Amazon made their monthly report to KDP Select publishers over the weekend, electing to add $2.5 million to the compensation pool for October reads/borrows through Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. But the most closely watched number by authors — the amount paid per read — declined again, to $1.33. That’s the lowest amount paid per read since KOLL began in late 2011. Authors were paid $1.52 per read for September (on 3.29 million reads), and $1.54 per read for August, the first full month of the Kindle Unlimited subscription program. As usual, authors’ opinions are mixed on Amazon’s forum and Kindle […]
Subscription
Scribd Adds Audiobooks to Their Subscription Plan
Scribd substantially expanded their subscription reading service on Thursday morning, adding a collection of more than 30,000 audiobooks titles, available for unlimited streaming and downloading as a part of their regular $8.99 subscription service, alongside the ebooks they have offered since October 2013. In contrast to the ebooks, which are mostly backlist titles, the audiobook catalog includes frontlist titles as well from many of the participating publishers. The biggest named participants are HarperCollins and also Scholastic from the trade publishing side (so the Hunger Games trilogy is there), as well as Blackstone Audio and Naxos. The audio collection is supplied […]
Digital: Diversion Launches Romance eBookstore; More Kindle Unlimited; Start Buys Cleis; and More
Digital publisher Diversion Books has set up a new division “to go deeper into the romance vertical,” EverAfter — which has launched an ebookstore and reader app on iOS and Android. “Exclusively dedicated to romance ebooks,” the store offers over 100,000 titles from traditional houses and self-published authors. They promise “flash sales, special pricing, recommendations and thousands of free ebooks” for romance fans, along with curated categories of recommend “essential titles.” The app is licensed from Page Foundry, which develops mobile ebookstore apps for clients including HarperCollins’ Book Perk; the Indie Reader Bookstore, the Chicago Tribune’s TribBooks. All titles are […]
Harlequin Makes 15,000 Backlist Titles Available on Scribd In Exclusive
Harlequin has joined its new corporate parent HarperCollins in signing on with ebook subscription service Scribd, entering into a one-year agreement to provide 15,000 backlist titles. Unlike many previously announced deals, however, Harlequin has made Scribd their “exclusive subscription partner.” Featured bestselling authors include Debbie Macomber, Robyn Carr, Susan Wiggs, Heather Graham and Shannon Stacey. Scribd will also be making the full Harlequin catalog available for individual purchase in the Scribd retail store. “Harlequin prides itself on being an innovator in the digital space, so I am thrilled that this partnership with Scribd will help us to meet our readers where they […]
Amazon Rolls Out Kindle Unlimited In UK, At £7.99 A Month
On Wednesday Amazon launched their Kindle Unlimited subscription program in the UK, charging more on a relative basis, priced at £7.99 a month (or a little over $13, or 30 percent more than the US version). The offering is otherwise very similar to the US version, featuring a licensed deal for Harry Potter and a pay-by-the-book deal for Hunger Games, but no Lord of the Rings (which is controlled by Harper in the UK, rather than Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Most of the books are KDP self-published titles and Amazon Publishing books, with some titles from independent, non-agency UK publishers. We […]
Scribd Enters Digital Book Discovery Fray; Same-Day Service from BN & Google
Scribd relaunched what it dubs its “new browse experience”, the company’s try at digital book discovery to complement its existing subscription program, which now boasts 500,000 titles (with Princeton University Press, Samhain, and National Geographic among the most recently added publishers.) The browsing capability is available at Scribd’s website and in the coming weeks through its various mobile apps. Scribd vp, marketing Julie Haddon told us in an interview earlier this week that the company enlisted a “50-person team of scientists, book publishing experts, librarians, and marketers”, as well as a small editorial staff, to “work out the ideal browsing […]