I’ve never actually played Dungeons and Dragons, but one of the pieces in play, as I am told, is something called the bag of holding, which you can get anything you want out of. It reminds me a bit of the mother’s bag in Swiss Family Robinson, which that wise woman had packed full of sundry items before abandoning ship to be marooned on an island with her family for twenty years. More recently, I discovered the tale of Aoife’s skin while I was researching Manannan Mac’Lir for The God’s Wolfling. In this tale, he kills his wife while she is in swan-form, makes a bag out of her skin, and whoever reaches into the bag can draw forth what they really need.
I’m reminded of the old admonishment, be careful what you wish for. You might get it. The Genie in Scheherazade’s tales of Arabian Nights was a most literal being. So are computers, come to think of it. Unless you define your parameters, you might not like the results of your wishes.
So I am cautious, when presented with the latest in bright shiny prospects. It might be an opportunity, a chance to reach into the bag and pull out the tool I need for the job at hand, and there might be a beartrap in there ready to close on my fingers.
It’s not that I don’t trust Amazon, it’s that I don’t need to trust Amazon. When presented with the latest and greatest reason to sign onto KDP select with my books, I’m mulling it over from a business standpoint before I plunge right in.
So here’s the skinny, for those of you who have been hearing rumors. Amazon rolled out a Netflix-like subscription service for books, Kindle Unlimited. You can read or listen to as many books as you want for only $9.99 a month. What a deal, especially if you are a reader like me who can consume more books at a sitting than I care to admit.
What’s the catch? Well, every time a subscriber reads more than 10% of an author’s book, they get paid. In full, at 70% royalty. {edited} The author is paid out of the general fund Amazon maintains for their lending service, and they have added $800,000 to it in anticipation of this new fund. Hurrah! It’s similar to the Prime lending library, which also pays authors really well when they are borrowed and read. So this is a big plus for authors, to participate in this program.
However, in order to enroll, you must have your books in the KDP select program. Which means that your books are exclusive to Amazon. And here is where I stop and start contemplating the concept from all angles. I do have some of my shorter works in the Select program. Short stories and novellas just don’t sell outside the Amazon store. By enrolling them in Select, I can offer them free or ‘on sale’ from time to time, giving my readers a perk, and boosting my fan base every time I offer a free book.
But I had not done this with my novels, not wanting to put all my eggs in one basket. Amazon is a great distributor. They pay me well, put my books in front of a lot of customers, pay me in a more timely and transparent manner than any other outlet… can I rely on them to continue like this? I hear a lot of booing and hissing targeted at Amazon right now. Publishers, and the authors who have huddled under the traditional publishing umbrella for protection, are feeling threatened by Amazon’s business plan. One of the frequent things you will hear in any discussion about Amazon is “They are going to lower their royalty rates!”
They might, in time. It’s entirely possible. But they haven’t yet. I loved what our own Sarah Hoyt had to say about the fearful reactions: “Agents and publishers hate Amazon, Natch. What I can’t understand is why writers should. Let me see, the wolf should hate the wolf-hunter. But why should the rabbit also hate the wolf-hunter?” And although I’m not thrilled with the way they operate when it comes to the Select program, I also must face that: one, I can leave any time I want to, and second, I make well over 90% of my sales through Amazon. What about my nook readers? Well, I publish on Amazon DRM free, and not too long ago on this blog published instructions on how to download, convert to epub, and side-load an ebook onto a nook. It’s not convenient, but I need to maintain a perspective between the idea that I am a businesswoman, and I am a woman who want to make everyone happy.
Am I going to convert all my books to KDP Select and take part in the new program? I’m not sure yet. I may wait and see a little. But not too long… I’d love to give new readers a chance to pick up Vulcan’s Kittens on sale in 2 weeks when I release The God’s Wolfling. Then early next year, when I release Dragon Noir, do another special. Plus, it would be a lot of fun to see what happens with the subscription service. I may buy into it myself, with as many books as I read for reviews and pleasure. More than I should, less than I wanted to, to answer your question on how many!
Mad Genius Club 
40 responses to “Bag of Holding”
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I need to double-check but I think the new program gives you a share, like Prime, rather than full price.
