Lots of Changes At Amazon

I didn't know about the pricing tool. I'll have to go check that out. Right now I have my books priced at $3.99, which seems like a fair price to me for a new author. However, the pricing tool sounds interesting.

I got the email for Kindle Unlimited yesterday as well. I am a little leery about it, I'll admit. It's one thing for the lending library to pay us based on a communal fund. That makes sense, since the books are being borrowed. However, this Unlimited thing raised my eyebrow because there is no time limit on the books. So, in theory, a customer could download our book and keep it forever, without having to pay for it. That's fine if I'm still getting my 70% royalty for the download. But if I'm getting less, I really don't see how that benefits us as vendors.

Still, I guess we'll see how it plays out. I love that Amazon is trying to make books available for readers at a low cost and I'm excited to be part of it. I just question whether this will hurt sales, rather than help them. I'm willing to give a shot.

We have no idea what sample they pull for the cover price recommendation. I look at it but just as food for thought. I don't find the estimates is gives to connect much to what I feel to be the true market forces--that being mainly specific sub-genre and competition.

It recommended 99c for two of my short stories (which were already priced at that level).

girlyswot said:

It recommended 99c for two of my short stories (which were already priced at that level).

Click to expand...

Interesting. It recommended all of mine to be raised from 99c to $2.99.

Heck, I'll give it a shot. Not getting many sales as it is... who knows?

M. H. Lee said:

Right now I think you get $2-2.50 per borrow. With infinite borrows available but the pool not increasing that much, I think the payouts may drop to 25 cents or so per title. (Just my WAG).

Click to expand...

Infinite borrows available doesn't mean infinite borrows used. And a percentage of those borrows, I suspect a large percentage, will be trade-published titles that don't come out of the monthly KOLL pool, so won't affect the payout for SP titles at all.

It's also not likely a huge percentage of people who buy books at Amazon will sign up for the offer once it kicks over to paid. There will be some, but I doubt it's a majority of readers. I'm not interested, for instance. And many who do sign up will never take full advantage of unlimited borrows.

Wait and see is the best approach. Things will be in upheaval at first because everyone now is in a free-trial. I'd give it a few months with some actual data points before you start worrying the borrow rates will be lower than their smallest possible royalty.

shelleyo said:

Wait and see is the best approach. Things will be in upheaval at first because everyone now is in a free-trial. I'd give it a few months with some actual data points before you start worrying the borrow rates will be lower than their smallest possible royalty.

Click to expand...

Well said! I agree. I think it will be a few months before we can make any kind of good judgement on this. Time will tell.

I haven't looked at the new pricing tool, but I'll go play around to see what they suggest.

As for Unlimited, it sounds a lot like Scrib but with their music option also thrown in. I'm confused on the pricing for Scrib and don't really understand how authors are paid under Unlimited either. Since I'm not a select author, I don't get included in this new program, but I would like to figure it out when/if I decide to become select.

M.H. Lee, thanks for your post. I had heard of Unlimited but not the price suggestion beta test.

I agree that your book will do better at $4.99. It is perceived value. I'm reading Influence the Psychology of Persuasion and he talks about that. I realize that some fiction writers do better if they have a book at .99, but that is a horse of a different color. That seems to work well if your book is part of a series, which non-fiction generally isn't. And also the .99 is common with fiction, so if I were a fiction writer I would likely follow that trend. But for non-fiction, I really think you will do better at $4.99

I'm eager to try the price suggestion thing and see what good advice it gives me.

I dropped my short story from $2.99 to $1.99 and sales didn't change, so I'm going to bump it back up because I get so much more at the 70% royalty. Guess people who want to read it aren't bothered by the $1 price difference.

I'm curious about Unlimited. I'd probably be fine with it for my short stories and maybe the first book in the series, but then wouldn't want the others in it.

I had a similar reaction, when looking at the price tool -- my book is currently listed at $3.99 (has been out just 5 weeks and I've sold about 85 copies). The tool suggested that the optimum price would be $5.39... and would result in 25% fewer purchases, and +5% bigger profit.. claiming that the data was based upon other similar book titles.

That extra data was interesting (25% fewer readers, 5% more profit). Obviously, given that it's my first book and I'm a self published author, I'd rather have the lower profit and the additional readership. So it doesn't lead me to change my current approach.

