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Kindle Unlimited Funding Pool Grew in July 2017 as the Per-Page Rate Dropped

July is the last month before the new KENPC changes take affect, and it went out with a bang. Amazon reported yesterday that the funding pool rose by $1 million in July 2017, to $19 million.

At the same time, data collected by Self-Publisher Bibel shows that the per-page rate decreased significantly from June 2017, from 42 thousandths of a dollar to 40 thousandths.

That is a drop of 20% in the per-page rate so far this year (January’s rate was 00.4754 cents), leading some authors to announce they are quitting KU.

  • US: $0.0040 (USD)
  • Germany: €0.0027 (EUR)
  • UK: £0.0031 (GBP)
  • Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy: €0.0040 (EUR)
  • Canada: $0.0040 (CAD)
  • India: 0.0785 (INR)
  • Brazil: R$ 0.0098 (BRL)
  • Japan: 0.5001 (JPY)
  • Australia: $0.0035 (AUD)

P.S. Here’s a list of the monthly funding pools. It does not include the bonuses paid out each month.

  • July 2014: $2.5 million (Kindle Unlimited launches early in the month)
  • August 2014: $4.7 million
  • September 2014: $5 million
  • October 2014: $5.5 million
  • November 2014: $6.5 million
  • December 2014: $7.25 million
  • January 2015 – $8.5 million
  • February 2015: $8 million
  • March 2015: $9.3 million
  • April 2015: $9.8 million
  • May 2015: $10.8 million
  • June 2015: $11.3 million
  • July 2015: $11.5 million
  • August 2015: $11.8 million
  • September 2015: $12 million
  • October 2015: $12.4 million
  • November 2015: $12.7 million
  • December 2015: $13.5 million
  • January 2016: $15 million
  • February 2016: $14 million
  • March 2016: $14.9 million
  • April 2016: $14.9 million
  • May 2016: $15.3 million
  • June 2016: $15.4 million
  • July 2016: $15.5 million
  • August 2016: $15.8 million
  • September 2016: $15.9 million
  • October 2016: $16.2 million
  • November 2016: $16.3 million
  • December 2016: $16.8 million
  • January 2017: : $17.8 million
  • February 2017: : $16.8 million
  • March 2017: $17.7 million
  • April 2017: $17.8 million
  • May 2017 :$17.9 million
  • June 2017: $18 million
  • July 2017: $19 million

Self-Publisher Bibel

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Comments


Marion Gropen August 16, 2017 um 9:56 am

Do you have a list of the per-page rates, historically. Isn’t that more relevant than the total pool?

Anthony Pero August 16, 2017 um 11:50 am

I’m not sure it is more relevant. It might be equally relevant.

Marion Gropen August 16, 2017 um 1:24 pm

When we’re looking at when any given self- or micro-publisher should participate, the trend in per page reimbursement is what will determine how much they get. And that’s a major factor in making that decision.

I have a feeling that the per-page trend is a slow decline, but I don’t know. I suspect that Amazon is well aware of that fact, which is why they always headline the increases in the size of the pool.

Marion Gropen August 16, 2017 um 1:29 pm

Just checked: in early 2015, the rate was nearly .6 of a cent per page. It went up and down, but ran around .5 of a cent in 2016. And in 2017, we’re looking at .4 of a cent. Any guesses about 2018?

Allen F August 16, 2017 um 1:48 pm

Well, as kindle thinks my 130K word story is 490 pages, that’d be $1.96 for the read, better than I’d get for a sale if I’d trad-pubed the thing, and about what I’d get if I was selling the ebook on Amazon at $2.99.

(As I’m 'wide' I can’t play the game, but if I could it’d have to drop a bit more before I’d say it was a bad deal.)

Anthony Pero August 16, 2017 um 1:51 pm

"per page reimbursement is what will determine how much they get"

No, per page reimbursement x pages read determines how much they get. The very fact that the pool of money has gone up, but the per page amount has gone down means that more pages were read. In other words, there was an increase in potential audience. Whether or not the increase in potential audience offset the decrease in payout per page is completely dependant on how good an authors work and platform is. That calculus will be different for each author, of course.

