New Delhi: Amazon is tweaking its policy of paying authors for the e-books users download. Instead of paying a consistent amount for every download, irrespective of whether the user reads it in entirety or stashes it away in the device, the company will now pay authors based on the number of pages you read.
Starting July 1, Amazon will adopt the new policy for Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library authors. This would compensate writers for their hard work on longer titles and encourage quality material.
According to Engadget, Amazon will use a normalized page count that accounts for how much content is actually there. Therefore, authors won’t be able to pad things out by using larger font or extra spacing. The rate will be the same no matter the layout.
Whether this structure will prove beneficial to authors and impact the quality of content is yet to be discerned. Calculating images as content might lead to extra illustrations, while inclusion of cliffhangers, epilogues and anything else that might just increase the page count and keep you hooked is a cause of concern.
On the contrary, this policy could prove upsetting to authors of industry guides, textbooks and other material that is usually read cover-to-cover.
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