign up, for the following reasons:

  1. Sales from KDP Select promotions may be limited. While some authors have great results from KDP Select, others don’t see much in terms of increased sales or rankings. I experimented quite a bit with Select in 2013 and experienced paltry sales and reimbursements. The rankings boost was negligible. I stopped using KDP Select in mid–2013, and haven’t looked back (sales have actually been stronger than ever across multiple platforms in the past few months).
  2. KDP Select reduces the number of readers you can reach with your books. I want to make my titles available to as wide an audience as possible, and KDP Select runs counter to that. It actually aims to establish a monopoly over reader eyeballs and self-publishing authors. It’s not only a poor way to treat readers who want to buy from other platforms and use other devices, but also limits our options down the road when competing platforms wither and fail.

On this last point, ask yourself what incentives there are for Amazon to improve the KDP UI, payouts, and policies for self-published authors if there is no credible competition. Nook is already failing (YOY sales are down 50% for me), Apple is so slow to implement change, and Google has only recently begun to improve Google Play for books.

Locking content out of these platforms via KDP Select or any other similar scheme will hasten their decline or stifle their growth, and ultimately hurt us in the long run. Competition leads to better interfaces for readers and authors, higher revenue-shares, and policies that deliver value for readers and writers alike. If Amazon is the only player in town, they don’t need to pay attention to anyone’s needs, and indeed can exploit the situation for the benefit of their owners and shareholders (which we’ve seen in the publishing industry in the past; see Bowker’s 12,500% ISBN markup for new authors.)

Bottom line: KDP Select is great for Amazon’s long-term strategic goals of dominating the publishing industry. It may even help some authors juice sales of certain titles. But ultimately it will erode the viability of other platforms, which is not good for us or readers.

UPDATE: In July 2014, Amazon launched its Kindle Unlimited subscription program. Most KDP Select titles were apparently automatically enrolled. I have evaluated the subscription program’s payouts for self-published authors, and have concluded that it treats self-published authors unfairly and is likely to cannibalize full-priced digital downloads. See Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription plan screws self-published authors for details.

Feb 28
Love1

The “Spotify for books” model: Great for readers, terrible for authors and publishers

By Blog, Industry

I am a fan of Spotify, the streaming music service that offers millions of tracks for free over the Internet. As a listener, I love the ability to find old favorites or discover new artists. Having to put up with occasional ads is not much different than listening to radio. If I had more disposable income, I would pay the $5 monthly fee for Spotify Premium — which does away with the ads and lets you download music to portable devices, like iPods and mobile phones. Would I be interested in a Spotify for books? There are such services popping up, like Bookboard for kids books and 24symbols in the U.K. for adult readers. Amazon also offers free downloads for some ebooks.

As a reader, free books are very appealing. I already use the library to borrow books, and the idea of getting free ebooks on my iPad or Kindle is attractive.

But as an author and publisher (The In 30 Minutes catalogue includes Online Content Marketing In 30 Minutes, Dropbox In 30 Minutes, Excel Basics In 30 Minutes and a Google Docs for Dummies alternative) I’m very concerned about any model that depends on free giveaways that result in little or no returns for the writers and publishers.

Spotify for books and Amazon KDP

For instance, the “free days” on Amazon’s KDP Select (which are the source of the free downloads on Amazon.com) have turned into a joke for me and other authors. KDP Select requires indie authors and publishers to only distribute through Amazon (no iTunes or Nook!) and in return gives them five days every 90 days in which they can price their book for free. The free days are supposed to attract lots of downloads from Amazon readers, while delivering a nominal price to participating authors. However, the last time I looked, my single KDP Select title delivered an average of 1 cent per download from the KDP Select fund. That’s comparable with the money musicians get every time someone plays one of their tracks on Spotify, according to various sources.

I withdrew my single title from KDP Select, and have no plans to use the KDP Select service again — unless Amazon can figure out a plan that brings more than a few pennies each time readers download books on the free download days. The same goes for other services that try to ape the Spotify for books model, or depend on loads of free giveaways. Unless there’s something tangible in it for authors, I’ll pass.