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Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

theatlantic.com

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Re: Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

#21

Post by bagels »

minthd wrote: post #13

This could offer the final blow to the paper book market: Since they way to monetize ebooks will be totally different than paper books, this means they'll need to be written in a totally different way. So this means most authors will choose one or the other, and most likely they'll choose to write only ebooks, because there's more money there.

Is that true though, that ebooks revenues are higher than printed books? Or maybe the aggregate of the author's cut of revenues is higher for ebooks?

I am skeptical, but am willing to be proven wrong.

Re: Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

#22

Post by icebraining »

freyr wrote: post #20
hdevalence wrote: post #3

Why is it acceptable for Amazon to be able to record every time someone turns a page?

Because it's the device they're offering, the version of the content they're offering, and the service they're offering. If you disagree with this practice, you're free to not accept the offer. It's as simple as that.

Just because people are free to refuse it doesn't mean we must find it acceptable and refrain from criticizing it.

Re: Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

#23

Post by akhatri_aus »

technofiend wrote: post #7

This is to address people gaming the old system by turning in 10-30 page books of barely readable garbage. Under that system authors were paid ~$1.30 per book each time the reader passed the minimum 10% book length. This encouraged a flight to short, low quality books. This new plan should wash out low quality work as it's no longer profitable to publish pamphlets with great titles and near Markov-chain levels of non…

Would this not encourage books to be larger with a lower density of content?

Re: Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

#24

Post by __Joker »

akhatri_aus wrote: post #23
technofiend wrote: post #7

This is to address people gaming the old system by turning in 10-30 page books of barely readable garbage. Under that system authors were paid ~$1.30 per book each time the reader passed the minimum 10% book length. This encouraged a flight to short, low quality books. This new plan should wash out low quality work as it's no longer profitable to publish pamphlets with great titles and near Markov-chain levels of non…

Would this not encourage books to be larger with a lower density of content?

I think they will go for something like ( price_of_the_book)/(no_of_pages) for a single page. So it should not be a problem though.

Historically I think, may be, some of the 19 century books like Charles Dickens The Great Expectation may suffer from the problem you mention. These books used to be published like periodicals like a single chapter would be released each week(like soap). It made sense to lengthen them for financial benefit.

I am not sure, kind of anecdotal, but I think lot of people don't read or finish lot of books.

Re: Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

#25

Post by yxhuvud »

akhatri_aus wrote: post #23
technofiend wrote: post #7

This is to address people gaming the old system by turning in 10-30 page books of barely readable garbage. Under that system authors were paid ~$1.30 per book each time the reader passed the minimum 10% book length. This encouraged a flight to short, low quality books. This new plan should wash out low quality work as it's no longer profitable to publish pamphlets with great titles and near Markov-chain levels of non…

Would this not encourage books to be larger with a lower density of content?

That should be adjusting by itself though, since lower density of content lowers the want to continue reading.

Re: Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

#26

Post by jon-wood »

myliverhatesme wrote: post #15

I think the per page strategy is way too arbitrary. What is a page exactly? A unit of measurement of text? How big is a page? What font must you use. What about technical books and books with pictures and diagrams? If we invented modern electronics before books we wouldn't care about pages. Measuring time spent would be a lot more useful and harder to game. What if the book is dense with so much good information that…

Technically this is probably based on Kindle's location measurement, rather than physical pages. Locations allow them to sync where you are across vastly different devices without worrying about the fact that one may be a mobile with a huge font size showing three words a page, and the other might be a desktop reader with a tiny font.

Re: Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

#28

Post by oldgun »

__Joker wrote: post #24
akhatri_aus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would this not encourage books to be larger with a lower density of content?

I think they will go for something like ( price_of_the_book)/(no_of_pages) for a single page. So it should not be a problem though. Historically I think, may be, some of the 19 century books like Charles Dickens The Great Expectation may suffer from the problem you mention. These books used to be published like periodicals like a single chapter would be released each week(like soap). It made sense to lengthen them fo…

How about paying by the percentage of what the customer read?

Re: Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

#29

Post by avar »

Andrenid wrote: post #16
dcre wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acceptable in what sense? Users know about it and accept it, therefore it must be acceptable. I don't think you can opt out, though.

Sure you can. Don't have our Kindle connected to the Internet while you're reading. Unless I'm missing something?

You'd have to never connect your Kindle to the Internet ever again, when you re-connect it uploads the page position for all your books.

Re: Amazon's New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page

#30

Post by rajadigopula »

If we are talking about Kindle - digital reading here - how does a "page"/ "page flip" be defined with varying factors like -

X devices a kindle app can be consumed on: A page can be of different word length on a mobile than of a tablet?!

X What if I bump up the font size to max on my device? Could it still count as a single page flip, if I flip the page?

==> Well the above is answered by Amazon with "Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC)" @ https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A156OS90J7RDN

-> Academic textbooks/ reference books/tech. books etc are not page turners. Are the authors of this kind at a disadvantage with the new model?

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