- Kindle direct publishing tax information for free#
- Kindle direct publishing tax information full#
- Kindle direct publishing tax information series#
"Indies would do well to avoid Kindle Unlimited for one simple reason: it requires KDP Select exclusivity," Coker wrote. "It requires them to make their books exclusive to Amazon, which means they can't distribute to Smashwords, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, Oyster, and others."Ĭoker further laid out his thoughts in a blog post Friday, titled " Is Kindle Unlimited Bad for Authors?" Smashwords provides 250,000 e-books each to both Oyster and Scribd. "I think it's a bad deal for authors," Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, the leading self-publishing platform for e-books, said in an email. Amazon CEO Jeff BezosĪmazon's global fund was increased from $1.2 million to $2 million for the month of July but can be changed next month, as can the 10 percent threshold that determines whether an author racks up cash for a user's download.
Kindle direct publishing tax information full#
Analysts estimate the Prime program has as many as 25 million members.Īmazon says on its website that Kindle Direct Publishing Select "authors and publishers will earn a share of the KDP Select global fund each time a customer accesses their book from Kindle Unlimited and reads more than 10 percent of their book - about the length of reading the free sample available in Kindle books - as opposed to a payout when the book is simply downloaded." Offering payouts based on percentage is similar to how competing subscription services Oyster and Scribd operate, though both services offer a full list price payout, which the author dictates, once the threshold is reached.
Kindle direct publishing tax information for free#
That service contains many of the same titles as Kindle Unlimited and is available for free to any Amazon Prime member, though with a limit of one e-book per month. The money comes out of a pool set up by Amazon that's shared among both its new unlimited service as well as its Kindle lending library. Self-published authors earn money depending on the amount of their book users actually read through. (However, Amazon has refused to disclose the terms of deals it reaches with large publishing imprints that would outline how much Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins earns from subscription downloads.) That agreement translates downloads into direct payouts to the publisher, and the deal transferred over to Kindle Unlimited by way of the companies' contract, Scholastic spokesperson Kyle Good confirmed. Publisher Scholastic, for instance, has a deal with Amazon for using the "The Hunger Games" e-books across its Kindle platform. That means most of its titles are not carried on the backbone of special arrangements hammered out by publishers with Amazon, but are subject to the more arcane elements of Amazon's terms of service.
Kindle direct publishing tax information series#
Amazon and the power of its terms of serviceīeyond the handful of notable series - many trumpeted on the home page, like "Harry Potter," "The Hunger Games," and "The Lord of Rings" - Kindle Unlimited is overwhelmingly self-published content. What's unclear is how authors will stay afloat in an Amazon system that may soon be dominated by a Spotify- and Netflix-style subscription structure. With Kindle Unlimited, Amazon is again going to great lengths to reel customers into its e-book platform, and to snuff out the competition.
Now the e-commerce company is trying to stave off competition from a growing number of e-book upstarts that are cozying up to those very same publishers, as well as to self-publishing authors, with subscription models that distribute the wealth more freely. That's given CEO Jeff Bezos the freedom to flex his muscles when dealing with the traditional publishing industry, evidenced by the running dispute with French publisher Hachette. That program requires authors to restrict the availability of their title to Amazon's Kindle platform for up to 90 days at a time in exchange for higher royalties on e-book sales - sales ostensibly undercut by the availability of these books on Amazon's growing number of e-book lending services.Īmazon by some estimates controls as much as 65 percent of the digital book market.
But more than 500,000 of those titles are self-published works through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing Select program, according to industry newsletter Publishers Lunch. Kindle Unlimited offers downloads on more than 600,000 e-books, as well as thousands of audiobooks, for $9.99 per month. Amazon's Kindle Unlimited e-book subscription service, unveiled Friday, raised new questions about how much the company pays its army of self-published authors and the methods it uses to do so.
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