Do authors make money on kindle versionsof their book

The people I follow online have sold a lot more than books. Momey, I read recently that the majority of self-published authors sell less than copies of their books. So maybe there are indie authors out there who might actually want to know how a nobody like me managed to sell over But every single one of those copies were yheir downloads. I have learned a few tips along the way that may be of mooney to newer indie authors. Does this mean you have to stifle your creativity and only write mass market, commercial books? It just means that whatever genre you write in, you have to be highly autors with what readers of that genre actually buy, and create something that follows their criteria. As a fiction author it means studying the most successful books in your genre, and deconstructing why readers of the genre love. You still need to write an original book. But you need to incorporate some of the elements that make books in that genre sell. This goes for plot, voice, and story elements, but also for your cover and book description.

After I published my first book , it took six years before I published my second book. What triggered such a change? It started when Seth Godin told me this on my podcast :. So how do you learn that? Well, you learn it by doing. And the easiest way to do it…is to come out with a book a week on the Kindle…. It costs nothing to do this. It costs less than it cost me to mail my proposals to book publishers. So what are you waiting for!? Seth was right. If you get out of your own way, and rethink books with the current market and technology, you can start publishing today, learning more every day.

Want some extra confidence in your self-publishing journey? ProWritingAid is a powerful suite of over 20 different writing and editing tools. Copy your draft into their online editor and check grammar, sentence flow, overused words, and more. Try it for free! Sign in. Get started. David Kadavy Follow. The Writing Cooperative A writing community and publication focused on helping each other write better. Writing Self Publishing Publishing Entrepreneurship. It’s not too late.

Calculating Payout by Book

The reception by readers was mostly positive, finally a Netflix for Books! The reaction from authors and publishers was mixed. Kindle Unlimited was doing to independent authors what Spotify did to musicians. By offering their work for free to subscribers, they were potentially lowering the revenue that an author or publisher could make from each book. In this article we explore how KU has evolved over the past 5 years and its current impact on authors. When KU was a year old, in June , Amazon announced that they would begin paying participating authors by pages read, instead of by the number of books downloaded. At the same time, they introduced KENPC Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count , which accounted for type size and line spacing to prevent anyone from cheating the system and artificially making their books longer.

eBook Sales and Royalties

KU authors should be wary of the fine print. Via Shutterstock. You recognize this is not how royalties usually work. An author with a traditional publisher will receive royalties on each hard copy of the book sold to libraries or a percentage of the ebook sold at a library rate. Authors are also required to sign over exclusive rights to each work to Amazon. Amazon assures its authors that each text will be in a consistent font with consistent spacing as its length is determined. Under the new payment method, the amount an author earns will be determined by their share of total pages read instead of their share of total qualified borrows. Author C. Kindle Unlimited authors are more likely to make a fraction of a penny per page. Kilgore breaks down this calculation in a smart blog post:. That is how extremely significant this payout change is. On the other hand, an author of a page fantasy book who was getting 1.

Depending on how fast you can type, and how many book ideas you have, the idea of writing eight books minimum could be a real shot to the gut. The truth is, it isn’t easy to market books just ask traditional publishers. There have been many reports of issues with clickfarm scams on the KU Kindle Store. I was now a self-published author. As you build and grow your publishing business you may want to consider publishing on other platforms and distribution channels; and also consider going the route of seeking out a traditional publisher — but getting started with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is a great place to get started. In that way the author is paid more than once. KDP relieves you from having to use complex conversion tools to get everything Kindle ready.

The Atlantic Crossword

Popular advice seems to be that you need to publish multiple books in order to see any kind of tangible success. Everyone loves a bargain. Sign up for my 1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE! You are going to need to learn how to leverage traffic from your blog to sell books. However, the reality is that Kindle Unlimited KU is proving to be very popular with Kindle ebook readers. If you want to make money selling Kindle books then you are going to have to learn to market both the books and yourself as a writer.

The Writing Cooperative

However, the reality is that Kindle Unlimited KU is proving to be very popular with Kindle ebook readers. In fact, a KU subscription can cost even. It is a bargain for avid readers who want to save money. But will it mean that authors are starved of an income as a result?

