As some of you might know, one of my streams of income are few hundred ebooks spread over dozen pen names. They are mostly under 100 pages, some are cookbooks, or reference books that people do not read cover to cover but simply rent using KDP lending library to get information.
Previously, each time a person would borrow one of my books, I would receive $1.33. That amount would add up very fast.
With new changes, it is 0.006$ (0.6 of a cent) per page read.
If what you are writing are page turners, you might make similar amount to before, but only if you have about 250 page books at a minimum.
Cost for KDP Unlimited members does not change, its still 10 dollars per month to read all they can from books in KDP library. KDP library membership is not mandatory either, but so far I saw only benefits to it.
But with this new change, top 10% of authors will simply remain at same level, while bottom 50% will have even harder time struggling to make their ... $500 per year. Yes, folks, that is what more than 50% of Kindle authors fail to break. A $500 per year barrier. And if I was trying to promote few books rather than having hundreds out there, I'd be making less than that as well. I do not buy reviews nor do I waste time trying to cheat the system just so I can claim "oh, I have a best seller". I know exactly how to, and I'll tell you.
To have New York Times bestseller you need around 3000 hardcover sales in one week. There are 52 weeks in a year, and if you look at statistics you will notice that some weeks that number can be up to four times higher. Just like your electricity bill, same weeks are slow weeks every year. You pick one of those, and you spend all you ad dollars and effort getting people to preorder your books and to buy them exactly during those seven days. Preorders count as day one sale.
If you really need your one and only book to get read, then this makes sense. If you diversify its utter waste of time and money. Especially if you hire agency to help you. Three thousand hardcovers are about 90,000$. Agency fees are 25,000-50,000$ for ones I'd find trustworthy and reputable. If your book sucks ... or you somehow manage to get bad publicity like guy I just checked out on Goodreads who had 5 star rating for his terrible book, but he decided to badger and insult some poor person who gave him one star rating until thousands came to give him one star ... you might not even get your investment back. And that is not including time you spent writing, editing and formatting book itself.
It does not take money to make money, but it does take a lot of money to make a lot of money.
No comments:
Post a Comment