[nateberkopec]

Ouch. I wrote a travelogue as a side project/on a bit of a lark, and I enrolled it in "KDP Select" (Kindle Unlimited). I make far more money, it seems, from full-price purchases than my per-page royalties from Kindle Unlimited. It really seems that it doesn't make sense for most authors, since the revenue-per-page is diluted by these scammers.

EDIT: To put some numbers on it, here's my KDP dashboard: http://imgur.com/lDWoQQ6 The book is $4.99, of which I receive 70% ($3.50). I sell about 3 copies per day (making about $10), and generally get ~350 pages read per day (making $1.50). So I make 10x on regular sales what I do on Kindle Unlimited. If it matters, it's a short book of ~300 Kindle-normalized pages.

While writing this up, I realized Amazon charges authors $0.15 per megabyte of book file size per download. My book was 10 MB thanks to a bunch of photos. After extreme JPEG compression I was able to get it down to ~2MB or so. I wonder how many authors, like me, are losing 20% of their royalty without realizing it.

On AWS, you're charged ~$0.09/GB of bandwidth out. How Amazon thinks 1000x pricing is fair here is beyond me.

[robhu]

I would guess the high megabyte charge is there to encourage authors to keep their file sizes down, and the reason for this is presumably because Amazon have to pay for book downloads run through their 'Whispernet' (3G) Kindle service.

[derefr]

In other words, the charge is to incentivize people like nateberkopec to do exactly what they did: compress their JPEGs better.

[dbcurtis]

well, except it makes books with screenshots worthless. I bought an e-book on Mac Server. The print book is great because it is full of usefull screenshots showing exactly what you need to do. The Kindle book is a useless collection of smudges. Amazon has taught me to avoid an entire class of technical books on Kindle.

[sebular]

I feel like I've heard a lot of general hate toward the Kindle when it comes to anything with visuals. For starters, it's in black and white, but that's obvious, and nobody's going to try to sell or buy a coffee table photo book on the Kindle.

But the bigger issue with the Kindle platform is the inability to mimic the usefulness of a large, graphics-heavy reference book. It has a tiny screen that isn't good for viewing larger diagrams, and its tools for quickly flipping through pages or jumping back and forth between specific parts of the book are pathetic when compared with using a real book.

In terms of popular digital devices, the Kindle is the most puzzling to me. It was an innovative and groundbreaking technology when it was introduced 8 years ago, and all we've seen since then are the most boring and incremental improvements. Some have even been major missteps, as evidenced by the removal of physical page-turning buttons, only to have them return in the latest model.

Imagine if smartphones, tablets, wearables, or laptops had undergone such a severe lack of innovation in the past 8 years. How the product leadership of the Kindle team isn't fired and replaced with people who have real vision is a complete mystery to me.

I thought Bezos was supposed to be a hard-ass, but from an outsider's perspective it seems like he's totally fine with them barely lifting a finger to collect their paychecks.

[djrogers]

You d realize that you can read a kindle ebook on a tablet, phone, laptop, or retina iMac?

You're clearly conflating Kindle (the device) with Kindle (the ebook store).

[MicroBerto]

Can you embed links to the full size image?

[dbcurtis]

You can link out. But one of the things I like about Kindles for reference books is the ability to use it where you are, and not have to have an internet connection in order for it to be useful. Also, Silk isn't that great of a browser.

A bit off-topic, but I couldn't get at all interested in Kindles until the Kindle Fire, because that was the first time it would render O'Reilly books correctly, or render something like a resistor color code correctly. I love having a programmer's reference library in my laptop bag.

[emodendroket]

Well that explains why Kindle books typically have maps that are so compressed they are completely illegible I guess.

[nateberkopec]

I suppose so. But they're still charging 10x what I pay per MB for my cellphone. I use Ting, which runs on the same Sprint network as Whispernet, and I get 4G.

[Xylakant]

Amazon Whispernet works in most countries (even down in southern africa) and allows multiple re-downloads of the same book. Most people probably don't download a book ten times, but twice is fairly common for me (multiple readers). Comparing the price with the raw bandwidth price on a single network is not a fair comparison.

[extra88]

> Amazon charges authors $0.15 per megabyte of book file size per download

But they don't charge you anything to store the book, right? Charging something for the download is presumably necessary to discourage gaming the system and the rate chosen is meant to encourage books they consider the right size which may penalize (intentionally or not) image-laden books.

I'm not arguing that that Amazon's policies are right or that "Unlimited" makes sense for authors (or readers), just that there are good reasons to charge something.

> On AWS, you're charged $0.15/TB of bandwidth out

Where did you get that? Data out starts at $0.09/GB, goes down to $0.05/GB for big customers and presumably can go down even further for even bigger customers but not 300x cheaper.

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

[DanielDent]

Using Amazon as a benchmark for bandwidth prices is not a good starting point.

Amazon charges are $x.xx/GB. Providers which compete on bandwidth costs charge $x.xx/TB.

300x cheaper than Amazon is a little difficult, but 50-100x cheaper is a price at which bandwidth can be profitably sold.

[nateberkopec]

You're right, I have no idea where I got that figure. Editing.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

I believe that was the number tossed out (with proof) for hosting services bandwidth prices, in a discussion here about a month ago.

Edit: sortof - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11301085

(Bitterness: found by googling site:ycombinator.com bandwidth price hosting , because that search in-site does not work, because the one that once did was ignored/chased away. Must be some badge of honor like Apple's and Microsoft's app stores - "dismal search, we haz it".)

[smnrchrds]

I guess the per megabyte charge is how they recoup the cost of free 3G on Kindle devices.

[VLM]

I've recently been contemplating getting a new reader. As part of the research I can verify "free" 3G might have been free back in the kindle1.0 years but its $70 now upfront as an additional cost. Also you get to pay extra to have ad blocking.

[mynameisvlad]

It's "free" as in "not a monthly charge". The old Kindles had no Wifi-only option, so the price for 3G was already factored into the cost of the device ($399 for 1st generation, $259-359 2nd generation). The 3rd generation was the first to introduce Wifi-only models, and it came in two flavors, a cheaper one with wifi and a more expensive one with wifi and 3G. That's continued throughout the line ever since.

Similarly, the price for ad-free experience was also already factored into the cost of the device, but now is separate for those people who don't mind seeing ads for a lower price (or can't afford the $20).

[newman314]

Market opportunity? =) BSO (Book Size Optimization)

[kbenson]

> On AWS, you're charged ~$0.09/GB of bandwidth out. How Amazon thinks 1000x pricing is fair here is beyond me.

Do Kindles still use whispersync, where they get to use cell network connections for free but at very low rates? Even if it's no longer in use, maybe the pricing is still a holdover from that which people haven't noticed.

[mrbill]

My 1st-gen Kindle has the "Whispersync" 3G built-in and it still works fine (which was surprising last time I fired it up).

[amazon_not]

> On AWS, you're charged ~$0.09/GB of bandwidth out. How Amazon thinks 1000x pricing is fair here is beyond me.

$0.15 per MB is to cover "free" 3G downloads also when roaming.

[searine]

Just curious. How do you go about advertising your book?

[nateberkopec]

Not at all. It's just a side for me. My sales are 100% thanks to Amazon searches.

[steve19]

Can you share a link to your book?

[nateberkopec]

Sure: http://www.amazon.com/Alone-Across-America-Motorcycling-Back...