eBooks: The Death of
Publishing As We
Know It, or the New
(Publishing) World Order? For those who missed it, the world of eBook publishing is abuzz this week over Kindle's new pay structure for books in Kindle Unlimited, its lending library. You can look up the details yourself, but the nutshell is that authors will no longer be paid an equal portion of Amazon's large monthly allowance based on # of downloads. It will now be based on how many pages of your book(s) your readers actually read.
The general consensus I've seen is one of woe & dismay as well as even more of the ever-popular "Amazon is evil!" lambasting. This is, I think, a knee-jerk reaction by inferior &/or ignorant writers. I, for one, am breathing a long-held sigh of relief.
One such example of vitriol comes from an author of short erotica who I shall not name here. In her blog post, she openly bashed Amazon for cutting her paycheck & subtly thumbed her nose at authors of bigger works. Her takeaway message was that she'd been doing well with her short books and now her heyday was coming to an end. Also, Amazon is only trying to make more money, which is both obvious & egregiously hypocritical. Of course Amazon is trying to make more money. So is she. So are we all.
But what she failed to realize in her fear for her bank account is that Amazon is also doing the publishing world a favor, one that I think will start to make up for past atrocities (namely the creation of a world where shit authors can easily publish their books alongside the Rowlings, Kings, & Martins of the world... an atrocity, mind you, which is balanced by providing legit-but-heretofore-undiscovered authors to also easily publish alongside those same greats which has been a stepping-stone for many to becoming discovered & actually making a living off of writing).
Let me put things into perspective for you...
Too Long
(ok... not if it's really good)My novels are long. Not too long, but long enough to require an honest investment of time from my readers. They average about 400 pages (or 100,000 words for you writers out there). Each took me a very long time to write. We're talking many MANY months to draft. And more months to revise. And then still more months to polish/ re-revise/ polish again/ etc. I take pride in every word & I genuinely try to produce a high-quality product. While the jury of public opinion is still hashing out via reviews, sales, & word of mouth whether or not I've been accomplishing that monumental feat, I've regardless been getting paid the same amount per download as people who slap together a simple idea, stick on an eye-catching cover, & publish three or four (or five or ten) books in those same months.

Please understand I don't knock the value of short works... I, myself, have a couple of short story collections & even one solo short story for sale... also, some of my favorite written works of all time ("The Lottery", "The Last Question", "The Raven") are short. But I've always known that my novels (where the overwhelming bulk of my energies have gone) have been getting the shaft. It's never sat well with me to spend 8 hours at a book fair next to an author making sale after sale of a $20 children's book of maybe 40 pages & 2,000 words when I can barely get buyers for my $10/ 400-page/ 90,000-word novel. It's true that children's books are a unique genre & good parents will do anything for their kids including sacrificing their own reading desires for the betterment of their offspring, so I can happily live with the disparity there. But when I see (and I assure you, I have seen it, LOTS of times) authors deliberately publish short, low-brow drivel in order to make a quick buck from the Kindle lending library, my inner teenager-wailing-at-injustice cries out. 
The 'humph' face I make when
meeting a scam author.
Because, you see, until now it's been working. 

These "authors" have not only been abusing the system by cranking out multiple books with flashy titles & covers then collecting the same dollar-per-book as novelists like me, but even worse they've also been diluting the Kindle Unlimited pool in both volume & quality.

But now, Amazon (in a cleverly-worded email to its many authors suggesting the idea came from us all along... and perhaps it really did, though I doubt it) is changing things. As I said before, authors will no longer be paid based on how many people download and read 10% of our books (the only requirement up till now). Instead, we will be paid based on pages read. This old rule of 10% was particularly harsh for authors of longer works like me. It meant that readers had to turn 35 or 40 pages rather than 10 or 12 before I got my sub-buck-and-a-half paycheck. (That's right... last month KU authors earned a whopping $1.35 for each downloaded book that was read 10% through). It also put an unnatural priority on the length of a book rather than its quality, which in my humble opinion is the bad side of capitalism. I don't know about any of you, but I'd MUCH rather spend the time to read a thousand *pages* written by Stephen King than a thousand *words* written by Stephenie Meyer.  
So, yes, I am very happy Amazon is making this change. 
Happy Reader Sad Reader
(Ok, this is actually from "The
Neverending Story" & if you remember
correctly, the reason Bastian is crying is
because Atreyu's horse, Artax, has just
died in the Swamps of Sadness. The truth
is that this is exactly the kind of
emotional outpouring authors love).I predict that this will (eventually) encourage authors to put more effort into writing better quality books of all lengths since page turning will be the new gold standard rather than one-click wonders. Content, not mere marketing, will be a better determiner of a writer's paycheck, which is the way it used to be before eBooks changed everything. And better content means happier readers, which in turn means more readers. For everyone. After all, there is a reason indie authors have a reputation for poor quality, & this move will definitely help thin the herd. 

I'm sure this sounds harsh, even greedy, but after the last few years of watching hacks steal my hard-earned money, I say good riddance to the shorty scam-artists & hello to my bigger piece of the pie. It also means poorly-written books might be downloaded but not read all the way through, and therefore not earn as much. Under Amazon's new system, it seems to me that more of the money will go to the best authors rather than the best marketers. 


Do you agree? Am I out in left field on this one? I'd love to hear you thoughts in the comments.