Currently, to pay the authors who publish through Amazon directly, the company sets aside a pool of cash each month—this month it is $3 million—and divides it among the authors. In the past, Amazon measured the number of “borrows,” or downloads, and computed each author’s share of the pool accordingly. In February, one “borrow” of one of my books was worth $1.38. That’s not a bad amount for a short book, but it’s much less than the royalties that a big book might earn.
Starting in July, Amazon will divvy up the pool based on how many pages are read. This per-page model applies to books published through Amazon that are read as part of the Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Online Lending Library programs. Amazon offers a few different Netflix-like subscriptions to its various collections of books. Access to the “Lending Library” is a perk of Amazon Prime membership (which costs $99 per year), and the Kindle Unlimited service costs $9.99 per month. Both programs claim to offer access to more than 800,000 titles.
While many larger publishers’ offerings are included in these programs, the details of those deals have not been made public. Their authors may or may not be paid by the page. Amazon’s announcement only says that the new formula applies to Kindle Select books that are self-published and distributed through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program.
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