Kindle Unlimited Payout Drops Below Half a Cent Per Page in October 2015
The Kindle Unlimited payout for October was 0.4809 cents per page, and as you can see from the chart to the right that is the lowest payment Amazon has offered since switching to the new model in July.
Amazon has deliberately allowed the payment to drop over the past 3 months by arbitrarily choosing just how much to boost the monthly payment pool.
Edit: a reader argues in the comments that this post is inaccurate. I disagree, but for the sake of completeness here is the counterpoint he made:
The KU payout per real book page (imaging a printed book) is about one cent per page. The KU payout of about half a cent is per KU KENP page, which is a constructed “page” to account for differences in paging in various ereader devices, phones, tablets, etc. KENP pages run about twice the count of real book pages. Also consider the following: a printed mass-market 300 page paperback book will produce a royalty in trade publishing of about 50 cents a copy–which is about 0.17 cents per page, much less than the 1.00 cents per page of KU for the same book.
Don’t forget: starting in November (this month), Amazon will adjust the payment based on the market where the subscriber is located. (I don’t know exactly what that means, either, and Amazon has declined to provide specific details.)
Here’s the running tally of monthly funding pools:
- May 2014: $1.2 million
- June 2014: $1.2 million
- July: $2.5 million (Kindle Unlimited launches early in the month)
- August: $4.7 million
- September: $5 million
- October: $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
Thanks, Morris!
image by 401(K) 2013
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