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Just hours after I wrote about an upcoming rental service it is now officially announced by Amazon…
Amazon is offering an e-book rental service: “Kindle Unlimited”. The “all-you-can-read” book service will cost $9.99 per month. Amazon’s big advantage here: they are offering nearly 8,000 titles in Audio-book format and over 600,000 book titles. The current Kindle Owner’s Lending Library has a one-book-per-month cap, so this could be an option for Prime users who want more access.
Lots of Competition Already
Amazon certainly enters a crowded field and will have to compete with Scribd and Oyster. Scribd, which launched a book subscription service last October, charges $8.99 for access to best-sellers, classic books and new releases from bigger trade publishers. They have 80 million users and offer works from 900 publishers. They allow users to contribute works.
Oyster boasts access for $9.95 to more than 500,000 books, but the majority of those titles come from self-publishing service companies, such as Smashwords.
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How Much will Authors Receive?
Amazon’s official announcement for writers/publishers: “KDP authors and publishers who enroll their books with U.S. rights in KDP Select are automatically enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Inclusion in Kindle Unlimited can help drive discovery of your book, and when your book is accessed and read past 10% you will earn a share of the KDP Select global fund. For the month of July we have added $800,000 to the KDP Select global fund bringing the total to $2 million.
KDP Select is an optional program that makes your book exclusive to Kindle and eligible for the following benefits:
- Reach more readers – With each 90-day enrollment period, your book will appear in Kindle Unlimited in the U.S. and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) in the U.S, U.K., Germany, France, and Japan which can help readers discover your book.
- Earn more money – When your book is selected and read past 10% from Kindle Unlimited or borrowed from KOLL, you’ll earn your share of the monthly KDP Select Global Fund. You can also earn a 70% royalty for sales to customers in Japan, Brazil, India, and Mexico.
- Maximize your sales potential – Choose from two promotional tools including: Kindle Countdown Deals, time-bound promotional discounts for your book, available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, while earning royalties; or Free Book Promotion, where readers can get your book free for a limited time.
Gigaom.com explains: “If you’re a self-published author participating in KDP Select, however, it looks as if your book can be included without your explicit permission simply under the terms and conditions you already agreed to: According to one poster on the Kindle Boards, “Books in Select will automatically be enrolled. Like the KOLL you won’t be able to opt-out if you’re in Select. You will be payed [sic] if you someone reads 10% or more of your book. The payment will come out of the same KOLL fund, just as if it was a borrow.” That “same KOLL fund” is a set pool of money from which self-published authors are paid each time their book is borrowed.”
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Author-publishers have an advantage: Amazon doesn’t have any books from the so-called “Big Five” publishers: Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Hatchette. Some of these big houses have agreements with Oyster, as well as Scribd, and are likely not cooperating with Amazon’s new service. Read also Joe Wikerts‘ commenting blog post on this.
Amazon seems to become the 21st century’s digital library. “Kindle Unlimited” could completely change the market. Why purchase individual e-Books or bulky physical copies when you can read hundreds of thousands of books for just $9.99?
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Also Available: “Kindle FreeTime Unlimited” for Children
Amazon already offers a and-curated subscription of kid-safe apps, books and videos. They explain on their website:
“Kindle ‘FreeTime Unlimited’ is the first-ever all-in-one subscription that brings together all the types of content that kids and parents love – books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows. With unlimited access to thousands of hand-picked titles for kids ages 3-8, parents don’t have to spend time (and money) guessing what their kids will enjoy, and kids can explore a world of age-appropriate content on their own – NO ads, NO in-app purchases.”
“Kindle FreeTime Unlimited gives kids the freedom to choose from thousands of the most popular books, games, apps, and shows for hours of fun and learning. Unlimited access starts at just $4.99 per month, with special pricing for Amazon Prime members from $2.99 per month.”
Screen Limits
“Many parents choose to limit their child’s screen time, but doing so without the proper tools is difficult. With Kindle FreeTime, parents can set daily limits, or restrict certain categories – like games and video – while leaving unlimited time for reading. In Kindle “FreeTime” mode, web browsing and purchasing content are also disabled.”
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After 5 Months of KindleUnlimited
Many authors are a bit sceptical if it is worth staying with KU. An excerpt from an article by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader: Author Discontent Grows As Kindle Unlimited Enters Its Fifth Month
“I took the plunge and went all-in to KDPS again. Lends almost made up the difference and KU honestly revived my older lower selling series. However, I am still down overall from pre-KU levels. As soon as my KDPS terms are up, I’m back out, baby. I may keep my older series and my 99c shorter works in KDPS for the exposure and because even $1.33 is better than $0.3465, but I’m taking my longer better-selling and higher priced books out.”
