KDP Select KENPs released

Since mid-June when Amazon first released news that its KDP Select program would be moving from a 'books borrowed' method of payment to a 'pages read' method of payment, I've been wondering what on earth that's going to mean for my monthly income.

Well, rather than having to wait until mid-August to find out, Amazon have helpfully released some figures this morning that may allow me to calculate out the proposed payouts.

This morning they confirmed again that the size of the KDP Select fund will be at least $11m for July, and they've also released figures to say that the total pages read (using KENPs - more on that later) was nearly 1.9 billion.

Yah. Finally some figures that aren't 'to make this easy to understand' figures pulled out of nowhere and good for nothing.

So, first things first, where do you work out how many pages your book is?

This information was released overnight (if you live in my time zone that is, God knows when YOU found out) into the KDP Select Bookshelf 'Promote and Advertise' button field. Exactly where Amazon said they would put it.

If you're used to calculating the number of pages based on a physical book, then you're probably in for a surprise.

My first novel 'Found, near water' clocked in at 366 KENPC (Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count). This is opposed to the physical page count I used previously which came in at 215 pages. My second novel 'Skeletal' clocked in at a massive 448 KENPC from a previous physical page count of 268 pages.

To turn that into word count figures it would be approximately 5.3 KENPC per thousand words. Unless you're using exclusively large words whereupon it's anybody's guess.

Now for the fun bit. How much am I going to get paid?

Making the assumption that the 1.9 billion pages read during June was based on the US billion, of one thousand million, and not the UK billion, of one million million, - in which case we're all screwed and are going to die starving in a gutter somewhere - then the formula seems to work out thusly:

$11,000,000 KDP Select Global Fund divided by 1,900,000,000 KENPC read equals 0.005789474

Multiply that figure by your individual KENPC to arrive at a payout figure for each book if read in full.

Therefore 'Found, near water' would nett me $2.11 in royalties, and 'Skeletal' would nett me $2.59.

That's a vast improvement on the $1.33-$1.35 ish I've been receiving lately.

Who'd have thought? GO AMAZON!

The 1.9 billion pages read has an element of pause for thought, though. Either there are far more titles out there with low page counts than I'd assumed, or the readers just aren't getting into the books on offer.

Either way, at this stage it looks like it might be an improvement for any writer who hasn't been trying to game the system by putting exceptionally low page count books on offer.

My main concern would be for children's books being taken out through KU or KOLL as their page counts will always be lower than young adult or adult offerings.

My current page read count (part way through day one of the new system) is currently showing at 272 KENPC read. Or $1.57 in cold, hard cash.

I just have to hope now that readers haven't been only getting through 11% of my novels before abandoning them, and I'm on a winning ticket.

If any other indie authors have feedback or figures on how this new system may work out for them, drop a line in the comments field below and cumulatively we can all try to work out where we stand in this brave, new world.