Thursday, January 12, 2012

Amazon: Authors Making More From Lending Library

Seattle-based Amazon.com is reporting this morning that the top authors in its Kindle Owner's Lending Library--its borrowing program for Kindle titles--are seeing a huge impact on their royalties by being included in the program. Amazon reported that the top ten KDP Select authors earned over $70,000 in the month of December, a 30 percent increase on top of the sale earned from paid sales of their titles in the same period. The firm said that was a growth of 449% month-over-month from November to December. The Kindle Lending Library was launched in November, allowing Amazon Prime owners to borrow books from a library of over 5000 titles. That library now includes oer 75,000 titles. Amazon has heavily promoting the library to independent authors and publishers, paying out a special fund to authors willing to make their titles exclusive through the library for at least 90 days.