Also, with regard to unlimited, my initial gut reaction of being automatically enrolled in it as a participant in KDP was negative. And my second, more thoughtful reaction was also negative since it is part of the KDP program. Unless I see evidence that it will be a benefit, It's definitely a deterrent to me re-enrolling in KDP when the time comes around.

That being said, if I had a short story collection--or when I have my first sequel out, I may find the idea more appealing if I see/hear any evidence that it's helping expand readership.

SamCoulson said:

Also, with regard to unlimited, my initial gut reaction of being automatically enrolled in it as a participant in KDP was negative. And my second, more thoughtful reaction was also negative since it is part of the KDP program. Unless I see evidence that it will be a benefit, It's definitely a deterrent to me re-enrolling in KDP when the time comes around.

Click to expand...

Assuming you mean KDP Select, why would being automatically enrolled in Unlimited be a problem? It's really no different from borrows in Select, and you chose to opt into Select. Or maybe I'm missing something...

Before, I don't think you automatically opted into the lending library by joining select. I believe there was a check box for "do you want to make this book available in the Kindle lending library."

WriterBN said:

Assuming you mean KDP Select, why would being automatically enrolled in Unlimited be a problem? It's really no different from borrows in Select, and you chose to opt into Select. Or maybe I'm missing something...

Click to expand...

Raly is correct. As part of the KDP select, you can choose to opt in or out of the lending library. However, I was auto-enrolled in Unlimited. Part of the whole draw of self publishing is that we have a bit more control and flexibility--so the forced opt-in made me sneer.

Additionally, I'll say, in the last 5 weeks I'd had zero movement on the lending library on my book--just straight sales. Today, I have three lend's/unlimited accesses already--which one can reasonably assume is due to Unlimited being implemented.

Again, not harping on it necessarily because I'm a fan of exposure in any form, but not having an opt-in choice or an opt-out option is a tally in the minus-column for renewing with KDP Select after my initial 90 days comes to a close.

M. H. Lee said:

They were actually allowing people to leave Select early if they wanted to because Unlimited launched with no real warning. I took advantage of that option for one of my story combos.

And I thought when you were in Select you were automatically enrolled in the Prime-related lending program? It's just the loan it to a friend for two weeks part that's optional but not always? I want to say depending on royalty rate?

Click to expand...

Yeah, all books in KDP Select become a part of the KOLL. That's the point. You can't opt out of that.

Books not in Select that are earning a 35% royalty can be opted out of Kindle-owner to Kindle-owner lending.

M. H. Lee said:

They were actually allowing people to leave Select early if they wanted to because Unlimited launched with no real warning. I took advantage of that option for one of my story combos.

And I thought when you were in Select you were automatically enrolled in the Prime-related lending program? It's just the loan it to a friend for two weeks part that's optional but not always? I want to say depending on royalty rate?

Click to expand...

They were? I totally missed that option.

If I remember right the lending program is optional. Maybe not though.

cwbrowning said:

I got the email for Kindle Unlimited yesterday as well. I am a little leery about it, I'll admit. It's one thing for the lending library to pay us based on a communal fund. That makes sense, since the books are being borrowed. However, this Unlimited thing raised my eyebrow because there is no time limit on the books. So, in theory, a customer could download our book and keep it forever, without having to pay for it. That's fine if I'm still getting my 70% royalty for the download. But if I'm getting less, I really don't see how that benefits us as vendors.

Click to expand...

Bolding mine.

In theory, that's possible, but I don't think it's very likely.

While customers can read as many books as they like, they are limited to ten at a time on their Kindle/KindleApp.

When they've read at least 10 percent of the book, it counts as a borrow. (Of course, it only counts that once for that Kindle -- a re-read doesn't count as another borrow.)

When a customer stops subscribing they lose access to any books borrowed through Unlimited still on their Kindle/KindleApp.

After using their Beta pricing program, I wound up increasing the prices of a couple of my books---the second two novels in my SF series. To make up for it, I made the first one in the series free for a week. We'll see if the reduced number of sales is made up for by the increased royalties. I'm considering increasing the price of the first novel after the free week. Haven't decided yet though.

So, I was on my bookshelf tweaking my keywords and finally remembered to check out this new pricing tool! LOL It recommends listing both my books at $4.49. They are currently at $3.99. I'm not sure it's worth it for an extra $.50. I don't doubt the math or the science that the good folks at Amazon used to calculate the number, but I'm wondering if $.50 will make that big of a difference.

Has anyone followed the pricing the tool and seen any drastic change to sales yet?