What Kindle Unlimited Means for Writers

The landscape of book publishing has been completely transformed by media innovators like Amazon with their Direct Publishing option, and they just might be doing it again.  Even though it is now incredibly easy and cost-effective to self-publish each and every manuscript that has ever flitted though a writer's mind, an inverse relationship has arisen between the ease of self-publishing and reader's immediate ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.  The average quality of books available for purchase has decreased due to the removal of the necessity of picky, if not expedient, editors and traditional publishers.  With this decrease came a reticence of readers to invest in a book that has a fair chance of being a disappointment.  Even with quality rating systems and the availability of book returns, it seems as though many readers just aren't as interested in taking a chance on an unknown author after having been on the receiving end of an object lesson in frustration, born from trying to convince themselves the book they are reading isn't "that bad".  Books stay with you.  Bad books stay with you too, whether you want them to or not.

When I'm procrastinating from writing my book I research publishing options for my book, and this particular issue has been a huge source of irritation for me.  Of course my book is going to be God's gift to readers (please laugh with me, otherwise it is just awkward), but how am I supposed to convince everyone of this if my credibility is called into question by all those poor examples of books out there?  I stumbled across Kindle Unlimited, and my first thought was, Yay! This is going to save me a ton of money!  My second thought was, Yay! Unlimited books at my fingertips, muhahaha!  Eventually, I started thinking like a writer and realized this might be the answer to us unknown writing entities to get readers to take a chance on us.

Kindle Unlimited is pretty much the Netflix of the book world.  For just under $10 a month subscribers have access to up to 10 of the over 700,000 titles at any one time.  Any author can include their book in Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program.  That doesn't, however, mean that sub-par books are out of the woods, so so speak.  In order to receive royalties, 10% of the book has to have been read before any money is earned or distributed.  This means my book still has to be kick-butt (at least the first 10% has to be reader worthy).  I'm okay with that.  I am just as concerned with the downward spiral of the quality of books on the market as the next reader, and writer, for that matter.  I think this system of checks keep the less impressive writing specimens from reaching the top of the reading lists while still allowing budding new writers their chance to leave a positive impression.







photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/9106303@N05/6187333553">Freedom to eRead, after Roger Roth</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>