Amazon launches Kindle Select; fund to pay royalties to KDP authors participating in Kindle Owners’ Lending Library no comments
Amazon today announced KDP Select, a new option for indie authors and publishers who use Kindle Direct Publishing. If a KDP author or publisher agrees to release their book exclusively through the Kindle Store for at least 90 days, the book becomes eligible for inclusion in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and can earn royalties from a $6 million annual fund Amazon has set up for this purpose.
More from the press release:
The monthly royalty payment for each KDP Select book is based on that book’s share of the total number of borrows of all participating KDP books in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. For example, if total borrows of all participating KDP Select books are 100,000 in December and an author’s book was borrowed 1,500 times, they will earn $7,500 in additional royalties from KDP Select in December. Amazon expects the fund to be at least $6 million for all of 2012, in addition to the $500,000 allocated for December 2011. Enrolled titles will remain available for sale to any customer in the Kindle Store and authors will continue to earn their regular royalties on those sales.
With KDP Select, authors and publishers will also have access to a new set of promotional tools, starting with the option to promote their enrolled titles for free for up to five days every 90 days.
More information can be found about KDP Select here.
This has been a busy week for Amazon, which a couple of days ago announced the acquisition of publisher Marshall Cavendish’s US children’s book business. This includes over 450 titles. While only a few of these are available as Kindle books at the moment, it is probably safe to assume that many more will be available optimized for the Kindle Fire soon.
The list from Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books has been nominated for more than 150 industry awards and includes a diverse range of titles including “The Night Before Christmas” illustrated by Gennady Spirin, “Three Little Tamales” by Eric A. Kimmel, “Chalk” by Bill Thomson and “Yellow Star” by Jennifer Roy, as well as the National Book Award finalist “My Name is Not Easy” by Debby Dahl Edwardson. The acquisition creates the foundation for Amazon Publishing to further expand into picture books, chapter books and Young Adult novels.
“We’re excited to acquire the Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books titles and expand our publishing business in this area,” said Jeff Belle, Vice President, Amazon Publishing. “We believe the children’s book market segment presents a unique opportunity to innovate in both print and digital formats. And since many of these titles are not readily available as eBooks, we see a chance to connect a terrific group of authors and illustrators with more readers. We also see the potential for similar deals across other categories in the future.”
Once the deal is closed the acquired books will be published under an imprint of Amazon’s New York publishing unit.
Amazon and Penguin continue their love-hate relationship by jointly announcing the fifth annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. The competition awards two grand prizes: One for general fiction and one prize for young adult fiction. Each winner will be published by Penguin Group (USA). For more details on the contest visit here.
