Kindle Unlimited is a great program for enthusiastic readers to consume as much literature as possible. As an author, it’s possible to make a substantial amount of money by offering your ebooks through this service, as long as you get enough page reads. Luckily, there are some tricks authors use successfully to gain more readers and overall page reads of their KU publications.
Here’s how to get more Kindle Unlimited page reads:
- Create attractive book covers, titles, and descriptions.
- Offer more fiction titles.
- Use KDP Select strategically.
- Opt into the Kindle Owners Lending Library.
- Follow trending themes.
In this article, I’ll share more about these tips for getting more Kindle Unlimited page reads to help you earn more money through this popular subscription service. Let’s get started!
1. Create Attractive Book Covers, Titles, and Descriptions
Despite the common warning to not judge a book by its cover, many readers often do. Readers may not develop a full opinion of you as an author or even get a glimmer into your unique brilliance from your cover, yet a good cover should convey the professionalism, benefit, and very essence of the book at first glance.
Beyond an exciting or intriguing title, the font, style, layout, graphics, and overall look of your book’s cover work to attract readers and help get them curious about the book. The description blurb can also significantly influence whether a potential reader’s interest is piqued.
If your book doesn’t seem to get even the “curious clicks,” try redesigning your cover, title, or book description. More importantly, if you’re not educated or trained in cover design, it’s best to consider hiring a professional to create a book cover for you.
2. Offer More Fiction Titles
Analytics of Kindle Unlimited subscriber data in 2021 revealed that KU is teeming with avid readers.
More than 74% of total subscribers sampled in a survey profess to read over five books every month. As a comparison, only 55% of non-KU readers read that much. In addition, 26% of KU subscribers attest to reading over 20 books every month.
Perhaps a more meaningful insight uncovered in this analysis is that many heavy readers tend to prefer fiction titles, as they can fly through them faster than nonfiction. Since the program works so well for fiction readers, it attracts more of that crowd.
Ultimately, the fiction genre yields outstanding results for many KU authors.
Still, that isn’t to say you can’t do well as a nonfiction author in KU. Just keep in mind that this could present you with some unique marketing challenges and require you to find unusual strategies found outside of articles and posts like this.
Regardless, it’s possible to get more page reads simply by providing more content. Consider writing bonus content or commentary for nonfiction, or expand a popular fiction title into a multi-book series.
Offering more titles and content helps you attract more readers and provides your existing fans the chance to consume more of your work, both of which can earn you more page reads on Kindle Unlimited.
3. Use KDP Select Strategically
The 90-day KDP Select program is available to all authors and publishers and offered free by Kindle Direct Publishing. It’s an excellent way to reach a different group of readers via Kindle and Amazon promotions.
As an author in the Kindle Unlimited community, you must have a title enrolled in KDP Select.
With that said, you might consider not having all your titles enrolled simultaneously. Instead, try rotating them in and out of the program.
This is particularly important if you’ve written a series because all your titles are on the subscription shelves when enrolled in KDP Select. Admittedly, this can be advantageous at times, yet you could try to maximize your royalty income by keeping the first title of the series in the program and attaching a link at the end of the book to take readers to the next title.
Depending on how many titles are in the series, you could experiment with rotating a few of them through the program if you’re getting a good response.
4. Opt into the Kindle Owners Lending Library
The Kindle Owners Lending Library is part of Amazon Prime membership benefits that allow Prime members to borrow one book per month from the library to read. As a KDP author, you receive payment for pages read per the KENP rate.
Remember that you’re only paid for the initial reading and won’t receive revenue for re-reads.
Upon enrollment in KDP Select, any book you have priced at or above $2.99 is automatically added to the lending library for two weeks. Enrollment is involuntary if you decide to take advantage of the KDP Select 70% royalty rate.
You can opt out of being included in the Kindle Owners Lending Library, though it comes with the same pay rate as Kindle Unlimited, so why deny yourself the potential profits?
5. Follow Trending Themes
Believe it or not, themes play a critical part in ebook marketing. The keywords Amazon uses to define and categorize publications change constantly, which means that your existing keywords get replaced, affecting your book’s ranking.
If you’ve seen a recent plummet in profit of a steadily-successful title, updating just one or two theme keywords to the current trend can make all the difference.
How Kindle Unlimited Works for Authors
Now that you know how to get more unlimited page reads, you might wonder how it actually works for writers.
When listing ebooks on Amazon, you can choose to have your titles included in the Kindle Unlimited library. This makes your work available to the millions of Kindle Unlimited subscribers, increasing your chances of getting new readers and potentially life-long fans of your writing.
The main difference between selling an ebook vs. having it “rented” through a subscription service is how you’re paid. Instead of receiving the price of your book, you’re paid per page read according to the current KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Page) Rate.
Yet, is it possible for authors to be successful and profitable when the Kindle Unlimited library has over one million books and thousands of popular magazines and audiobooks available? How do you get your work to stand out to KU subscribers in this virtual sea of literature?
The key is to make popular trends and successful marketing strategies work to your advantage.
Final Thoughts
Getting more page reads on Kindle Unlimited can be tricky, but it’s not impossible. Experiment with these strategies to see what works best for you. Keep in mind that you may want to employ several methods at the same time and change up your primary marketing focus occasionally to yield the best results. Good luck!