According to new rules published by the company, self-published authors could be paid $0.006 per page read, while writers making their works available via Amazon’s Kindle Owners Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited will be paid not per copy downloaded but rather per page actually read. Thus, longer books have a higher potential payment than shorter works.

Amazon communicated new rules to authors, revealing exactly how little that payment would be. According to statistics, customers of its 2 services read about 1.9bn pages in June, and Amazon expected to pay at least $11m a month for June, July and August.

In other words, the payment per page read could be as little as $0.006. This requires an author to write a 220-page book and make the readers read every page to earn the same $1.30 they now get per copy downloaded.

As a result, literary editors working with self-publishing authors started losing clients, as the authors have decided to stop writing after estimating a 60–80% reduction in royalties. The matter is that self-published authors are often disabled, stay-at-home mums, or returned veterans who can’t handle a regular job and at the same time can’t write for free, because they have to make a living.

Still, it seems that not every writer will lose out – taking into account the fact that the overall amount paid out to authors remains the same, there will be winners. Apparently, they will be authors writing longer books that are read in full. This may create an impression that Amazon is going to reduce the income of authors of shorter works trying to alter the composition of the library. One may argue that placing the emphasis on length of book rather than its quality, the company is shutting out not only erotica authors, but also nonfiction authors and even children’s book authors.