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Amazon announce major kdp select change

by quadagon
7 replies
Amazon are changing how they pay self published authors.

Instead of being paid per download self publishers will now get paid on how much of your book is read.

Looking at the details I can already see that some 'gurus' will launch book reading clubs.

Here's more info

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A156OS90J7RDN
#amazon #announce #change #kdp #major #select
  • Profile picture of the author KentJ07
    Well then I guess you should write books that people want to read to the end. Otherwise opt out of KDP Select and take your chances on Smashwords or D2D.
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    • Profile picture of the author quadagon
      Originally Posted by KentJ07 View Post

      Well then I guess you should write books that people want to read to the end. Otherwise opt out of KDP Select and take your chances on Smashwords or D2D.
      Not that simple though. If you are writing a heavily scientific book its unlikely anyone will read it in one go. In fact my shelves are full of reference material.

      I think it'll end up promoting smaller books with authors splitting their work up into several books rather than one quality production.

      The quality of 90% of kindle ebooks is dubious at best as it is.
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  • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
    Paying by the page only matters through the Kindle Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited.

    It's a valid concern of the authors. I mean, I pay for KU by the month, not by the book - so I've paid to spend a certain amount of time reading, and during that time I can only read so many pages. If I spend that time on one book, that book has provided me more value than if I read fifty books. And the author should be compensated not for simply landing on my Kindle, but for actually being read.

    This encourages people to write Kindle books that actually get read, which is good for everyone.
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    "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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    • Profile picture of the author KentJ07
      Originally Posted by CDarklock View Post


      This encourages people to write Kindle books that actually get read, which is good for everyone.

      I agree. There are a lot of crappy 20-30 page non-fiction books being listed on Kindle, books that read like poorly-rewritten PLR content. I think this is an attempt by Amazon to weed out some of this junk. Kindle was never meant to be a Get Rich Quick scheme.
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      • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
        Originally Posted by KentJ07 View Post

        There are a lot of crappy 20-30 page non-fiction books being listed on Kindle
        Which is why I am a Kindle Unlimited subscriber. Last week I decided I needed to know more about Kindle publishing, so I used it to get a boatload of books on the subject. Each one was basically a load of half-arsed garbage. The core information is still the same, but it felt parroted - like all these people read someone else's book and ran off to write their own.

        So I'm really glad I didn't pay $3 for each of those books.
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        "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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  • Profile picture of the author David Beroff
    Originally Posted by quadagon View Post

    Instead of being paid per download self publishers will now get paid on how much of your book is read.
    Interesting. I recently purchased the rights to 22 titles from two different authors, and now I'm wondering if that change was a contributor to their original decisions to sell. Do you know when this was first announced?
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    Just another example of how following "internet marketing guru" advice has negative long term effects. A lot of people on this forum are about to have this portion of their income stream cut off because they were dumb enough to buy into the concept of publishing garbage since some fake guru told them content doesn't really matter.
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