Crash Couse on Kindle Vella vs Kindle Unlimited vs Kobo Plus for an everyday indie reader

Welcome to the smuttier side of romance, , with alien peens and the readers who love them!

When it comes to saving money on reading books, a subscription can be a life saver for fellow book addicts. We get to consume far more books than we would be able to afford otherwise.

Sometimes, I get my money's worth with the Kindle Unlimited program and some months, it would have been cheaper to simply buy the one book I read, but on average, I find I do save more money being in the program than not.

So, let's look at the available program options and how they look for both readers and the author involved.

A book in Kindle Unlimited gets less than a half cent per page read by a reader. That's around .00445 typically.

For an author: It was around 5 cents for 12 pages read the other day for one of my books. With a book of around 320 pages that's around $1.40 cents if someone reads the whole book.

For a reader: you spend around 9.99 a month (I'm not including any taxes, as I'm not including taxes in the sales tax for authors either.)

If you read that one book the whole month, then that's spending 9.99 for 320 pages, around 3 cents a page. Read two books of similar length, then you've spent 5 per book, three books 3.33, 4 books (one book a week, that's 2.50 a book) and on average most indie books are around 2.99, 3.99, or 4.99.) So, around the 4 book spot is where you are seeing the savings from being in the program.

If you read less than 4 books a month, 1 book a week, it is better to simply pay the indie book cost for the book, both for your wallet, and for the author!

Paying 3.99 for a book gives the average Kindle indie author around 2.70, which is a full $1 more than reading through KU.

Let's say that same book is in Kindle Vella vs KU. In KV, the books are paid based on tokens used. So, that's around 4 cents per episode. An episode is typically a chapter, but because of the format of KV, a chapter can sometimes be divided up into multiple episodes because of the way the tokens are paid out. (And KV does lots of "FREE" token distribution that means the author gets nothing for free tokens. AND nothing for the first 10 episodes which is probably around 10,000 words automatically free off the top.)

An average book of 320 pages is around 250 words a page, and around 80,000 words. 10,000 free (sometimes more depending on the size of the 10 free episodes.) makes 70,000 words for the book that get distributed around 1,000 to 2,000 words per episode. That means around 35 episodes that get unlocked using tokens to read the story. Which would pay the author around $1.40 for the book per read through (IF they use paid tokens, less if they are using free tokens.) That's actually on par with what KU pays out for pages read!

Pretty fun to see how the math was spot on between Vella and Unlimited! (Difference is that Vella there is a chance you get less, which I guess is a trade off for releasing a book in episodes before the book is actually finished. Many books in this platform are being worked on as they go, which makes the interactive polls and comments fun to be part of the creation process.)

For a reader in KV, it's 10 tokens an episode, and you can grab 2,000 tokens for 16.79 or around 8 cents an episode. 8 cents for 35 episodes is around 2.93 per book spent. Only 6 cents difference from paying the 2.99 average price for an indie book.

Kobo Plus is 7.99/mo (USD) to 9.99/mo (CAD) Instead of by pages read, it's by TIME spent reading in the app. Value per minute consumed. VMC.

For every minute a reader spends in your book, the author earns 60% of the revenue. They average out around 300 minutes equals 1 read. But, as I haven't been in Kobo Plus, I am uncertain about what that translates to for an average indie book's 80,000 average word count being read through once. It is possible this average 80,000 words could equate to MORE than the 300 minutes (1 read)

If you are an author that has been in KOBO plus, let me know what you've found for this VMC value per minute model? As 300 minutes is around 5 hours, and many books around 80,000 words can take an anywhere from 6 to 10 hours to read depending on the reader, while there are some SUPER readers who can read the same book in half the time.

I do plan on testing out Kobo with one of my books next year to see whether this platform can show similar income streams to KU.

My test bunny will probably be my book Goblin's Treasure book, the dark fantasy romance based on the feel of the Labyrinth for all the lovelies that would have said YES to the Goblin King being their slave if only they would love him. I mean doesn't that just break your heart? I'm okay with the OG FMC breaking my heart though, the FMC was way too young, but my FMC is not. She's a grown woman after divorce and the Goblin Kingdom is hers for the taking, after some hardships and spice of course.

The thing that I really like about the idea of KP is that there is no LIMIT on rereads/relistens in the program. If a customer spends more time in the book then the author gets more money. There isn't a first time listen only clause like with KU or exclusivity. And it does have a large selection of romance, so it's possible that my books might do well there, while not demanding my books be exclusive.

