With Amazon’s “kindle unlimited” program, people can get access to a pretty big collection of ebooks as part of their membership in the club. It’s like spotify for books.
Part of the genius of this sort of program is that the books seem free, even though you’re paying a monthly fee.
I’ve expressed my doubts about that model for magazines, but for books I think it will work, and if anybody can do it, Amazon can.
Most of my books are registered to participate in that program, and I get paid based on how often my books are read.
In other words, some group of people pay Amazon $9.99 a month to read unlimited kindle books. Amazon then pays the authors / publishers based on what the kindle unlimited members actually read. It’s not based on book downloads, it’s based on pages.
If somebody downloads my book, reads five pages and then stops, I only get paid for five pages.
This means that Amazon is keeping track when you page through an ebook. Remember, data is valuable stuff.
As I mentioned in a previous post, one way to monetize content is to mine the data on how people are using the content.
Give away content, but track how readers use it — This article will challenge your ideas about the value of content. What We Got Wrong About Books.
What’s more valuable, a $10 magazine subscriber, or the fact that you know he reads every one of your articles about DIY home repairs, and he lingers on photos of Italian sports cars?
Imagine a future where all content is free, and then imagine ways you can still monetize your content by collecting data on the people who are reading it.
In my Amazon interface, I can see how many pages of my books are read on a daily basis. I can’t see who’s reading, but I can see that somebody is (or was) reading one of my books.
It reminds me of Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next. (If you haven’t read it, try The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel.)
Anyway, this is an example of how data is becoming more and more important, and how it can be used to help producers make better products.
As an author, I would love to know what parts of my books people like, what they hate, what they skim past, what they highlight, etc. When I give a friend a book to read, I’d love to get it back with marks all over it.
A good eReader platform could do that. Imagine an eReader that would allow readers to provide that level of feedback to authors, even to the point of liking and disliking individual pages or paragraphs.
To a small extent, they can do that now. On some of kindle books I purchase, I can see areas that other people have highlighted. That’s somewhat interesting as a reader, but very interesting as an author.
eReaders have come a long way, but they have a long way to go. They are the perfect platform for communication between readers, and between readers and authors.