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Trick Rather Than Treat? Kindle Unlimited Changes the Payment Rules Again

October 30, 2015
By Michael Cader

Amazon announced another changed in how they will compensate self-published authors who participate in the Kindle Unlimited subscription payment pool. In July the system switched from paying for every download to paying based on pages read — and now those per-page rates are becoming much more complicated, international, and opaque. Starting with the November fund payments, Amazon writes, “payouts per country will differ based on local country factors” as take “marketplace differences into account.” In other words, as Kindle Unlimited has rolled out to multiple countries — most recently India, where the subscription price is the equivalent of $3 a […]

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Subscription Service Blloon Closes

October 30, 2015
By Michael Cader

It’s no big surprise that European-based subscription service Blloon is officially closing at the end of October. The subscription program was spun out of ebook technology provider and platform txtr — which went insolvent earlier this year, before pieces of the operation and some of its personnel were picked up by retailer Media-Saturn — and both Blloon and txtr were run by Thomas Leliveld. The public notice says, “We haven’t been able to align with our partners to create a sustainable business.” An email from Leliveld to publishing partners notes their original model of providing limited reading based on points “was not […]

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Oyster Shutting Down, In Google AcquiHire

September 21, 2015
By Michael Cader

Ebook subscription service Oyster announced late Monday afternoon in a blog post that the company would wind down operations “over the next several months.” Publishers told us to expect this development earlier in the day, as part of a sale of Oyster. The subscription company then confirmed to Re/code that “a portion” of staff are going to work for Google Play Books, and sources told the site that Oyster ceo Eric Stromberg, co-founders Andrew Brown and Willem Van Lancker are among those who will work for Google. Sources said Google is de facto the buyer, paying Oyster for the right to hire some of its […]

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Amazon KU Payment Drops 11 Percent For August

September 16, 2015
By Michael Cader

Amazon decided — as usual, in their sole judgment, based on undisclosed data — that they will pay KDP Select authors a total of $11.8 million for Kindle Unlimited subscription reading in August. That’s up from the $11.3 million pool divided up for July. But with the money being shared across 2.3 billion pages read, Amazon’s per-page payment dropped considerably. Going down to roughly $0.00514 per page (about half of one cent) from $0.005779 per page in July may look modest visually, but as authors were quick to note on online forums, that equates to an 11 percent decrease in the […]

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Simon & Schuster Tries A Kindle Unlimited Experiment

August 28, 2015
By Michael Cader

Since Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription program launched just over a year ago, agency contracts have prevented the etailer from putting the five largest publishers’ books into the initiative without consent — though that hasn’t stopped Amazon from pulling in selected books from non-agency publishers without permission, paying for them like any other sale. But earlier in August, Simon & Schuster initiated the first known “big five” KU experiment, albeit a very modest one. Vince Flynn’s first Mitchell Rapp thriller Transfer of Power and the late author’s most recent installment The Last Man (published in 2012) have both been available for […]

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Next, Scribd Curtails Unlimited Audiobooks

August 24, 2015
By Michael Cader

Following substantial reductions in their catalog of romance titles at the end of June, Scribd announced in a blog post last Friday a substantial curtailment of the distinctive unlimited audiobooks included in their monthly subscription offering. As of September 20, subscribers will be limited to a single audiobook per month from one part of the collection. To listen to a second audiobook within the same subscription month, members will have to pay the equivalent of another month’s fee — positioned as purchasing an “audio credit” for $8.99. At the same time, Scribd says they will keep some kind of catalog […]

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