We all know the answer to that.
I see a lawsuit in Amazon's future.
this is apparently for the lending library only......not book sales. So the Amazon Prime is not really the applicable comparison.
They’ve already determined how much they’ll put into the author pool on the lending library, this seems like just a shift in how they allocate that money.
Customers are not affected by this at all. I am a self-published author with books in the KDP Select program, so I will be affected, but I’m not sure how it will affect me yet.
Right now, I get paid a set amount every time one of my books is borrowed and read past the 10% mark. This is a standard method of getting paid and does not vary according to the length of the book I have put up. From the beginning, some authors have decried this as unfair, and they certainly have a point.
Someone who has a book that is 500 pages long must have someone read 50 pages before they trigger a “borrow”, but there are many writers who have 30 page books (mostly niche specific erotica) who get paid once someone reads 3 pages of their book.
Considering that a 30 page book would likely not sell well at 99 cents (and earn a 35 cent royalty when it does), these writers are thrilled with the current setup where someone can down load their book, browse in a couple of pages, and trigger the borrow at a rate of around $1.30 - $1.40 per borrow.
With the new system in place, it would be more like this.
(Assuming for math a rate of 1 cent per page read)
500 page book - someone reads 50 pages and stops reading = 50 cents
500 page book - someone reads the entire book = $5.00
30 page book - someone reads 5 pages and stops reading = 5 cents
30 page book - someone reads the entire book = 30 cents
This has nothing to do with how customers will be charged or limited in any way. It is simply a restructuring of how authors are paid when their books are borrowed from the Kindle Online Lending Library.
That’s more or less how the Soviet Union paid authors.
Hence the 1200 page Russian Novel.
one very popular author could reduce the amount others get paid by hogging a large portion of the fund leaving less available for the others.
Does Taylor Swift write books?... : )
If so then maybe she can boost the amount the authors get.