“In this digital age, we don’t see why authors should have to wait six months to be paid,” Amazon’s VP of publishing Jeff Belle wrote in the letter. “Beginning with our March payment cycle, we will move to paying our authors on a monthly basis. More specifically: each month’s royalties will be released within 60 days of the end of that month, every month.  For example, royalties for sales in January will be released by March 31, royalties for sales in February will be released by April 30, etc.”

Most publishing houses pay royalties twice a year. Authors who self-publish through Amazon’s KDP and Createspace lready receive monthly royalties.

Belle also wrote that “Based on sales in February, Amazon Publishing now ranks as the 5th largest publisher on the U.S. Kindle platform (excluding free downloads but including KOLL loans, for which we pay authors).”

Full letter:

Friends,

The team at Amazon Publishing has been working to continually improve our business, with the goal of turning efficiencies into higher author royalties, faster payments and even more support for the books we publish.  Building a new business can take time and patience, and the feedback and encouragement we’ve received along the way from you has been invaluable in making us better.

We’re particularly excited to tell you about upcoming changes to the way we pay royalties.  In this digital age, we don’t see why authors should have to wait six months to be paid.  Beginning with our March payment cycle, we will move to paying our authors on a monthly basis.  More specifically: each month’s royalties will be released within 60 days of the end of that month, every month.  For example, royalties for sales in January will be released by March 31, royalties for sales in February will be released by April 30, etc.

We recognize this may create a little extra paperwork in some cases, but we feel this change is in the best interests of authors — we hope you’ll agree.  As with any such change in our business, our tireless Author Relations team is standing by to answer any questions you may have on this topic.

In other news, 2013 is off to a strong start.  Based on sales in February, Amazon Publishing now ranks as the 5th largest publisher on the US Kindle platform (excluding free downloads but including KOLL loans, for which we pay authors).  The latest book to reach the 100,000 copy threshold is 47North’s THE MONGOLIAD: BOOK ONE, the first installment in the epic Foreworld saga, written by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Erik Bear, Joseph Brassey, Mark Teppo, Nicole Galland and Cooper Moo, which surpassed 100,000 copies in February.  Similarly, CRAZY LITTLE THING by Montlake author Tracy Brogan continues up the Kindle charts, also surpassing 100,000 copies in the last week of February.  Another Montlake bestseller, NOT QUITE DATING by Catherine Bybee exceeded the 100,000 copy milestone just last week as well.  Also of note is Christina McKenna’s “wittily and winningly-detailed” debut novel THE MISREMEMBERED MAN, which we acquired from Toby Press and re-published under AmazonEncore in 2010, re-entered the Kindle Top 10 in February on the strength of our backlist promotion, and is now on the verge of the 100,000 copy mark as a result.

Our AmazonCrossing imprint has also been on a roll lately. In January, THE BEGGAR KING by Oliver Pötzsch, the third installment in the bestselling Hangman’s Daughter series, debuted in the Kindle Top 10 to outstanding reviews, and just today surpassed 100,000 copies.  Translated from German by Lee Chadeayne, the Hangman’s Daughter series has been a breakout success, with over 800,000 copies sold to date (and occupying the top 4 slots in the US Kindle store, as of this writing).  In February, we launched the latest in our series of translations from Icelandic with REPLY TO A LETTER FROM  HELGA by Bergsveinn Birgisson, which garnered immediate praise as “a stunning work of art — resonant, earthy, heartbreaking”.  Meanwhile, in the other direction, our translations from English into German continue to surpass our expectations as well.  ABDUCTED by T.R. Ragan, itself a Kindle bestseller in the US and UK, was translated into German by AmazonCrossing as IM NETZ DES SPINNENMANNS in November, where it quickly reached #1 in our German Kindle store (combined English and German copies have already surpassed 100,000).  In all, for the month of February, six AmazonCrossing titles reached the Kindle Top 10 in Germany.

Meanwhile, Kindle Serials also continues to outperform our expectations.  Since the release of the first episode in its serialization, OPTION TO KILL by Andrew Peterson has sold over 70,000 copies and is now available as a complete book in both Kindle and trade paperback. And we are excited to see PINES, Blake Crouch’s Kindle bestseller, which has been called a “genre-bending, completely riveting thrill ride” of a novel, going into development at Fox and FX, with the pilot to be directed by M. Night Shamalyan.

