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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.

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Thank you. I want indie authors to know they have choices. Too many get fed simplistic advice that putting their books in Kindle Unlimited is their only option for building an audience and that's simply not true. It isn't even the best option for many genres. I was underwhelmed by the results I got from KU and I know I'm not alone on that boat.

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Yeah, there may have been a time when KU was truly the best option, but that time has gone by. When it first launched, I made more from KU than I did from book sales because so many people were checking it out and so few writers were on there. I miss the time when more indie writers were more experimental with how they released their fiction. Books are not the only way for us to tell our stories now and I am excited to see all the ways stories can be told on the internet.

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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.

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Thank you. Happy it helped. This newsletter is much more infrequent than my main one, but I'm hopeful it can be a nice resource for other indie authors as they publish and market their work.

One thing I forgot to mention is that Kobo offers Kobo Plus, which is a KU-type subscription service. The main difference is your books don't need to be exclusive to Kobo to be in it. That's great news for a wide author.

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Yeah, this is great info and I appreciate your willingness to help other authors. I'm embarrassed to admit I never even heard of Kobo before this :-|

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I use KU, and bring in a whopping $3 a month from it.

But, it is what it is, a hopeful road to another discovery of my work.

https://AuthorCancilla.com

Those links go to the Amazon purchase pages.

I get good results, but I will never be a best seller.

I know that already, and I accept it.

I just love writing. Mostly Science Fiction, but also camping and survival.

It seems that some DL my survival guides to their devices in the event they need to bug out, but I write them from the perspective of hiking through the backcountry, camping, and surviving in leisure.

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