This year the July payout sets a new record (probably only until next month) with $55.5 million being shared.
Last year the July pot payout for self-publishers and small presses with titles in the Kindle Unlimited ebook subscription service hit $49.5 million for the month, up from $45 million in July 2022.
This year the July payout sets a new record (probably only until next month) with $55.5 million being shared.
N.B. Big publishers and big-name authors like JK Rowling are paid quite separately at a la carte rates, as are APub downloads, so the pot is solely for small presses and self-publishers.
These payments are in addition to regular self-published and small press a la cart sales in the Kindle store.
None of these payments are included in the monthly and annual reports from the AAP and like services. And of course the APub revenues and download numbers are also omitted from these industry reports.
The total pot payout to self-publishers so far this year, Jan-Jul amounts to $366.5 million. For the past twelve months, August 2023-July 2024 Amazon has paid out total of $613.6 million to these authors and publishers.
Extrapolating from current trends, TNPS is forecasting the full 2024 pot payout, as to be announced in January 2025, to come in at around $635 million.
As an additional note this value does not include the “All-Stars” bonus payment to the top-selling indies, which for July 2024 amounted to another $3.4 million.
The All Stars bonus is contentious in that it is awarded not based on page-reads, but using “a variety of customer signals in addition to pages read to recognize books that delight readers.
For this reason I do not routinely include the All-Stars bonuses in the reportage on KU payouts.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsletter.
