If you’re getting close to publishing your book on Amazon and don’t really understand how Kindle Unlimited works and whether it would be a good option for you, you’re not alone. With several clients writing cozy romance or mystery novels—a couple of the genres that Kindle Unlimited is particularly well suited for—I figured that a post explaining how it works was in order.

Kindle Unlimited works great for genres that are likely to attract binge readers who devour lots of books, since payment is based on the number of pages read each month, and authors receive higher royalties. The tradeoff is that you can’t sell the digital copy of your book anywhere else, including your own website.

While sacrificing wider distribution might not serve nonfiction authors, since nonfiction readers may consume fewer books, authors of series, particularly in the romance, urban and epic fantasy, and sci-fi genres, can gain significant visibility and exposure while strengthening their Amazon platform.

I’ll let KDP explain exactly how it works:

Kindle Unlimited (KU) is a subscription program where customers can read Kindle eBooks and keep them as long as they want, for a monthly subscription fee. Customers don’t have to be Amazon Prime members to enroll in Kindle Unlimited (KU). When you enroll in KDP Select, your Kindle eBook is automatically included in Kindle Unlimited (KU). Your Kindle eBook will still be available for customers to buy, and you’ll continue to earn royalties from those sales.

To be included in Kindle Unlimited (KU), you must meet the KDP Select requirements and enroll your Kindle eBook in KDP Select. If you don’t want your Kindle eBook in Kindle Unlimited (KU), you have the option to remove it from KDP Select.

Your Kindle eBook is eligible for royalty payments from Kindle Unlimited (KU) for pages an individual customer reads in your Kindle eBook for the first time.

Kindle Unlimited royalties are calculated based on the size of the KDP Select Global Fund each month.

As KDP further explains:

Author earnings are then determined by their share of total pages read. You are able to earn a maximum of 3,000 Kindle Edition Normalized Pages(KENPC) read per title per customer.

For example, here’s how we’d calculate royalty payouts if $10 million in funds are available in a given month with 100 million total pages read…:

• Author with a 100-page Kindle eBook that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million x 10,000 pages for this author / 100,000,000 total pages).
• Author of a 200-page Kindle eBook that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million x 20,000 pages for this author / 100,000,000 total pages).
• Author of a 200-page Kindle eBook that was borrowed 100 times but only read halfway through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million x 10,000 pages for this author / 100,000,000 total pages).

You can see how many pages of your book (KENP) Kindle Unlimited readers have consumed—and get an estimate of royalties to be paid—in the KDP Report. Here’s more information about that. If you have enrolled in Kindle Select (Kindle Unlimited on the reader side), your page reads will show up under KENP on the reports. Just remember that monthly KENP numbers are finalized at the middle of each month and can change up until that point.