Borrows and Page Reads
Book Report offer robust support for data related to KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited.
This page goes into detail about how we estimate borrows for KDP. Other platforms supply their borrow numbers directly, and are included directly (without any complex estimation).
Page Reads
Book Report reports the number of pages read for each book enrolled in KDP Select. This data is provided directly by Amazon. The amount of money each page read is worth isn't provided until a couple weeks past the end of the month. Once the rates are announced, Book Report will reflect the official numbers. Before that, we have a few options for how you'd like to estimate the value of each page read
The setting is called What KENPC rate should be used for page reads? and it has three options:
- Last month's rate: This option assumes that every marketplace will pay as much per page as it did last month.
- Assume a drop is coming: This option assumes that every marketplace will pay less than it did last month. How much less? It finds the biggest drop for each marketplace that occured in the last 12 months, and assumes a drop slightly bigger than that one.
- Custom rate: If you want to keep things simple, you can still set a single custom rate that applies to all marketplaces.
But please remember: Book Report only estimates the value of a page read when it doesn't have the exact numbers yet. Once the official numbers are available, Book Report will use those instead.
Borrow Estimate
When you enroll your book in KDP Select, subscribers to Kindle Unlimited can borrow and read your book. Amazon pays you for the borrows based on how many pages are read by borrowers. They report the number of pages read, but not the number of borrows.
Book Report estimates the number of borrows based on two numbers:
- The number of pages read
- The KENPC of the book
By default, it simply divides the number of pages read by the KENPC to estimate the number of borrows. This is a simple and effective way to estimate borrows, but it is not perfect. For example, if ten readers borrow your book and read the first 10%, this will show as a single borrow in the estimate.
You can think of the borrow estimate as the fewest number of borrows that could have resulted in the number of page reads your book received.
We do offer a setting called "What percent of KENPC counts as an estimated borrow?" which is 100 by default. This setting allows you to adjust the estimate to account for the fact that not all pages read will result in a borrow. For example, if you set this to 50, then Book Report will estimate that a borrow occurred when 50% of the KENPC has been read.
One final detail: KDP caps the number of page reads a single borrow can only result in at 3000. If you have a book that's over 3000 pages long, Book Report will divide the number of page reads by 3000 instead of the KENPC.