Kindle Unlimited

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jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Sunday 7th January
quotequote all
Anyone else (ab)use this much? I've really started trying to read as much as possible this last year and get as much value for money as possible out of it.
I'm fairly sure I cost Amazon money...

The issue becomes finding new authors I've not read, or older authors who've added their back catalog. And then sorting the absolute dross out from the gems.

I read primarily sci-fi, fantasy and fiction - any KU authors out there that you'd recommend that may have not been noticed otherwise?

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Tuesday 9th January
quotequote all
I managed 271 last year. I can't see myself exceeding that any time soon, as I had to push quite hard to reach that.

Also, see request for recommendations wink suffering from a lack of content right now

Edited by jimmyjimjim on Tuesday 9th January 14:49

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Tuesday 9th January
quotequote all
CheesecakeRunner said:
The main problem I have, especially with SF and fantasy, is everything seems to be “Part X of an eleventy-million-part-series-due-to-be-completed-in-2069”. It’s a stty trend in those genres now and puts me off a lot of probably very good authors. I don’t mind the odd trilogy but would prefer people got back to writing stand-alone novels.
The advantage is that if you like it, there's more to read smile
The drawback is that there does seem to be a certain amount of 'writing by numbers' where the intent seems to be to generate more pages and game the KU revenue algorithm. But you can usually tell if a series will be dross pretty quickly.

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Tuesday 9th January
quotequote all
It's also amazing how well-reviewed some utterly crap books can be - and I don't mean bot reviews - I've read reviews that were clearly written by a human* claiming that it was the greatest work of literature ever when I'm fairly confident I could crap out better prose.

* or near derivative.

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Thursday 11th January
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Added to the wish list (KU full currently).

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
Lewis Kingston said:
(One thing worth bearing in mind, though, is that the KU statistics only tell you the number of pages read – not complete readthroughs or reader count – so I'm just dividing the total page reads by the length of the book to get an approximate idea of how many complete KU reads there have been.)
I read an article a while back about changes to the way that KU paid the author, intended to get round the games played by authors with short stories. I think there's a minimum page count before payment or minimum percentage (10%?) before the author gets paid?

Thinking about this, that was several years ago so it's undoubtedly changed many times since then. I just found something saying the author got paid about $1.50 for an average book length. Taking that into account, I get about $30 pcm value out of my KU subscription.


jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Sunday 14th January
quotequote all
Lewis Kingston said:
My science-fiction novel, which is called Prompt Excursion, is available on Kindle Unlimited. If you do pick it up, I hope you enjoy it. smile
Glad there's a sequel in the works.

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Monday 22nd January
quotequote all
I bet that gets confused as anything when multiple devices are used for the same book.

Or, as right now I've a couple of books I'm flicking in and out of and re-reading sections of.

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Wednesday 24th January
quotequote all
In the 'xx of a series of xxx' vein, book 14 of 'Starships mage' is out. Lightweight compared to a lot of stuff, but still enjoyable.

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Wednesday 24th January
quotequote all
velocemitch said:
I think what happens with page reads is the kindle will download the read data at periods, but obviously only if its connected to the wifi, if for instance the reader takes a kindle on holiday (out of signal), it will only download when they get back and connect up to wifi again.

Yes they do make small payments, our account shows a number of different royalty payments from different countries, from both sales and KUP.

I do have a mistrust of the system though, it changed format about 12 months ago, at that point we noted a dip in of both KENP and sales. We even started to get a cluster of negative sales, ie returns, something that had never happened before in the five years of trading.
As is the done thing, please link your novel(s) on here so I can partake smile

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Thursday 25th January
quotequote all
My wife uses my KU account, but she reads on her PC and her phone, both of which are registered devices on my account.

If she had her own Kindle on a different Amazon account, it could be awkward. There's an Amazon family program; your might need to use that and associate both accounts and try that way.

jimmyjimjim

Original Poster:

7,365 posts

240 months

Thursday 25th January
quotequote all
velocemitch said:
Happy to oblige. It’s my wife’s project, 7 books in total, but this is the main seller and first of trilogy.
Just read recent review saying, ‘like an adult Enid Blyton‘ I think that’s a great compliment

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Letter-never-know-when-Ch...
Not my cup of tea, (not that I like tea) but I read some of the reviews and it's well received, so who knows in future!