This new avenue for income might be a good option not just for unknown authors, but for authors like her that are marketing more to a niche audience. The traditional book publishing industry is not so friendly to niche offerings because they must sell a certain amount of copies to break even with publishing expenses — so books with mainstream appeal fare better.

I think that the new royalty scheme will definitely benefit the less known author. I can only imagine how hard it is to get represented by a publishing company, so this concept will open the door for those writers who want to get their works exposed. With that said, we’ll likely see a huge increase in “junk” so hopefully, Amazon will have the resources available to filter content and maintain an enjoyable Kindle experience.

As for the concept of “free” in the context of the Kindle – I do believe that giving away content for free is a stepping stone to more purchases down the road. I have several songs in my iTunes library that stemmed from earlier “free” downloads. After listening to my “free” songs, at least for the ones I liked, I had no issue paying for additional songs by the same artists. There are a lot of awful free songs offered as well, and to those, I simply ignore and move on to the next ones I like. My guess is that the same model will work with free books. To those readers who want to stick with their favorite authors, they can go directly to their selection and pay the price. For more indecisive readers, the free option will give them the chance to experiment and see what they like, penalty free.

I also consider it somewhat admirable of Amazon to up their author royalties. Even if it is for selfish reasons of the company, it shows a sign of respect for content creators. Jeremy said it might lead to a slew of “sucky” work being published online, and I could see this happening but I agree that they should implement some sort of filtering and rating system to balance it out.

A rating system for new authors would be especially helpful as well as successful if applied to work being offered free of cost. More people would be willing to try out a new author if they didn’t have to pay anything, that’s why the “free” model works, and therefor more people might be willing to submit a rating to help other e-book readers sort through it all.

(Separate thought from the previous question to Katy. No offense intended!)

This opportunity sounds like it will inflate the Amazon offering (like it needs it), but I wonder how much of that will be books that _didn’t_ get a publisher for a good reason (i.e. they suck). Hopefully they’ve learned from 5 years of UGC and have tools for filtering and rating content. It would be painful to have to sort through something akin to YouTube on the Kindle.

With my iPhone (iPod touch) and the Kindle App, I make targeted purchases for favorite authors. I don’t use it to browse much. A bloated catalog would scare me away.

I interned at a couple of Seattle book publishers and took the first crack at reading through the “slush” pile — all of the unsolicited manuscripts that people would send in. I’d write up my thoughts about them and pass them along to the acquiring editors, but it is a very rare occasion that an unsolicited manuscript is taken on for publication — maybe once or twice in an editor’s entire career.

I wonder if this new Amazon royalty scheme could provide supplementary income and a wider audience for those that are not supported by a book publisher and had planned on self-publishing their work.

I don’t see authors giving up their publishers any time soon to go publish directly with Amazon. I don’t think that we are at a point where having your book out just in ebook form is the same as having an actual physical book published and distributed… Can ebooks replace the joy of seeing your book in print, on bookstore displays, in people’s hands?

I don’t see 70% lasting over time, though. MSFT started there on XBLA games, but a couple years in dropped it to 35%. Certainly builds the critical mass to bootstrap your platform well beyond the competition to start, however.