|
|
Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Aug 16, 2018 1:05:01 GMT
I was reading on reddit and someone said there was a petition out there, or something, for amazon to pay by word count instead of page count. This would prevent page inflation, however, scammers would just move on to padding the word count even more. So I'm not sure if this would make a difference or not.
What do you think?
|
|
|
|
Post by prolificwriter on Aug 16, 2018 1:13:05 GMT
Only if I get paid more than I currently do by the page.  |
|
downtown
Smut Slingers
Smutslinger
The less better half of a two person publishing team
Posts: 57
|
Post by downtown on Aug 16, 2018 17:23:31 GMT
I was thinking about this a while ago, trying to figure out if it makes sense for amazon and what people would do to "scam" the system.
You'd certainly see massively inflated about the author/blurbs/newsletter signups/etc content. I assume you'd also start seeing a lot of really poorly written content as people try to stretch each sentence out as much as possible, or hire people to edit their content and add words.
I guess you wouldn't have to worry about formatting concerns anymore though.
|
|
|
|
Post by writeway on Aug 16, 2018 17:28:01 GMT
I don't get why people waste their time with petitions because Amazon has never and never will respond to a petition. They don't care what authors think. This is a risk when you are exclusive to a retailer. You become a victim to all their crap. Amazon is not changing how they pay and sure as heck wouldn't pay per word. ROFL! Please. Okay, we talk about scamming? You will see scamming if that happened. Get ready for some KU books to be 600,000 words of crap if Amazon started paying by word. It would be worse than stuffing. Amazon does not want to pay people MORE they pay as little as they can get away with and as little as authors accept. If authors take less than a penny per page why would Amazon willfully pay more?
I think people actually believe Amazon cares about authors and what they think. No. Amazon is a retailer and they will do what's best for them and what eases their pockets.
Why do you think they changed KU1? It wasn't because of readers complaining about short books. That's BS. They changed it because they figured out a way to pay authors less AND a way they can do it without proof they're doing it. Why do you think they don't tell authors how many borrows they get anymore? It's because authors would see they get way more borrows than what they make in page reads. Why? Because we know tons of people will borrow any book and many don't read them. So authors would see they might be getting tons of borrows and if they were paid by borrow like before, it would most likely be more than what Amazon is paying for reads.
Point blank. It just baffles me how every single time Amazon screws over KU authors they talk about petitions, class action suits (which you can't do against Amazon), etc. But most never talk about leaving KU. Some do but most don't. That's why Amazon treats KU authors this way. They know they won't leave. Even if Amazon dropped the rate to 0.002 you will still have people taking up for not even getting close to half a penny for all their work.
And, look, I'm not criticizing those that stay. I am just saying you can't stay in this program and keep complaining every time Amazon screws you. At some point you gotta stand up and make a change on your own and not expect Amazon to suddenly change things to appease KU authors because they won't.
(I'm not labeling this at anyone here just in general). I think it stinks how Amazon treats KU authors so I am not in KU. Until authors take more power back, it'll keep getting worse.
|
|
|
|
Post by davidvandyke on Aug 21, 2018 6:15:08 GMT
The 80% solution to this is really simple: Lower the cap to (say) 1000 KENPC. In one fell swoop the scammers lose 2/3 of their revenue. This will affect a tiny fraction of one percent of real books, and even those would be only slightly shaved.
The majority of the abuse is in the stuffed and bloated 3000-KENPC range. Cut that down, and you cut down on most of the problem. KDP should have done it long ago.
|
|
|
|
Post by possiblyderanged on Aug 21, 2018 8:33:37 GMT
What David said. I've suggested this many times before, as have others. It's the single, most reliable way of cutting down on the scamming, outside of actually making sure pages are what they should be.
Paying by the word won't make a difference, scammers going to scam. Bloating with more words. Urgh.
|
|
|
|
Post by davidvandyke on Aug 22, 2018 3:17:30 GMT
You're right, it isn't about the money per se for Amazon--but disincentivizing the scammers will help clean up the pool and their bad press.
|
|
|
|
Post by thanos on Sept 1, 2018 0:47:11 GMT
there is no solution for the issues with KU. It's fatally broken and will remain so. All of the "patches" that zon could introduce to clean up the system would send the content mills for the hills, and zon wants them around because they feed the system endless amounts of content (as crappy as it may be; so long as it has a nice cover they are happy).
amazon isn't interested in creating a store free of scammers. They just want the world's biggest (and cheapest for the consumer) bargain bin for readers.
|
|
|
|
Post by possiblyderanged on Sept 1, 2018 11:31:13 GMT
Amazon doesn't want the bad press. That sort of thing makes investors unhappy. That's why they finally did something about the worse scammers, because it started getting in the news.
If they were serious about fixing KU (as much as it could be fixed, it is a bad system), they'd drop the cap and do the other stuff many of us, like David, suggested from day one. I suspect it will end up happening, but probably not this year, as we seem to have passed the usual "Let's update KU and screw people over!" period.
|
|
|
|
Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Sept 2, 2018 3:03:29 GMT
I liked it best when they paid by the borrow. Just a flat fee per borrow, whether it's read or not. $0.25 for books under 5,000 words. $0.50 for books from 5,000 to 10,000 words. $0.99 for books from 10,000 to 20,000 words. And $1,25 for all books over 20,000 words.
Keep the unlimited amount of borrows, but only let customers borrow 1 book at a time. They have to return the book they have before choosing another one. Don't pay again once a book has already been borrowed, and one asin/story per entry - no multi-work books.
Also, let authors see when their books are borrowed.
|
|
|
|
Post by thanos on Sept 3, 2018 15:10:33 GMT
The best model would be one where amazon acquired the content; which is basically the Netflix model. Then they could do whatever they want with it. So buyout authors rather than pay them per page.
But KU has never been like Netflix, rather it's more like YouTube... open to all with a monetary reward for those who generate the most traffic.
That's the most important thing to understand about KU, is that it's basically YouTube for books.
|
|
downtown
Smut Slingers
Smutslinger
The less better half of a two person publishing team
Posts: 57
|
Post by downtown on Sept 3, 2018 16:56:05 GMT
The best model would be one where amazon acquired the content; which is basically the Netflix model. Then they could do whatever they want with it. So buyout authors rather than pay them per page. But KU has never been like Netflix, rather it's more like YouTube... open to all with a monetary reward for those who generate the most traffic. That's the most important thing to understand about KU, is that it's basically YouTube for books. They're really a combo though, no? They let the creators generate and upload content (ie. youtube), but they want that content to be exclusive to them and accessible via subscription (ie. netflix). I bet they would go full Netflix if they could, but that's a ton of risk and overhead. |
|
|
|
Post by thanos on Sept 3, 2018 17:22:21 GMT
They're really a combo though, no? They let the creators generate and upload content (ie. youtube), but they want that content to be exclusive to them and accessible via subscription (ie. netflix). I bet they would go full Netflix if they could, but that's a ton of risk and overhead. Well, I'd say they are 90% YT and 10% Netflix in terms of their mixed model. Amazon has done such a good job at capturing the market that they don't have to acquire the content. Enough authors will subject themselves to KU that there's no reason for amazon to pay more than a KENP rate. It's similar to youtube and ads... youtube feels no need to "acquire" youtube channels no matter how popular they are... they simply make money off the ads and give the content producer a small cut of that. |
|
