Amazon will pay Self Published Authors based on the numbers of pages read in the book.

Can writing lengthy books earn you more? Amazon’s new policy says so…

From July 1 2015,  Amazon will pay Self Published Authors based on the numbers of pages read in the book. Amazon will use its KDP Select global fund and Kindle’s lending library feature to balance payments in this new policy.

So how this new payment plan will work? This is what Amazon announced:

The author of a 100 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

The author of a 200 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million multiplied by 20,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

The author of a 200 page book that was borrowed 100 times but only read halfway through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

 

You can read the full announcement here Amazon’s new kindle unlimited page read policy

Kindle has its own system for page count that is Kindle Edition Normalized Page count (KENPC). The system uses line spacing, font size and type, and line height to know how many pages were read based on standardized format.

One thing self published authors should also note that if a smartphone showed a book had 200 pages while a tablet displayed 150 pages then authors would be credited towards 150 pages read. This can be quite messy for self published authors.

We can’t say if it is for good or bad for self published authors but, Amazon says that the change was made in response to authors who “asked  us to better align payout with the length of the books and how much customers read”.

This leads us to an interesting question,

Can writing lengthy books will earn you more via kindle unlimited ?

According to this new policy of Amazon it seems so. But this new payment plan also depends on the number of pages read in your book. So, start writing page turners because every flip counts now!

And last but not the least, we would like to know your take on this.How it is going affect self published authors? As an author will you start writing lengthier books?

Please tell us your opinion about this and share it with other Authors.

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Being Author Staff

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10 thoughts on “Amazon will pay Self Published Authors based on the numbers of pages read in the book.”

  1. Would you pay an artist if all someone looked at was the horse, and not the field he was standing in? Of course not, and this is no different. Writers are artists, and should be paid the full price for the full work, regardless of how its “viewed”. This is just another way for Amazon to pay authors less, but still pull in the same amount of money. Plus there’s a growing movement to lessen how much companies track what we do. Now Amazon wants to track how many pages you read? A great many won’t like that.

    Over-all, this is good for Amazon, but not for the world of writing. Authors, especially new authors, will feel pressured to balloon their page count to make more money. This will lead to more books with pointless pages that will only serve to make self-published works that much more looked-down on. The art of writing will suffer, as a story that should only be 70,000 words will be forced to go as high as possible. That’s never good for the story. And I worry that even traditional publishers will fall into the trap. They’ll want an author to add 20,000 words to the story. Either they do, and delude the story to a possibly fatal degree, or they don’t, and lose the sale. Either way, the author loses, and so does the reader.

  2. I believe it makes no difference to me, I wrote for the love of it, I would always wish to produce a page Turner and quality work. Page count is off little consequence if you are true to your story. My story will be complete when it is finished not when I have enough pages. Nor will it be incomplete due to a page count. Keep on writing 🙂

  3. I agree wholeheartedly with DJ Cooper! Also, in my opinion, when a story wants to be told, it is transferred from the creative source into its physical existence. Not even the author who is writing it really knows how many pages long it will be – it will be what it will be. Writing because we love it and being true to the story is the only way I think we can make good art.

  4. I believe the whole point is to reward high quality books that people actually read. I’ve read many self published books where I can’t even get past the first few pages due to terrible editing or the first few chapters due to a terrible story line. I’ve also read some amazing indie books. I think this may be an easy way for Amazon to sift through sh*t pile, so to speak.

    Frankly, if you have a 200 page book read 100 times completely through and your profit is $2,000.00, that’s akin to $20 a book. If you sell 100 copies of that same book at $2.99 your profit is only around $209.00.

    The moral of the story being. If your writing is worth it’s weight, Kdp could help, not hurt you. They’re not asking for longer, even crappier books; they’re looking for talented authors who write page turners. Does Amazon make out on this? Absolutely! But up until now there was no way to separate the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I’m sure this will help them keep better track. It seems like a win win.

    1. Thanks, K.C., for that perspective on the frame of income. Quite helpful. I just posted a comment, but will ask you here if you have knowledge of how it will affect picture book authors. Thanks!

  5. Hi Deborah, I’m afraid I don’t know much about publishing. Especially picture books. I’m still working on my first novel! 🙂 I would search through Amazon’s may help topics to start.

  6. The point of KU is not to reward authors for long books. Most KU authors must pull their book from all other platforms, so consider that when putting your book in KU. Bye bye, iBook, Nook and Kobo readers. KU is designed to run other vendors out of business… and own all the authors and readers. When that happens, they will take pricing control away from us, and lower royalties. (Royalties were slashed by more than 50% on Audible when Amazon bought it.) The problem is that some bigger authors aren’t made to be exclusive, they boost KU enrolled books in their alogrithms as a carrot but it doesn’t always help because of the millions of books. Also, the top 100 authors are paid a perk (ranging from $25K for the top 10, too $1K to those ranking 91-100, and those authors will get the biggest boosts.) The perk was to get big authors to enroll, and not to entice all authors to dump their entire library in KU. The problem is that if you don’t enroll something in KU, you’ll get burried on Amazon. So one book, okay, but the whole backllist is publishing suicide for the industry as we know it.

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