Amazon is at it again... (Update) (Patreon)

On May 14th, Amazon quietly changed the Kindle Unlimited algorithm. Overnight, less than half of 'page reads' were being registered.

The blue line in this graph is Kindle Unlimited page reads, and it was previously the majority of my income (and the income of every other KU author). This effectively slashed my income by 35%, which is a pretty sizeable demotion. I'm not thrilled about it, and it doesn't look like something that's going to be 'fixed'.

Over the past two weeks, the other authors who make this their living have been in a full panic. Today, two different authors announced that they will no longer commit to writing full-time, and have begun the process of finding some other way to pay the bills. What that means for you: less content.

I won't say who the authors are; they will make their own announcements shortly. Sadly, they are big names if you read trans and feminization romance.

I, personally, am very lucky, because I have YOU. Years ago, I started this Patreon and have grown it sloowwwwlly to what it is now. It's not massive, but it's currently what's stopping me from retiring the pen to seek out something that can better pay the bills.

Amazon has done this many times over the past decade. I was around in 2015 during the 'smutpocalypse', which ruined the livelihoods of many authors I knew well at the time. Then I was there for the second big hit to authors, when they dropped the value of a page read from $0.01 per page to $0.001. Somehow, I've always managed to slip through the cracks. I even survived in 2022 when Amazon unrolled their bot moderation, which banned thousands of accounts writing erotic content overnight (I was banned for a month because someone was plagiarizing my content, and the bots thought that I was the one stealing).

I will survive this latest blow as well, partially because I'm very used to living on a low income, and partially because I spent the past half decade trying to diversify as much as Amazon will allow me with their exclusivity requirement. Audible (owned by Amazon) is also currently keeping me alive.

What will change moving forward...

Some authors are desperately holding out hope that the past two weeks have been a glitch, but I'm 99% sure that they've simply changed what counts as a 'page read'. This was probably done to combat the sheer volume of AI content being published daily. Kindle Unlimited has always been a 'pot' that is shared by all authors. The payout is divided amongst the authors based on how many pages readers read. With SO MUCH AI content being shat out, they had to respond somehow. Sadly, there is no way for them to detect or prove what is AI and what isn't. I imagine this is the beginning of the end of the KU program as we know it, paying out based on page reads.

The red in the graph I shared above is hard sales at regular price. As of May 14th, hard sales are the largest chunk of my income. In fact, print sales (the grey line) is starting to even rival Kindle Unlimited.

So spending seven straight days writing a single book up to 25,000 or 30,000 words is probably no longer profitable. I will probably not be writing content that long anymore if the value of a page read is so low.

I MAY even consider going back to how I published in 2016: two shorter books per week, around 12,000 words each. I'm keeping a close eye on how this is developing--but something will have to change if I'm going to survive.

Patreon has been very good to me, especially over the past year. So I will probably be posting more exclusive content here--more books like Loyalty Test, which are written for Patreon and Patreon only. Publishing Loyalty Test brought a lot of new members here. I am considering publishing one shorter 12,000 word book to Amazon each week, and one 12,000 spicier book to Patreon each week.

This would be good news for you! Though I have to test it out before committing, because it may be more work than I can handle to be consistent.

I will probably stop generating illustrations for new releases. Yes, the images in my latest books are AI-generated. But generating them is time consuming, taking many hours to make for a book. The reason I include images is to remain competitive with the volume of AI content being published. Adding images increases my page count, and more pages meant more payout--but not so much as of May 14th. Now, it's probably not worth the extra time commitment when I could be writing exclusive content for Patreon.

It REALLY seems like Patreon is my future, with Amazon constantly reducing payouts. Patreon has been so consistently good to me. Right now, Patreon only makes me about 30% of what I make on Amazon, but I will probably put more effort into growing my catalogue here moving forward, because Patreon is safe and Amazon is totally unpredictable.

I'm sure many of you noticed the disappearance of names like Ava Hayes (a good friend of mine), DL Savage, Kenzie Hayes... Amazon changes forced them to find different work, and they no longer have time to write. It's sad. At least two more big names are now about to join them. This is what I love doing, so I'm going to do everything I need to do to avoid that fate.

So, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on what I've said here--particularly in regards to the shorter book length moving forward. 12,000 words is what I was writing between 2015-2018. Maybe you've been around that long and remember... I hope this isn't a dealbreaker for many of you; I just can't commit an entire week to writing a book that won't make me enough money to buy food.