I didn't have a big problem with Amazon's
exclusivity requirement in KDP Select when Kindle Unlimited wasn't in the picture for one simple reason: Amazon was paying authors more in royalties for being exclusive to KDP.
Not exact matches
If Amazon dropped the
exclusivity requirement for KU, I might be willing to tolerate the lower payout, but it seems * insane * to put all your eggs
in a basket and hope for the best.
The program ruffled a lot of feathers
in the industry when it was first announced, mostly for its
exclusivity requirement.
Particularly, it must do away with the
exclusivity requirement but it must also pay out
in percentages, based on a book's standard royalty rate.
If Amazon removed only the
exclusivity requirement, even keeping the present uncertain and unfair pay scale
in place, many indie authors, myself included, would enroll at least some books — and that would be enough to provide a sizable increase
in books available to customers for borrow.
The aggregate Draft2Digital is about as good a comparison for easy upload as you can find - but they are just the aggregate that tries to save you headaches from Kobo, iBooks, and Nook individual dashboards (which are so painfully frustrating) And they don't have access to Google yet (probably because Google has no idea what they are doing...) I am totally against Amazon
Exclusivity and it being a
requirement of KU - but I also have a couple of my books
in KU right now because it works.
That is to say, where
exclusivity is not a formal
requirement for the grant of the rebate, is it necessary to conduct an economic analysis of the rebate
in question.