Does Line Spacing Effect Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP)?
Apparently not.
I wondered this as I was following the formatting guidelines for a Kindle Direct manuscript. Recommendations dictate assigning a 1.2 multiple as the line spacing ( vs the double spacing you would typically use when submitting a manuscript to an agent or a publisher ) and I wondered if varying that linespacing would change the total pages Amazon calculates for a manuscript.
The word counts writers are using as estimates are from between 250 to 350 words for one "Kindle Normalized Page", but this clearly varies as a dialogue-rich manuscript, or one with short paragraphs, seems to result in more pages, vs tight blocks of prose.
So as a test I did a line count on a 4500 word short story mansucript, coming up with 270 lines. Amazon determined the manuscript was only 11 pages long. Which seems very short, as MS Word counts it as 19 formatted pages.
For Amazon's KENP calculation used to compensate writers for participating in the Kindle Book Lending program, the lower page count definitely benefits Amazon as they are paying writers for each page that is read. ( So for example, if someone reads an eleven page short story that author is compensated exactly the same as when a reader reads the first 11 pages of a 300 page book, and then discards it ).
The KENP rate paid per page also changes month to month, and some writers have suggested that the page count used in the Kindle Normalized Pages count may also change depending on the software version used for the calculation.
Looking forward to seeing how it goes. Anyone else have any insight?
Yeah, I guess that was all pretty jargonish.
Here's the background - the KENP is what Amazon calls the "Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count" - it's the number they use when the calculate earnings based on pages read in your book if it is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited.
I was initially trying to figure out the difference between the page count that appears on a product page like this one - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016AX0TR4 - and that KENP number Amazon uses for payment.
The problem I was seeing was that the page count that was reported on the product page was running about half of the KENP total that is reported in the author's Kindle Direct Publishing reports when logged in to Amazon.
On the one hand, the higher KENP number is great because that's what Kindle Unlimited payments are based on. But the low number on the product page could be a big negative, because someone sees that a story for sale at .99 only has 11 pages according to Amazon and it doesn't seem like a great value. Unless it has a lot of excellent reviews.
So I was trying to determine if the discrepancy was due to page formatting prior to uploading to Amazon or some other unknown issue.
Word count seems to be the best way to determine total KENP count as calculated by Amazon. On average, my work has all been running between 200 and 220 words per KENP page.
I've found some formatting situations within the uploaded file may have an impact on the page count on the *product* page, but don't seem to have any impact on the KENP count.I'm uploading some slightly modified files today to see if the product page count changes, and will report any difference in a slightly less jargon and acronym filled post.
