Kinky Decisions

What's a girl supposed to do when all she wants to write is smut?

Truly, that's how I feel about my writing sometimes: I just want to write hot, sexy smut. I simply enjoy sharing sexy, kinky stories, getting creative, and turning my readers on. I love coming up with strange and unusual situations and just having a good time. I love the process, I love the whole entire concept of being an Erotica author. Unlike the Erotica authors who favor a specific genre and only dabble in Erotica, I'm the opposite: I mostly write for Erotica and very little of my writing prowess goes elsewhere.

I love sex. It's just that simple.

There are other things in play when it comes to writing, I confess. The nitty gritty. For me, writing is something I do full time. It pays the bills. However much I would love it if I didn't have to also consider this revenue end, the bills will not pay themselves. Save for being a prostitute or a porn star, there aren't many ways in which a passion for sex can put food on the table.

Recently Amazon announced a significant change to the way its Kindle Unlimited writers are paid which was implemented today (July 1st). Before this change, everyone was offered the same amount per story borrowed through the Lending Library ($1.30 or $1.40 in revenue per each title borrowed for example). This was regardless of length of the story or how much of the story was read by the reader. Amazon's recent payout changes for the Unlimited program now calculates pages read. (If you're curious about how this is calculated out click the 'read more' option at the end of this Blog Entry.)

What it comes down to is this: In order for me to continue to earn the same amount of revenue as I have been doing through the KU program, my awesome KU readers would need to read a collective number of 80,000 pages. As it stands, I have no sense of how much any of you DO read. Perhaps, all together, my readers do read that much, perhaps not. Perhaps far more, perhaps far less. Only time will tell.

Essentially: right now I am only making decisions as things progress forward.

What I have decided at this point:

1) I will continue to write both Erotica and Romance Erotica, only I'll be more selective over what works are in the Kindle Unlimited program and which ones are not.

2) Kindle Unlimited membership requires that every title enrolled must stay in for 90 days at a time - exclusively at Amazon. I have therefor opted to consider and address what to do with each title as it comes to the end of its current 90 day period. (Options are simple: leave in for another 90 days - or remove and publish into a larger number of venues).

3) In anticipation of this shift I published six new stories in June, most are in Kindle Unlimited. Therefor, I am updating my catalog to reflect these new titles in order to point you to them so you can read, enjoy, and be E-merry.

4) When I am finished with my website catalog updates I'll post another blog entry which will summarize June for you nice and purdy.

Thank you for reading! I do greatly appreciate every Unlimited reader and every paying reader. I even know that some of you are both. Thank you, truly. I'll be in touch, soon. In the meantime, feel free to give a little bit of feedback by filling out this simple survey:

Math Crunch for those who are curious...

Before this change, everyone was offered the same amount per story borrow. $1.30 or $1.40 in revenue per each title borrowed, for example. If the monthly payment was set at $1.30 then 5 borrows = $6.50. 10 = $13.50. So on, so forth.

The changes to the program now counts pages read and plugs it into this formula:

Pages Read x Global Fund ÷ Total Pages Read

Initially: their golden-calf example presented a pleasant scenario. (100 PR x 10M GF ÷ 100M TPR) which resulted in a $10.00 per 100 pages. That did seem enticing.

The reality of those numbers seems to be shaping up far differently. According to recent information given via email, the current projected GF is 11M. Readers, in June, read an average of 1.9 Billion pages. Perhaps when Amazon began Kindle Unlimited they weren't sure how much people would read?

Plug the reality-based numbers in and this is the result:
100 PR x 11M ÷ 1.9B = 0.58 (rounding up)
$0.58 / 100 pages read = .0058 per page.

So, today several of you (thank you, by the way, for being faithful readers and waking up to my Kink) read a collective total of 584 pages. I hope you found them to be 584 hot, steamy, enjoyable pages ;)

Plug that in and do the math:

584 Pages Read x 11M GF ÷ 1.9B PRT = $3.38

Now, Amazon shaped their presentation of this "KU 2.0" as a positive for 'quality' writing and that it was 'beneficial' to novelists. Yet, I'm unsure of how enticing .006 per page is for anyone, especially novelists, in exchange for exclusivity at Amazon.

Only time will tell (and not too much time, mind you. Many authors are already out of the program). Yet, I'm not going to decide quite so quickly. Rest assured, at the least I will still write steamy smut and offer it for you to consume.