Soon, books by independent authors who self-publish on Amazon might be longer than usual. That’s because the online retail giant announced today that starting next month, authors will be paid by pages read, not by book.
Amazon announced today that users of the Kindle Direct Publishing platform will be paid based on how far a reader gets in their book. The new system will start on July 1.
The KDP sets up a Select Global Fund monthly, which will now be determined based on total pages read instead of books borrowed from the Kindle libraries. Then, individual authors will be paid proportionately, again, based on pages read.
For example, if 100 million pages are read, the fund would hit $10 million. An author who wrote a 100-page book that was read completely 100 times would then earn $1,000. But if the author wrote a 200-page book that most readers only read 100 pages of, the author would still only earn $1,000.
“Beginning July 1, 2015, we'll switch from paying Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Kindle Owners' Lending Library (KOLL) royalties based on qualified borrows, to paying based on the number of pages read,” Amazon said in a statement. “We're making this switch in response to great feedback we received from authors who asked us to better align payout with the length of books and how much customers read.”