‘The Absolute Best Experience For Readers’ Here’s an argument we don’t hear frequently for the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select programs. I’m ensuring the best possible reader experience with ebooks. This is the soon-to-be-seafaring author Hugh Howey, who says that there’s something more important than the doubling of his overall income since Amazon instituted per-page payouts… Read More
Gaming the system: Amazon at home and abroad
The special symmetry of ‘the disrupter that demands to be undisrupted’ As Friday’s edition of The Bookseller points out, last week brought Amazon’s place in European markets into tighter focus. A scene-setting article from my colleague Lisa Campbell announced the European Commission’s formal antitrust investigation into the retailer’s relationships with publishers and ebook distribution. Campbell also pointed to… Read More
Amazon And Its New KDP Select Per-Page Payments: Everybody Has To Swim For It Now
‘What This Means For Authors Is Debatable’ Yesterday’s news (15th June) that Amazon is changing its payout structure for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) lending scenarios — that’s Kindle Unlimited (KU) and the Kindle Owners Lending Library (KOLL) — has been met with somewhat muted reactions. And this is good to see. Some mature, prudent thinking is… Read More
Is the honeymoon over? KU comes between Amazon and its self-publishers
A kind of downgrade for Amazon, and nowhere near Wall Street The most significant change is that Amazon KDP has slipped to third and also reflects the growing discontent self-published authors have with the introduction of Kindle Unlimited and recent communications regarding the new VAT law in Europe for 2015. We also have five new providers entering… Read More
Is Amazon KU exclusivity a velvet barrier for authors?
It “might be a possibility” at some point that Amazon would consider changing the the Kindle Unlimited (KU) subscription programme’s exclusivity requirement for independent authors, according to Daniel Slater, Amazon Independent Publishing principal. He spoke Thursday (22nd October) on a panel discussion at the 25th anniversary national conference (#ninc14) of Novelists Inc., in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Slater was… Read More
AuthorEarnings.com: Kindle Unlimited On The Line
‘I wish our conclusions could be more . . . conclusive’ But all things being equal? Authors are working without a net right now. As with so many things in publishing at this point in its encounter with the digital dynamic, the potential contradictions loom large in the new AuthorEarnings.comreport, just out today from the… Read More