Self-published authors are not getting a lot of love this week.
After announcing last week that self published writers will no longer be paid per copy downloaded but pages read through the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners Lending Library program, under these new rules writers can be paid as little as $0.006 per page read, reported by The Guardian.
In an email sent to the authors, Amazon went into further details on how they would actually be paid:
The company said that customers of its two services read nearly 1.9bn pages in June, while it expected to pay at least $11m a month for June, July and August.
That means the payment per page read could be as low as $0.006, meaning that an author will have to write a 220-page book – and have every page read by every person downloading it – to make the same $1.30 they currently get from a book being downloaded.”
However, only a some authors will see benefits from this:
Not every author will lose out, however. Since the overall amount paid out to writers is intended to remain the same, there will be winners – mainly those who write longer books that are read in full.
That has led some to argue that Amazon intends to reduce the income of authors of shorter works in an effort to alter the composition of the library. If that is the company’s intention, Lucas argues that Amazon is missing the point.”
Who knows what Amazon’s true intentions or motives for this new payment plan. I just have a disturbed feeling that in the end the only people who will end up hurt are the writers.