What is KENP? For new Amazon authors, it is important to understand this acronym.
KENP stands for Kindle Edition Normalised Pages. Amazon uses the process as the formula to calculate the number of ebook pages read by a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
You earn royalties for every page of your ebook that a reader reads.
Amazon determines the amount month-to-month, which depends on the size of its Global Fund.
How does KENP work?
You can only earn page read royalties when you enroll your ebook in Amazon KDP Select to make it available on Kindle Unlimited (KU).
However, you will have to agree to make your ebook exclusive to Amazon when you enroll. So it’s a choice you need to make.
If you prefer to have your ebooks available on other retailers, you won’t be eligible to earn KENP income.
But if you enroll, you will earn money for every page read of your ebook or ebooks.
A KU reader doesn’t need to read your whole book to earn a payment. Because every page read counts, you will be paid even if a reader only reads one page.
Every month, Amazon announces the size of its Global Fund.
You can find this information at the very bottom of your KDP dashboard screen.
Amazon divides the fund total by the number of page reads from Kindle Unlimited to arrive at a per-page read amount.
You can read Amazon’s explanation if you want more details.
How much do you earn?
As a rough rule of thumb, the Kindle Unlimited KENP rate returns between $0.004 and $0.005 per page read.
It is a reasonable return for a full-length novel compared to an ebook selling price of $2.99 to $4.99.
But for short novellas, it might not be such a good return.
To give you a better estimate, authors receive between $4.00 and $5.00 for every 1,000 pages read.
It’s a cumulative amount. It could be two readers who read 1,000 pages, and both finish an ebook. Or when 500 readers read only two or three pages of each ebook.
You can find your KENP income in your KDP dashboard.
Your Amazon KDP royalty earnings will depend on the popularity and also the availability of Kindle Unlimited in certain countries.
As you can see in the table above, The US and India are well ahead of other markets.
How to maximize KENP your earnings
When you enroll in KDP Select, your ebook is available for sale at its regular price.
This means that readers without a KU subscription or whose subscription is not available in their country can still buy your Kindle ebooks.
Because of this, you need to give thought to your book marketing and promotions. You will likely miss out on ebook unit sales if you only promote your ebook as available on KU.
The best way is to have a strategy that works for both types of readers and book buyers.
You should stick to using your most useful book promotion ideas and keep attracting potential readers to your ebook.
With KDP Select, you can offer your ebook for free for five days in each enrollment period.
You would be right to think that this is not a good idea for attracting KU readers, but it can be useful for helping sell unit copies.
However, if you want to concentrate on page-read income, you can try one simple tactic. Simply make your ebook more expensive.
It’s about the perception of value and getting a bargain.
For a Kindle Unlimited subscriber who pays $9.99 per month, an ebook with a list price of $0.99 looks far less attractive than an ebook at $5.99 or even $7.99.
But of course, the downside is that you will lose unit sales.
A better way to earn page reads
By far, the most effective way to gain page reads is to select the appropriate categories and keywords for your ebook.
You can research and select the seven best Kindle search keywords and three genre categories in different ways.
A lot of new authors fail to understand how vital search keywords are for a new ebook.
When they publish, they fill in the seven spaces with single words without giving them any thought.
It’s a big mistake. Kindle keywords are not one word. They are short phrases.
The more time you spend researching your Amazon keywords, the better chance you will have of success with your book.
There are many ways you can do your keyword research for free.
However, the most effective way is to use online keyword tools or specialized software to help you make the best choices.
Does KENP help sales ranking?
Yes, all KENP page reads count toward an ebook’s sales rank.
The ranking boost will naturally be less than the sale of a copy, but every page read will help lift your overall book sales ranking.
Amazon doesn’t give much detail about this.
But you could be safe in assuming that if your ebook is 300 pages long, you will get the same boost for 300 page reads as for selling one ebook.
Conclusion
If you don’t have any of your ebooks enrolled in KDP Select, you might want to reconsider.
With the popularity and number of KU subscribers now, you could be missing out on relatively easy KENP income.
For authors with one ebook, it’s a choice. But if you have published a few ebooks on Amazon, you can be selective and enroll only one or two.
Because KDP Select runs for only 90 days, another option is to use one ebook as a test for that period.
Even though there were doubts when Kindle Unmilited launched in 2014, it is certainly here to stay.
KU took some time to stabilize and become accepted. But it is now used by a big percentage of self-publishing authors and many large publishers for their backlist titles.
The only slight drawback that still exists is that so few countries have access to KU.
Hopefully, this will change in the near future and give authors and readers more choices.
Related reading: Can You Sell Books With No Words On Amazon KDP?
Are there any other ways to get readers to read your book other than by search terms? My book came out 30 Nov 21 and so far nothing has shown up on my KENP dashboard. It is my first book and it is not very long, i.e. I’ll get 60 cents book if the whole thing is read.
I also read your thoughts on pricing and now I’m thinking of raising the ebook from 2.99 to 5.99 or so.
Selecting the best Kindle keywords will always help attract KU readers. But you can also use other forms of book promotion. However, there’s no guaranteed way to get readers in such a competitive market.
I want to end my enrollment with Kindle select ( so that I can submit free books to review sites) after 90 days.
I have sold a sizeable number through free promotions though ,and would like to get the income it would bring from KENP, will I still get paid even if I am not enrolled in Kindle select in the future, for the units already sold?
This is what Amazon states, Nina.
“A customer can read your eBook as many times as they like, but we will only pay you for the number of pages read the first time the customer reads them. It may take months for customers to read pages in your eBook, but no matter how long it takes, we’ll still pay you once it happens. This is true even if your KDP Select enrollment period has expired, and you choose not to re-enroll.”
So yes, you will be paid for after you end your enrollment for ebooks that KU readers download or start to read during your enrollment period.
Very helpful and precise explanation. Much appreciated.