More than 1000 authors earned over US$100K in 2018 says Amazon

Amazon has reported that authors earned more than US$260 million (A$359m) from the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select Global Fund in 2018, totalling more than US$840m (A$1.16bn) since the launch of Kindle Unlimited.

Amazon said, ‘hundreds of thousands of authors have self-published millions of books through KDP since launching the service in 2007’. It added that ‘thousands’ of authors earned more than US$50,000 (A$69,000) from KDP royalties in 2018, and more than 1000 authors earned over US$100,000 (A$138,000).

The company shared the data when releasing its full-year financial results, which showed a net sales increase of 31% in 2018.

The retailer earned net sales of US$232.9 billion (A$321.3bn) this year, compared with US$177.9bn (A$245.4) in 2017. Operating income increased to US$12.4bn (A$17.1bn), up from US$4.1bn ($A5.6bn) in 2017. Net income increased to US$10.1bn (A$13.9bn), up from US$3bn (A$4.1bn) in 2017.

A version of this story first appeared in Books+Publishing on 4 February 2019. Books+Publishing is Australia’s leading source of print and digital news about the book industry, keeping subscribers up to date with the latest industry news, announcements, job advertisements, events, trends and more.