Dear Reader,
So how does an independent author like me get paid? The answer is: directly from Amazon (and other book sites, if you "go wide," which I don't - I'll explain that later).
Whenever someone orders one of my books, Amazon takes their cut and, at the end of the month, sends me my cut. How much is that? For a $3.99 e-book (like my Star Riders), Amazon takes $1.28 (including VAT) and I get 70%, or $2.71. For a paperback listed at $11.99, Amazon pays me $2.40, and says printing the book costs them $4.40, and it looks like they pocket the rest.
It's different for Kindle Unlimited, in which readers pay a monthly charge to Amazon and get to read as much as they like for free (books that participate in Kindle Unlimited). In this case, Amazon pays authors by the "page," which they can do since the KU books are only available on Amazon devices like the Kindle or their apps. They define a "Kindle Edition Normalized Page" (KENP), and pay authors about half a cent per KENP. For example, Star Riders has 547 KENP, so I would get about $2.55, so it's pretty close to selling a copy to a non-KU member. Note that in order to be eligible for KU, an author must be exclusive to Amazon (i.e., not sell books on other sites, or "go wide"). With this system, if someone starts a book but doesn't finish it, I'll still get paid something, based on how far they got into the book.
One interesting thing is that I can see the KENPs on a daily basis, so I occasionally get to see how quickly someone reads a book (don't worry, I don't see any identifying data, just country). For example, recently I saw this data, showing someone plowing through all three books in eight days:
The reddish bars are for Star Riders, gold for The Rogue of Sevado, and blue for The Achaylan Avenger. I really enjoy seeing that and consider it nice feedback, that someone likes the books enough to keep reading like that (I wish they'd do a review, but still it's nice to know someone is enjoying it).
Of course, there are expenses, too, for an independent author:
- Bookfunnel (promos): $100/year
- Story Origin (promos): $70/year
- Website & email hosting: $96/year
- Book cover design: $200
- Editor: $750
Note that the last two can be a LOT more than that, but that's what I paid for my last book.
Advertising costs, too. Amazon has an advertising program where I can select keywords and "bid" on them. If someone uses one of my keywords in an Amazon search and ends up clicking on my book, I'll pay them the bid (pennies). Note that someone else bidding more for the same keyword will be more likely to get their book shown in the search. Also note this isn't for a sale, it's just for clicking on my book in the search. I'm not doing this right now, but plan to do so after my next book comes out.
So what's the bottom line? I'm still in the red overall. I could advertise more aggressively, but it would take a lot of time and I'd rather devote that time to writing (even though it still takes me a LONG time to finish a book). I probably shouldn't say it, but it's not really about the money for me.
