I’ve read a couple of posts recently about Kindle Unlimited and how some readers–and this author–believe that Amazon isn’t paying authors a fair rate for books read in their program.

Currently, authors are paid $0.004 (that’s less than HALF A CENT) per page read.

So for any 250-page book an author might’ve charged $2.99 for and received the 70% royalty split from Amazon (that’s about $2.09), the author only receives:

$1

I used to be mad about this but now I just find it laughable because it’s completely absurd–to the author. To the reader? Not so much.

Don’t believe me?

Myself and other authors have been contacted by readers who have the stones to tell us they wouldn’t pay more than $0.99 for our books EVEN THOUGH THEY ENJOY READING THEM AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO (especially if they’re free).

So you see, nothing’s really fair when you have readers who won’t pay–who don’t believe our products are worth even a buck because they’re just an ebook. I can’t tell my cover artist I don’t want to pay her because her work is just going to be a picture file for an ebook.

Readers certainly won’t tell their nail artists–who they see weekly–that they won’t pay what they’re being charged. And those nails will fall off/crack/have to be replaced every week or so.

My ebook is forever.

(Okay, so maybe you don’t get your nails done. Hair? Go to the movies? Go out to eat? Insert anything you consume here.)

You think Amazon wouldn’t charge more for their KU subscription service (currently $9.99 a month) if it meant they’d remain competitive in the marketplace (and they could get away with paying authors so cheaply? Oh wait, they’re already doing that)? Of course they would.

And readers would pay it, if there wasn’t too much friction.

Yet, there is so much friction that hell would freeze over before they’d pay more than $0.99 for an author’s ebook. KU is utterly and completely a bargain for readers; most aren’t going to abandon it even for the principle of the matter.

I appreciate readers emailing Jeff Bezos about how “unfair” this all is, but in reality, his bottom line isn’t hurting so…what’s the problem? KU is having record-breaking page reads a month and the payout to the author continues to goes down.

This post is more for authors. Don’t get stressed, depressed, anxious, sad, mournful, etc.. This is the marketplace you opted to be in (as Uncle Scar would say, “Be Prepared!”). There’s no such thing as “fair” when the purse-strings are controlled by the readers. They’ll pay if they want to.

And they don’t (well, not all of them).

We can talk until we’re blue in the face about how culture has changed to cultivate readers who are conditioned to pay less. It’s visible across genres. But we don’t have to. It’s here and it’s not going away anytime soon.

We as authors need to figure out how to communicate our value to readers so they would be willing to pay more than $1 for a product that takes 100,000% more to produce (is my math right? I’m trying to get to $1000.00. Hey, I’m a writer, not a mathematician…even though this is probably sixth grade math. Okay, I’ll just stop embarrassing myself).

I’ll be honest; I haven’t quite figured that out. I have a few loyal fans who pay full price for my books, but based on my sales many don’t, and enticing new readers to buy is the Mount Everest of selling for me personally. I won’t physically climb that mountain, but I’ll try to conquer it in my author business.

Before you get too despondent over readers not seeing the value of your work, I’ll end this post.

Photo Credits:

captainpixie.deviantart.com, www.youtube.com/watch?v=SapLyHFXtPU, www.koreanclass101.com/