There is little point trying to calculate pay per page read against copies sold, as there is no way of knowing if a KU reader read the whole Kindle book. The only basis to use is that Amazon calculates a page to be about words. In the end, it is all boils down to the number of word pages and not the number of fully read books. Then you can add Amazon Do authors make money on kindle versionsof their book Reading to the menu, where Prime members can read an ebook for free every month.

Everyone loves a bargain. Your ebook price in the Kindle store needs to be tempting for Kindle owners and KU users. But at the same time, setting the price too high will dissuade ebook buyers and have a detrimental effect on your per copy ebook sales.

Another factor is naturally that the higher the ranking an ebook has, the more interest and attention it will attract. So while the return might be less than the sale of a copy, every page read helps lift your book ranking. So instead of putting a lot of marketing and promotional effort into a KDP Select free ebook periodperhaps putting the same effort into promotion aimed at Kindle Unlimted readers might be more beneficial.

When it comes to maintaining an income, authors who have their ebooks available on Kindle Unlimited will have to make smart decisions about finding a balance between the two reading markets — buyers and subscribers.

With some big publishing houses starting to add their titles to Kindle Unlimited, including the Harry Potter series, The Hunger Games and Wool, the writing is on the wall. Or, remove your ebooks from KDP Select and rely on old-fashioned ebook sales by going wide with as many ebook retailers as possible. But for authors? Well, you will have to make your own decision about whether it is fair and if it works for you or not. There is no value in it, in any way, shape or form from what I can see, and KU subscribers are a fickle lot.

When the agreement on the ones having KU are up, there will be no. Interesting thread. I searched this subject because I will probably remove my book from KU soon. My book is less than two hundred words, as opposed to tens of thousands, but I spent several hundred hours illustrating and formatting it for Kindle. KU was introduced while I was working on the book.

I knew the pay structure was bad for me, but I hoped the free reads would lead to paperback CreateSpace sales. In paperback, my book is the standard 32 pages. Since the artwork is all done as two-page spreads, the kindle version is only 16 pages. I get less than a dime per read. I had over 16k pages read removed.

I asked them for some clarification on this, with things that would not compromise their security but they have given me no response. Only way someone can illegally influence their system is if they hacked amazon or if Amazon does not have a proper page counting system in place. I am a first time author and 16k pages is a lot for me. There message made little sense actually and left me wondering exactly how there program is working.

There have been many reports of issues with clickfarm scams on the KU Kindle Store. You can read about them in this article. In other words, spreading their activity wider to try to avoid detection by Amazon. I can only suggest that you contact Amazon again and ask for more details.

Just adding a few factoids: My book is words. The paperback is pages. I assume that not everyone who borrowed the book would have bought it, so I think that allowing borrowing is a good idea. Who knows. Anyway, direct sells are much higher than borrows.

KU is a bad deal if your goal is strictly making money off books in it. You say Amazon calculates a page to be about words. That means an 80 word novel is counted as pages. Or did I miss something? Your arithmetic is perfect, Ben. That is what an author gets from KU page reads for 80, words. As a reader, I will say that kindle unlimited is a dream for book hoarders. I just will be careful about selecting that author.

Because I do hoard books, and I can only have 10 books in my KU library, I will then purchase the book after reading if I enjoyed it. In that way the author is paid more than .

How Much Money Does a SELF PUBLISHED Book Earn?

Latest Issue. Past Issues. He was—and at the time of this writing, still is—ranked above J. Rowling No. His most recent book is ranked tenth on Amazon Charts, which Amazon launched after The New York Times stopped issuing e-book rankings, and which measures sales of individual books on Amazon.

Kindle Unlimited & KDP Select: A History

The company does not disclose the metrics behind Author Rank, which is still versionxof beta. While he may not be as familiar a name as the big authors marketed by traditional publishing houses, and may not have as many total book sales, Omer is making an enviable living from his writing. Now, he makes more money than he did as a computer engineer. But now its self-publishing service, Kindle Direct Publishing KDPhas made it easy for people to upload makd books, send them out into the universe, and make money doing so. Its store has created a place for readers to go and easily find inexpensive self-published books. The site that got its start by radically changing where books are sold is now reshaping how books are published and read.