Craig, I bought your Outcast Ops but I don<t read it through a Kindle. Does it mean you don't get paid because Amazon doesn't know if I'm reading it or not?
Well, if your bought it, I still get paid, because it's a sale. I think Amazon is tracking only the borrows, and that's because they're now paying by the page for the borrows instead of a flat fee like they were doing.
Got it off amazon.ca. Sorry to steer a bit off of your Battletech blogs but I just read your July 1st blog for your next novel and how amazon pays writers doesn't make sense to me.
Well, according to my sales stats, as of now, you're one of three people who bought
African Firestorm through Amazon.ca! O0
Amazon's payment plan, as I understand it is this:
For sales, the author(s) receive 70% of book's sale price, if it falls within a certain value range ($1.99-$9.99, I think), or 35% of the price outside of that price range. So, for a $2.99 book like
African Firestorm Rick Chesler and myself receive about $2.09 per sale.
For borrows, that's a longer explanation. It use to be (Before this month), that if a book was borrowed through the Kindle select program (which
African Firestorm is a part of) and the reader read 10% of the book, the authors would receive a fee (Somewhere around $1.30-$1.40 per book) That fee was based on a monthly pot ($11-$13 million dollars a month) divided by the number of borrowed books that reaches the the 10% level.
The problem that Amazon found was that someone who was publishing a 20-page story was receiving the same amount as someone who was publishing a 250-page book, with a lower threshold to be paid. (The author with the 20-page story would get paid after a reader read only 2 pages, as opposed to the author with the 250-page novel would only get paid after the reader read 25 pages of their novel.)
So, starting this month, Amazon is paying by the page for their borrows. It works out to about the same for
African Firestorm, so we're not losing any money, and it's actually better because the author gets credit for those readers that don't reach the 10% threshold under the old system. Comparing what we're seeing now with the previous two months, it's looking good for our bottom line.
Am I making money hand over with with
African Firestorm? No. But what I am getting is some money, enough to pay a bill or two. And I'm working on another Outcast Ops Novel right now that will hopefully increase the cash flow in the future.
I hope that answers your questions!
Craig