Kathryn Le Veque, a self-published author, Says She has dropped the price of her books since the Kindle Unlimited was Introduced, but is selling more books. Credit J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times
One big argument for the “all you can eat” music, videos and Book Services Is that They Encourage people to sample new artists and ultimately developement a deeper relationship with a few of them. You listen to songs you havenever heard before Because there is no additional cost, and then maybe you go to the concert and, perhaps, buy a t-shirt. Artists are rewarded at the end of the process, Note In the Beginning The Way They used to be.
The Case Against the services, drew most eloquently by Taylor Swift Is that They teach people That culture is not worth paying for online. As a result, artists must earn Their’ll keep with something morethan Their nature â ???? Those t-shirts, perhaps. If artists do not want to or can not interact withtheir fans, They Might Be out of luck.
Traditional Book Publishers havebeen Reluctant to Participate too much into reading-subscription services, FEAR That individual books, Their authors and the editors who shape Them Will Be devalued. But self-published writers, overpriced called independent or indie writers, many of Whom Have just Begun Their careers, see little to lose. They are trying to move up the food chain, while Established writers havebeen trying not to moveDown it.
Indie writers, despite Their name, must rely to a Greater or lesser extents on Amazon, Which felt it needed to start .its own all-you-can-eat service, Kindle Unlimited, To Remain Competitive with start-ups like the Oyster and Scribd. Kindle Unlimited Opened in July. In the six months since, the Amount of material on IT HAS Increased to 700,000 books from 600,000 â ???? nearly equivalent to the entire Amount of materials available for Kindle e-readers Shortly after the Amazon Introduced them in 2007.
The vast Majority of Kindle books Unlimited are self-published. In essence, it is one of the biggest experiment in reshaping reading ever under taken. Will the Kindle Unlimited foster a new generation of readers, as Amazon hopes, Or Will it drown them in bad work? Will it put most indie authors on a treadmill of writing and Promoting That Only a few can hope to escape, Which would resemble the bad old system of publishing? Or Will it be a tool for liberation? These questions are shaking up the independent publishing community.
Kindle Unlimited might change, but it will not go away. The news late last week That Scribd had received an additional $ 22 million in financing, Bringing .its total funding to $ 48 million, I will not pass unnoticed at Amazon. Scribd Began ITS service a little more than a year ago and says it had monthly subscriber growth of 31 percent.
Kathryn Le Veque HAS self-published 44 works of fiction since 2012. Her audience is Primarily on Amazon, Which Means That When the Kindle Unlimited came along, she either had to give up or make it work. So far, she HAS BEEN Able to adjust.
First, some background: Ms. Le Veque was born and raised and still lives in Southern California. Now 50, She has been writing since she was 13 and HAS BEEN Rejected by traditional publishers since she was 28. Her favorite setting is English Medieval, Which she calls a “sub-subgenre of historical romance.” Her first work Appeared on Amazon into May 2012. Within three months, she was Able to quit her day job as an executive assistant.
Before the Kindle Unlimited, She Says, She soldier about 6,000 books a month. Since the novels were Generally long, she sets her prices at $ 4 or higher. At the moment, the Kindle Unlimited pays $ 1.39 for each bookthat ice borrowed and read. To turn Those borrowers into buyers, Ms. Le Veque dropped some of her prices to as low as 99 cents. The result: She is moving three times as many books a month as she was before the Kindle Unlimited. Her annualized revenue Has gone up about 50 percent.
In the old days, as artists Became more popular, Consuming Their works somewhat more expensive. You Could Hear a guy singing at the local bar for the price of a beer; When he Became Bono or Kanye West, A Ticket to see him would cost hundreds of dollars. Writers would begin underwriting cheap paperbacks and then graduate to the pricier hardcovers As The acclaim built.
But the Kindle Unlimited ice Pushing Ms. Le Veque In The Opposite Direction. She is getting more popular village Becoming less expensive, Which is making her more popular. She is the embodiment of Amazon’s argument that “Lowering the e-book prices willhelp â ???? not hurt â ???? The Reading culture. “
To her, however, the Kindle Unlimited is” a double-edged sword. “For one thing, as she readily concedes , not every writer is equipped to do what she did. She has a huge supply of work from all those years she was unpublished.
“I Am Able to drop prices and, by sheer volume of sales , Increase my income, “she said.” Most authors can not do that Because most of them do not have the 50 novels for sale. “
When asked why people buy frameworks They can borrow, She Says:” Most readers like to read theirfavorite books over and over. I’m getting a crowd That Not Only Borrows My Book, But will then buy That same book to keep. “Also, she says, some of her books are not available in the Kindle Unlimited,” so there are someones They must buy in order to read. “
To Keep Up with the Demands of the marketplace, Ms. Le Veque now Has a part-time editor and two part-time assistants. But She has to Consider Things That writers never used to think about. “I am worried that i willhave to drop my prices more to stay competitive,” she said. “I watch prices literally daily.”
That, at least, She has control over. But she has no control over the payment for Books That are borrowed in the Kindle Unlimited, Which changes every month. “It started very high and the HAS cases,” she noted.
She overpriced HAS to worry about the service embracing more and more work. A higher number of books in the Kindle Unlimited “is not what we want to see as authors, Because That drives down the royalty evenmore,” she said. Or So it Seems. Amazon HAS note explained retweet To The writers’ satisfaction.
So Ms. Le Veque keeps working, sometimes producing as many as 12,000 words a day. “When I’m in the full swing of writing with a deadline, I’m writing 18 hours,” she said. “My poor husband is a bachelor.” But, she added: “It does not feel like work. It feels like doing something I love. “
That’s good, Because, as Mark Coker, the chief executive of the e-book distributor Smashwords, said: “We’re still in the very early days of the self-publishing phenomenon. There are a vast number of potential writers out there thathave not started writing yet. “
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