Why Kobo Plus is a great way to support your favorite authors AND your reading habit

An alternative to Kindle Unlimited that helps everyone win
A guest post by author Isabel Jordan

I’m going to be brutally honest and say something that might not be super popular.

I most definitely am in this business for the money.

That’s not to say writing isn’t my passion. It is. I’ll be cranking out stories until my great, great, great grandchildren pry my ergonomic keyboard from my cold, dead hands. But publishing…well, publishing is another story entirely. 

Publishing is hard. Time consuming. Sometimes soul crushing and disappointing. If it didn’t help put braces on my kid’s gnarly teeth, groceries in my fridge, and a roof over my family’s head, I wouldn’t do it.

So, it was ultimately the decreasing revenue I was earning in Kindle Unlimited (KU) that prompted me to pull my books from the program a few years ago. 

While KU is great for readers, it’s not always kind to authors. For more background, Romance Rehab did a great article about why so many authors are pulling their books from KU. But the three factors that prompted my decision were:

1.  Amazon demands exclusivity. If your book is in KU, you can’t publish it (in ebook form) anywhere else. And if your book is found on an illegal pirate site at no fault of your own, Amazon will consider that a breach of their Terms of Service (TOS) and can shut down your account, no questions asked (*gulp*).
2. Amazon puts the money they earn from KU subscription fees into a giant pot and uses that pot to pay authors each month. They pay authors fractions of a cent for each page of their books read—and those fractions can change each month at Amazon’s discretion. (Exact subscriber numbers are not made publicly available, and Amazon determines what constitutes a page read.) And while they recently raised the KU subscription fee from $9.99/month to $11.99/month, the payout for page reads has actually gone down, not up. 
3. Big publishing houses are allowed to skirt the KU exclusivity clause whenever they want. Self-publishers and smaller publishing houses aren’t. That kind of hypocrisy doesn’t sit well with me.

But even though I’m not planning to put my books back into the KU program unless some changes are made, I do think subscription-based reading programs can work. I understand we’re living in hard times and the cost of buying every book you want to read can become unaffordable quickly. This is especially true for romance readers, who are typically more voracious than any other genre fiction readers. (Seriously...y'all are amazing.)

Which is why I made all of my books available to Kobo Plus subscribers.

Advantages of Kobo Plus

For readers:

1. It’s cheaper than KU. For now, the cost in the US is $7.99/month for a Read (eBooks) subscription, or for $9.99, you could get a Read and Listen subscription that allows you access to audiobooks, which easily beats having to buy KU and Audible subscriptions separately. Just as with KU, you can keep up to 20 books at a time in your library.
2. Superior Ereader support. The app is well designed and easily searchable. For romance readers, their library of available books is pretty extensive, and getting bigger every day.
3. You can read via the Kobo app on your phone or iPad, so you don’t even need to have a Kobo reader to enjoy the Kobo Plus program (although I highly recommend the Kobo reader. It’s a very high-end reading experience for a very not high-end price.)  There’s also some evidence to suggest that now that Kindles don’t rely on MOBI files, you could download books from the Kobo Plus program (instructions from Kobo for downloading EPUBs here) and read them on your Kindle. (Disclaimer: I haven’t tested that yet, but theoretically, it’s sound. If I’m wrong…bygones.)

For authors:

1. Kobo Plus does not demand exclusivity. So, an author in the program can publish their ebook anywhere they want and not be in violation of Kobo’s TOS.
2. Kobo Plus pays authors per minute of material read, which is better than KU’s quickly dwindling “pot” payment method. And in their latest TOS, Kobo announced authors will also be paid if a reader re-reads their work in the program, which is something that KU doesn’t offer.

With all that said, I’m not here to lead some kind of anti-KU revolution. If you’re an author or reader who enjoys the program, use it! You do you. Like I said, these are hard times we’re living in, and since there’s hardly a damn thing worth watching on TV anymore, get your books (legally) wherever you see fit. (Kind of off topic: Don’t forget about libraries, either. They’re awesome, and authors get revenue there, too, because libraries buy their books at a markup.) No judgement here.  I’m just saying that KU isn’t the only game in town anymore, and the more open-minded we all are, the more reading options we’ll have going forward. Because at the end of the day, authors will go where the readers are. When it’s been made clear that readers are enjoying Kobo Plus, more of them will join the program.   

Finally, at the risk of sounding totally self-serving, well-paid authors are happy authors—and happy authors are more willing to keep cranking out the books you love and publishing them for your enjoyment. Just sayin’… 😊

​Anyone interested can get their Kobo Plus subscription of choice here.   
​​