Sunday 16 August 2015

Payouts

There are bunnies who are not happy about the new payout system from Amazon Kindle.  I must be honest and say my payout is on the plus side when compared to what I've been earning over the last few months. Now the big question is if this will be sustained over the rest of the year.

There are authors complaining bitterly that their books are not earning anything via the pages read system, which means, basically, that no one is reading their pages. or put another way, the book has been downloaded but not read. One of my titles has been downloaded but not a single page read. Who knows why this happens? (Though I must admit I've downloaded books, even ones I've paid for, and then left them to one side unread. Usually it is because something better comes along and I read that; or life gets in the way of reading for a spell.)

I'm not sure if the download for free system - you know, the Top 100 Free Reads - racks up any payment on the pages read system. Looking at my July account, I can't be sure, but I suspect it might. Certainly there is one title where only 3 copies were purchased and only 10 pages read; but 70 free downloads were made and  the pages read, which earned me money, were far more than three times the number of pages the 3 purchased copies would have generated. If anyone has a definitive answer, let me know!

In general it seems to be the authors of short books who are complaining loudest. A lot of authors have discovered that writing a short book and publishing quickly earns them more money than publishing longer books at longer intervals. One argument is that a download is a download and should be paid as such; the counter to this is that if it is never read, then it should not. What puzzles me is why people download books and then never read them  - and do this on a regular basis. I'm sure there will be more information coming out over the next few months so watch this space!

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