KINDLE UNLIMITED PAGES READ: MARCH, 2016
The Kindle Unlimited per-page rate held steady at $0.00477885 for March, 2016. It’s nearly identical to the $0.00479 for February, 2016.
Both February and March are up considerably (about 17%) over January’s rate of $0.00411.
So it’s nice to see the per-page rate hold steady at about $0.0048 per page.
There is more good news: The KDP Select Global Fund increased to $14.9M for March, 2016, up 6% from February’s $14M.
This combination is a good sign. Ordinarily, the Global Fund increases when the per-page rate decreases, and the Global Fund decreases when the per-page rate increases. The per-page rate and Global Fund usually exhibit inverse behavior, as shown here.
This time, the per-page rate held steady while the Global Fund increased 6%. Amazon paid $900,000 more in March compared to February, and they paid it at the same per-page rate.
What does this mean? It means that more pages were read in March, and Amazon didn’t reduce the per-page rate to compensate. It’s probably a sign of more Kindle Unlimited subscriptions.
With KDP Select books earning $14.9M in royalties per month just from Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime borrows, it’s clear that Kindle Unlimited has become a huge market. Any book not enrolled in KDP Select is missing out on this $15M per month market share, and needs to make up the difference through other venues. Not an easy task, though sales and even borrows usually don’t come easily.
The Kindle Unlimited market itself is highly competitive, with 1.3M books vying for a share of the approximately $15M monthly Global Fund. (But vying against 1.3M books for a slice of $15M is better than vying against 4.4M e-books for sales. The market for sales is much tougher than the market for borrows. The borrows actually help with potential sales, as each borrow helps sales rank.)
This means the average KDP Select book earns about $11 per month from borrows ($15M divided by 1.3M books), though hardly any books actually draw in this exact average. The top books, the KDP Select All-Stars, see a million or more pages read in many cases.
If your book gets over 2300 pages read per month, it’s doing better than the average KDP Select book. (That’s how many pages read it takes to earn the average $11 per month.)
A few other countries:
- United Kingdom: £0.00303 per page (British pounds). Almost identical to February.
- Canada: $0.0047 per page (Canadian dollars).
- India: ₹0.1 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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Reblogged this on The GUNDERSTONE review and commented:
Another #MustRead
Thank you. 🙂
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
Update from Chris McMullen 🐵
Thank you, Chris. 🙂
Welcome Chris 👍
Thank you for the information, Chris. Do you know the payment for pages read in Germany?
You’re welcome. I believe it’s around 0.0047 euro per page. If you see pages read in DE on your March report, divide the amount paid by the corresponding number of pages read, to double check.
Thanks. Better then I expected.
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Hi Chris – thanks for this. Much appreciated.
Not sure if you have seen Ann Christy’s post highlighting the KU Pages Read scam http://www.annchristy.com/ku-scammers-on-amazon-what-you-need-to-know/ David Gaughran also has some interesting information about KU scamming.
Do you have any thoughts/advice?
I believe the problem to be relatively minor in the grand scheme and to have been mostly dealt with. Amazon waits a couple of months to issue payments, so they are able to catch many problems before the payment would be made. The more prevalent the problem, the more likely it will be caught and dealt with swiftly. (It may also be better for the Kindle brand, and thus Kindle authors and readers, not to publicize such problems.)
Legitimate authors running sales, etc., have a very legitimate complaint: the scammers affect where the legitimate book places on the lists they depend on hitting.
That cannot be fixed in arrears: the opportunity to have someone perusing the lists click on your book goes down dramatically each time you go further into the lists.
Plus the bit about annoying the customers is non-trivial.
I hope Amazon fixes it soon for those reasons, if nothing else.
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I wonder if that’s a result of the recent crackdown on authors gaming the system. If so, it would appear that Amazon has done it more-or-less right, despite the howls of protest 🙂
It’s also typical of KOLL/KU royalties to be somewhat lower in December and January. Personally, I don’t expect the gaming to be too prominent. The more gaming there is, in general, the more likely Amazon will catch it early and deal with it. That’s why Amazon waits a couple months to issue payments. (Also, it may be better for the Kindle brand, and hence out own sales, not to publicize such problems too much.)
An interesting point. Most of my visitors are fellow authors, of course, so I guess that’s OK 😉
It wouldn’t surprise me if a couple of my visitors work for Amazon. 🙂
Have them visit my blog, too, please 😀
🙂
I’m still puzzled why Amazon made the KENP be half the size of most normal fiction pages – so half the people up in arms keep quoting that as a page payment (as in my book is 250 pages).
I also don’t understand a lot of things in life, so no biggie. I just hope they get their scammers under control (ie, roasting on a spit) soon.
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I know this post is a year old – but maybe you can tell me today – where/how do you find the number of pages read for a month to calcuate the per page rate? I see where the total pot isposted, but haven’t found the numberof pages…
Amazon doesn’t publicize the total number of pages read by all books in the program. Amazon doesn’t even publicize the per-page rate. However, on the 15th of the month after a month ends, you can open your Prior Months royalty reports, and then you can calculate the per-page rate for one of your own books. Find a book where pages were read, and divide the royalty paid by the number of pages read.
Amazon does publicize the KDP Select Global Fund for the month in a monthly email (which you can subscribe to at KDP). This way, we know the total amount of royalties paid for Kindle Unlimited pages read and for Amazon Prime borrows of KDP Select books (but this figure doesn’t include All-Star bonuses, nor does it include royalties paid to traditionally published books that participate in Kindle Unlimited).
Thanks – I don’t feel bad now that I couldn’t find the number of pages 🙂 cause the number’s not out there