Kindle Unlimited ebook subscription service tops $5 billion payout
5 BILLION – that’s how much Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited will have paid out to self-publishers and small presses when the October 2026 pot payout is announced in November.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Oct 17, 2026 | Amazon, Digital subscription, ebook subscription services, Ebooks | 0 |
5 BILLION – that’s how much Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited will have paid out to self-publishers and small presses when the October 2026 pot payout is announced in November.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Mar 19, 2026 | ebook subscription services, Ebooks, Self-Publishing | 0 |
KU has paid $2.58 billion to self-publishers since 2020 — a 107% increase. Now four million books in 2025 has the industry panicking. TNPS runs the numbers and asks who, exactly, the problem is for.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Feb 19, 2026 | Audiobooks, Digital Audio, ebook subscription services, Print, USA | 0 |
Audible, Spotify, and Storytel are collapsing the boundaries between audio and text. What it means for rights, royalties, AI — and the reader who never reads.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Jan 25, 2026 | Digital Libraries, ebook subscription services, Ebooks | 0 |
OverDrive 379 m ebook loans + $700 m KU payouts expose the “ebook plateau” myth—self-publishers quietly dominate digital reading.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Sep 4, 2025 | Audiobooks, Digital Audio, Digital subscription, ebook subscription services | 0 |
Now it’s back. Estonia next month and 6-8 further new markets in the next few years.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Mar 18, 2025 | Audiobooks, Digital Audio, Digital subscription, ebook subscription services, Ebooks | 0 |
Put simply, publishing needs to move with the times. And of course it will, eventually. The history of publishing is the history of active resistance, passive acceptance and eventual embrace.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Sep 10, 2024 | Amazon, ebook subscription services, Ebooks | 0 |
Markus, that deadline is almost up. If you wish, I can get the kids at school to make you a The End Is Nigh sandwich board so you can walk the streets of Manhattan outside PRH like Bruce Willis in Die Hard Whatever-Number-It-Was, and remind everyone just how dumb you were.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Aug 25, 2024 | ebook subscription services, Ebooks, Self-Publishing | 0 |
This year the July payout sets a new record (probably only until next month) with $55.5 million being shared.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | May 21, 2024 | Digital subscription, ebook subscription services, Ebooks | 0 |
The total sum paid out to self-publishers and small presses so far this year is $205.8 million, putting ebook unlimited subscription service Kindle Unlimited on target to pay out $620m in royalties in 2024.
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Mar 15, 2024 | ebook subscription services, Ebooks | 0 |
History suggests the payout will hover around the $49 million per month mark during H1 and climb a...
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Mar 5, 2024 | Digital Audio, Digital subscription, ebook subscription services, Hong Kong, Ireland, South Africa, Taiwan | 0 |
Those of you desperately wanting to be offended or outraged by my TNPS op-eds will have to simmer...
Read Moreby Mark Williams | Jan 22, 2024 | Audiobooks, Digital subscription, ebook subscription services, Ebooks, Film & TV | 0 |
Would a 30 second ad inserted every five or ten chapters really be more disruptive than a knock at...
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