4 ms·

Since you seem to have missed the point of my "Netflix for ebooks" analogy (which you quoted): Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service where users can pay $1

by Kuiper 7y ago

Since you seem to have missed the point of my "Netflix for ebooks" analogy (which you quoted): Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service where users can pay $10/month for unlimited access to a catalog of books that authors have chosen to list under the KU program. (This is how subscription services like Netflix work from a consumer standpoint. The difference from the creator side is that authors get paid based on how much people read their books, whereas Netflix funds productions up front, and then uses viewer data to make decisions about which shows to renew.) The money that people spend on $10/month KU subscriptions is used to pay authors based on which authors people spent the most time reading (or, more accurately, which books you read the most pages of). If I read 400 pages of book A, and 5 pages of book B, then author A gets paid more than author B. I think the reasoning behind this should be pretty intuitive and obvious. Since every KU subscriber only spends $10/mo regardless of how much they read, there is a fixed "pie" to distribute to authors, and it makes sense to divide the pie based on which authors contributed the most to the readers' use of the KU platform. Readers don't get a "refund" for dropping a KU book 5% of the way through, because even if you quit reading one book, the fact that you stopped reading a book does not change the fact that you still have access to tens of thousands of other ebooks in the KU library for the remainder of that month, which is the thing that you are ostensibly paying for. (I don't phone Netflix to request a partial refund if I start watching the first episode of Bojack Horseman and quit halfway through the first episode, I just start watching Stranger Things or Narcos instead.) If authors don't like this arrangement, they are free to not participate in Kindle Unlimited, and sell their books under a more traditional model (where the author sets a price, and people can buy the book for that price irrespective of any participation in any sort of subscription program).

grawprog 7y ago
Wait so... >Readers don't get a "refund" for dropping a KU book 5% of the way through, But... Authors get paid by the page? So Amazon basically gets to stiff authors on the refund that customers aren't getting but Amazon is applying internally to products customers use through their services by way of just not paying authors for content? Seems pretty fucked up to me and the only one that benefits is Amazon. Customers are left with something they don't want and authors aren't paid for their work while Amazon keeps the change...
- eh78ssxv2f 7y ago
  The "change" that Amazon keeps can be fixed irrespective of how they distribute the money to the authors. Lets say user pays $10/month fee. Amazon decides it wants to keep $2 and distribute $8 to authors. Now, there are different ways of accomplishing that: (i) Distribute proportionately based on which books user downloaded. If user downloaded N books during the month, author of each of the books gets $8/N. (ii) Distribute proportionately based on amount of time spend by user on each book. If user spent T hours in Kindle during the month, and T_1 time on one of the books, then the author of that book gets $8*T_1/ T. There are pros and cons of both approaches in terms of fraud prevention, user engagement etc.
- eozoon 7y ago
  What the customer paid for is a subscription where they get to read anything they want for however long they want. They don't pay per book, so there's no "left with something they don't want". Presumably when they stop reading Book A after the 5% mark, they would move on to Book B and Amazon will then pay the author of book B. So Amazon is paying someone for the whole duration that the customer is reading from their collection. Personally I think it's a fair arrangement. Some of the "books" are really low effort cash grab that you'd literally open, read 3 pages and drop - it'd be unfair if they got paid just as much as well written works of the same length that you finish reading through.
  - dhimes 7y ago
    So if I read a book for a day and stop at the 20% mark; then come back to it a month later and finish it, does the author then get 100%?
    - Kuiper 7y ago
      Authors get paid monthly, approximately two months after the royalties are earned. So if you have a KU subscription and you read 20% of a KU book in January, the author will get paid for those pages in March, and then if you continue reading book and read the remaining 80% in February, the payment for the pages that you read in February will be included in their April statement.

by Kuiper 7y ago

grawprog 7y ago

Wait so... >Readers don't get a "refund" for dropping a KU book 5% of the way through, But... Authors get paid by the page? So Amazon basically gets to stiff authors on the refund that customers aren't getting but Amazon is applying internally to products customers use through their services by way of just not paying authors for content? Seems pretty fucked up to me and the only one that benefits is Amazon. Customers are left with something they don't want and authors aren't paid for their work while Amazon keeps the change...

eh78ssxv2f 7y ago
The "change" that Amazon keeps can be fixed irrespective of how they distribute the money to the authors. Lets say user pays $10/month fee. Amazon decides it wants to keep $2 and distribute $8 to authors. Now, there are different ways of accomplishing that: (i) Distribute proportionately based on which books user downloaded. If user downloaded N books during the month, author of each of the books gets $8/N. (ii) Distribute proportionately based on amount of time spend by user on each book. If user spent T hours in Kindle during the month, and T_1 time on one of the books, then the author of that book gets $8*T_1/ T. There are pros and cons of both approaches in terms of fraud prevention, user engagement etc.
eozoon 7y ago
What the customer paid for is a subscription where they get to read anything they want for however long they want. They don't pay per book, so there's no "left with something they don't want". Presumably when they stop reading Book A after the 5% mark, they would move on to Book B and Amazon will then pay the author of book B. So Amazon is paying someone for the whole duration that the customer is reading from their collection. Personally I think it's a fair arrangement. Some of the "books" are really low effort cash grab that you'd literally open, read 3 pages and drop - it'd be unfair if they got paid just as much as well written works of the same length that you finish reading through.
- dhimes 7y ago
  So if I read a book for a day and stop at the 20% mark; then come back to it a month later and finish it, does the author then get 100%?
  - Kuiper 7y ago
    Authors get paid monthly, approximately two months after the royalties are earned. So if you have a KU subscription and you read 20% of a KU book in January, the author will get paid for those pages in March, and then if you continue reading book and read the remaining 80% in February, the payment for the pages that you read in February will be included in their April statement.