Kindle Unlimited is Amazon Kindle’s brand of a lending library. For $9.99 a month, a reader can join the Kindle Unlimited program. Any book sold on Amazon with the little “Kindle Unlimited” link can be “borrowed.” The book appears on the Kindle reader you use.
I enrolled Members of the Cast for Kindle Unlimited, having no real idea if this works for authors. Amazon puts the money they get from Kindle Unlimited users in a pot and pays by the page read. So, it doesn’t matter if one reader reads your 300-page book or if 300 readers read one page—your pay is the same. At an average of $0.0045 per page, that would come out to $1.35 for each time the length of your book is read.
The graphic shows the first week of sales for Members of the Cast. Today is the first day of no book sales, but 404 pages were read today. (It was 705 two hours later. Folks are reading.) The book is 250 pages long, so more than one reader enjoyed the book.
Is Kindle Unlimited a good idea? Each author must make that judgment. It may get the book before more eyes. If your book is a page-turner, you will get paid for many pages. If your book doesn’t excite the reader, you may get $0.0045 for the single page read. It could be that the customer loves your book and buys a paperback for her/his mother. How much do you believe in the readability of your book?
Post Script: One Year Later
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