Being so immersed in technology and depending on it for many tasks, if an author notices that their books on Kindle Unlimited are getting fewer views and reads, it can lead them to think that they are not to the liking of their readers, even though the truth is actually different.
This is what's happening on Kindle Unlimited ( a service that has even reached Japan ) due to a bug that's reducing the number of page views on ebooks published on this Amazon service. Numerous authors reported last week that they've been seeing unusually low numbers lately.
This is a problem because Amazon pays based on the number of pages read by Kindle Unlimited subscribers. This is the model Amazon has used since last July, which is long enough for authors to understand the usage pattern.
Apparently, the number of pages read follows the trend of the more traditional sales curve , although it usually lags by a day or two. Longer books tend to have more pages read, and new releases tend to experience a surge in page counts that peaks after a few weeks or months. Therefore, when lengthy books are first published, their page counts often remain flat while hundreds of copies continue to be sold.
Several authors reported the issue to Amazon, and it has since been confirmed and resolved. The cause of the problem is currently unknown , but current speculation points to the "Page Flip" feature, which was updated earlier this year. This means that each time a reader uses the "Page Flip" feature, the views are not being counted.