Kindle Unlimited KENP rate falls to $0.0045 for August — the lowest level under post-recount system

The Kindle Unlimited KENP payment rate for authors fell to $0.0045 for August — the lowest KENP rate under Amazon’s page recount system which came into operation in February.

Although the KENP rate fell by 6% from July’s figure of $0.0048, the KDP Global Select fund (which is the cash used to pay KU authors) rose again to another new high of $15.8 million from $15.5 million in July, which was a considerably bigger increase than the ‘mere’ $100,000 rises seen in May and June.

It looks very much as the Kindle Unlimited business is repeating its seasonal trick of sticking on a plateau for a few months and then seeing a surge in members and borrowing, sending the KDP fund higher and the KENP rate lower.

The KENP rate for the UK stayed the same at £0.0030 in August, which equates to around $0.0039, with British-based writers still battered by the post-Brexit crash in the value of the pound. The KENP rate for Germany was €0.0033, which works out at only around $0.0037.

Dividing the amount of the KDP fund for August (£15.8 million) by the KENP rate of $0.0045 produces a figure of around 3.51 billion KENPs read by Kindle Unlimited members during August. That’s a substantial 9% rise from 3.22 billion KENPs in July and 11% up on the total of 3.14 billion KENPs in June.

The monthly KENP rates for this year are:

  • January: $0.0041
  • February: $0.0048 (the first month of KENPC v2.0, a revised way of calculating the number of pages in a Kindle ebook)
  • March: $0.0047
  • April: $0.0048
  • May: $0.0046
  • June: $0.0049
  • July: $0.0048
  • August: $0.0045

Average monthly KENP rate over Jan-July 2016: $0.0046

The monthly KDP Select global fund totals for 2016 are:

  • January: $15 million
  • February: $14 million
  • March: $14.9 million
  • April: $14.9 million
  • May: $15.3 million
  • June: $15.4 million
  • July $15.5 million
  • August $15.8 million

Total for January-August 2016: $120.8 million

The long and the short of the Kindle Unlimited KENPC recount