How boycotting Kindle Unlimited doesn't hurt who you think it does

There has been a lot of information thrown around the internet lately about why people shouldn't read in KU etc. etc., but I'm here to tell you, boycotting Kindle Unlimited will not hurt Amazon, it will only hurt the authors you love to support, especially indie authors!

As a soon to be published author, and someone who regularly uses KU for reading, I've looked into this issue from 'behind the scenes' and I'd love to share my findings with you.

All KU subscription funds (so, everyone's monthly KU sub fees) get pooled into one account, and then get allocated to each KU participating country, based on things like exchange rate, reader behaviour, and local KU subscription price.

Author royalties (what authors get paid for you reading in KU) are determined on a number of factors, including their individual share of total KU pages read, their book(s) total page number, and whether the book was read fully, or only partially.

Remembering that authors only get paid for the first read through in KU, so if you love to re-read, I suggest finding a different way to support the author, such a requesting/ borrowing from the library, asking for someone to gift it to you, or purchasing a copy for yourself.

The below example is direct from Amazon, and assumes that in one month there was a total of $10 million in funds available, and there were 100 million total KU page reads:

• Author of a 200-page Kindle eBook that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million x 20,000 pages for this author / 100,000,000 total pages)

  
  

• Author of a 200-page Kindle eBook that was borrowed 100 times but only read halfway through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million x 10,000 pages for this author / 100,000,000 total pages)

  
  

When it's broken down like this, it's easy to see if an author gets the majority of their income from KU, which some do, by boycotting it, you are not hurting Amazon in the slightest, you're only hurting those authors who rely on that income.

Do you read in KU? Comment and let me know!

x Tempest