Anyway, why am I not wide now? Why am I in KU if I feel this way? Because without being in KU I have no way to get visibility in the Amazon store. My books, with my small but growing fan base would simply disappear. I'm not one of the wealthy people that can pour thousands (or even hundreds) of dollars into advertising. It just isn't there. So, KU it is.
Now, take away that borrow equals sale on the ranking/visibility factor and things change. Like drastically, for me and authors like me. Our books no longer have to compete with the books in KU for ranking, they don't HAVE to have that added boost because no one else in the store has it either. That's HUGE.
......
All I'm really saying is that as things are (borrow=sale) new authors who want their books seen, without having to break the bank, don't really have a choice but to go into KU. Change that and they do. End of story.
I cant see how there would really be any change.
If KU had its own ranks, the ranks will remain exactly the same as they are with just the sales removed. So all the books doing well in KU, will remain where they are in the ranking, or in fact do better as books with more sales are dropped down the KU chart with their sales removed.
Anyone with a mainly KU fan base is going to find their books doing better on the KU chart than on the sales chart. And as far as being found in KU, that has to be better for a lot of authors.
I seem to be seeing that people think if you remove KU from the sales chart, things get worse. But this shouldn't happen. A book will show both ranks next to each other. Both charts will shake out a bit, but current rankings should remain relatively the same.
In fact, the KU chart should become really interesting, because without all the sales only books in it, it is very likely every book in the top end of KU will hike up quite dramatically. Think about it. All the classic books which are not in KU now, but still sell megaloads, are in the top echelons of the sales chart still. Take those thousands of books out, and the KU books below them will shoot up in rank. So on KU chart at least, a lot of books are going to significantly improve in rank to fill the slots of all the sales only books which drop out.
Down below say 50,000, there probably wont be much change on either chart. Just a major shakeout as KU stops boosting books with poor sales on the sale chart, and books with great sales stop boosting the poor reads books on the KU chart.
My books for example, I'd expect them to go down in rank on the sales chart, but up in rank on the KU chart. My new releases would be about the same on both charts for day 1, and then the sales rank will drop faster then the KU rank does, and my KU rank will hold a lot longer than my sales rank will.
But I would expect to see very little in the way of a change in income.
The big thing would then be the very obvious books with no sales and huge KU downloads, and after Amazon nuked them, everyone on the KU list goes up a few notches.
And with KU taken out of sales, the sales ranks will be true sales ranks, and sales could actually improve because a sh*t load of books sitting out of the top 100 in all categories, will suddenly rise in there and become visible again.
I don't see any doom and gloom here. Sure there will be a shake out in the ranks, but after it, I see little change in actual incomes, and in terms of sales, potentially an increase for those who currently sit outside the top 100's, and cant get in there. A lot of top books which dont have 50/50 sales/borrows will drop like a stone on one of the charts and be replaced with books which previously were being held out. And I think that's a good thing.