How am I doing?

I’ve spent several hours collating stats only to come to the conclusion that I cannot compare like with like due to the many changes Amazon have made in the last few years. 

In 2011 books were sold and we authors received a royalty. In December of that year, the first change appeared - books were either sold or borrowed. By the end of June 2014 we had the introduction of KU/KOLL units. I understood that KU stood for Kindle Unlimited, but I was never sure what KOLL stood for. (Now I know it is Kindle Owners Lending Library)

By July 2015 we saw the introduction of “Net Units Sold or KENP Eead.” Otherwise explained as:  Net Units Sold or Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) Read. According to Amazon people bought books but never read them, so this was an attempt to pay only on pages read in an effort, so they said, to weed out the dross that was self-published. 

When KU came in, KENP made some kind of sense. Members of KU didn't buy the book, but "borrowed" it, so no royalty accrued to authors. KENP means that for every page read the author is paid a tiny amount, something like 0.0016 of a penny. On a 400 page book that would amount to 64p. It was as much, sometimes more, than the original royalty payment on low-priced fiction. 

So far, KENP Read is still holding. The only way I can see that I might be able to tell if I am doing better or worse is by tracking the money. Is the money that comes to me via KENP pages read better, worse or equivalent to my payments back in 2011? Who knows? Looks like another few hours doing stats. Even then,  other things have moved and changed since those days, so I won’t ever be certain whatever the stats tell me.

Dabbling in the market

This week, on the 6th to be precise, I lowered the prices on each of my e-books in order to discover if prices had any impact on the lack of sales recently. Out in Facebook land there is a theory that  the cheaper the e-book, the less respect it deserves. I read this so many times from so many different people that I resolved to raise my prices as I was not writing the equivalent of Kiss me Quick stories that would be forgotten two days after closing the book - metaphorically speaking, of course.

My raised prices and subsequent falling sales resulted or coincided with the national decision to vote for leaving the EU, so Brexit had to be to blame. It had frightened everyone into  scrupulous saving, hadn't it? I had no idea, because I had not noted the dated when I raised prices and I didn't do it on all my books at the same time. Scientific about it I was not.

Meanwhile, the KENP pages read continued to do well in the USA, particularly for The Gybford Affair. The UK doesn't produce the same results. Perhaps paying a monthly subscription for as many books as you can read hasn't caught on  in the UK. Or maybe UK readers don't like my books. Who knows?

So this time I decided to take note of what I was doing. On 6th February I lowered  my prices and waited the 72 hours for the changes to kick in. This morning I checked my figures and there were sales in the USA. Not a huge amount yet, and only one in the UK, but it is a start. Now it will be interesting to see how the  rest of the month goes.

I had priced one or two of the more recent e-books at $3.50, and the lowest at £1.99. Now the lowest is $0.99 and the highest $1.99 and I'll be watching to see what happens from now on.

The picture? Oh that is the real Matfen Hall in the Tyne Valley. In my latest story I have a vague outline of it in my mind when I describe Matfen Grange, where Leigh Fenwick has her adventures.

Amazon payouts and future worries

Every self-published author will have heard of Hugh Howey. They may even have read one of his books though they are a dystopian-sci-fi mix that is not everyone's taste. I cane across a post of his while checking for comment on Amazon's Kenp system of payment (ie payment by number of pages read at the rate of $0.0056 per page) His long post is worth reading.

http://www.hughhowey.com/subscription-models-literature/       and so is this one:

https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/kindle-unlimited-math-with-kenpc/

In summary, Howey says:

1. Kindle Unlimited (KU) 2.0 pays per page a higher rate for an ebook borrow than major publishers pay per page for a print sale.

2. KU 2.0 seems to be an attempt by Amazon to pay the same per borrow that they pay per sale, if ebooks are priced according to their recommendations.

3. KU 2.0 more fairly rewards time invested by authors and time spent by readers than KU 1.0.

4. I have yet to see an argument by anyone showing how KU 1.0 was more fair to authors than KU 2.0.

Since the Amazon monthly reports were out yesterday, I have seen mine. Since this new payment system began I have sold fewer books, but my income is much as it was because of the payments on the pages read.  Now instead of looking for sales, I look for the number of pages read. It can be addictive! Who, for example, is the person in Australia who read one page and never read another? Why did they give up? (I find myself thinking of family - there are quite a few Blacks out there! it could have been one of them, and I'm not sure my stories appeal to the young and trendy!)

So now I'm wondering if going free every now and then is a way of bumping up the KENP payment system. Possibly. I'm also thinking that this road leads to books been given away for free forever and payment coming via people who read them, where does it leave the literary prize winner who - so it is claimed - has very few sales but lots of critical applause? Where does it leave mainstream publishers and their advances? I suppose it is a fairness in the argument that if no one ever reads a certain book, then no payment should be made on it.

But how soul destroying for the writer. And how odd to think that  a book like the infamous 50 Shades would earn millions for its author. Is there not a danger that many writers will be persuaded to write similar erotic material? That would mean the average person's reading choice would become severely restricted and that is not a happy thought.

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!