We’re pleased with this strong growth overall, and in particular the results of our US and German translation publishing businesses, as well as Kindle Serials.  And yet we are also quite aware of the many improvements and inventions that lie ahead —as always your feedback is welcome and appreciated.  If you have any suggestions or questions about the new royalties process, or anything else about Amazon Publishing, please feel free to reach out to me directly.  –Jeff

Jeff Belle
Vice President
Amazon Publishing

Belle writes that “early next year, we will launch Amazon Publishing in Europe from our EU headquarters in Luxembourg.” Victoria Griffith, who headed Amazon Publishing in Seattle, will move to Luxembourg in early 2013 to run the operations. In her place, Larry Kirshbaum, publisher of Amazon Publishing New York, “will now assume editorial leadership for our Seattle and New York adult imprints, as well as Amazon Children’s Publishing.” Daphne Durham, who was editorial director, is promoted to editor-in-chief across Amazon’s adult imprints, reporting to Kirshbaum. Other staff changes:

Amazon veteran Amy Bates will oversee Operations across our entire publishing business.  West Coast Marketing chief Mikyla Bruder will oversee our global marketing efforts across all imprints.  Philip Patrick, who has been leading our rights and licensing team, will now lead our larger business development, rights and sales teams across all imprints.  And another long-time Amazon veteran, Brooke Gilbert, will continue to lead our dedicated Author Services team.

Belle also touted some sales numbers. Tim Ferriss’s The Four-Hour Chef, released November 20, “has already sold over 60,000 copies (print + Kindle),” he said. With Publishers Lunch reporting today that Four-Hour Chef sold 29,000 print copies in its first week (according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks print sales, including those through Amazon’s website), that suggests about half Four-Hour Chef‘s sales were digital.

Amazon Publishing now has five active Seattle-based imprints, mostly focused on genres like romance and thrillers, along with the general trade and children’s divisions in New York. Publishing industry veteran Kirshbaum was hired to launch the New York division in May 2011, and it published its first books this fall — including Ferriss’s Four-Hour Chef and former Laverne & Shirley star Penny Marshall’s memoir My Mother Was Nuts. Barnes & Noble and many independent bookstores refuses to carry Amazon print titles in their stores, which limits the distribution of Amazon Publishing titles and could affect the company’s ability to sign bestselling authors in future. But, as Belle notes in his letter, the company will now attempt to bring more English-language authors to a European audience.

Here is Belle’s full letter:

Dear Friends:

As we head into the holiday season, we have much to be thankful for at Amazon Publishing. We are especially thankful for our authors, who continue to keep us energized, and readers, who help get these books on Amazon bestseller lists. I am happy to report that thirteen of the Top 100 Kindle bestsellers for the month of October were by Amazon Publishing authors. In the past few months, we’ve welcomed several new authors into the 100,000-copies club: John Rector (ALREADY GONE), Sean Chercover (THE TRINITY GAME), Blake Crouch (PINES), Kendra Elliott (HIDDEN), Laurie Fabiano (ELIZABETH STREET), GM Ford (THICKER THAN WATER), Melinda Leigh (SHE CAN RUN), Alexis Harrington (HOME BY MORNING), Karin Slaughter (THORN IN MY SIDE), Michael Wallace (THE RIGHTEOUS) and Nelson DeMille (THE BOOK CASE).

We continue to be energized by readers’ reception for our authors and their books — so much so that we have some exciting news to share. Early next year, we will launch Amazon Publishing in Europe from our EU headquarters in Luxembourg. Vicky Griffith, who as Publisher of our West Coast Group, has been instrumental in launching our US business, will be relocating from Seattle after the New Year to help support this effort. We will begin staffing a team of editors and marketers, and ensure we are expanding the English language audience for our authors, with a focus on our English language bookstores on amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, amazon.fr,amazon.it and amazon.es.

As Vicky hops the pond, we will make a few organizational changes in the US, centralizing key functions and positioning us for continued growth.  Larry Kirshbaum, Publisher of our East Coast Group, will now assume editorial leadership for our Seattle and New York adult imprints, as well as Amazon Children’s Publishing. Daphne Durham will step into the role of Editor-in-Chief across all of our adult imprints, reporting to Larry. Amazon veteran Amy Bates will oversee Operations across our entire publishing business. West Coast Marketing chief Mikyla Bruder will oversee our global marketing efforts across all imprints. Philip Patrick, who has been leading our rights and licensing team, will now lead our larger business development, rights and sales teams across all imprints. And another long-time Amazon veteran, Brooke Gilbert, will continue to lead our dedicated Author Services team.

