As I pointed out more than a year ago, Amazon has been offering monthly blog subscriptions to Kindle readers, but, in some cases, it hasn’t been paying the bloggers a reasonable cut of the revenue. And as my investigation revealed, in some cases, Amazon didn’t even bother to ask permission from the bloggers. While the monthly subscription cost has gone down to 99 cents per month, as Rebecca Skloot discovered on Twitter this afternoon, Maud Newton’s site is now for sale on the Kindle. (Maud has since revealed that a nonexclusive contract she signed with Newstex gives them the right to distribute her content through the Kindle.)
But there’s a big question here. If Amazon makes 99 cents per subscription, how much of this goes to the bloggers?
I am now in the early stage of a major investigation to determine, once again, if the bloggers listed on the Kindle store are collecting any commensurate revenue or granting their permission to Amazon to have their blogs distributed. And I will be updating this site with my findings. If your blog is listed on the Kindle Store, please contact me so that we can begin to hold Amazon accountable for seizing content generously offered for free and selling it to others on the open market.
There are currently 1,280 blogs listed at the Amazon Kindle Store.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
I would imagine you could include a non commercial/deriviate works/attribution license from creative commons (or elsewhere).
I see you can also CC-ify your twitter stream if you like, too http://www.tweetcc.com/
You shouldn’t have to license your content in any way if you don’t want Amazon syndicating it. Just ask them to remove it — it’s your own copyrighted work.
Cognitive Daily is on Kindle, and while I don’t get a cut, my publisher said they did get paid when they signed on, and that if the proceeds ever amounted to anything, they would consider cutting me in on it. I doubt Amazon (or ScienceBlogs.com) is getting rich from subscription fees at the expense of authors. At best, they profit indirectly by being able to say “blogs are on Kindle!”
I just don’t think many readers are going to pay for blogs they can get for free via their computers and iPhones (and even through Kindle’s own clunky web interface). CogDaily is the #1 science blog on Kindle, 21st overall, and we rank lower than 1,000th in overall sales for the Kindle.