GOING SELECT

Early this morning I enrolled all three of my Kindle books in Select. I'd been weighing this decision for a while. One thing in my favor, I have nothing listed on any other site. No fans to disappoint there.

I will admit, seeing J.A. Konrath go "all in" with Select had an influence. Although it's hard to understand why a guy with his impressive sales numbers would give books away. (He talks of a 100,000-download free day.)

But what really convinced me was the news that came in my email inbox: In April, the payment for a download from the Kindle Lending Library was $2.37.

Get this. Somebody takes your book for free, and you get as much as if you'd sold the thing for $3.49—WITH a ten cent delivery fee on top of it.

And my books are one at 99 cents and two at $2.99. Sell one each and I'd make a total royalty of $4.45 (after combined delivery fees of twelve cents). Have all three borrowed once for free and I'd make $7.11

I'd be better off if I NEVER sold a book!

Meanwhile, the library "customer" pays nothing, compared with spending $6.97 for the privilege of reading my three books.

We're BOTH better off!

Over a year ago Konrath released his Reports page (covering the first ten days in January, 2012). Roughly one fourth of his downloads come from the lending library. And this was long before he went Select, so there are no free books in there.

(At least, none listed. But the screen-print image is cropped before you get to the free columns.)

You CAN have free books while not in Select, of course, should Amazon choose to match a free book offer on another site.

(By the way, extending his library loans through the full month, and applying the rate for April 2013, he would have made nearly $25,000 that month for lending just his top-selling title.)

The engine that drives this whole process is the money Amazon puts aside for lending library downloads. For May they announced it would be one million dollars.

Can this go on indefinitely?

I don't know what their plans are, but there may actually be a valid business model in this:

A big company with a lot of different things to sell gives books away to customers who buy a minimum amount of stuff. The company skims off a chunk of their total revenue to pay authors and keep up the supply of new books.

Big name authors can command prices above $3.49, the price point where a lend is equal to a sale. On the other hand, they can't get the 70% royalty—unless they've gone indie.

More likely they get 35%, or even 25%, after settling up with their "trad" publishers. Their royalty will match the library rate at a sales price of $6.87 and $9.58, respectively (again, assuming a ten cent delivery fee).

If they can get more than that for a download, they're better off selling.

But the trend is toward lower prices for all. E-reading folks are getting used to buying at a steep discount.

Hard to know where this all will end.

But right now I guess I should be saying (with some trepidation): Please don't buy my books!

If you're Amazon Prime customers, borrow them for free instead!

I'll let you know when that changes....