Although it’s easy to see that the customer is Amazon’s number one priority that doesn’t mean that they don’t recognize the need to provide at least some benefits for the authors who supply the ebooks, even if grudgingly. Rarely is an issue black and white, so I’ve laid out a list of pros and cons for authors regarding enrollment with Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited Program.

Pros

• Kindle Unlimited has more books. They have about 600K compared to Oyster’s 500K and Scribd’s 400K. Readers are more likely to be drawn towards the option with a higher selection, especially since all three services charge a very similar monthly fee.
• Kindle Unlimited is currently the only service that has audiobooks. They’re only other real competitor at the moment is Audible, which is also an Amazon company. However, Audible charges $14.95 monthly compared to Kindle Unlimited’s $9.99 a month. Kindle Unlimited also allows for seamless transition between listening to the audiobook and reading the eBook so that the reader can choose whichever feature fits the moment best without having to lose their place. This new feature and the lower price may convince current users of Audible to switch to Kindle Unlimited thus increasing the reader pool.

*It may benefit Self-published authors to look into what it takes to produce an audiobook version of their work in order to take advantage of this new feature and market to a greater audience

• Kindle Unlimited books have to pass Kindle’s quality control standards. This means that readers can trust that they are going to receive a quality product and authors can rest easy knowing that no one is discouraged from reading their novel because of a quality error.
• Kindle Unlimited offers tools that help authors to promote their novels. A couple of these tools are Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotion. It’s also easy to make any changes such as typo fixes to your books because they are all in one spot. No need to spend all day going to each eNovel on each separate site. Exclusivity can mean convenience.
• Most importantly, the startup phase is highly competitive and indie and self-published authors usually end up on the bottom of the food chain. KU (however grudgingly) does subsidize authors, so if you’re willing to swallow the exclusivity clause you can make some money. Authors earn a share of the KDP Select global fund when readers choose and read more than 10% of their book plus 70% royalties for sales to customers in Japan, India, Brazil, and Mexico.

Cons

• The Big 5 traditional publishers have decided at the moment to opt out of Kindle Unlimited, which means that readers who are interested in books published by the bigger publishers will probably also opt out of Kindle Unlimited.
• Kindle Unlimited requires enrollment in KDP Select in order to be published on KU i.e. Authors are required to be exclusive to Amazon. If the books are in print they may be sold elsewhere but Amazon retains exclusive rights to the eBook.
• Readers can’t read an excerpt before ‘buying’ the book on Kindle Unlimited. This feature may deter readers from downloading books that they may otherwise find an interest in through an excerpt.
• If authors are exclusive to Kindle Unlimited they miss out on the Global Growth in the rest of the digital markets
• Being exclusive to Amazon means that authors end up being completely dependent on Amazon’s success. Is it really safe to have all your eggs in one basket? Even a super-giant like Amazon can be disrupted financially. Having all your income invested in Kindle Unlimited means you’re stuck on that boat if or when it sinks.

Even with all these pros and cons listed out it can still be hard to decide what is best for the self-published author. Whether we like it or not Amazon does currently sell the most eBooks, which means they have a large reader pool. It’s also an unfortunate truth that Indie and Self-published authors are treated worse and paid less than authors who are published by well-known publishing companies, purely because of the added leverage that gives them. Companies like Kindle Unlimited may be the future of books, which would mean authors will have to adapt, for better or worse.

I’ll leave you with one last interesting thought. Although KU is often compared to Netflix for books it could also be looked at as a step back in time to when people could pay a fee to borrow books from private libraries before public libraries existed. With this thought in mind, will modern libraries catch up to the call for the eBook and soon become Kindle Unlimited’s greatest competitor?