Are Kindle Unlimited Royalty Changes Unfavorable for Authors?

My eyes hurt from all that reading.

Panzer was awakened from his afternoon nap by loud hissing and snarling. Our kitty boy hopped into the Panzermobile and headed into the Catosphere. Following all the noise lead him to a new Amazon announcement about their royalty payment to authors in the Kindle Unlimited program

 First our fearless kitty stopped at the Publishers' Weekly site. There in a post by Calvin Reid he learned that according to an Amazon announcement they have changed their royalty terms for KU. Amazon said they did this because authors were complaining about the previous terms. In particular authors said their royalties were lower in the plan as opposed to before they entered the plan. Based on the authors' input, Amazon made the change. However, Amazon said even with the old terms 95 percent of their KDP Select authors renewed their titles in the program.

Next our kitty boy headed over to the GalleyCAT site. There he found a post by Dianna Dilworth that quoted a post at the Melville House blog site saying the new changes are unfair to authors. Whereas in the old plan Amazon paid for a 10 percent read of an ebook, now under the new plan they will only pay for the pages actually read in an ebook.

Panzer says, "Hmmm. I was thinking of putting my new book Cat Wisdom for Humans in KU. Now I'm not so sure."

Note: Get a b-i-g cup of tea. Below are links to both posts and the GalleyCAT post contains a link to the Melville House post. So ... you're in for a l-o-n-g read.

To read the Publishers' Weekly post, tootle over to Amazon updates KU and-KOLL royalty terms

To read the GalleyCAT post, tootle over to Kindle Unlimited Royalty Changes Are Unfavorable for Authors | GalleyCat

Amazon Has Big Competition In Germany

300,000 ebooks? Let's take a look.

Panzer was out taking a leisurely trip around the Catosphere and he happened to stop in at Melville House. Our big bad kitty traveler found a post about a new competitor for Amazon in Germany.

According to a post by Sal Robinson, the players in the new competitor are the German booksellers Thalia, Welbid, Hugendubel, multi-media company Bertelsmann, and the telecom company Deutsche Telekom.  The combine has developed an ebook distribution platform and an e-reader called the Tolino Shine.

Included in the post is a link to the new distribution site, so you can check out the platform and e-reader.

Panzer says, "Watch out Amazon. The new site has twice as many books as Amazon.de."

To read the full post, tootle over to Amazon competitor

Of Amazon, Ellora's Cave and Dear Author

I don't want to know about this.

Panzer was tootling around in the Catosphere and stumbled over an interesting post at publisher Melville House's site.

Melville editor Sal Robinson's post addresses the issues with erotica publisher Ellora's Cave.  Ellora's Cave brought a law suit against Dear Author blogger Jane Litte.  Ms. Litte wrote a post about Ellora's Cave's finances.

Now my big bad kitty boy knows nothing about erotica or Ellora's Cave or their finances. What drew him to the post was the title, Is Amazon responsible for the Ellora's Cave fiasco? Most of the post is about EC's finances. In addition, there are some interesting points included about Amazon's search algorithm and its possible impact on EC's sales. However, there are other points about why and how the search algorithm might not be picking up EC's books in the potential buyers' searches.

Panzer says, "Do you suppose Amazon is responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs? They seem to be responsible for every other bad thing that's happened in the world."

To read the latest about the destruction of the world as we know it by Amazon, tootle over to Melville House