Delilah Waan

We’re approaching the end of #IndieAugust and the final days of the Narratess and Epic Sale of #BelovedSFFBooks sales so I thought I’d do a little financial transparency post on running a $0.99 sale as the average self-published author.

Readers, here’s a peek behind the curtains.

Petition is normally priced at $4.99 USD. Other indie books are often priced much lower, for various reasons, but I feel $4.99 USD (i.e. a coffee) is fair for my book:

• 594 Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC).
• ~115k words long
• 430 pages in 5×8 paperback

I initially enrolled Petition in the Kindle Direct Publishing Select program. That allows Kindle Unlimited (KU) subscribers to borrow the book. KU is a great deal for readers. It lets you try out as many books & authors for “free” (a.k.a. as part of your mthly subscription).

For indie authors, it’s complicated.

What authors are forced to give up when their books are exclusive to Kindle Unlimited

Whether to put your book in KU is one of the biggest decisions you make as a new indie author.

I got paid ~$0.005 USD/per KENPC (Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count) page read. A full read is~$2.97 USD. But rates are dropping. It’s ~0.0045 now.

The first & most draconian requirement: KU books must be exclusive to Amazon. The ebook CANNOT be available anywhere else. Period.

If Amazon finds that it is, your account is frozen. Even if it’s because your books were pirated.

The exclusivity requirement only applies to indie books. Trad pub books are exempt because of separate agreements with Amazon.

This made sense when Amazon was trying to gain market share but now KU is dominant. This policy hurts indie authors & readers.

Amazon also has strict ideas of how books should be priced. You must price your ebooks between $2.99 and $9.99 to receive a 70% royalty.

Any book priced below $2.99 or above $9.99 only gets a 35% royalty.

So you’d think that if Petition is normally priced at $4.99 USD, I should earn ~$3.49 USD per sale, right?

Wrong! Amazon also deducts a “Delivery Fee” based on the file size.

File size. In freaking 2024. No other platform does this.

The pricing exception is, when you run a $0.99 Kindle Countdown Deal (KCD), you can keep 70% royalties. But:

• they’re US/UK only
• the book must be in Kindle Unlimited
• plus a host of other requirements

(Amazon will still charge a delivery fee.)

How Amazon tricks readers

One of Amazon’s sneaky tactics lies in their UI design, which prioritizes the Kindle Unlimited program.

Lot of readers will click the very prominent KU button instead of the less prominent buy button, and end up borrowing the book instead of buying it as intended.

For a $0.99 sale of Petition:

• using a KCD nets ~$0.57 (70% royalty less $0.12 delivery fee)
• manually dropping prices nets $0.35

If my book were in KU, I might get accidental KU borrows, which translates to page reads at ~$0.0045/page with 594 KENPC = $2.67

How other retailers/platforms compare to Amazon

A full read on Kobo Plus nets ~$2.38 (NO exclusivity required here).

What I make per $0.99 non-Amazon sale:

• Direct = $0.97 (2.2% CC processing fee)
• Kobo = $0.58 (45% royalty)
• Google Play = $0.70 (70% royalty)
• Apple (via D2D) = $0.60 (70% less D2D 10% cut)

Direct is far and away the BEST. Readers pay no more than they would anywhere else but authors get to keep 97% and get paid the NEXT day, instead of weeks or months later.

“But doesn’t the Amazon algo rec your book?” you ask.

Good question!

Amazon’s algorithm and why it isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be if you’re just starting out as a self-published author

The Amazon “also bought” recommendations can be powerful but these days they’re often crowded out by ads.

Look at all of these ads!

Indie authors are paying Amazon through the nose for these ads. They’re very expensive to run and you often end up losing money.

The best way to benefit from the algorithm is to get enough sales to get your book into the top 100 best seller lists and “stick” there long enough for new readers browsing to find you.

But getting into the top 100 is hard, especially for categories like epic fantasy. You need a LOT of sales in a particular pattern which requires “promo stacking”. For a fee, promo sites like BookBub will send your book out to their subscribers.

Here’s Petition in the BookDoggy e-blast and in Bookspry:

Total cost: $26.90 USD

Petition also got a spot in Ebookaroo, which is free & run by the wonderful Patty Jansen. International & non-Amazon readers, this is the deal newsletter for you. Books must be available worldwide & at more places than just Amazon to be featured.

Why my books are no longer available on Kindle Unlimited

I pulled my book from KU after 90 days.

Petition is available everywhere because I want my books to be accessible to readers everywhere. And I won’t let Amazon bully me into favoring readers in a few select markets over readers everywhere else.

But Amazon is so dominant that 95-99% of my sales still come via them. At $0.35 USD royalty per sale, I need 77 to break even. At the time of writing, I’m at 63 (58 Amazon, 3 Kobo, 1 Google, 1 direct) and will be making a loss.

Most authors aren’t as fortunate as I am:

Interestingly, a lot of indie readers would prefer to support indie authors directly…

…but most authors don’t see this happening.

If 10% of the readers who bought via Amazon (6 people) switched to buying direct from my store, I’d be in the black.

And if everybody switched to buying Petition direct from me…

They get to own the DRM-free ebook file. Forever. No being locked in and held hostage by your library to a particular retailer or device.

I’d get to keep 3x the royalties—enough for a nice birthday dinner! 🎉

I’m thankful for every reader who gives my book a shot, no matter how you found me. But I thought this was important to share with you so you know your purchasing decisions matter!

---