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Post by Daniel on Jan 15, 2015 8:30:54 GMT -5
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Post by Suzy on Jan 15, 2015 11:12:57 GMT -5
Select was only one month old when it took off big time. I don't buy the 'wait and give it a chance' stuff.
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Post by Miss Terri Novelle on Jan 15, 2015 11:20:34 GMT -5
I hear him talking but have not seen any action to prove that they are doing anything different with KU six months in.
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Post by Suzy on Jan 15, 2015 11:30:18 GMT -5
I hear him talking but have not seen any action to prove that they are doing anything different with KU six months in. Except lower the royalty month, by month... |
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Post by Pru Freda on Jan 15, 2015 11:47:38 GMT -5
Hmm. He talks like a politician - not actually answering the questions and slithering about in platitudes.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2015 12:54:12 GMT -5
Interesting...I have to wonder how successful they want KU to be. I wonder if they would be more likely to make more revenue from subscriptions or selling books. His tone is kind of lukewarm about the negotiations with the Big 5. It makes me wonder who really won that battle.
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Post by Daniel on Jan 15, 2015 15:42:40 GMT -5
Love these responses. We are such a cynical crowd. "Yadda, yadda, yadda. Sure Grandinetti, let's see Amazon put some money where your mouth is."
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Post by Suzy on Jan 15, 2015 15:57:31 GMT -5
It's a bit like the Irish saying 'live, horse and you'll eat grass'.
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Post by Miss Terri Novelle on Jan 15, 2015 16:12:27 GMT -5
Yeah, $.04 cent raise in payout this month. $1.43
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Post by Suzy on Jan 15, 2015 16:17:44 GMT -5
My sales are improving daily since I took my books out of Select. Especially in the UK, which is odd, considering the 20% tax hike. I have put two books back in, the #1 in my historical fiction, but not the sequel. Ditto with my Scandinavian detective duo, but that's all. And the books I put into D2D are beginning to move.
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Post by scdaffron on Jan 15, 2015 16:17:59 GMT -5
Hmm. He talks like a politician - not actually answering the questions and slithering about in platitudes. Lynda gets extra credit points for using the phrase "slithering about in platitudes." I love it  |
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Post by Alan Petersen on Jan 15, 2015 20:21:33 GMT -5
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Post by Daniel on Jan 16, 2015 8:06:53 GMT -5
Lucky for us, Amazon claims to see KDP authors as customers, not investors. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2015 9:29:02 GMT -5
KU is not nearly as successful with authors as they claim.
I have five very short stories, originally one short book, in KU because I wanted to have something in. The collection is also available, but not in KU.
So, those five "books" are among the 95% that stayed in KU. Yeah. But my longer books will never come near the program.
In my opinion it was a transparent sucker deal from the beginning. We have to accept all kinds of restrictions and become exclusive, while their commitment is that they'll pay us whatever they think is fair. What's next? Selling us a bridge in Brooklyn?
But since KU is not nearly as successful as they claim, and they need the content to lure readers into the all-you-can-read-buffet, chances are payouts will stay relatively high for the time being. But in the long run:
Stick, stick, carrot, stick, stick, stick, stick, carrot, stick, stick, bullwhip, bullwhip, sorry we're all out of carrots.
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Post by Miss Terri Novelle on Jan 16, 2015 11:00:05 GMT -5
I agree. It looked like there was some statistical manipulation in their recent email about the next KU payout. It felt like they were trying to encourage authors to submit longer books by saying that those books were doing well. Maybe for them but not for us.
