Kindle. KU. Paperback. Now What? Readers & Writers, What's it Mean? Writer: WHAT DO I DO? HELP! How Do I Make Money?

I Have Questions

Kindle, KU, ISBNs, and the Glamorous Economics of Indie Publishing

You have a Kindle.

You purchase eBooks, usually for considerably less than their papery cousins.

Cool.

You may also have Kindle Unlimited. If a book is included, you can borrow it through your monthly subscription and tell yourself it was free.

Also cool.

But what does all this mean for the reader—and for the author?

When You Purchase an eBook

When you buy an eBook, the author earns a royalty from the sale.

You do not have to keep it on your Kindle for seven days, pray over the device, or sprinkle holy water on it. Just don’t read the entire book and then return it as though it arrived with a defective transmission.

If Amazon refunds the purchase, the sale becomes a refund, and the author’s royalty may be reversed.

Fair enough if you bought the wrong book or the file is genuinely defective. Less fair if you read all 387 pages, enjoyed yourself, and then returned it because apparently authors survive on printer ink and optimism.

When You Borrow Through Kindle Unlimited

First, a small distinction: You did not purchase the book through Kindle Unlimited. You borrowed it through your subscription.

Amazon pays participating authors according to the number of Kindle Edition.

Normalized Pages—KENP—actually read.

That means merely borrowing the book does not pay the author.

Opening it and abandoning it after three pages pays the author for approximately three pages.

Reading half pays for roughly half.

Finishing it pays for the pages you read through the end.

You do not need to perform frantic ceremonial page-turning. Read the book normally. If you enjoy it, keep going. If you finish it, read through the ending instead of returning the book from the 70-percent mark because you have already guessed the murderer.

The author does not receive the eBook’s regular purchase royalty from a KU borrow. The author receives a share of the monthly KDP Select fund based on pages read.

A Word for Authors Who Have Clever Ideas

Do not repeatedly buy, borrow, or page-flip through your own book in an attempt to inflate your sales, ranking, or KU numbers.

Amazon has systems intended to detect manipulation. It also prohibits authors from rewarding or compensating KU subscribers for reading pages.

In other words, do not wave a sparkler at the fraud-detection machinery and then act surprised when something catches fire.

Author Copies Versus Retail Copies

Author copies are sold to you at printing cost. You do not receive a royalty from them because you are not paying a retail price.

They also do not qualify for free or Prime shipping. Naturally. Amazon can deliver a twelve-pack of paper towels to your porch by sunrise, but your own books must travel by mule caravan.

Retail copies are different. They are purchased through the regular Amazon listing, may qualify for Prime shipping, and generate a normal paperback royalty.

Depending on your book’s printing cost, list price, quantity, and shipping charge, purchasing retail copies can occasionally cost less than ordering author copies.

Do the actual math before ordering:

Author-copy total: printing cost × number of books + shipping

Retail-copy total: retail price × number of books − royalty received

Compare the final totals. Do not assume the author-copy button is automatically cheaper simply because Amazon labeled it helpfully. We have all met Amazon.

If you temporarily price a paperback lower for a launch or promotion, you may find that buying a reasonable number of retail copies for signings costs about the same as—or occasionally less than—author copies after shipping.

Do this to obtain inventory, not to manufacture a bestseller ranking.

Paperback royalties vary according to the list price, royalty rate, and printing cost. KDP provides a calculator, which is more dependable than staring at the ceiling and hoping arithmetic happens.

Stop Comparing Your First Book to James Patterson

You may see established authors with tens of thousands of reviews, expensive Kindle editions, hardcovers priced near $30, bookstore displays, posters, tours, and publicity campaigns.

Remember that you are not operating under the same business model.

Major traditionally published authors may have agents, editors, publicists, sales teams, distribution representatives, and publishers arranging at least some promotional opportunities. Their publisher pays production and distribution expenses and then pays the author according to the contract.

Indie authors have more control, but also get to perform nearly every publishing job known to civilization.

*You are the writer.

*You are also the publisher and project manager.

*You either create or hire someone to create the cover.

*You revise the manuscript.

*You arrange developmental editing, line or copyediting, and proofreading.

*You format the eBook and print interior—or hire someone who knows why one invisible paragraph mark has pushed Chapter Twelve onto another continent.

*You handle metadata, pricing, uploads, proofs, corrections, marketing, awards, direct sales, taxes, and reader communication.

Control is lovely.