We remain determined to invent ways to help authors reach more readers. In July, for example, AmazonCrossing began translating  the first of our English language books into German. Already, twelve of these titles have appeared on the Kindle Top 100 list in Germany. At the same time, our Kindle Serials format has outperformed our expectations in the short time since our September launch — and we are thrilled to be publishing Kurt Vonnegut’s SUCKER’S PORTFOLIO, featuring seven never-before-published stories releasing in serialized form, over the next seven weeks. In September, based on overwhelming customer feedback, Amazon Studios optioned the film rights to Ania Ahlborn’s SEED, published in July by 47North. Short-form content has a home with Amazon Publishing as well: Thomas & Mercer published THE BOOK CASE by Nelson Demille as a Kindle Single in May (over 200,000 copies sold) and THORN IN MY SIDE by Karin Slaughter (over 100,000 copies sold).

We’re also very excited about some highly-anticipated new releases.  Tim Ferriss’ THE 4-HOUR CHEF released last week, and has already sold over 60,000 copies (print + Kindle) — more than any other non-fiction title on Amazon for the week, which included Black Friday. BONE RIVER by Megan Chance, which has been called “heartbreaking…complex and intriguing” by PW and “quietly powerful” by Booklist comes out December 4. THE BEGGAR KING, the “brilliant” third book in the highly-acclaimed Hangman’s Daughter series (over 500,000 copies sold) releases January 6. And THE RUSSIAN DONATION, winner of Germany’s Friedrich Glauser Prize, is being translated into English by Gerald Chapple and will be published by AmazonCrossing on January 22.

As our CEO likes to say, “It’s still day one.” That is especially true of Amazon Publishing. We have much work to do, and many challenges ahead of us, and we remain relentlessly focused on providing the best possible publishing experience for your authors.

Thank you again for your support.  If you have any questions about Amazon Publishing, as always, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Jeff

P.S. If you’ve started your holiday shopping, check out HARRY POTTER PAGE TO SCREEN, THE COMPLETE FILMMAKING JOURNEY (COLLECTOR’S EDITION).  It’s available December 4.

Jeff Belle
Vice President
Amazon Publishing

What’s new this time around is that Amazon is using a pay-once model: A user who buys the first installment in a serial automatically gets all of the others for free. Serials are being run out of Amazon’s West Coast publishing division – along with its imprints like Thomas & Mercer and 47North – while Kindle Singles are based on the East Coast.

Amazon has eight Kindle Serials for sale so far. In some cases, it’s tapping authors who’ve previously published books with Amazon Publishing. (“I got the gig because Thomas & Mercer picked my previous novel, Jewball, off the KDP self-publishing pile, and we all got along,” Neal Pollack, the author of a Kindle Serial called “Downward-Facing Death,” wrote in the book’s online forum.) Three are from a startup called Plympton. The company was cofounded by former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8 Lee and novelist Yael Goldstein Love. For the three titles, Amazon paid Plympton up front for a licensing deal that includes digital, print and audio world rights for a limited time.

Prior to the Amazon deal, Plympton had planned to pay its authors $500 an episode plus a bonus, but that changed with the deal — which was lucrative enough, Lee says, the company is “profitable, for now,” and will be able to pay those authors five-figure fees. There’s also a revenue split on serials sold. Amazon pays Plympton royalties directly, and Plympton then splits them with the author.

Kindle Singles and Kindle Direct Publishing offer authors a 70-30 royalty split in most cases. When I asked Jeff Belle, VP of Amazon Publishing, whether the split is the same for Kindle Serials, he didn’t give me a direct answer. “We are offering compelling terms, which will vary based on the proposed work,” he said.

“The third-episode problem”

Claudia Hall Christian is the author of “Denver Cereal,” a long-running online serial that is published daily in 500-word segments and gets 50,000 readers a month. Christian, who has been writing “Denver Cereal” for four years, is a bit skeptical of Kindle Serials. “I think it’s a marketing and advertising strategy,” she said. “Can the authors they’ve chosen actually write serial fiction? The problem with writing serial fiction is that it’s hard.” She hopes that Amazon will tap authors who’ve been writing in the format for a long time.

Plympton’s Goldstein Love echoed Christian’s comments that writing serials is hard. “We have really come across a lot of what we’re calling the third episode problem,” she told me. “It’s a lot easier to write a brilliant first episode of something. In your second episode, you’re continuing that. In the third episode, you realize you have no idea where this is going. It’s a real danger with writing serially. We won’t sign anyone on fully until we see how the first three [episodes] go.”

Amazon exclusives?

