If you haven't heard about it yet, Amazon shook the Kindle world up a bit yesterday when they started offering a new program Kindle Unlimited. For a $9.99 monthly subscription fee Kindle owners can read all of the books they want for free (as long as they're in the lending library).
Right now Amazon is offering the first month free, so I had to give it a try. By the end of day one, I bumped into one of the program rules - You're limited to borrowing ten books at one time. After that, if you want to pick up a new book, you have to give one back. Fair enough, I guess. From what I understand there are no limits on how long you can borrow a book. And the fact that you can only have ten titles on your Kindle at one time is a good thing for writers because it means if readers want to keep a permanent copy of your book, they still need to buy it.
From what I understand the program works just like KDP. When a reader selects one of your books, you share in the split of KDP funds for that month as long as the reader reads ten percent of your book. To compensate for the increased borrow volume, Amazon added $800,000 to the fund for this month.
It sounds like a great deal for authors. There's no price barrier to try your book if readers are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. All they need to do is click on the Read for Free button, and your book is sent to their Kindle.
For someone like me who's been moving my books off of Amazon to Smashwords, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and GooglePlay, this presented quite a dilemma. Sales were just picking up on the other sites, not fantastic, but I was looking at an extra hundred bucks a month from each site. However, after reading about Kindle Unlimited, and considering its sales potential, I decided to move all of my books back to KDP.
If you decide to try it, cancel your books on all of the other sites first, and then re-enroll your books in KDP. This way there's no conflict with your books being posted on other sites. Barnes and Noble removed my books in less than two hours. The rest of the book sites took from eight to twelve hours, so I was still able to have my books available on Kindle Unlimited from day one.
Here's hoping it works out as planned.
Right now Amazon is offering the first month free, so I had to give it a try. By the end of day one, I bumped into one of the program rules - You're limited to borrowing ten books at one time. After that, if you want to pick up a new book, you have to give one back. Fair enough, I guess. From what I understand there are no limits on how long you can borrow a book. And the fact that you can only have ten titles on your Kindle at one time is a good thing for writers because it means if readers want to keep a permanent copy of your book, they still need to buy it.
From what I understand the program works just like KDP. When a reader selects one of your books, you share in the split of KDP funds for that month as long as the reader reads ten percent of your book. To compensate for the increased borrow volume, Amazon added $800,000 to the fund for this month.
It sounds like a great deal for authors. There's no price barrier to try your book if readers are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. All they need to do is click on the Read for Free button, and your book is sent to their Kindle.
For someone like me who's been moving my books off of Amazon to Smashwords, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and GooglePlay, this presented quite a dilemma. Sales were just picking up on the other sites, not fantastic, but I was looking at an extra hundred bucks a month from each site. However, after reading about Kindle Unlimited, and considering its sales potential, I decided to move all of my books back to KDP.
If you decide to try it, cancel your books on all of the other sites first, and then re-enroll your books in KDP. This way there's no conflict with your books being posted on other sites. Barnes and Noble removed my books in less than two hours. The rest of the book sites took from eight to twelve hours, so I was still able to have my books available on Kindle Unlimited from day one.
Here's hoping it works out as planned.
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