Peter Cawdron
Hi Sarah,
Only a handful of my ebooks are available outside of Amazon. The reason for this is Kindle Unlimited has been a lifeline for me. It's like Spotify for books. Readers pay one amount for an annual subscription and read as much as they want. For an obscure author like me, this is a fantastic way of being discovered. Instead of agonizing over conflicting reviews when spending their hard-earned money on an ebook, KU readers can pick up my ebooks without any fuss. If they don't like one, they can just stop reading. They haven't wasted any money. If they do like one, by reading through to the end, I'll get paid on a per-page-read basis. For a full-length novel, it's not as much income as an ebook sale, but I get soooo many page-reads, this makes up 70% of my income. The only downside is to be in Kindle Unlimited my ebooks need to be exclusive to Amazon.
Without Kindle Unlimited, I wouldn't be a full-time author. I've tried going wide across Apple iBooks, Google Play, Kobo, B&N, etc and my income drops to morning coffee levels.
Most of my paperbacks are available through other retailers, like Barnes & Noble, but they're printed by CreateSpace (which is part of Amazon). https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/cawdron Oh, and don't be fooled by the price difference between ebooks and paperbacks. On several of them, I make less than I do on an ebook sale.
Big-name authors like Stephen King, John Green and Andy Weir have enough clout that they can be in Kindle Unlimited without being exclusive, but I'm a long way from that. Perhaps one day I'll land a book deal with a big traditional publishing house and see my novels on the shelves of a bookstore, but I doubt it. The competition is insane. The interest from traditional publishing houses is non-existent.
Sorry, I wish I had another answer for you. For now, this is the best I can do. Basically, KU allows me to write my next novel. Without it, I'd be sunk.
Only a handful of my ebooks are available outside of Amazon. The reason for this is Kindle Unlimited has been a lifeline for me. It's like Spotify for books. Readers pay one amount for an annual subscription and read as much as they want. For an obscure author like me, this is a fantastic way of being discovered. Instead of agonizing over conflicting reviews when spending their hard-earned money on an ebook, KU readers can pick up my ebooks without any fuss. If they don't like one, they can just stop reading. They haven't wasted any money. If they do like one, by reading through to the end, I'll get paid on a per-page-read basis. For a full-length novel, it's not as much income as an ebook sale, but I get soooo many page-reads, this makes up 70% of my income. The only downside is to be in Kindle Unlimited my ebooks need to be exclusive to Amazon.
Without Kindle Unlimited, I wouldn't be a full-time author. I've tried going wide across Apple iBooks, Google Play, Kobo, B&N, etc and my income drops to morning coffee levels.
Most of my paperbacks are available through other retailers, like Barnes & Noble, but they're printed by CreateSpace (which is part of Amazon). https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/cawdron Oh, and don't be fooled by the price difference between ebooks and paperbacks. On several of them, I make less than I do on an ebook sale.
Big-name authors like Stephen King, John Green and Andy Weir have enough clout that they can be in Kindle Unlimited without being exclusive, but I'm a long way from that. Perhaps one day I'll land a book deal with a big traditional publishing house and see my novels on the shelves of a bookstore, but I doubt it. The competition is insane. The interest from traditional publishing houses is non-existent.
Sorry, I wish I had another answer for you. For now, this is the best I can do. Basically, KU allows me to write my next novel. Without it, I'd be sunk.
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