I thought about including it in Vella while I write it, but from what I can see the Vella platform seems to do better with a younger generation and the YA category. My books are NOT YA, and based on most of the marketing going towards youth, I feel like it's best to side with caution and avoid the Vella platform unless I have something tamer PG13 to share.

As for the rest of your monster-alien fudgers, I think you'll enjoy the goblins I have planned for you. I'm 14k into writing this story, and hopefully will have it finished before Christmas (so for those of you on my ARC team, you'll get a very merry holiday if I succeed.)

Speaking of holiday goodies, Her Alien Starbreaker is in progress and my current book baby. I'm halfway through writing it for the anthology Beyond Earth launching in December! My book is due to the formatter for the anthology by November 1st, but I want to have it finished by the end of September so I can start finishing up Goblin's Treasure.

I am narrating audiobooks at the same time! Because I was able to get a few gigs, that means I have more time to write! Narrate for a few weeks, write for a few weeks! It's working out as planned so far!

Help support more books and more writing time by checking out my alien romances!

https://books.steviemarie.com/jotab

https://books.steviemarie.com/heralienwarrior

PS: If you've read Jewel of the Alien Bandit, you're going to love Her Alien Starbreaker where Vareo gets a cameo appearance when he was part of the Birds of Zorn.

xoxo

Sky

His Brother's Mate NEW RELEASE COMING AUG 30th to KU! or Preorder for 99 pennies!

Vampire's Dragon Mate coming August 22nd to KU!

Grab a Cozy Spicy Monster Romance for Freesies

Standalone plot with spice adventures of fated mates, space vampires, knotting, and bonds that will last beyond the stars! All available in Kindle Unlimited!

https://books.steviemarie.com/jotab

https://books.steviemarie.com/heralienprince

https://books.steviemarie.com/heralieninsurgent

https://books.steviemarie.com/heralienexchange (Freesies with this newsletter, dig it out of your e-reader!)

https://books.steviemarie.com/heraliensavior

https://books.steviemarie.com/heralienwarrior

(Next book Her Alien Captor I want to work on for NaNoWriMo)

https://books.steviemarie.com/takingmedusa

https://books.steviemarie.com/breakingfate

Happy Reading and thank you for being part of my author journey!

~Sky

Check out Out of this World Unlimited Alien Romance Reads!

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Check out Romantasy Awareness Book Fair

Check out Sci-fi Romance for freesies

This is the place in my newsletter where you can check up on my word count/progress on any given project. So, if you're excited about something and where I'm at with it, or what's next on the writing agenda, this is the place to check. I don't post this anywhere else but on my newsletter. Not even my website has a progress update zone.

Breaking Fate: off to ARC READERS!!! Breaking Fate (currently available for Pre-order) Launches October 2nd 2024

Read Taking Medusa on Kindle Unlimited to get caught up!

TKManAteHer is on Amazon and Audible! A short erotic sentient robot romance, to be enjoyed in around an hour. Perfect for a quick escape that won't interrupt your beauty sleep if you start at bedtime!

It is a complete story, no cliffhangers, 2.5 spicy scenes, and a romance that defies time itself.

It's available for 99 pennies on Amazon, or from my author store:

Amazon: https://books.steviemarie.com/tk

Author Store: https://payhip.com/b/XgOuk

Also available on Audible! https://www.audible.com/ac/TKManAteHer-Audiobook/B0D5GC1ZDK

When you grab the book direct, more pennies are kept with the author. For every 99 penny book, an indie makes around 35 cents from Amazon.

Direct, I get around 50 cents depending on if you use Stripe or Paypal as your payment method through my author store. That's 40% more pennies in the author's pocket by grabbing direct!

Her Alien Starbreaker My goal is to have this completed before end of September 2024 for an anthology. Best of all, the personal cover for the book is commissioned by Deborah Garcia! So, this is the first cover I have made from commissioned artwork instead of cover designers! (Note: I make sure all my covers are done by designers that do NOT support A.I., No A.I. is used for my covers, nor my writing. I R hooman.)

Word Count: 22,372/50K goal

This book will be included in the upcoming anthology Beyond Earth available for pre-order for only 99 pennies and you also get 7 other complete sci-fi romances from awesome indie authors!