Changes Afoot!

Some of you may have heard rumors that Amazon is making changes to the affiliate program (which is how sites like this make money, as I've mentioned in the past) in regards to how free books will affect earnings. They dropped the bomb on everyone via a midnight email a couple of days ago and many sites are scrambling, to accomodate the new rules. Any site that Amazon determines "primarily promotes free books" and has more than 20,000 free books purchased and if less than 20% of all books are paid purchases, will lose all their income for that month, starting March 1.

That sounds like a really big number, 20,000, until you break it down by day (about 670/day) and by books (on an average day, the big publishers might have 2-3 free books and the smaller publishers another half dozen; that's ignoring the probably thousand free books added in the KDP select program for indie authors). So, a site like this one that mentions 7 books a day would lose all income if 100 people bought each of the books mentioned. This can easily happen to a site with a much smaller readership than I have. Note that affiliates don't lose only the referral income due to the free books (there isn't any income from free books, of course, but sometimes there will be a small amount if someone goes on to purchase something else in the same session), but all referral income for the month (and across all of the affiliates sites: many other bloggers have multiple sites with different focuses, but share a single Amazon affiliate account).

What none of us know, right now, is how many free books are being credited to our accounts right now, because Amazon doesn't share that information with us (they hope to have reports available for this by March 1, when the new rules take effect). Another complete unknown is how many free books will get added to our accounts due to people who go on to buy more than one free book once reaching Amazon (in the above example, if 50 people went to buy those 7 free books and also bought another free one they saw on the bestseller lists or the "also bought" ad under each book, then that would be enough to hit that 700/day level; you can see how even a very small blog could end up exceeding these limits if they keep promoting free books).

I've read on some sites that they will shut down or charge for listings, as some of the large freebie only sites now do (authors pay to be featured on the site or emails, often scheduling far in advance) and a rumor of one that will charge for a daily email of free books. I've never accepted author advertising for free books and don't plan to start. But, I will have to make some changes. Right now, I am setting up a second site for free book postings (it's sort of up now, but I still need to set up the related RSS feeds, twitter, facebook, etc). If that site can continue without impacting the main site, it will keep going and the books mentioned there will be the same ones that had been mentioned here. After March 1, the main Books on the Knob site will only feature bargain books, daily deals and reviews; no free books, the same as many other sites have decided. Free MP3 music and Android Apps are not affected by the upcoming changes, so will continue to be highlighted on a daily basis, here on the website's homepage.

I don't know how this will effect those who subscribe to Books on the Knob on their Kindles - I may be able to combine the RSS feeds there, since there are no affiliate tags in the feed (and the Kindle doesn't let you click on links for blogs, anyway). There will be separate feeds for those using an RSS reader or email delivery. For the next few days, there will be no changes and I'll give you the links for the new site, just as soon as I get everything sorted out.

Outside of changes here on this blog (and across the web at other sites), I expect to see some changes in the KDP Select program, which authors use to offer free books, as well, in the next few weeks (although perhaps Amazon believes that cutting off their avenues for advertising will be enough to rein in the flood of free books and some of the resulting problems, such as Kindle Libraries that are so large they don't function well and the costs that Amazon no doubt incurs from delivery). At least one thread mentioned an author selling over 40,000 free books when mentioned on just one high traffic blog (not here! I'm nowhere near that big); that's enough to affect sales rankings at Amazon and may still be worth the advertising fees the larger sites are charging (which may go up, once they lose their Amazon earnings). A lot of indie authors are talking about leaving KDP and hope that readers will go back to paying for content, as they've run into readers who now want the entire series free, rather than just the first in a series. Of course, it isn't just the indie authors that have been gaming the system - I just read an article on how much you can pay to guarantee a #1 start on either The Wall Street Journal’s or NYT's Bestseller lists (think $70K and up) and how some agencies are gaming the sales numbers by ordering multiple singles, rather than dealing with distributors for the books for the events they arrange.