So it seems that KindleUnlimited is worthwhile for lower priced books, while higher priced are better of without.
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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,140 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.
Thanks a lot for following:
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http://www.111publishing.com
http://www.e-Book-PR.com/
http://www.international-ebooks.com/
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+
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Social Media: Is it a Total Waste of Time?
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It’s always surprising: when searching on Google for a certain word or topic, I often find our own articles and blog posts, as well as re-posted content from our Google+ sites on Google’s first page. This very high ranking on Google’s Search Engine means that users find easily our content. And if YOU, as an author, write a lot of posts, blog articles etc. – always with a link to your website or Amazon author page – you will be high in Google ranking too and more people will learn about your books.
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Total Waste of Time
Authors flock to Social Media sites to get the word out about their books. However, many writers see it as a waste of time and would rather write on their next book. Smart authors combine the best of the two worlds and post small snippets of their writing or interesting details of their research on Google+ posts. Think about it: if you combine your Google+ page with your Twitter presence, explained here in detail, you post only once on Google+ and it appears on Twitter as well. You save 50% of your time on Social Media!
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Your Goal for Being Online:
Unless you have ten-thousands of dollars every month to spend on advertising for your book, you might use the more subtle way of book marketing and meet your readers online on Social Media sites. But what would your (potential) readers be interested in or want to hear from you? They certainly want to learn more about you as a writer and they want to learn about your books and get samples of your writing. It means you can do what you like most: WRITING and at the same time give your potential readers and buyers of your book reasons to follow you and tell others, or re-post and re-tweet your content.
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Use Your Creativity
Authors often ask: “what should I post on Google+ or on Social Media sites in general?” Nothing easier than that. You can use every word, every fact, every location or scene in your book to write a short post, blog or even a long article. Even novels, such as a Science Fiction story has lots of potential to be used to write short articles. Just one example: I recently thumbed through a clients’ book and found on the first page, under acknowledgements, that she thanked the police chief of her town for giving her a tour and explaining her certain laws when she did the research for her book. Her meeting with the police chief and each one of the laws she learned about, could be the topic of a short article or blog!
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For Authors: It’s a Must to Be on Google+
Google has been using Google+ to discover new content, and many authors have discovered that URLs (links to their sites or articles), but also posts that they commented and shared on Google+ are indexed very quickly – and they find themselves often on page 1 on Google’s search results – one of the main reason to be on Google+ or to post on Google+ communities.
Compare this to Facebook, where privacy settings and restrictions on data sharing, make it rather often impossible for posts to never be crawled or indexed by Google at all. Unlike Facebook, which hides data from Google, or Twitter – which directs Google not to follow most of its links – Google+ data will be immediately and fully accessible on the Internet and readers can find you and your books easily. Each post on Google+ acts like a mini blog post and adds highly share-able, link-able context to the search engines. Last but not least: Don’t miss to link to all relevant profiles from your Google+ “About” page.
To sum it up: Use your research and your manuscript to write lots of blog posts, articles and Social Media content and post it first on your Google+ page. Combine your Social Media sites, linking to each of them. Post with one click on several of your Social Media sites, which can be done by using scheduling sites, such as Hootsuite.com or Shortening Sites, such as Bit.ly. This is just for posting your articles – not for directly connecting with your followers or readers. The time you save when linking your Social Media sites is not only time you save to write, but also some time you can spend to connect directly with your readers! Social Media = Social Networking.
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More About the Benefits of Google+
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/how-to-get-your-author-page-on-googles-page-1/
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/5-tips-for-a-successful-google-presence/
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/3-top-reasons-to-be-on-googles-page-1/
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/15-reasons-to-be-on-google/
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/how-to-get-more-followers-on-your-google-page/
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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars Or visit http://www.e-book-pr.com/book-promo/ to advertise your new book, specials, your KDP Select Free Days or the new Kindle Countdown Deals.
Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,030 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.
Thanks a lot for following:
@111publishing
http://www.111publishing.com
http://www.e-Book-PR.com/
http://www.international-ebooks.com/
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+
http://pinterest.com/111publishing/
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Posted by ebooksinternational on March 2, 2014 in Blogging, comment on posts, join the conversation, Marketing, post to public, posting, Social Media Book Marketing, Social Networks
Tags: Google+ a MUST for authors, GooglePlus is the best Social Media site, how to link all your Social Media sites, how to write great content, leverage your manuscript, Social Media Content, Social Media: Waste of Time?, your reason for being online