Amazon to pay authors in its library program by pages read

In a move that places a new priority on 'page-turner,' Amazon on July 1 will begin paying authors in its Kindle library program by the number of pages read, and not the number of times a book is checked out. The change appears to affect only e-books self-published on Amazon that authors made available through the company's Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners' Lending Library programs. As anyone who's ever picked up a paper book knows, not every volume that's bought or borrowed gets read from cover to cover. A reader might skim, might check out the last chapter, might start at the beginning and give up after a few pages or chapters. Now, some authors will be paid by only the number of pages the borrower has actually read. (No cheating, Amazon's got an algorithm to check for that.)

Authors will now only get paid for each page that Amazon thinks was actually read. And only the first reading of each page counts. Someone going back to re-read a particularly scintillating bit doesn't bring in any more dough. Perhaps even more painful, these Amazon authors will now be able to go to their sales dashboard on the site and see exactly how many of the pages they sweated over were actually read by readers who checked out their books.