K is for Kindle Unlimited

If you self publish your works as e-books, then making it available to the public at large is relatively simple.   Download it on or all of many publisher's sites, push the "I agree" button to their terms and conditions, and away it goes.    (Print is slightly more complicated - we shall talk about that anon).

But even with the simplicity of e-publishing, you do have to make tough decisions.   The price you set could possibly kill potential sales if it is set too high, or lose you a lot of missed income if set too low.   And you can never be sure what level is too high, and what is too low.

A further consideration is that if you give Kindle an exclusive contract for each work, you get to keep 70% of the sales income from that source - which is very nice.    For six months, my books were published with every e-book publisher out there.   But virtually all of my sales were through Amazon, and it became a no-brainer to sign up with Kindle to virtually double my income.

Then along came Kindle Unlimited.   This marketing ploy gives the reader unlimited access to everything available in the store, for one flat monthly fee.    If a KU customer reads more that 10% of one of your works. you get a flat fee regardless of your published price.   (The 10% threshold is pretty low - we typically put that amount out as a free preview for all potential customers).

The price you set for a book is irrelevant for a KU customer.   The customer is prepaid and you will get the identical amount per sale, come what may.

So the normal economic rule is reversed.   For a cash customer, the higher the price, the greater the disincentive to buy.   For a KU customer, the higher the price (and therefore the higher the assumed value of the transaction) the greater the incentive to download it.   If someone has paid a fee to get to all books, the the higher the price of those books, the more valuable the purchase of the KU membership will seem to be.

So - for a while - I increased the price of my two slowest selling books from $2.99 each to $15 each - and as a result, they did indeed start to be picked up by KU readers.    Cash sales for them went to zero, but I rationalized that that was OK on the grounds that they were not very big sellers to start off with.

Then came an epiphany - I have not set out my stall to be a niche author writing exclusively for the KU market.   So last month I reduced their prices back to $2.99 each, in line with all my other works.   The KU cash flow has dropped significantly, but cash sales have started again.   And that is OK - I really do want my books to be available to everyone, and not only to those who have a "free" pass to everything that catches their eye.