Posted on 06/28/2019 10:39:46 PM PDT by RArtfulogerDodger
...For much of the last year, mainstream novelists were furious that Amazon was discouraging the sale of some titles in its confrontation with the publisher Hachette over e-books.
Now self-published writers, who owe much of their audience to the retailer’s publishing platform, are unhappy.
One problem is too much competition. But a new complaint is about Kindle Unlimited, a new Amazon subscription service that offers access to 700,000 books — both self-published and traditionally published — for $9.99 a month.
It may bring in readers, but the writers say they earn less. And in interviews and online forums, they have voiced their complaints.
“Six months ago people were quitting their day job, convinced they could make a career out of writing,” said Bob Mayer, an e-book consultant and publisher who has written 50 books. “Now people are having to go back to that job or are scraping to get by. That’s how quickly things have changed.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Note that this is from 2014. Still an interesting article.
I’ve tried finding books from those self-published authors. All of the 50 or so books I tried (samples of first pages) over 2 years could not compose a paragraph that made sense. They should not have quit their day jobs. There was a “gold rush” attitude where many thought they could get rich quick or at least make steady guaranteed sales regardless of what they wrote as long as they pushed themselves hard. Doesn’t work that way.
That said, Amazon is indeed ripping off authors and “good ones” would be hard pressed to make a profit with Amazon’s pricing structure.
The worst of the lot end up writing blogs and subjecting innocent people to their trash.
Ok, but what’s its relevance in June 2019?
Is there some recent event connected to it?
I subscribe to kindle unlimited. I’m real happy with it.
One of the “worst of the lot” wrote on her blog her method of earning money as an author while learning how to write. She gleefully explained that you sell your (trash) draft and use the money earned to replace the cover design, give it a new title, change the names of the characters and some identifying cosmetic details, and rewrite the parts of the book people complained about most often using their input as editorial support. Voila! New book!
Sell that “new” book, collect the funds and repeat the process - new cover/names/title/added pages. Rinse and repeat, ripping of people along the way until the author is satisfied with the book. Oh, the humanity!
I’m shocked!
As much as I love physical copies of music and books, the world is slowly moving away from that direction. The business model has changed. Indeed, per this article, while hardback and paperback sales are rising, the growth rate of downloaded audio eclipsed all other formats (though it's off a smaller base).
As such the "employees" in the book industry would be wise to adjust accordingly. A streaming book service may seem like a new car to the buggy whip/physical book crowd, but they need to realize horse-drawn transportation is a dying industry.
I’ve heard that the best way to sell a book is to sell the outline - but to a publisher. It’s a ton of work to write a several hundred page book. The publisher will know after a few pages whether he’s interested in buying it or not.
Did sales of books tank after Kindle Unlimited started up?
Does an author have any choice whether to list his or her book on Kindle Unlimited, or was there implied consent when the author listed it on Amazon? Or was there a Kindle Limited, where the author received more commission than could be expected from $9.99/month split 700,000 ways?
Who died and gave Amazon the right to rent other peoples property? This seems to be a clear violation of copyright laws.
Must be nice to be a rich Uber Liberal Elitist, laws are for Deplorable people.
Of course AMAZON does this.
AMAZON is about others earning less and them earning more.
Very dangerous company.
Needs to be a regulated platform
KU is opt-in and costs the author nothing.
Every month, the Kindle Global Fund is divided among the pages read at KU to establish a per-page royalty, which is deposited into the author’s chosen account. As with most publishing, there is a 60-day lag between page reads and payment clearance.
Top authors, trads as well as indies, get the most and it can be considerable.
Readers have the opportunity to try an author for one price, just like streaming a movie. No different than a library, with a limit on how many KU books the reader can hold at any one time.
Today, it is difficult to sell literary fiction. Read the “Look Inside” sample available at Kindle and you might see why. Genre fiction, however, sells.
The problem for all authors is, as usual, progs. Now, an author needs to not only have diverse characters, they must be seamlessly incorporated and their diversity must be written as incidental, free of cultural appropriation. Female heroines must not be flawed in any way the diversity editor finds demeaning. (fill in your own air quotes)On and on, but I am certain many authors are just writing for the drawer and waiting until the authoritarian zeitgeist changes, again.
Literary agents present 30-50 pages to editors. Even with a sale to a publisher, the author is expected to travel and promote the book. It can take years from final draft to actual release and the author has 30 days to make back the advance before brick and mortar stores discount or return unsold copies. KU is forever or until the author unpublishes from the platform.
Many genre authors try to leverage large You Tube followings into book sales. This works moderately well, if the author has accurately read the audience and served up what they crave. Profit is another thing. The indie author bears all the production expenses from cover and format to rounds of editing.
Traditionally published authors can find they not only do not earn back their advance for the publisher, a book deal years in the making can result in nothing published because the publisher went belly-up or the editor quit, died or was fired before publication.
I’ve followed a few of these publishing adventures over the years, which is the basis for this post.
The Atlantic has an article about someone still trying for a book deal after ten years.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/09/why-im-still-trying-to-get-a-book-deal-after-10-years/539115/
I pay $200 for a different company's technical book service. You read them online instead of downloading like Amazon. It probably saved me double that every year in books that I would otherwise buy, skim, grab some interesting ideas and then shelve.
who has written 50 books.
50? I bet those are some read works of art.
It depends on how you sign up the book at publishing time, and no sales didn’t tank. I think the bigger issue is that there is a limited market for kindle unlimited types of plans.
I put a piece on Kindle Unlimited and I will probably do so in the future. I have a “day job” (ok - really decent career) and creative writing is one of my outlets. . I want feedback more than income. I made about $25 and one person downloaded from Kindle Unlimited. The rest were from single sales. That’s about what you can expect unless you are putting time in to build an audience and fan base or having a good publisher work with you.
Amazon is money-mad and will do anything to make a profit. “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money...” - BHO
What about public libraries?
All that FREE reading!
Amazon Offers All-You-Can-Eat Books.
Didn’t Penthouse offer that once or was it a scratch and sniff books?.
I read an article not too long ago about publishing houses now having editors who review manuscripts looking for anything that would set off the folks we refer to as snowflakes.
That would explain a lot when it comes to romance fiction these days.
Publishers are hiring 'sensitivity readers' to flag potentially offensive content
No wonder so much fiction stinks these days.
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