Amazon’s ebook subscription service, Kindle Unlimited (KU), launched during the summer of 2014, and ever since then it has been paying self-published authors for KU reads of their books from a pool of money that fluctuates monthly. Prior to July 2015, authors were paid a fixed amount for each book borrowed and read; now authors are paid for each page read.
For February, Amazon has announced the latest payout rate for self-published books read via KU: it increased to $.00478 per page, up from $.00412 in January.
Why the increase in payout? It’s a direct result of Amazon changing what constitutes an ebook page. Known as the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC), this methodology is essential for Amazon to determine how much of an ebook is consumed in a standard and equitable way across all categories and genres. In July 2015, Amazon debuted KENPC 1.0, and in February 2016 it moved to KENPC 2.0.
Under the 1.0 method, 3.641 billion pages were read in January 2016; in February, that number decreased to 2.929 billion pages. If you take into account two fewer days in February than January, that amounts to a 14 percent decrease in pages read under KENPC 2.0, as calculated by Publishers Marketplace (subscription required).
Amazon is trying to prevent gaming of the system. An adjusted KENPC has been anticipated by everyone from the start, since there is continual gaming of the Amazon KDP system by less-than-scrupulous authors who look for methods to jack up earnings by any means possible. (Consider author to be a very loose term in this context—some would simply say scammers or online marketers.)
Most recently, some ebooks have encouraged readers to jump to the end of the book in order to mark all the pages as read, or the author has placed the table of contents at the end of the book. Amazon has therefore tried to mandate that the table of contents appear at the beginning of the book rather than at the end, which has angered well-established indie authors. (It’s not uncommon for indie authors to put a table of contents at the end to generate a higher quality free sample for readers.)
Bottom line: As indie author David Gaughran commented, “One of the quirks of Kindle Unlimited is that we are all fighting for money from a fixed pot, putting us into competition with each other in a way that we aren’t normally.” The more books that unfairly collect page reads, the less money there is to go around to those legitimately read. It’s not clear yet how well Amazon can or will determine what pages are actually read versus skipped. For more in-depth commentary, read Gaughran’s post, which includes an update after he spoke directly to Amazon about his concerns.
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.
