Having reported in our last edition that Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select per-page payments will be adjusted for local pricing conditions, we’re now seeing calculations that the October per-page payout will be $0.004809—less than half a cent.
As you may know, Amazon sets the total KDP Select Global Fund amount monthly. The amount for October has been set at $12.4 million—up from $12 million in September. In November’s payments, authors will see the first effects of the new territorial/national adjustments.
Morris Rosenthal at FonerBooks.com notes that the per-page rate on KDP Select borrows stood at $0.0058 in July, when the per-page and Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) program was instituted. “So in four months,” Rosenthal writes, “the royalty has dropped by a tenth of a cent per page, which is getting close to 20 percent.”
Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch noted, “The total pool of money paid out has grown $900,000 since July (+8 percent)—while pages read have gone from $1.99 billion up to $2.58 billion (+30 percent).”
Bottom line: While this month’s change in per-page payout isn’t upbeat news, it may have less effect on authors’ take-home pay than the internationally varied rates going into force this month. And those coming effects might be more anecdotal and harder to parse because territorial sales appeal may differ widely from author to author.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
