Eagle-eyed readers might have spotted I have a new short story series: it’s called ‘Caught’ and all the books are around the theme of being, well, caught!
“The Underwear Aisle” is available now, and there’ll be a new story – “Sweating Out The Truth” – in about a week. You can get the first ‘Caught’ book – it’s called “Reflections” – for free, just for signing up to my mailing list.
Shorts are how I started out in writing erotica, and though my more recent releases have been novel-length, I still love the creative possibilities of a quick dive into something sexy. ‘Caught’ is also an experiment, too: I’ve had a fair few readers ask me a) for shorter stories, and b) for more options on Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s “all you can read” subscription.
While Kindle Unlimited readers can get “The Underwear Aisle” as part of their subscription, it’s also available for regular purchase (only on Amazon) for $2.99. Just to be clear: this is a short story. I’d like to believe my writing is worth the price of a takeaway coffee, but I also want to set expectations!
If you’re curious as to why I picked $2.99, keep reading for a longer explanation. I also plan to bundle up ‘Caught’ shorts into 3-4 title collections, after they’ve been available individually, for a discount. So, if you’re not a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, I could totally understand you choosing to wait for that!
As always, happy reading, and please do let me know what you think – my email is alexp336@gmail.com
-Alex
The longer version (for those who want more details)
Amazon has two royalty rates for self-published Kindle ebooks. For a book priced over $2.99, the author gets 70% – dip below that price, though, and the rate drops to just 35%. It’s the difference between making just over $2 on a $2.99 ebook, versus just over a dollar on a $2.98 ebook. That’s before taxes, fees, etc. of course.
Kindle Unlimited (KU) royalties are worked out differently: authors get paid per page read. Exactly what counts as “a page” (which Amazon calls Kindle Edition Normalized Pages, or KENP) is a little mysterious, but the rate varies slightly each month. However, it’s typically around $0.0045 per page: if someone reads a whole, 300 page book, the author makes around $1.35.
Clearly, an author makes more money for selling a book than having it borrowed as part of KU. The flip side is that KU subscribers are figured to be more voracious readers: there’s more chance of them reading your book if it’s enrolled in KU, whereas they might not buy it outright. The general assumption is that there’s not much overlap between buying-each-book readers and KU readers, but Amazon releases such little data on its customers that we don’t really know for sure.
A sensible reaction to that would be “Okay, well, just release everything both ways,” I know. The hiccup is that, to enroll an ebook in KU, Amazon demands exclusivity.
All the time your ebook is available to KU subscribers, you can’t offer it elsewhere: not on Smashwords, not on B&N or Kobo, not even as a download on your own website. You commit to that in 90 day chunks, and that exclusivity lasts even if you decide to pull your ebook from KU after a day. At the end of 90 days, you can either leave the ebook enrolled, or remove it from KU.
The decision to go exclusive, or go ‘wide’ (across multiple ebook stores), is a tough one. With the demise of my Gumroad store, Amazon has become the most popular place for readers to get my stories. For the moment, I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing with all my books so-far: a mix of wide or exclusive on a per-title basis, along with a regular supply of free stories too. As always, I’m definitely open to feedback and suggestions – get in touch!