Wal Mart does that on a regular basis. They make so many orders from a given supplier that the supplier ends up dependent on their orders and would go out of business without them. When it gets to that point Wal Mart then insists on regular checks from the supplier or they will put out of their contract and destroy the business.
So do Tesco and Asda (which is owned by Walmart), and probably Sainsbury, Morrisons, Waitrose and M&S. It's part of the reason that Tesco's recent accounts were so out of wack. (Yes, I listen to 'Wake Up to Money' on the radio. Do not judge me.
I always half thought the purpose of Kindle Unlimited was precisely to put a good 75% of self-published authors out of business, to cut down the signal to noise ratio on Amazons self-published section. Because it seemed pretty inevitable that was what it was going to do.
I'm curious about how the payment model works for Kindle Unlimited. I assume that an author (or publisher) gets a pre-agreed fee every time one of their books is "borrowed" in a similar way to how it works with lending libraries. But with such a model there is no way that fee can ever be as high as they could get from a sale, simply because people who subscribe to an unlimited option are a) likely to be reading a lot and b) going to borrow a whole lot more books than they would ever buy in a month.
I think Amazon put aside an arbitrary "pot" for the payments, and then shared it out amongst the people whose books are lent out.
Of course, the difference between this and Spotify is that people don't tend to read the same book numerous times. So 60p for a single is matched by someone listening to the same song 60 times on Spotify, but you can't make up the numbers the same way with lending/buying books.
(There are books I've read multiple times, but it's a very different pattern.)
Just dig a bit of digging and it seems I was wrong. The fee received is similar to that from the average sale, however, a) the sum seems to be decreasing and b) there is a requirement for your book to be exclusive to Amazon, so there is no possibility of selling it anywhere else.
Oh and also you only get paid if the reader reads 10% of your book, although I suppose that is reasonable as lot of people will download books they never get around to reading.
Yeah, I raised the problems with this when it first came out -- http://andrewhickey.info/2014/07/18/why-you-will-not-find-my-books-in-kindle-unlimited/ -- and the problems are essentially the same as in the earlier KDP Select thing. They're trying to become a monopoly and a monopsony simultaneously, and relying on authors to simply trust that they will do the right thing. I think it's *very* dangerous.
Comments 8
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Of course, the difference between this and Spotify is that people don't tend to read the same book numerous times. So 60p for a single is matched by someone listening to the same song 60 times on Spotify, but you can't make up the numbers the same way with lending/buying books.
(There are books I've read multiple times, but it's a very different pattern.)
Reply
Oh and also you only get paid if the reader reads 10% of your book, although I suppose that is reasonable as lot of people will download books they never get around to reading.
Reply
They're trying to become a monopoly and a monopsony simultaneously, and relying on authors to simply trust that they will do the right thing. I think it's *very* dangerous.
Reply
Leave a comment