The Era of “Pay-Per-Page” (PPP) Begins
Since July 1, 2015 Amazon has changed the payment system for the writers who join the program Kindle unlimited, the ebook streaming service managed by the Seattle giant. Warning! This new metric doesn't apply to all streaming ebooks (for example those from publishers), but only those from authors self-published who join the KDP Select program which requires the exclusive assignment of rights to Amazon.
The new unit of measurement for the royalty payment to the writers will be the number of pages read. The previous metric, that not was tied transparently to Cover price and left Amazon a certain arbitrariness in deciding the sums to be distributed to the members of the program, she had been strongly criticized from all over the community of authors independents who had seen their revenues drop on the new service. The need to move to a more transparent and objective system was a deeply felt need.
The consequences of $0,006 a page
Amazon in presenting the new payment system communicated a statistics relative to June 2015: subscribers have read 1,9 billion di pages on Kindle Unlimited. Whereas the fondo available to Kindle unlimited has risen to 11 million dollars for the month of June, the English newspaper "Guardian" has calculated that a page read vale $ 0,006. Since there are no pages in an ebook because it is a liquid format, Amazon has developed a counting system which it explains in its blog.
By making a rather rough calculation, based on the data of June 2015, it can be seen that to obtain theequivalent of the royalties of a ebook downloaded for the price of 4,99 dollars (author royalty = $3,493) a user read 580 pages. In the case of a price a dollars 2,99 are needed 350 pages read to match the revenue of a download. If, on the other hand, the download of the ebook cost $1,99, the pages read necessary to obtain a similar royalty would be 230.
Difficult to understand the consequences of these numbers on the lives of the writers who populate this service. One thing, however, immediately catches the eye. I am favorite le works with largest number di pages. The writers will to write not only of more, But say meglio because they will have to convince the reader to follow the plot, the characters, the dialogues from the first to the last page or as far forward as possible. In a nutshell they will have to conquer thecaution of the reader. No it will therefore be about water down the contents, But say increase it qualitatively. And this is not bad as Giuseppe Granieri rightly underlines. If so far theobiettivo of one writer, a bit' cynically, could be to get bought, Now is really that of be read in full. It is not a small distinction, and this can truly be a spontaneous factor di cleanup of the offer that shifts the tick from quantity to quality. It will certainly change the way of writing as Granieri points out at the conclusion of his analysis.
Are the mammoths coming back?
- winning authors on Kindle Unlimited will be those who will publish long texts which must be read in their entirety. If we were to comment on this state of affairs we could say that they could tornare the models of mammoth of great nineteenth-twentieth century European fiction, the great novels-masterpieces of Lev Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann and ours Richard Bacchelli. It is a return that you suitable and with a certain difficulty al modern mood which tends to narrow the time frame in which a viewing, reading, listening or other experience is had.
Ci are anyway gods data collected which show that i strong readers not are frightened byextension of aopera and it would be enough to cite the success of verbose authors such as Stieg Larsson, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon or Karl Ove Knausgård to name but a few. After all i first consumers a service book streaming I'm just the strong readers.
There is also another aspect that Amazon will have to address in the future. For KDP Select authors, the clause ofexclusive right that something appears anachronistic and in sharp contrast with the opening and democratization of new services which tend to be inclusive. There are still a lot of things to fix on Kindle Unlimited.
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In Fucecchio, a village in Tuscany halfway between Florence and Pisa, a singular monument has been erected to Giuseppe Montanelli, patriot, scholar, politician of the Risorgimento and great-uncle of the great journalist Indro, also a native of Fucecchio. In the central square of the town, Montanelli stands enthroned standing on a high pillar with a right arm bandaged around the bust (to testify to the wound in the battle of Curtatone and Montanara) and the scroll of the liberal Tuscan Constitution in the other hand. The figure leans lightly on a pile of books which rises from the base of the figure to the bottom. The inhabitants of Fucecchio, who as good Tuscans are not lacking in cynicism and a taste for desecration, have renamed this monument "cacapagine". Could this state be precisely that of the modern writer? A state that Amazon, with its infinite antennas, has been able to capture and materialize.
