Why I’d prefer that my readers not buy my new book
I’ve just published my latest book:
The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations
and I’d really prefer that my readers not buy it.
Oh, it’s not that I’m not proud of it: I am. I’ve been collecting quotations off and on for decades, and I’ve put a lot of work into this. I spent some time meticulously linking authors, sources, and characters, really bringing this into the digital age.
The thing is that I’ll make more money if they borrow it than if they buy it…a lot more.
Here’s how that works:
I’ve priced the book at ninety-nine cents, which means at Amazon that I can get thirty-five cents (roughly) per copy purchased. You can’t hit the higher 70% royalty tier unless your book is listed for at least $2.99 (and no more than $9.99).
However, the book is also part of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL).
With the KOLL, we all split a pool of money based on the number of “borrows” a title gets in a month, regardless of the list price.
The pool has been running at $600,000 per month and each borrow has been getting us a bit over two dollars.
So, if one of my readers buys the book, I get about thirty-five cents. If that same reader had borrowed the book from the KOLL, I get over two dollars. I’d have to sell more than five copies to get to the same “royalty” (or pool pay) as a single borrow.
That’s part of the nouveau economics of e-books.
You get into all of these strange, unprecedented calculations. Not everyone can borrow a book from the KOLL; you need to be a qualifying Prime member, and you have to have a hardware Kindle (not just a free reading app). Obviously, I don’t want to discourage those people from buying it.
There’s also the issue of giving it as a gift. I think that’s going to be a big part of the market for this title…little ninety-nine cent gifts at the holidays, and possibly, people who are quoted in it giving it to friends, relatives, co-workers, and so on. At this point, you can’t gift a borrow.
Oh, and do borrows affect a book’s bestseller rank? I don’t actually know. The bestseller list is a big part of discoverability…do I lose potential borrows if other borrows don’t count as sales, and therefore people who sort by bestselling don’t see it?
Those are the sorts of things you should be thinking about if you are a publisher, not just an author. If you make your books available for sale to the public, you are a publisher.
You can see why some established authors would elect to go with a traditional publisher, rather than publish independently…they’ve probably been in meetings with their agents where they tried to explain all these obscure data points. “Wait…why am I going to a book signing event in Des Moines, and not one in New York?” “Trust me…that’s what the numbers say.”
What about you, WG2Ers? Have you ever found yourself wishing that someone had borrowed a book, rather than bought it?
Giveaway: I’m going to gift a copy of The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations to the first five people who comment on this post and request it. Do not include any contact information in your comment: I can see your e-mail address in the non-published part of the comment. I will not use that e-mail address for anything except to send you your free copy. Of course, if you’d rather borrow it from the KOLL… 
Recent posts in the I Love My Kindle blog which may be of particular interest to WG2E readers:
- Can a popular book be a good book?
- Retreating advances
- Snapshot: October 1 2012
- ALA & AAP: the relationship between public libraries and publishers
- It’s the Things That I Think That They Mean (a poem)
Bufo Calvin is the author of the popular I Love My Kindle blog and several titles in the Kindle store, including the #1 bestseller Love Your Kindle Fire: The ILMK Guide to Amazon’s Entertablet. Bufo is proud to be a part of the WG2E family.
Hi Calvin, I’d love a copy of your quote book. The borrows question is an interesting one that I ultimately gave up on. Yes, I’d make more in borrows but how do you market that and is it worth dealing with the people that would have liked you book on X platform. I was part of Select when it started and a big supporter but as more people joined, in the romance world anyway, its power seemed to get diluted out. I hope that isn’t the case for you and you get tons of borrows. I realized that the only way I could really force the borrow issue was to jack up the price to 9.99 at least, then it was worth it to someone to borrow vs. buy.
Thanks for writing, L.C.!
It’s on the way!
It’s all very complex. I do make my decision on which book to borrow partially on the cost. I want it to cost more than $6.58, so that if I was only using Prime for that (we’re not), borrowing the books would save us more than the $79 annual fee. However, I also discover books that are ninety-nine cents while I’m looking in the KOLL. That’s one of the key things about the KOLL (and also about public libraries): discoverability.
Raising the price makes it a better value for the borrower, but less of a value for the publisher. You make a lot more per transaction if someone buys a $9.99 book than if they borrow it. You make more money if they borrow a ninety-nine cent book than if they buy it.
Ideally, somebody borrows the book…and then buys it for other people.
To be honest, I hate thinking about all this money stuff…but the money justifies the time and energy spent away from other things. I love the “gaming” part of figuring out what does what, though.
One little thing: my first name is Bufo, my last name is Calvin. Don’t worry about it, that happen a lot.
Good morning! I most certainly would love a copy of your book…I love quotes!
I certainly wish you luck in select…the theory is sound, but I keep waffling on the subject myself. Should I? Shouldn’t I?
The jury is still out for me, but again, I hope you get “borrowed” to your heart’s content.
JT
Thanks for writing, JT!
You should have the e-mail shortly!
I can understand being uncertain about the KOLL; the exclusivity is one of the big concerns. In this case, this is a short work, meaning I wouldn’t be comfortable charging, say, $5 for it. That limits it for other platforms. If I kept the price at ninety-nine cents, could I sell more than five times as many by having it at Barnes & Noble as well as in the Kindle store? Hard to say…
As a fellow quote lover, I hope you enjoy this one!
i’d like a copy
interesting marketing strategy too! thanks!
Thanks for writing, Adan!
I’ve ordered it for you!
I am curious to see how this works. I don’t think books of quotations are typically very discoverable by people; it’s not a part of the Kindle store that you are going to find accidentally. My guess is that sales of this one are going to depend on what I call “word of mouse”.
