Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited pays self-publishing authors based on number of pages read, and those payouts—determined after the reading takes place—took a recent nosedive. The March 2023 per-page payout was .00406 cents per page, nearly hitting the lowest rate ever reported. In February 2023, it was .00443 cents per page. (See the history of rates here.) Self-publishing author Lindsay Buroker recently tweeted she’s planning to remove her titles from the program because exclusivity to Amazon is “starting to not be worth it.” Read her Twitter thread.
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.
