Kindle Unlimited vs Wide Publishing
Kindle Unlimited vs Wide Publishing
What you should know about your book's distribution options?
One publishing question divides indie authors on a level usually only seen in discussions on politics or religion outside the writing community. This question arouses passionate arguments on both sides, with true believers condemning the other camp for their ignorance.
Kindle Unlimited or wide distribution?
The answer isn’t as black-and-white as it seems on the surface.
Self-Publishing options
Before the advent of self-publishing, traditional publishing houses acted as literary gatekeepers. They determined which voices were heard based on which authors and works offered the best potential sales volume and profit margins. If your story didn’t suit the tastes or whims of unseen editors (or their assistants), it got tossed aside and absorbed into a slush pile — never to be seen again like stellar matter swallowed into a black hole.
Amazon eradicated the slush pile by offering authors the option to self-publish through its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) arm. Indie authors finally got a much-needed foot in the door. Other authors soon migrated from traditional publishing for indie publishing to gain greater control over their works rather than be at the mercy of their publisher.
Amazon’s success brought competitors like Barnes and Noble Press, Draft2Digitial, Kobo, Apple Books, and Google Play into the self-publishing realm. Amazon countered by launching Kindle Unlimited — a platform where Amazon customers subscribe for access to a library of millions of eBooks for a monthly fee.
Publishing books to Kindle Unlimited opened a new audience for indie authors. It also closed a separate door. Indie authors who enroll their books in Kindle Unlimited cannot publish those books in an eBook format at another retailer while they remain in KU. This naturally presents a major dilemma. Is it better to go exclusive in Kindle Unlimited or go wide with other retailers?
Here’s a detailed breakdown of what each option offers to an indie author —
Advantages of Kindle Unlimited
Greater visibility on Amazon: Books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited are available to millions of readers who subscribe to the service. This can offer a boost in potential revenue because many of these readers do not buy books not available in the KU library.
Additional revenue stream: Authors who publish in Kindle Unlimited can earn significant royalties from page reads. Royalties for a KU book typically range between $0.004 and $0.005 per page read. For a longer series, this can add up to a significant monthly income in a hurry.
Higher rankings: If you want to click the bestseller lists on Amazon, having a popular series in Kindle Unlimited can be your ticket up the charts. Page reads are factored into rankings calculations. If you browse through the Top 100 books in many genres from romance to science fiction, you’ll discover most of the titles are available in Kindle Unlimited.
Exclusive promotions: Amazon reserves some promotional opportunities — like Kindle Countdown deals for example — exclusively for Kindle Unlimited books. This can lead to increased downloads and page reads and equal greater visibility for those titles.
Disadvantages of Kindle Unlimited
Limited distribution: Publishing your book on Kindle Unlimited means you cannot publish and sell it anywhere else while it is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. This includes direct sales from your own website. Limiting your book to Amazon means missing out on readers who prefer to buy their eBooks at another book retailer like Apple or Kobo. While you can publish paperback, hardcover, and audiobook editions of the same title elsewhere, an overwhelming number of your potential customers will prefer purchasing an eBook.
Limited revenue streams: Authors who publish only on Kindle Unlimited can become too dependent on income derived from their KU audience. It can make building an audience outside of Amazon more difficult. This will potentially harm an author in their efforts to carve out a long-term viable writing career. KU authors also struggle with fluctuating royalty rates and invalidated page reads which can put a dent in their monthly income.
Loss of control: If you stick all your eggs in the Kindle Unlimited basket, you are at Amazon’s mercy. That means if Amazon decides an author has violated their terms and conditions, they can close that author’s KDP account, and the author has suddenly lost their only source of revenue.
Advantages of Publishing Wide
Greater distribution: Publishing and selling your book among multiple retailers throws open the door to building a wider and more diverse audience. You will potentially gain more readers and greater visibility by offering more purchasing options. People love having more than one choice. This can equal a higher number of sales and greater exposure for your book.
Diverse revenue streams: Distributing a book among multiple retailers lets authors earn royalties from numerous sources. Having a diversified income stream is crucial in establishing a steady full-time income as an author. They are able to weather the storm if sales slow to a trickle with a specific retailer.
Greater visibility: More eyeballs will be on your book with a wider distribution among retailers. That can make it easier to get paperback or hardcover copies into brick-and-mortar stores and libraries. Wider distribution can also make it easier to market your book to different audiences. For example, you can tailor one set of ads to appeal specifically to Barnes and Noble customers and another set to appeal specifically to Apple customers.
Disadvantages of Publishing Wide
Lower initial earnings: Gaining traction with retailers outside of Amazon isn’t a simple thing to do. Some retailers like Kobo, Apple, and Barnes and Noble offer sporadic promotional opportunities to indie authors. Mostly, your book can get lost in a sea of similar books and it results in lower revenue from royalties than what you might see on Amazon during the same period until you become more established as an author.
More marketing required: Distributing a book among multiple retailers requires a greater investment of time and money into advertising than publishing exclusively on Kindle Unlimited. KU authors have Amazon Ads and KU-exclusive promotions to help their marketing efforts. Wide authors must find creative ways to market their book on each platform. In-house promotions with retailers can help, but effective marketing often requires strategies like creating Facebook ads and BookBub ads, making TikTok videos, or doing newsletter swaps with other authors to reach your intended audience.
Make an informed choice
No one-size-fits-all approach exists for publishing a book. What works well for one author may not work at all for another.
I tested out one of my stories, In Hell’s Shadow, on Kindle Unlimited for three years before finally pulling it from KU at the end of March 2023. During that time, my story earned 454 total page reads. The revenue generated from that 3-year KU stint equaled less than 10 sales. Ironically, In Hell’s Shadow sold 62 copies outside of Kindle Unlimited during the same 3-year period. I’ve experienced considerable success going wide with all my other novels and short stories, gaining steady sales with a variety of other retailers over the past five years.
Some genres do better in Kindle Unlimited than others. Genres like romance, fantasy, and science fiction are hugely popular with KU readers. Many successful indie authors writing in those genres draw a large percentage of their royalties and their audience from the Kindle Unlimited ranks.
The choice between putting your books in KU or going wide boils down to your goals and priorities as an author. If you value higher visibility and higher rankings on Amazon, enrolling your books in Kindle Unlimited may be your best option. If you value greater distribution and a diversified revenue stream, going wide with other retailers is the better path to travel.
Once upon a time, I made ok money from Kindle Unlimited, but only on series. Solo books rarely got checked out. On average, I earned about $0.06 a page for reads on KU. I tried it out again with my misadventures with Kindle Vella, but didn't come close to what I made from Ko-fi, so I decided to go wide again. I am currently experimenting with serialization here on Substack, but the experiment is only a couple of months old, but has shown some interesting results. While I have had little luck getting people to sign up for paid subscriptions yet, I have received so nice support on Ko-fi for my posts here. If they had a tip jar or other one time only feature, those transactions would probably have happened here. There are a lot of option in indie publishing, and I am glad to see you bringing them to light.
Thanks for this helpful guide! I’m currently researching my options and this is great info. Appreciate you sharing your experience, as well. I write obscure historical fiction and I’m thinking wide publishing might make the most sense.