Amazon talked with Byliner about including its titles in the Kindle Serials launch. Byliner “had no problem with the pay-once model,” the company’s editor-in-chief Mark Bryant told me, but didn’t want to accept Amazon’s exclusivity requirement. Byliner authors “want their work to be available everywhere, in all the digital bookstores and on every device,” Bryant said. (Many Byliner e-singles are also available as Kindle Singles, but they’re not exclusive to Amazon.) Byliner will still sell individual installments of its serials in the broader Kindle store. Installments are $2.99 apiece.

Going forward, Lee isn’t sure whether Plympton and Amazon will make another deal. “We do not know what we are going to do going forward,” she told me. “But [Amazon] really cares about this format.” All eight Kindle Serials are offered at an “introductory” price of $1.99, which will rise over time, though Amazon’s Belle wouldn’t tell me by how much the increase will be. “It’s still early and we have a lot to learn,” he said. “But what we can say is that we think Serials will always be a great value for readers and a great opportunity for authors.”

Ultimately, writing a serial is a lot of work and takes more time than writing an e-single. “Downward-Facing Death” author Pollack explained a little more about the editorial process in a post for the Huffington Post:

Here’s what [my editor at Amazon] laid out: A book published in installments of 10 to 15 thousand words, over the course of a few months, with each segment ending in a moment of suspense or uncertainty. Each segment would be copy-edited, and edited for content if necessary. Then, when the whole thing was done, the book would get another complete edit, and would be issued in a full Kindle edition as well as a paperback one. The whole process would take about six months.

Further, each Kindle Serial is a flat price – with multiple episodes priced about the same as just one Kindle Single, for now. It seems that Amazon will have to invest more money in this format than it has in Kindle Singles: It has to pay authors more because they are writing more, and it either has to sell the Serials at a significantly higher price accordingly or take a loss. Since it doesn’t appear to be offering the 70/30 revenue split that it does on Kindle Singles and KDP titles, it might also have to pay authors more money up front. So Kindle Serials could be a bigger investment for Amazon than Singles have been.

Jeff Belle doesn’t doubt the pay-once strategy. “We thought this would be the best customer experience for reading a digital serial,” he told me. “in the end, if you focus on the best possible customer experience, the revenue will follow.”

“We’ve been energized by the early results across all of our imprints,” Belle writes:

Since December, our Thomas & Mercer imprint has sold over 250,000 copies of Ed McBain’s classic 87th Precinct series (available for the first time in digital). In December, 47North published The Book of Sith by Daniel Wallace, which has been called “one of the coolest Star Wars products ever made.” This summer, with the success of The Dark Monk (A Hangman’s Daughter Tale), AmazonCrossing author Oliver Pötzsch has now crossed the half-million copy mark in life-to-date sales. Also joining the half-million club as of last month is Karen McQuestion, author of the Kindle bestsellers A Scattered Life, Easily Amused and The Long Way Home.

At the end of July, we released The Trinity Game by Sean Chercover. It quickly rose to the #5 spot on our Kindle bestseller list, and is already well on its way to surpassing 100,000 copies. War Brides by Helen Bryan occupied the Kindle Top 10 for most of July and August, and has now sold over 300,000 Kindle copies.

Not surprisingly, Belle does not break down how many copies the books have sold in print versus Kindle books. A little under a year ago, I took a closer look at Amazon Publishing and discovered mediocre print sales on most titles.

I love that the Book of Sith hyperlink above leads to…a review on Barnes & Noble’s sci-fi blog.

Belle claims that authors who’d previously worked with other publishers are doing better with Amazon:

The Detachment, by Barry Eisler, published last September by Thomas & Mercer, has sold over three times the copies of any of Barry’s previous New York Times bestselling books. New York Times bestselling author Connie Brockway joined Montlake Romance as our launch author, and The Other Guy’s Bride has also gone on to sell more than three times the copies of her other recent titles.

“We are as determined as ever to make sure that Amazon Publishing authors reach a huge audience,” Belle writes. “In particular, we will continue to heavily market and promote them to our 180 million customers around the world, through online and offline advertising, our websites, through email, and on millions of Kindle and non-Kindle devices.”

Full letter below.

Dear Friends,

The last year has been one of exciting growth for Amazon Publishing: We published the first titles from our Montlake, Thomas & Mercer, and 47North imprints based in Seattle, and opened our New York office, which is focused on non-fiction and children’s books. In January we completed the acquisition of Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books; in June the acquisition of Avalon Books; and in August, we closed on the acquisition of over 1,000 backlist titles from Dorchester Publishing. And just last week, we announced a new initiative that we’re very excited about — Kindle Serials.