I finally put mine on Select because I realized I was too lazy to put it up elsewhere, so I might as well avail myself of the benefits. Like I scheduled a two-day freebie that will hopefully coincide with giving Charlie and the Oyster another shot at promoting it, unless I really screwed up, just to try the system out.
Double-check completed. You earn a share. https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=AA9BSAGNO1YJH
“Once a customer reads more than 10% of your book, or a Kindle Owners’ Lending Library customer downloads your book, you’ll receive a share of the KDP Select Global Fund. ”
I also just filled out the affiliate thing. Although I expect within three years I’ll be paying account maintenance fees….
Yes, you are correct, I wasn’t sure when I wrote this yesterday, and I will edit that. I still think it could be useful, especially as Amazon announced they are adding a large sum to the general fun in anticipation of this program.
Account maintentance fees? Want to elaborate?
Oh, if you go something like three years without generating enough referrals They’ll change you $10 or whatever you’ve accumulated, whichever is less. This is for the associate/affiliate program.
Just had some fun trying to update my book links on my wordpress site. WordPress deletes the iframe insert code, but if you just include the link that the iframe would have gone to, wordpress generates their usual amazon cover shot.
Yes, WordPress really really doesn’t want us the blogger to generate ad income off our sites – they want that for themselves. I need to finish moving my site to my webhost so I can use fancy ads.
Actually, the end result was exactly the same as if I’d just stuck the unadorned ASIN link in a post. It just took some figuring out to do it. And I can understand why they might not want people sticking iFrames in the middle of blog posts. It might screw up their precious narrow formatting.
I’ve got all my stuff in the program. It’ll be interesting to see if having everything available for free all the time will generate as much borrowing as the random “free for five days” promos. I doubt it . . . but the people who do borrow will be more likely to actually read it.
I wonder how quickly we’ll see the results? Any of you who join the program, please go grab one or two of mine and at least click through 10% (or read it–you might like it!) and I’ll report in a month or so.
I saw when I was looking yesterday that your stuff is in there! I haven’t signed on yet, but I will be getting your most recent when I do, to read 😉
We’ll all have to figure out what works best for each of us. At some point we’ll all probably start _not_ putting our new stuff onto the select program, if it pays less well than sales. Could be we’ll win with more borrows than we’d have sales anyway.
Dang – I have read all of your books and waiting for more. I did buy full price. lol
If I can write a book now (some personal things happening) I would cautiously put my next book up on KDP and try it out. As for the reader part of me, I am yelling yeah… I was disappointed in the very beginning when they didn’t offer unlimited ebook reading.
Kindle Unlimited is a good thing for readers, esp. if they are sideload/DRM strip/format convert savvy and thus have back up copies of everything they download. As a reader I can certainly eat all I want of the Kindle Unlimited bucket, since I can easily “return” any books after I process them.
I have a problem with that business model, because other tech-savvy folks can do the same, so the 10-book limit won’t apply to them. So Amazon must hope to make its money from everyone else.
As a writer, I have real problems with a “forced” (at least, more strongly “encouraged”) exclusivity arrangement. I can’t put only book 1 of a series in Kindle Select, since folks who can’t buy book 1 on other platforms are unlikely to buy the other books there either. In fact, if I put anything associated with a series on Kindle Select (and not all of the series), it’s a problem for buyers on other platforms. (And while Amazon may be the majority of my sales, it’s nowhere near 90%, so I don’t want to cripple my other channels.)
If I put sample stories not in a series in Kindle Select so they can participate, I have doubts about the crossover effect to my other books in the paid arena.
I price my books to look attractive compared to traditional. Long novels: $5.99 for book 1, $6.99 for rest-of-series. Kindle Unlimited will not pay me anything approaching the 70% I get for that — it will force me into the $2.00 range of profit, as if my books were priced at $2.99. That’s less than half what I would make, and I don’t see my discoverability as being any better (they already have 600k books there).
I ain’t buying it. Here’s my prediction. People will still search for books the way they do now. When they look at an individual book, they’ll make a buy/no-buy decision which will be partly based on price/Prime-member borrow (free)/Kindle Unlimited-member borrow (free). Either the book will be worth the price or it won’t. I suspect the actual contents in Kindle Unlimited will end up as (1) regular books by people who cut off their other channels in general (Amazon’s hope), (2) standalone (sample) works for prolific authors (dead or living), or (3) low-end cheapies that will acquire a reputation that may not be always in their favor.
