IMPROVEMENT IN KENP READ RATE
Here is some good news for KDP Select authors and for Kindle Unlimited subscribers (indirectly, since this good news for authors benefits the readers, too).
The KENP pages read rate rose up to $0.00479 per page in February, 2016 up from $0.00411 per page in January, 2016.
It’s not because there were 2 more days in January. (Being leap year, there were 29 days this February.) The ratio 29/31 would only account for less than half the difference.
We had two reasons to expect the KENP per-page rate to increase:
- KENPC v2.0 began February 1, 2016, with a perceived decrease on average. A small reduction to the total number of KENP pages available to be read would result in a corresponding increase in the per-page rate.
- January, 2016 appeared to reflect holiday traffic. It’s typical for some of that holiday traffic to taper somewhat. The per-page rate dipped a bit in the holidays with a high volume of pages read, and the per-page rate rose back up following the holidays.
Regardless of the reason, and regardless of how long this lasts, a 17% boost to the KENP per-page rate for Kindle Unlimited (and Amazon Prime) borrows is nice to see.
The KDP Select Global Fund dropped 6.7%, down to $14M in February, 2016 from $15M in January, 2016. This is probably due to a decrease in the overall volume of Kindle Unlimited pages read following the holiday season.
In other countries:
- United Kingdom: £0.00305 per page (British pounds). Up 16% from December’s £0.00262.
- France: €0.00474 per page (Euro).
- Spain: €0.00474 per page (Euro).
- Canada: $0.00499 per page (Canadian dollars).
- India: ₹0.104 per page (Indian rupees).
Write happy, be happy. 🙂
Chris McMullen
Copyright © 2016
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
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chrismcmullen 
It’s funny to see people jump all over Amazon the minute they don’t like something.
Amazon isn’t perfect – nobody says they are – but I feel there’s intelligence behind the decisions, and they really do want customers to have good service and lots of choices. I’m willing to 1) assume they are trying and will fix things like KU, and 2) scammers will get what they deserve for putting out ‘books’ like some of the ones we’ve been hearing about, because the customers deserve far better.
If they move slowly, so as not to disrupt the ecosystem, people complain. If they fix things too fast (that never works well in programming), people complain. Me, I’m just trudging along, hoping I’ve backed the right horse, knowing you never get all the facts – but comparing to Nook shutting down and other things going wrong (Oyster) – and willing to wait. Isn’t this for the long haul?
I see it the same way, Alicia. 🙂
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FYI: We saw a similar drop in funding last year at this time ($8.5m to $8m). So I’m not surprised.
That’s right. Thank you. 🙂
Welcome!
This is why I keep a running list of the funding pools.
Thanks for sharing, Chris! I think there’s a simpler explanation, though: Amazon is clamping down on scammers that take advantage of the ToC loophole. Simply put, scammers create books by copying and pasting any sort of material. They then insert on the first page a click-bait link to the very last one (“click here to win a Kindle Fire”). Once the unwary victim clicks, Amazon is tricked into thinking that they have just completed the book – and the scammer is paid in full. That is also why Amazon capped KENP payments to 3,000 pages per book per month. I’m preparing a post, where I explain all this, but I’m thrilled that Amazon’s actions is already having such a positive effect.
That’s probably part of it, too. I don’t worry about the scammers, as they will suffer their fate in the long run. 🙂
Oh, absolutely. It’ll be nice when things clear up a bit, though.
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Thanks, Chris, for this helpful information. 🙂 — Suzanne
You’re welcome. 🙂
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Is it just me, or is there something distinctly weird about authors getting excited about a $0.0006 increase in how much Amazon pays them per page read. When I see news like that, it suggests writing as an occupation much like an orphanage in a tale told by Dickens. “Please sir, could I have more gruel.”
The reality is that outside a narrow price range that Amazon itself has set, the company pays authors only half as much (35% versus 70%) as Apple pays at every retail price. Why do authors endure that sort of abuse and even struggle to pretend it’s other than what it is?
To express the situation in other terms, it’s a bit like an abused wife taking comfort that her drunken hubby doesn’t beat her as bad as he might. Listen to such a wife and then listen to many Amazon fanboy authors talking about their earnings. They sound alike don’t they, particularly with their excuse making and vain hopes for the situation to improve?
Even that parallel may not be fair. That abusive husband may have a hard life. He may be bringing home the abuse he suffers at work. That’s hardly the situation with Jeff Bezos and his author-wife. With a net worth of $50.7 billion, Forbes ranks Bezos #5 among the world’s billionaires and the third richest person in the U.S. Yet that cheapskate pays you only half the market rate for your labors. For a parallel, imagine him paying his household servants a little over $3.50 per hour, half the federal minimum wage. This is the same.
http://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/
Yes, I know not everyone is quite as gutsy as me and those stubborn-as-hell Hallmark ancestors of mine, who stood up to the Klan and Klan-like groups in the nasty era of white supremacy during and after the Civil War. But it would be refreshing to hear at least a little informed moaning and complaining from fellow writers. All this excuse-making is sickening.
Start showing some professional pride. Quit suffering this abuse silently. Value your work and insist on being decently paid for it. Put an end to that, “Please Amazon, could I have a little more gruel”—in this case a pitiful $0.0006 more.
–Michael W. Perry, co-author of Lily’s Ride: Rescuing her Father from the Ku Klux Klan (a YA novel adapted from a bestselling novel written by the 19th-century’s foremost legal champion of civil rights)
Actually, I earn 70% on all of my Kindle ebooks, and for most, I earn a higher royalty through pages read (when read to 100%) than for a sale, so it’s all good for me. Amazon has been extremely good for me; other distributors haven’t.
Reblogged this on The GUNDERSTONE review.
Thank you. 🙂
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