J R Tomlin August 16, 2017 um 2:35 pm

True if you happen to be a scammer.

Marion Gropen August 16, 2017 um 4:54 pm

Technically, that’s correct.

Have you found that the average reader is changing how much of the average book that he or she reads, as the amount per page shifts?

It’s not intuitively obvious to me why that might be.

If they are NOT reading more (or less) as the per page reimbursement shifts, then that factor is a fixed multiplier for the per page number, and won’t change the math.

Other relatively unchanging numbers will include the number of sales, and the revenue per sale, that you forego in order to give Kindle the exclusive.

You’ll need to consider how many of your Kindle sales are being cannibalized by the increase in KU readers (probably quite few), and whether your KU reader base will be a fixed fraction of the KU readers, or whether the new entrants are more or less likely to be in your market segment.

Frankly, for most authors, those numbers are going to be unavailable. You’ll be forced to assume that they’re constants, and guesstimate where your greatest total revenue will be.

It could be that Amazon is juggling the numbers so that the average numbers of readers per book times pennies per page is a constant.

I can’t see any reason why they would do that, but it’s possible. I CAN see reasons why they would be doing the "slow drift down," but it’s possible that they’re not.

However, there’s no way I can see that we can get access to that number from outside of Amazon.


Allen F August 16, 2017 um 11:41 am

Those that stay will thank those promising to leave.

No horse in this race, but it’s fun to watch.

J R Tomlin August 16, 2017 um 2:33 pm

That I should be motivated in my decision by keeping someone else from making more is mind boggling. My KU income is down TWENTY PERCENT this year. That is what I will base my decision on, not whether someone would 'thank me'.

Allen F August 16, 2017 um 6:13 pm

That was a wee bit of sarcasm on my part. 😉

Of course you’ll decide for reasons other than the thanks of others who will gain by your actions. The question of course will be which will be better than the other for you.

While some say they use KU because they get more readers/followers, others only see it as a way to make some extra
money that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

Will quitting KU cause you to make more by sales than you lose from KU? The readers in KU pay one monthly fee for all they can read, will enough of them be willing to pay out more for your ebooks? If yes then wave KU goodbye, if not then you might want to stick around – even if it goes lower.

Every time the pay-per-page-read goes down we see those that claim they will quit. Funny thing is we see the same ones whine the next time it goes down. Seems they didn’t quit last time after all, maybe next time?

If they do ever quit, none of their pages were read, so less total pages read, so there’ll be more to split across the pages that were read. Sorta like a party that’s there’s more to eat/drink because some of those that attended the last party figured there wouldn’t be as much food/drink like the one last month.

Perhaps KU3 will take out more of the scammers – without also taking out any 'honest' writers. (I found it interesting over on TPV that many were calling for Amazon to just close the accounts on scammers – only to then have several 'honest' writers crying that their accounts had been closed by Amazon for no apparent reason.)

As I pointed out a bit higher, even at 'only' 80% of what you got last year, that’s still 100% more than you’d have seen if there was no KU and the same readers had read your book (or any other) at the public library.

Mark Williams Int August 17, 2017 um 5:48 am

"That’s still 100% more than you’d have seen if there was no KU and the same readers had read your book (or any other) at the public library."

Since when do we not get paid for books taken out at a public library?

Or maybe I’m imagining those payments from OverDrive, Baker & Taylor, etc.

Allen F August 17, 2017 um 11:17 am

I did say 'book', not ebook. 😉

I was trying to make a point that they may be going from 80% to something noticeably less than that.

On TPV they say they are going wide, and I wished them good luck. Some say they do better wide, some have admitted it didn’t help them compared to what they were getting being in the KU.

YMMV as they say.

Maria (BearMountainBooks) August 18, 2017 um 10:30 am

I tried KU with a couple of bucks. I make more out of KU than in (but most of that is because of other retailers). I gave it a shot a couple of times. The math doesn’t work for me.

But I do marketing across several retailers and I’ve been at this a long time. It’s tough to find opportunities. I think for some authors just starting out just going the Amazon route makes sense. It really depends on how much marketing work an author can do.


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