Time will tell. Books that appear to be free (via Prime lending/Kindle Unlimited) are not always valued.
Time will tell indeed. I’m going to wait and see. I have some stories in the program, as they were in KDP select before anyway, for promotional purposes. I don’t price my books very high, novels I keep under $5 as that is a known impulse purchase level, and shorts may well be the big winners in this new program, as readers may be more willing to pick up short stories and novellas for ‘free’ than they would be to pay for them.
I’m at the point where my sales are so small any exposure is a good thing. So I’ll check this program out, and see happens. I suspect that in the long run, I’ll opt out. The exclusivity is inconvenient, even if, like Dr. Mauser, I’m too lazy to aggressively convert to every platform.
I keep a list of URLs of recent “I mean to buy… when I can talk myself into ignoring the price” books. Of the 35 there, only 3 were in the Kindle Unlimited bucket. One was Indie SFF, one was Open Road SFF, and one was a guide to keeping backyard chickens.
(Anent selection issues…)
I’m right there with you. As a reader, this sounds awesome. It sounds REALLY awesome for my mother who’s on a fixed income and loves to read more than anything else. We get her a Kindle for her upcoming birthday (another one. She boogered up her last one), and she’s good to go.
As a writer, I’m not so sure. A lot of this will depend on what the payout per read is. For example, I seem to make more on people borrowing my two stories than I do when people buy them. That’s because they’re priced at $.99. So, if the payout is similar for this, it makes sense to have low priced stories available for reading. The payout might just be worth it for the writer.
However, with the dollar amount being paid out, I’m concerned that the pay for authors will just be a few cents per read. Not a big deal if millions are reading your work, but how many of us really expect that kind of readership?
So, like you, I’m withholding an opinion until we have more information. As things stand, one of my stories will probably be available for this as it’s already in KDP Select. We’ll see what happens. 🙂
I’ve got Elizabeth of Vindobona in there, but only because I’d decided to see if Select was worth it to me. I’ve had one borrow, but otherwise people seem content to exchange dollars and Euros for bytes. It’s an interesting premise, but like the rest of you, as a writer I’m not wildly excited.
I found something interesting this morning. Only my latest book, ‘War To The Knife’, is enrolled in KDP Select at present: all my earlier books were taken out of that program earlier this year. However, one of them, ‘Adapt and Overcome’, is shown as available in Kindle Unlimited, even though it’s not part of KDP Select any more.
I’ve written to Author Central’s Help desk to ask them why this is the case, and to find out whether authors can enroll their books in Kindle Unlimited even if they’re not part of KDP Select. I suspect there are some bugs still being worked out of the system.
it would be terrific if they decide down the road to let us opt-in without having to be in Select. I wonder if enough of us asked?
Do you know, now that I think about it, I hope not.
Because this means the Traditional Publishers are not in the pool, competeing with us. It’s not “Shall I borrow and read the latest Tom Clancy, or this complete unknown?” I wonder if Amazon has any idea of how much their customers branch out and add “Lets take a chance” to their usual reading habits?
I am certain they do. And you have a point here. Right now KU is weighted toward Indies, with enough ‘big names’ to draw readers in with books they are already comfortable with. You need that with a subscription service. I looked into Scribd as a reader, and backed away as it didn’t have many books I really wanted to read. The bulk of the Scribd library that I could tell at the time (about a year ago) was public domain, which I could get free elsewhere. Amazon has the benefit of a huge stable of books to roll out and attract readers.
I was thinking about this today as I was looking for a song I wanted to buy. I’d heard it on Pandora, and was smitten. Now, in the past I’d zip into the iTunes store and pcik it up, but… I’m a Prime member. I hadn’t really played around much with their music, but today I saw they have an app for the music to go direct to my phone and tablet. Since I went away from having an iPod, I haven’t had a direct-sync option for this. I bought the song from Amazon rather than iTunes. (Racing the Sunset, by Philip Wesley. Lovely classical piano piece). All the giants rise and fall, given time.
I wonder if it was intentionally weighted toward indies, or if this is an artifact of their releasing early when the news services piled on the beta page being left up? Given more time, would they have tried to include Hachette and Random Penguin?
FWIW, they already have the KDP sales report modified for Kindle Unlimited, which kind of surprised me. I guess I’ve dealt with other companies for too long, because I’ve seen many of them launch something, while not everything was ready for prime time. Amazon clearly isn’t one of those.
