January 2017 Kindle Unlimited KENP rate falls by 9% despite KDP fund hitting new high

The Kindle Unlimited KENP rate for January 2017 plunged by 9.6% to $0.0047 from December’s level of $0.0052 despite a strong rise in the KDP Select Global fund to yet another new high of $17.8 million.

The KDP fund increased by $1 million from $16.8 million in December while previous monthly figures were $16.3 million in November, $16.2 million in October and $15.9 million in September.

For the UK market the KENP rate for January 2017 is £0.0035 — down from £0.0038 in December and £0.0037 in November.

The company extended Kindle Unlimited to Australia (Amazon.com.au) last autumn at a rate of AU$13.99 a month for subscribers and the January KENP rate in Australia for authors and publishers is $AU 0.0040, down from $AU 0.0043 in December 2016.

Looking back a year ago, there was a similar 9% fall in the KENP rate in January 2016 to $0.0041 in January 2016 from $0.0045 in December 2015. These figures aren’t directly comparable with later statistics as January 2016 was the last month before the ‘page recount’ where Amazon recalculated the basis of just how many words make up a KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Page) and brought in KENPC v2.0 (Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count).

The KENP rate for February will give us the first full year’s figures under the KENPC v2.0 system.

The total number of KENPs read during January 2017 was around 3.78 billion pages, using my usual method of dividing the total KDP fund by the US KENP rate (17,800,000/0.0047). That is a substantial rise of 17% from 3.23 billion KENPs in December 2016.

It also illustrates a seasonal trend as January 2016 saw a 21% rise in KENPs read to 3.68 billion pages from 3 billion pages in December 2015, with both figures calculated under KENPC v1.0. 

Kindle Unlimited paid out $186 million to authors in 2016