Control is also sitting at your computer at midnight trying to determine why a font has turned into a black rectangle.

ISBNs, Barcodes, and Other Tiny Numbers

You do not need IngramSpark merely to publish a book on Amazon.

IngramSpark is an optional publishing and distribution service that may be useful when broader bookstore, library, international, hardcover, or wholesale distribution is part of your plan. KDP also offers Expanded Distribution for eligible paperbacks, although availability through a distributor does not guarantee that a bookstore or library will order the book.

You do not need three ISBNs for one paperback.

You need a separate ISBN for each format or substantially revised edition that requires one.

For example:

• Paperback: one ISBN

• Hardcover: a different ISBN

• Revised paperback edition: usually a new ISBN

• KDP eBook: ISBN optional

Handle audiobook identification after choosing your audiobook distributor, because requirements differ by platform.

You do not need to purchase an ISBN barcode for a KDP print book. Leave the proper blank area on the back cover, and KDP can add the barcode automatically at no additional cost.

You also do not need to obtain an ASIN yourself. Amazon assigns the ASIN when it creates the product listing.

KDP offers free ISBNs for paperbacks and hardcovers, but those ISBNs may be used only through KDP, and the listed imprint will be “Independently published.”

That may be perfectly adequate for some authors.

However, if you want your own publishing imprint listed—or want greater control over where that edition is distributed—purchase your ISBN through Bowker, the official ISBN agency in the United States.

Buying a block usually costs less per ISBN than buying them individually, which is one of the few publishing expenses that occasionally rewards planning ahead.

Copyright Without the Mysterious Middlemen

Your original manuscript is protected by copyright once it is created and fixed in a tangible form. You do not have to pay anyone to “give” you copyright.

Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is nevertheless valuable and may be necessary before bringing an infringement lawsuit involving a U.S. work.

You may register a published or unpublished manuscript. For access to certain statutory damages and attorney-fee remedies, timely registration matters—generally before infringement or within three months after publication.

Use the official U.S. Copyright Office.

Do not pay a suspicious website called something like Instant Global Copyright Protection Gold Supreme merely because it has a seal, an eagle, and a countdown clock.

And Then There Is the Actual Book

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to produce the strongest book you can.

That means plot.

Continuity.

Characters with recognizable human motivations.

Professional editing and formatting.

A cover that signals the correct genre.

And preferably not twenty pages of backstory before something happens.

Writing romance?

Men may notice that a woman is beautiful, but they are not generally composing six paragraphs about the ethereal shimmer of her eyes while someone is shooting at them.

Women may notice that a man is attractive, but please, in the name of all that is holy, postpone the detailed appreciation of his abdominal muscles until no one is actively bleeding.

Survive first.

Admire the musculature several moments later.

Will You Make Money?

Possibly.

If your only objective is immediate, dependable income, publishing may not be the wisest business choice. There are easier ways to earn money, including almost anything involving a time clock and someone else supplying the printer paper.

Coffee money?

Certainly possible.

A utility bill?

Also possible.

A mortgage?

Harder.

A full-time living?

Some authors achieve it through strong books, substantial backlists, consistent releases, careful marketing, and years of work.

You may be the next Christy Barritt, Ted Dekker, or Francine Rivers. Do not sell yourself short.

Just do not build your household budget around becoming one of them by Thursday.

Write the best book you can.

Publish it professionally.

Learn the business.

Keep going.

And stop crying.

Trust me. It could be worse.

You could still be trying to get the page numbers to begin on Chapter One, not the title page.

Before You Set the Manuscript on Fire

When you are ready to throw your manuscript out the window and set it ablaze, remember this:

Sharknado spawned six movies and a three-film spinoff trilogy.

Fifty Shades of Grey was savaged for its writing, sold millions of copies anyway, and became a movie franchise despite a famously painful adaptation process.

And someone came up with Amish Vampires in Space.

Then Amish Zombies from Space.

Then Amish Werewolves of Space.

And people bought them.

The sequels even won awards.

So take a breath.

Your manuscript is probably not the worst thing ever written.

More important, “strange,” “unlikely,” and “not what everyone else is writing” are not necessarily problems. Sometimes they are the entire selling point.

Fix the plot hole.

Cut the four unnecessary pages describing the kitchen.

Make certain the dead body does not change eye color halfway through Chapter Nine.

Then finish the book.

Readers have embraced tornadoes full of sharks and Amish werewolves in outer space.

There may yet be hope for the rest of us.