Kindle Unlimited Royalty Changes Are Unfavorable for Authors

By Dianna Dilworth 

Amazon's Kindle DeviceAmazon is changing the way it pays authors royalties for participation in its Kindle Unlimited e-book lending library. The new model is less favorable for authors.

Beginning July 1, Amazon will no longer pay royalties on books that were downloaded and read at least 10 percent through the program. Instead they will only pay royalties on pages that are actually read. “We’re making this switch in response to great feedback we received from authors who asked us to better align payout with the length of books and how much customers read,” Amazon explains on the KDP site. “Under the new payment method, you’ll be paid for each page individual customers read of your book, the first time they read it.”

Melville House points out that this is unfair to authors as “an author with a traditional publisher will receive royalties on each hard copy of the book sold to libraries (or a percentage of the e-book sold at a library rate).”