It's official. KDP Select has changed their KOLL/Kindle Unlimited system over to standardized pages read, rather than units borrowed/read based on passing the 10% mark.
It's not a bad thing. It's not a good thing. It is, however, a thing you may need to take a look at.
There's a little math, and a few other factors involved.
Book length.
Average sales.
Price point.
Special circumstances.
Book length:
If you have a longer book, this is probably going to help you. The more pages people read, the bigger your slice of the pie. Shorter books will likely suffer under the new system.
Average sales:
High volume of sales, you may want to evaluate this change a little closer. Lower, not as big of a deal.
Price Point:
Lower priced books may have more to gain, higher ones, more to lose.
Special Circumstances:
One example: A client of mine has a shorter, higher priced book with a fairly narrow target audience, pretty slow sales. In general, the changes are not in his favor, but are not a big deal. However, one of his marketing strategies is to put his title in front of his academic contacts, to try and get on required or recommended reading lists for their classes. If this should happen, he stands to lose a lot of potential revenue by keeping the title in the Select program, having it eligible for KOLL/Kindle Unlimited. The small amount he would make on borrowed pages, I estimated would be a tenth of what he would be making on straight royalties.
These are a few of the potential concerns about the new system. Feel free to comment with your own issues.
