Sharing
the beginning of a message from The Authors Guild…not good for
children’s authors…stay tuned for more on this from The Authors Guild.
Starting July 1, Amazon will pay royalties to its indie authors
based on the number of pages users actually read, rather than the number
of times the book is “borrowed.” In its announcement, Amazon touted its
unilateral amendment to its terms for self-published e-books enrolled
in its Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL)
e-lending services. The change, Amazon said, is a response to authors’
complaints about the unfairness of its current single rate for all
books, regardless of length. Writers of longer works will stand to
benefit, provided those books are read in full, but it could slash the
earnings of entire classes of authors, such as poets and children’s book
writers, whose works tend to have fewer pages. The new regime leaves
intact Amazon’s unfortunate practice of paying indie authors out of an
opaque royalty pool, which pits self-published authors against one
another in a zero-sum scramble for readers. With a finite amount of
money to go around each month, one author’s gain is another’s loss.