Having done some research on this, the KDP Select millions are very disproportionately spread. As a basic example, it is estimated that over 300,000 authors on Amazon only receive small amounts from the fund each month/year. It is biased towards big sellers and best sellers who gain ALL the prominent exposure and positions on the site, many flying high in high-trafficked overall top 100 categories, and those are also promoted via the KINDLE UNLIMITED program emails Amazon sends to its 3.5 million subscribers of the program.
Furthermore, even though Amazon says only 50 authors make over $100,000 a year, about 10 or 15 make a million or more.
So, it’s a classic case of the 80/20 rule at play here e.g. 20% of all authors take 80% of the fund profits, leaving the rest to be split between thousands of also ran authors!
An example year might look like so – approximately $516,000,000 was paid out in 2022.
According to Amazon’s own blog, this is stated. I cannot find the blog post anymore but it was genuine!
# 10/15 authors earned $1,000,000 each year and therefore took up to 15 million from the fund in the example year.
# 50 authors earned around $100,000 and therefore took another $5,000,000 from the fund in the example year.
# 1000 authors earned $50,000 and therefore took another $50,000,000 from the fund in the example year.
So $70 million – $516 million = $446 million which is then split between 299,935 authors left in the fund.
Which equates to an average earning of $1490 a year each for the remaining authors in the Kindle Select fund pot. Obviously, some will earn more and some just a few dollars, but this example highlights how biased the fund is towards best sellers and those in the overall kindle top 100 charts!
Whether authors choose to believe this or not is up to them!
