The plight of Friday...

It seems my Friday update schedule might be something that done for a time.  That being said perhaps I should just confirm there will always be a Tuesday update and from there I may add additional ones as I see fit.  It seems like a good enough idea to give it a try and see where it turns out.

So, this weekend Amazon announced the KDP Select Global Fund breakdown along with letting authors know what they'll be paid for their copies which were enrolled and checked out through the program.  I had enrolled the short story collection "Escaping Sanity" in the program to try it out.  As with many people, I firmly believe that we should be willing to try everything once.  This seemed like a great opportunity to so.

The fund started out at $3 million dollars and due to the success of the program they have added an additional $5.5 million dollars.  $8.5 million dollars for authors who were willing to allow their books to be checked out through the program.  Of course, this only breaks down to about $1.37 per borrow, that is if I did my rounding correctly.

Now, I know what you're thinking, to take that enormous amount of money and have it degrade down to $1.37 that is a lot of books. So this means the eager readers of Amazon E-books  downloaded and read over 6.2 million books this last month.   Each time the book is downloaded and read past the fifteen percent mark, (I could be wrong on the exact amount) the book gets a point.  All the points are tabulated and divided to break it down into that number.

I know I probably should be disheartened to find out that my share of it came down to around ten dollars.  But I then realized that if my book had been bought my local library and was checked out seven or eight times I would have received a total of one books royalties.  This way adds up to be more generous towards the authors than a lot of people would like to make it seem.

I've read articles in recent months which talk about Amazon fighting with publishers and groups to try to control their E-book market, pricing, etc. Now, having not been published or represented by an agent I had no dog in the fight, but a lot of their ideas seemed to make sense.  This is the way that I've perceived it and I'm sure that I could have missed some important stuff, but let me share how I see it.

First, a print book sells for more than the E-book, this to me makes sense.  If you want paper, you should be willing to pay for paper.  If you want E-ink then you already did pay for it and will continue to make the most of it.

Second, an E-book should give greater royalties to the Author. I understand there are logistics with agents, publishers, cover artists and the rest but let's keep this simple.  Being that I'm not paying Jon Doe to run his factories and to print a book I think it should be fair that I'm taking that cut.   The only costs that I shouldn't be getting as an author are the digital storage and distribution costs which are handled by Amazon.  If I have an agent for publicity and publishing then they get their cut too.

Third, this is something that I feel is important.  This gave me an opportunity to put together a collection of short works to start getting my name out there.  A friend of mine had a tentative contract with a large publisher pulled because they didn't know if she could move books.  She was an unknown and so the traditional publisher didn't feel right about extending a contract at that time.  So in a way this is a good way to try to open additional doors.  Perhaps not for the first book I put on here, but for others in the future.

Now, to finish up, I don't see myself as either a self-published author or someone seeking to be published traditionally.  I won't typecast myself as only seeking one path to publication.  I would love nothing more than to be able to find my books in a Barnes & Noble. To be able to be like Brandon Sanderson and do stealth signings of my books at airport book shops.  But all those types of considerations are a ways off still.  The old sayings ring as true now as they have in the past.  "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." and "You have to try everything at least once."