Amazon says KOLL successful for both customers and authors no comments
While big publishing might not be a big fan of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL), Amazon says that the program has proven to be both a success with its customers and rewarding to the authors who make their work available to borrow through the program.
Amazon says that in December 295,000 titles published via its KDP Select self-publishing platform were borrowed from KOLL. The available number of books at KOLL has been growing steadily and there are now over 75,000 titles to choose from.
Amazon is increasing the fund used to compensate authors whose books are borrowed from KOLL by $200,000 for January. Normally this fund is capped at $500,000 per month, but for January it will be $700,000. Amazon says that in December, KDP authors earned $1.70 per borrow.
Amazon also says that paid sales of titles participating in the KDP Select self-publishing program, which entails inclusion in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, are growing faster than sales of books in the regular KDP program.
The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a perk available to Kindle device owners with an Amazon Prime membership. Prime members can borrow one Kindle book per month and must return that book before borrowing another. While Amazon makes no mention of it, I expect that there is a big jump in the number of Prime memberships after the introduction of the KOLL and the Kindle Fire. I’ve seen estimates that there were 5 million Prime members in 2011, it will be interesting to see what the estimates are for this year.
You can see a list of the books in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library here,