We’ve been energized by the early results across all of our imprints. Since December, our Thomas & Mercer imprint has sold over 250,000 copies of Ed McBain’s classic 87th Precinct series (available for the first time in digital). In December, 47North published The Book of Sith by Daniel Wallace, which has been called “one of the coolest Star Wars products ever made.” This summer, with the success of The Dark Monk (A Hangman’s Daughter Tale), AmazonCrossing author Oliver Pötzsch has now crossed the half-million copy mark in life-to-date sales. Also joining the half-million club as of last month is Karen McQuestion, author of the Kindle bestsellers A Scattered Life, Easily Amused and The Long Way Home.

At the end of July, we released The Trinity Game by Sean Chercover. It quickly rose to the #5 spot on our Kindle bestseller list, and is already well on its way to surpassing 100,000 copies. War Brides by Helen Bryan occupied the Kindle Top 10 for most of July and August, and has now sold over 300,000 Kindle copies. We’re thrilled about our list for the rest of 2012, which includes Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels (all 14 books), as well as inaugural titles from our New York imprint, such as My Mother Was Nuts by Penny Marshall, and The 4-Hour Chef by Timothy Ferriss.

We are especially focused on increasing the audience for our authors. The Detachment, by Barry Eisler, published last September by Thomas & Mercer, has sold over three times the copies of any of Barry’s previous New York Times bestselling books. New York Times bestselling author Connie Brockway joined Montlake Romance as our launch author, and The Other Guy’s Bride has also gone on to sell more than three times the copies of her other recent titles. These authors, along with Amazon Publishing, are helping to redefine what it means to be a bestseller. We’re extremely proud of the results so far.

We are as determined as ever to make sure that Amazon Publishing authors reach a huge audience. In particular, we will continue to heavily market and promote them to our 180 million customers around the world, through online and offline advertising, our websites, through email, and on millions of Kindle and non-Kindle devices. Based in large part on our long experience as a bookseller, we are confident that this expansive marketing and promotional support will continue to yield strong sales results for our authors.

Our goal remains to invent new and better ways to connect authors with readers. I know you feel the same. So much of the work we are doing would not be possible without your support and we appreciate every submission and opportunity to do business with you and your clients. We also know that we’re new — we have more ahead of us than behind us (both opportunities and challenges) — yet we remain relentlessly focused on what we can do to provide the best possible publishing experience to you and your authors.

Thank you again for your support. If you have any questions about Amazon Publishing, as always, please feel free to reach out to me directly. — Jeff

Jeff Belle
Vice President
Amazon Publishing

The story, written by Businessweek technology writer Brad Stone (who will publish a book on the same subject next year), follows the history of Amazon’s entry into the book publishing world and doesn’t contain too many new nuggets for those who’ve been tracking the story already. Nor does the rancor that traditional publishers — none of whom were willing to speak on the record for this piece — feel toward Amazon come as a surprise.

The piece provides some insight into the ways Amazon perceives its own publishing business, though. A few choice quotations:

»  Jeff Bezos to Businessweek in 1999 (he declined to comment for this piece): “We’re really, really good at exactly one thing, which is helping customers discover things that they might want to buy online. And that’s enough.”

»  Jeff Belle, VP of Amazon Publishing and Larry Kirshbaum’s boss: “What we’re building is more like an in-house laboratory where authors and editors and marketers can test new ideas. Success to us means working with authors who want to find new ways to connect with more readers.” Traditional publishers would likely define success in the same way.

»  Larry Kirshbaum, who basically says not one thing of substance in the whole piece: “I have a message I really believe in. Which is that we’re trying to innovate in ways that can help everybody. We are trying to create a tide that will lift all boats.”

»  Amazon’s problems with Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) over whether Barnes & Noble will carry Amazon Publishing print books in its stores if it can’t also sell them as e-books: “Amazon executives say they’re ready to compromise on this issue but that Barnes & Noble is not.” I am dying to know what “compromise” means here, especially in light of the deal Amazon and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt struck this week under which HMH is the print publisher of Amazon New York titles. Does compromise just mean Barnes & Noble agreeing that it will stock the print books without being able to sell them in the Nook Store, since they are technically published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt? Or will B&N actually get a cut of e-book revenues?

»  Lines from the e-mail an Amazon recruiter sent to “several editors at big publishing houses” in April 2011, “looking for someone to launch a new New York-based publishing imprint”: “The imprint will be supported with a large budget, and its success will directly impact the success of Amazon’s overall business.” This suggests Amazon sees book publishing as a key contributor to its bottom line.

»  Nancy Pearl, the beloved librarian who recently signed a deal with Amazon: “I suspected people would not be happy with this. But I didn’t expect the vitriol.”