Thursday, August 17, 2017

SENSES NOVELS – DEATH BY AMAZON - GOODBYE, DEAR FRIENDS


This blog post is aimed primarily at those of you who have downloaded and read the Senses Novels through Kindle Unlimited. I have made the difficult decision to remove all of my books from the KU program.

For the past few months, Amazon has been increasing the combined fund from which the authors of books in the KU program are paid. At the same time, they have been reducing the amount that those authors are being paid. At one time, authors in on Kindle Unlimited were paid ½ cent per page read or slightly more. Lately, we have been paid less than .004 per page, not .004, LESS THAN .004. That is a 20% or more reduction. How would you feel if YOUR boss cut your pay by 20%? This means that for a 250-page book (if you read it from cover to cover), we are being paid less than $1.00!

That is horrible pay for an author and harkens back to the days of the pulps, more than 80 years ago! I care about my readers, and I am not writing to get rich, but writing still takes my time and effort.

I am going to start the process of removing my books shortly, though it may take some time for them to disappear from KU since it has to be done at the start of their 90-day cycle. Still, as most of you know, I am working on books five and six in the series, and these will not be placed into the Kindle Unlimited system at all.

For those of you who only download and read my books from KU, I apologize that I feel it necessary to take this action. I know that I am not alone in doing this, I am aware of at least three other authors that are a part of the same organizations that I am who are doing the same thing.

If you are upset over this action, you can voice your displeasure directly to Jeff Bezos at jeff@amazon.com. I’m sure he’d love to be swamped by your emails.

As I stated, it will take some time for all of the books to come out of the KU system, so if you have friends that are in Kindle Unlimited you might want to let them know to grab the books now.

KM

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