Amazon's Kindle Select Payment Plan Has Changed.

So, what`s Amazon up to now, Indies?

I see they’ve made an announcement about their new concept where they only pay authors of self-published Kindle books enlisted in the Kindle Select program based on the amount of content – or pages – the readers actually consume.

As an author with eight books on Amazon, and several in the Kindle Select program, it will be interesting to see whether this concept fails or not. I think it will be different for every genre. Short stories should do well, while novels that are slow to start ought to do poorly. A short story collection or anthology using this method, I would think, is destined to take-off!

Lucky me! I’ve recently published a short story collection and had planned to include it into the Kindle Select program. Now I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good idea. However, in the service of indie Author’s everywhere, I will include Waning Metaphorically into this program and report back with the stats.

I assume there will be a cost-per-page-turned in order to tally up each books worth to the reader, and those monies handed over to the author? That’s what I’m getting from this. But what that number per page is, I haven’t found out as yet.

If you have it, please respond and share.

The Little Free Library Phanominom comes to the Indie Author's rescue!

Have you seen this? Little Free Libraries are popping up all over the place, and after viewing the map on www.littlefreelibrary.com, it looks like North America has certainly embraced it!

I actually found out about this a year or more ago and dropped off a Dan Simmon's book for other's to enjoy. The little free library was a few kilometres away from me and not on my regular route so I considered briefly erecting one of my own. Not a year later a Little Free Library suddenly, and with much bravado (Local Televised News Covered it) planted itself just two blocks from where I live.

I noticed a large group of neighbours milling around and so walked my dog and daughter up the street to see what the hubbub was. Sure enough, a new Little Free Library had emerged. Inside the book case, built to resemble and old school house, is a wide variety of books, ranging from children's to young adult to action, philosophy, new age, you name it. It holds maybe 50  books tops, but is very revealing about the neighbourhood and their reading preferences. There is also a small journal where people can leave short reviews on the books they've enjoyed from the little free library.

So, why bring this up? Indie authors should be utilizing this opportunity to get the word out about your books. Don't place one in every little free library you see, but place enough to encourage interest in your name and don't place all of the books you've written, maybe your new audience would like to buy one! Leave book marks with your website printed on it, offering them up freely for those picking up or dropping off books. Bookmarks cost about as much as business cards to print these days. It's a small investment.

Give a shot. Check the map section of the website to find one near you, or make one yourself!

Michael Poeltl