I’ve told my family I don’t expect to make much on this book. They know I did this one really because I’ve always wanted to do it. Working on linking in it meant I did this rather than a book on the new Kindle Fire HD, which would do well (based on my previous title on the on first generation Kindle Fire). I may still do that one, but I’m feeling pretty happy with having gotten this one out there!
Thanks for the post, and I am a Prime person, so I will borrow it for my “actual” Kindle. Yes, I believe that there was a time that I was making more per book on Stay Tuned being borrowed than selling it for $.99.
Thanks for writing, Lauren!
Yay! I probably won’t really see many borrows until next month, since many people will have already used their one borrow per calendar month in October. That’s yet another part of the “craziness”.
I only have a kindle app, so I’m afraid I can’t borrow your book. So yes, please. My husband and I are planning to launch our novels in the next few months, and WG2E has been a AWESOME source of info. I would’ve never thought you’d get more money through borrowing than selling. And then there was that article earlier this week about how the Kindle Select program will make readers more difficult to find…yes, indeed…The Mind Boggles.
And good luck, Bufo!
Thanks for writing, Moira!
It’s on the way…and you and your husband can both read it, if you have apps registered to the same Amazon account.
Good luck on both your novels!
“The Mind Boggles” title is from one of my favorite quotations, which is in the book:
”An intellectual carrot? The mind boggles.”
–”Scotty” (played by Douglas Spencer)
The Thing (from Another World)
screenplay by Charles Lederer
Based on the short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Great post:)
Thanks for writing, Lois!
Thanks! Publishing had been a largely stable market for a long time before the Kindle exploded the e-book market. Can you believe that wasn’t even five years ago yet? One of the things it did was create new economic models, and this is one of them.
This sounds like a wonderful read and thanks for the information. I’d love a copy but if you’ve already given them away, I’ll have to go buy one.
Thanks for writing, Stephanie!
It’s on the way! If you did already buy it, you can use this gift for something else.
Great info as always, Bufo. Hope you’re well.
Thanks for writing, Jason!
Doing great, thanks! Same to you.
Update: The Mind Boggles is the number one bestselling book of quotations in the Kindle store! I would have thought that was pretty narrow, but there are 897 titles in that group! Thanks, everybody!
Congrats on your fabulous new book, Bufo! And WooHooo that you’ve already hit #1 in that category! U rock! And I can’t wait to read it!
I don’t participate in KOLL because I’m not a fan of KDP Select, which is a brilliant move for Amazon but I’m not so sure that it’s terrific longer term for authors. Although, as you’ve pointed out so well, if you can rack up those “borrows,” that’s good money.
What bothers me is the Exclusivity. Three months is a long time to not be available on all other platforms too. Sixty percent of my sales now come from all the other channels (with Nook leading the way overall). Only forty percent come from Amazon.
But, again, I can see how those KOLL Borrows can begin to add up.
Thanks for writing, D.D.!
Thanks for the kind words! I’m still number one this morning, so it wasn’t just those giveaways.
As to KDP, that’s where the math gets fascinating.
Let’s say you make the same amount on your sales at Amazon and B&N and other non-Amazon sources (is that true? I don’t know the B&N rates well enough to know).
Let’s further say that 60% of your sales come from non-Amazon sources.
Now, let’s say that the price of the book is ninety-nine cents.
Okay…let’s use 100 sales (40 from Amazon, 60 from the other sources) at a 35% royalty. That’s about $35.
Now, let’s say that instead of that, you have those 40 sales from Amazon…plus ten borrows, and no money from the other sources. The 40 sales gets you about $14. The ten borrows get you somewhat more than $20.
That makes it about equivalent to have used KDP as not to have used it…and you only needed 50 customers, rather than 100.
If we figure there is a cost per customer (that cost could be in time and/or social energy, in addition to money), the above model favors the KDP.
It’s a lot more complex than this, of course. In the future, for example, if your sales went to 75% non-Amazon, would you have lost ground by not getting those NOOK customers earlier? Is my 25% projection of borrows to sales reasonable? Do borrows replace sales or supplement them?
My number this morning, by the way, is only about 15% borrows…but it’s the middle of the month. Borrows are, I think, heavily weighted towards the beginning of the month, so I should see a boost of those November 1st or so.
There, that was easy, right?
Fabulous points to consider, Bufo!
Another angle to toss in for consideration is whether you want more money or more readers. For me, I’d rather have those 100 customers, even if I made less money than with just the 50 customers in your example.
Every decision I make is based on getting me the most readers I can across all platforms. I then use my Boxed Sets and other special products to make up the money element. And those higher priced products still treat my readers to books at a 99 Cent price point or lower (for example, they get 5 novels and 1 short story for $2.99 in my first Boxed Set…but that one product will make me over $50,000 in 2012 alone).
And neither way is wrong. That’s what’s so darn fabulous about Indie Epublishing. We each can choose the options that best meet our individual goals! And then have awesome sauce discussions about what’s working and what’s not for each of us! I luuuvvv that!!!
Absolutely, D.D.!
You are thinking more like a tradpub (traditional publisher), by considering the population of all sales, rather than individual transactions. My example is based on the latter, which is more of how a customer tends to think. I’m not that successful in terms of sales of my books (nothing near like what you make). Even though I write about it from an intellectual point of view, I’ve just never been that interested in money.
I’m going to quote Finley Dunne here from memory, but it should be pretty close: “The reason you have no money is that you do not love it for itself alone. Money will never surrender to such a flirt.” 
I tend to make my connections with readers through my blog, I think.