I think I'm pulling out of Kindle Unlimited. Why? Well, it's really hurting me. I lose one third of my royalty on every book sold via KU. Because so many of my readers have moved to KU, the loss in income for me has been close to fifty percent.
That's a lot of money.
So my choices were, either raise the price of my books on my non-KU buyers, artificially pad my ebooks with stuff to inflate the word count and increase the KU rate (which would only work if people actually read the inflated stuff), or pull out of KU.
Also pulling out of KU will allow me to sell my books in places other than Amazon, and while I don't think I'll see a lot of sales via the other markets, if I see a one third increase in sales on my paid (non-KU) sales, I'll be making just as much money as I am now. If I see a 50 percent increase (which means I keep only half of my KU readers) I'll see an increase in my income, to last year's level.
Honestly, I'd rather not pull out of KU, but financially, KU is killing me. I just can't afford it anymore. Yes, this move could do me in as a full-time author, I'm sure I will see an initial drop in my sales. But I won't know until I try. I know the books coming out of the publishing houses are never in KU, however they seem to do just fine on their sales.
If Amazon was to offer more than half a cent per page, I think I would stay with them, the problem however is just that the KU program has been very successful for them. But not so much for me.
I hope I don't lose any of you in the process, I think my price of 3.99 is a bargain, I honestly think that even at 4.99 I'd still be a bargain, but I'm committed to try and stay at 3.99 for as long as financially possible.
Thank you all for your patronage,
-John Van Stry
John, does the KU per-word rate go up based on your base price?
ReplyDeleteQuite honestly, $3.99 vs $4.99 isn't an issue for me. And I don't do KU in part because I *want* to maximize the payment to authors. I can't speak for others, or predict whether a price increase will help or hurt, but even if you went to $5.99 I'd still regard it as a bargain compared anything from a major publisher these days; there are some new authors I won't even consider trying because I regard the majority if the publisher's ebook prices extortionate.
KU is based on the number of words read, and its amount varies from month to month, sometimes rather drastically, based on how much money Amazon puts in it, versus how many authors they have to pay out to. I think the lowest I've seen it go is about a .4 of a penny per page. Right now it's just a little bit over half a penny, but even at that 'high' rate, I'm still losing a third of my royalties on average (that's per book price, not per sales). Sales wise I'm losing even more.
DeleteI have considered rising some of my prices to 4.99, I've been giving it a lot of thought, I know that I actually sell better than quite a few people who get much higher prices and who are published through a house (after conversations with a publisher), but I honestly want to try and stay at 3.99.
This coming year will determine what happens going forwards. I may put some of my books out at a 4.99 price point, if I have to, and of course I may be signing a contract for a new series, which would go at a higher price as that would be through a publisher.
I guess I will just have to see what happens in this coming year.
And thanks for your patronage and being a fan. I really do appreciate it.
I can't tell you what will work best for you but I can tell you my buying habits. I read lot of books via KU. If I go back and want to read it a second time I'll actually purchase it. So for some of your books you gotten paid twice for me. I can also tell you I've dropped authors for moving to $4.99. The Omega Force series by Joshua Dalzelle comes to mind I bought the first 7 books at 3.99 but never bought book 8 because he raised his price. (Although I see it's now 3.99 so I might go buy it now).
ReplyDeleteThis is the age old question of volume at a discount or not. I say try it without KU and see what happens.
Mr. Van Story, some of us readers have found a loophole in Ku (kindle unlimited) : if a reader were to borrow it first, then purchase the book, the author will get the royalties from each. It has to be in that order, however. If you could let your loyal readers know somehow this could possibly help.
ReplyDeleteNow, to the mercenary side. When will the new book, the one following Future Past be out.
Book two in Days of Future Past, (Present Tense) will hopefully come out in March, if not sooner.
DeleteI know its Van Stry, stupid autocorrect!
ReplyDelete