Recently, I tried an experiment. I removed my books from a wide selling platform (Amazon, BN.com, IBook, etc.) and opted to publish in Kindle Select. For those of you who don't know, this is an opt-in program for books published through Amazon Kindle. Only those books opted into the Kindle Select program are available on Kindle Unlimited ("KU") and can be borrowed through the Kindle Online Library ("KOLL").
I was attracted by the idea that people could read my books for free under their fixed priced, monthly KU subscriptions. As a mom, I love using the subscription service for providing reading material for my kids. It's convenient and it helps budget my children's reading appetite. I had hoped that by participating in Kindle Select, I could offer the same benefits to parents of kids who want to read my books.
I really wish I could stay, but certain aspects of the program force my hand. The first troubling feature is that in order to participate, I have to make my ebooks exclusive to Amazon. This means that only readers with Kindle readers can read the ebooks. So, by having my books on Kindle Unlimited, I am excluding readers with other ebook reading preferences.
This same exclusivity requirement does not apply to other traditionally published authors, such as J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins, whose books you will find on KU as well as other ebook platforms. I would image the reason for this is that these authors have the market power to negotiate better deals. I get that - it's business. So, this is just an observation. And, if I am so lucky as to have that market power in the future or Amazon drops its exclusivity requirement, my decision then might be different than the one I am making today.
Another problem revolves around the fact that the author compensation is based upon page reads. In that my books are longer, the pay read for a full book read isn't too bad, even though it amounts to half a cent per page. To provide a level playing field between books, Amazon uses an algorithm to calculate the number of pages upon which to base its pay by page read compensation. I don't know exactly how they do that but the premise is that the books are somehow equated by a uniform margin size, font size, etc. But in any event, a full page read for my books resulted in what I thought was a fairly acceptable compensation rate for each book.
However, I perceived a potential problem in just how the page reads are calculated. Amazon keeps track of the last page that a reader gets to, watches the reading rate speed, and appears to have all sorts of ways to disqualify page reads. Much of that is all related to trying to prevent people from gaming the system and getting paid unfairly, and I respect and appreciate that. If it were just that, it would be fine (apart from the exclusivity problem).
The problem is related to doubts that I started to have as to whether I was getting credit for pages that people were legitimately reading. I started noticing on various author forums that authors were concerned that their page reads were going down significantly. Many were claiming that there is some bug in the new page flip feature that is preventing pages read from being counted. Authors were stating that they were seeing days with just one page read for the entire day or days with low page reads and how that didn't make sense. At the same time, they were stating that their sales rank had gone up with no sales, such that it seemed that the books were being borrowed through KU. Some were saying that their sales ranks were moving around but they weren't getting any sales or page reads during that time. I saw something similar in my data for a time.
Investigating it further, I learned from other authors that the sales rank can go up when someone borrows the book from KU or the KOLL. The thought was that people may have opened the books but not actually sat down to read them but that they would presumably see the page reads later. I was told I should wait a few days and see if the reads start to show up later.
I spent hours researching the internet to see if there was an explanation. But then I was wasting time that I should be using to write the next book. So, I reached out to Amazon and asked if there was a problem. The email I received in response provided assurances that there was nothing wrong. The email further stated that the page flip feature was just a navigational tool that was not designed for reading and thus they don't count the pages read. Nevertheless, the email stated, they were monitoring page flip usage data and don't believe it is being used to read books.
That explanation seemed to make sense - at least until I used my new 7 inch Kindle Fire and noticed the page flip feature. It's a pretty neat feature and makes the Kindle seem more dynamic than just a text screen with no bells and whistles. It has two modes for the page flip. In one mode, 9 text screens are displayed on one page. It was very clear to me that reading a book that way would be impossible for most and uncomfortable at best for the remainder.
But the other mode is almost a full-screen display. And, although I am very nearsighted, with astigmatism that is not corrected by my contact lenses, and my optometrist would love it if I would get reading glasses, I noticed that I could very easily read a book page in this mode. This display mode also didn't alert me to the fact that it was only navigational and should not be used to read the book. In fact, it seemed to me that the swiping mechanism was more responsive to my touch. So, it seemed easier to turn the pages in that mode. Maybe that's not the case and it's just me but that was my impression. I also noted how easy it is to flip between the two. When I was out of the mode and swiped to turn a page, I would occasionally bring up the page flip mode in this almost full-screen display. It seemed like one might read a book being in the regular mode and then page flip and vice versa very easily.
Whether or not readers are reading in page flip or there is or is not some bug in the program, at the end of the day, my 90 day trial period did not provide me enough benefit to outweigh the exclusivity requirement and the constant worries over whether I am getting paid for page reads or not along with the time I am wasting on such worries. So, I am opting out for now. Should KDP Select no longer require exclusivity and I can feel confident that everything works correctly, I may reconsider in the future. But for now, it's not for me.
So, I am going "wide" again. I will post an update when I've done so.
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