(no subject)

[alexandraerin]

Man, I should have been looking at Kindle stuff earlier. I've had people ask me if I was going to put Tales of MU on Kindle and I didn't really understand what they meant (I mean, I knew it had a web browser and I figured that was good, right?) so I said I'd look into it. Well, now I've looked into it and it's like, wow. This is so easy. I don't really understand why people would pay money to subscribe to RSS feeds of stuff they can read for free, but I'm not turning up my nose at it. I guess I of all people shouldn't underestimate the willingness of people to pay for free content, right?

I'm not even thinking of Tales of MU in particular here... I can use this to monetize Fantasy in Miniature, which is one of the major problems I've had with keeping it going.

Mmmm, the thing about putting Tales of MU on Kindle is to make it really work I'm going to have the RSS stream have the full copy. But you know what? I can do that. I'm big enough, and my ad revenue is a small enough part of my income now that lose some views if people are reading it on their feed-readers. At this point I feel like I should be focusing on getting more eyes on my content... and the cross-promotion I do for my other projects and my fundraising attempts... than on trying to maximize the number of ad views. It wasn't too long ago I was considering axing the ads entirely, after all. It's only the fact that other creators asked me not to that kept them there, and you know, it's really kind of gratifying to see how many other serialists have been able to use the remaining ad spaces for under a dollar a day. I don't want to cut them out from that, but zealously trying to squeeze every pageview out of the ads is just not going to help.

(And of course, I could get ads on the RSS if my survival comes down to that, somehow. But I doubt it will.)

I don't expect this to be a huge revenue stream by any stretch of the imagination, but it's money that will come in just from me doing what I'm doing.

Update: Tales of MU is now available on Kindle. If I get 10 subscribers there today, I'll do an update on Wednesday.

Comments

[lizkayl.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm now very amused. I have a kindle and I'm currently a MU monthly sponsor with $2/month.

Does the kindle set-up cost you money?

Do you have any preference if you get your subscription through pay-pal or kindle?

And would we have access to/get the back issues, or just the new material? Reading on my kindle in bed would be easier and lead to me re-reading the story far more than sitting at my desktop.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't even know the answers to those questions! It cost me nothing, I believe the profit margin in the $2 range is going to be a near thing either way... I think it goes by the RSS feed, so you'd only have the recent entries. I believe it will let you sign up for a 14 day trial subscription if you want to check it out. Otherwise I will have my own Kindle later in the week and then I'll be in a better position to let you know. :)

[addiejd.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could sell the back issues separately in volumes, like you did before in print books.

No android support :(

[annabunches.livejournal.com]

It looks like I can't subscribe to the RSS feed without an actual, physical Kindle. I use the Kindle Android app, and Amazon won't let me buy the subscription (as I don't have any 'compatible devices' registered with the Kindle store).

If this is a setting you can change, you have at least one potential subscriber that would love to have this available on Android (sure, I could just read it with a web browser on google reader, but the Kindle app is *much* nicer for reading, especially if you have to stop in the middle of a chapter). If it is just a limitation of Amazon, well, um, I guess that just sucks :(

Re: No android support :(

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

I looked at that in response to another person (unless it was you?) on Twitter. I can't see any settings to change that control that, I believe it's on Amazon limitation. Possibly to stop other platforms from kicking them off, I don't know.

[barry smith (from livejournal.com)]

This title is not available for customers from:
United Kingdom

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

Huh, that's odd. I'm almost entirely certain that I had to agree to .uk-based terms of service when I set that up.

When I have more time I'll look into how the availability is determined. The seemingly-arbitrary limits are very off-putting.