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Friday, July 25, 2014

The KU confusion continues

Good for authors or bad for authors?

Something unexpected has happened.  Kindle Unlimited borrows are affecting the Amazon bestseller list.

From Digital Book World




Kindle Unlimited is minting best-sellers, or so it seems.
According to Publishers Lunch, the number of ebooks on the Kindle best-seller list that are Kindle Unlimited titles has just about tripled since the launch of the all-you-can-read service from Amazon last week. Amazon is counting Kindle Unlimited reads as well as Kindle store sales in its best-seller rankings.
Last week at this time, there were 15 ebooks that would have been part of Kindle Unlimited that were top 100 best-sellers on Kindle; this week, that number has ballooned to 45.
kindle unlimited best-sellers
As the chart shows, Amazon Publishing titles (which are in Kindle Unlimited), titles by other publishers included in the service, and Kindle Direct Publishing Select titles (those by self-published authors who only sell on Amazon and not other platforms like Nook and iBooks, which are included on KU), seem to have all benefited greatly from being a part of Kindle Unlimited. Books by self-published authors who aren’t exclusive to Amazon and those from publishers not participating in Kindle Unlimited have suffered — at least when it comes to hitting top-100 Kindle best-sellers.

And it could be the way that the borrows are marketed that is making such a difference.

Have a look at the change in the "Buy now with 1-click" box, reproduced at the top.  Quite subtle, really, but significant. 

Perhaps it is the reason that Island of the Lost -- published by Algonquin, which opted into KU -- is selling a few more copies than usual.

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