Yes, I saw this, and my first ‘borrow’ recorded, this morning. I’m going to be watching and listening, I’ll report back here in due time. 🙂
Please do. I don’t get borrowed a lot, which isn’t particularly surprising since both of mine up are short. Why waste your one borrow a month on a novelette?
In that way, this could be very, very good for short stories, especially since that 10 percent threshold hits a bit quicker than a 100K word novel.
This was my… maybe third thought after hearing about the new program. I really don’t sell many of my shorts (ok, looking at the last couple of months, ANY) in other venues. Yes, I’m often the scapegoat for the group, as I don’t mind experimenting and possibly damaging my income in search of new data (it’s not my primary source of income).
“After the Blast” is KDP select. So far, it’s sold about 750 copies in just under 90 days.
“Drift”, however, went up through Draft2Digital. It’s also sold about 11 copies total. Exactly ONE was outside of Amazon. It’s been out just a month less.
I’m not really sure what this means precisely, but coupled with what you say, I see no reason to put shorts up on anywhere else except possibly as an anthology.
Wait – you’ve dealt with my company before? 🙂
Entirely possible.
Of course, plenty of companies take that approach, so it’s difficult to know.
I just looked at the details for how to read the books and you can only read the books on kindle devices, not on kindle apps(like kindle for pc). That means that I wouldn’t be able to read them since I use a nook, and I can’t sideload them either. So the program only affects kindle users. I don’t intend to buy a kindle at all, so I couldn’t subscribe to the program.
I hadn’t gotten that far, and interesting… I don’t read on a Kindle, although Sanford does. I use my phone and tablet. That alone would keep me out of the program.
No, I just looked, and you can read on any device, with the apps. Amazon’s site says this: “Kindle Unlimited Any Device
You don’t need to own a Kindle device to enjoy Kindle Unlimited. With our free Kindle reading apps, you can read on any device with the Kindle app installed. And of course, you can always read on your Kindle. With Kindle Unlimited, you can take every word, every sentence, every story, everywhere you go.”
Not true. I don’t own a Kindle. I download to Kindle for PC, and on to Calibre from there. Works fine.
As a Nook HD+ owner I don’t even need the instructions, I can run the Kindle app so for all but the lowest end Nooks it’s not an issue.
As for Amazon Select I’m on the 30 day trial but I’m iffy about it as a reader. I think I may wind up using it more for shorts that at $1.99 aren’t very competitive with novels at $3.99 in terms of bang for the buck (I’m reading a short by Sarah that way for example) so I suspect not doing novels while doing shorts might work.
The evidence for KU as a revival of a short story market, and a viable option for those, is growing. Thanks!
Completely off conversation, but on Title subject: a Bag of Holding is like flat-space technology, it holds more on the inside than the outside appears to be able to hold. Hewards’s Handy Haversack, on the other hand, does have lots of useful things you can pull out of it. Sorry, AD&D nerdness took over.
I look forward to hearing reports on the Kindle Unlimited, though, my husband only has one novel up on Amazon, and it is apparently in the new program. “Star Mountain Sons: Honour on the North Lake.”
Check out Doraemon’s magic pouch, on his stomach, from which he produces almost anything and everything as needed. Even he seems to be surprised sometimes at what he pulls out. Note: I am not a fan, just an innocent bystander, but almost everyone in Japan knows a little about Doraemon. I think I got it right, though.
FWIW — I thought I would investigate Kindle Unlimited, since everyone seems to be talking about it. However, when I clicked on “learn more” Amazon happily showed me a wonderful page of things — but also showed me a banner saying “We’re sorry. Kindle Unlimited is currently only available for US customers. Please visit us again when it is available in your country.” Apparently I am not allowed in.
But! Interesting. Recommended for me in Kindle Unlimited are Hunter’s Home by Ellie Ferguson, Wings by Sarah A. Hoyt, and Trickster Noir by Cedar Sanderson? So some of you may have books in there, whether you know it or not?
Did you know those books were in Kindle Unlimited?
I did know… I put Trickster into the program out of curiousity, to see what would happen.
[…] Cedar wrote a post about Kindle Unlimited. There is a lot of good information in it about the program. However, as she […]