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Post by Daniel on Jan 16, 2015 11:23:03 GMT -5
Yep. They whipped out the aggregate statistics on us. As in, lies, damn lies, and statistics. Aggregates never represent the experience of an individual.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2015 14:22:21 GMT -5
Yep. They whipped out the aggregate statistics on us. As in, lies, damn lies, and statistics. Aggregates never represent the experience of an individual. Yes, as in "Nine out of ten participants in a mass rape enjoy the experience." |
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Post by Hsin-Yi on Jan 16, 2015 19:06:42 GMT -5
Yes, as in "Nine out of ten participants in a mass rape enjoy the experience." Ha! HA! Ha! This is brilliant! |
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Post by Hsin-Yi on Jan 16, 2015 19:13:12 GMT -5
I agree. It looked like there was some statistical manipulation in their recent email about the next KU payout. It felt like they were trying to encourage authors to submit longer books by saying that those books were doing well. I think this is due to all the bad PR from all the people (both on KBoards and elsewhere on blogs that I've seen) saying that KU is just full of erotica, shorts and scamlets... whether that's true or not, it can't be good for Amazon's image to have a library that's known for that. You know, the whole "mud sticks" thing. And especially about erotica. It's the irony about sex - everybody is happy to make money off it but nobody wants to be associated with it. Amazon know that KU will only be attractive to subscribers and RE-subsribers if they can say there are lots of quality content and "proper" books and so they're keen to stamp out this growing belief that KU is full of shorts & erotica - and the only way to do this is to convince authors that it's good for their longer books too. What I find really interesting is that for a company who is as famously mute as Amazon about lots of things, they felt necessary to send out such an email with all these stats and points made. It smells strongly of "the lady doth protest too much". Whatever they say about the success of the programme, the fact that they felt the need to publicly address things like % of authors renewing and length of books and income of authors growing... says something - even if the programme is doing well financially for them, they obviously feel that SOMEthing is detrimental enough to need a PR management exercise. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2015 19:52:13 GMT -5
I agree. It looked like there was some statistical manipulation in their recent email about the next KU payout. It felt like they were trying to encourage authors to submit longer books by saying that those books were doing well. I think this is due to all the bad PR from all the people (both on KBoards and elsewhere on blogs that I've seen) saying that KU is just full of erotica, shorts and scamlets... whether that's true or not, it can't be good for Amazon's image to have a library that's known for that. You know, the whole "mud sticks" thing. And especially about erotica. It's the irony about sex - everybody is happy to make money off it but nobody wants to be associated with it. Amazon know that KU will only be attractive to subscribers and RE-subsribers if they can say there are lots of quality content and "proper" books and so they're keen to stamp out this growing belief that KU is full of shorts & erotica - and the only way to do this is to convince authors that it's good for their longer books too. What I find really interesting is that for a company who is as famously mute as Amazon about lots of things, they felt necessary to send out such an email with all these stats and points made. It smells strongly of "the lady doth protest too much". Whatever they say about the success of the programme, the fact that they felt the need to publicly address things like % of authors renewing and length of books and income of authors growing... says something - even if the programme is doing well financially for them, they obviously feel that SOMEthing is detrimental enough to need a PR management exercise. This, but I think the long term plans of Amazon might be somewhat more complicated. They need full length genre books in KU (the bargain bin). Consider the average voracious genre reader. They probably have about a dozen Favorite Authors on their ABL (Automatic Buy List). These books they MUST have. But, alas, there comes a time when they have read every single book by every Favorite Author. While their favorites are writing their next release, they need a fix. Before KU they bought Indie genre books at an average of $2.99 a pop. Let's say 4 books a week. Over a month (4.33 weeks) this amounts to $51.78. Enter Amazon and KU. Now our reader needs only $9.99 to get as many fixes as they like. They save $41.80. Which means their truly favorite authors can raise their prices. Eh… nobody curious how Amazon and Hachette came to an agreement? Couldn't it have been something like Amazon saying, "Listen, we have this thing which will collect all those indie books that claim the readers' budget. Readers will love it and they will have more money to spend on your books. Trust us. Give us a year to lure them into this thing." Of course in the long run a payout of $1.43 a borrow is unsustainable. That's why I think that by the end of the year payouts will have been lowered to between $1 and 50¢. |
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