Amazon Ads no longer shows self-published authors an estimate of the royalties earned from pages read after an ad interaction, according to a Support Center page the company updated on November 11, 2026. The royalty figure the page now describes is calculated for "qualified borrows" instead: occasions on which a Kindle Unlimited reader downloaded a book and "read enough pages to qualify for a royalty payment." How many pages that takes is not stated anywhere on the page.

The change is contained in a single line of a short help article. "Estimated KENP royalties metrics are no longer available in Reporting," the page notes, without a date for the removal or a reason for it. Around that line, the article sets out a wider set of reading metrics than the one Amazon first gave authors six years ago, now split by clicks and views, by promoted and non-promoted books, and available across six campaign types.

In Short

Amazon Ads has removed the metric that turned pages read after an ad click into an estimated royalty, and now estimates royalties for "qualified borrows," alongside page and borrow counts split by clicks, views, promoted books and other books. It matters to self-published Kindle authors who run ads and rely on these numbers to see whether reading, rather than sales, pays back their spend. Amazon's own publishing pages, which now call the program Kindle+, describe royalties as paid per page read with no borrow threshold, while the ads page does not define how many pages make a borrow qualify, so the two sets of figures are not guaranteed to match.

What the page counts

The article is titled "Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) metrics" and sits under the Measure results section of the Amazon Ads Support Center. Its scope is narrow. "These metrics are available only for KDP authors," it states, referring to writers who publish through Kindle Direct Publishing. The metrics cover Kindle eBooks enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, and the page describes them as showing "the pages read and qualified borrows" attributed to a campaign from Kindle Unlimited customers.

The core measure is KENP read: the estimated number of pages read by Kindle Unlimited customers that Amazon attributes to an ad interaction. It rests on a second figure, the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count, or KENPC, which Amazon uses to measure how many pages customers read in a given eBook. "KENPC is calculated using standard formatting settings," the page says, listing font, line height and line spacing as examples. A normalized page, in other words, is not the page a reader sees on a particular device at a particular font size. It is a standardized unit, which is why two readers of the same book generate the same page count regardless of how they set up their screens.

Attribution follows a fixed rule. Amazon attributes reading events to an ad when customers read an advertised title "up to 14 days after they click the ad." That 14-day lookback window is repeated in the notes at the foot of the page, which describe KENP figures in the ads account as reflecting only pages read by customers who click an ad and then read within 14 days of the click.

Timing is less tidy. Pages are reported against the date on which they were actually read, not the date the data arrived. When a reading device is offline, Amazon updates the figure for the relevant date once the device reconnects, and the page warns that numbers for past dates can shift slightly as a result. "Pages read from offline devices can take 1 week to be reported," it states. A report pulled on a Monday for the previous week may therefore not be the same report pulled a week later.

Clicks, views, promoted and halo

Most of the page is taken up by breakdowns. KENP read from clicks counts pages attributed to an ad click. KENP read from views counts pages attributed to an ad view, a form of view-through conversion applied to reading rather than buying. Two further metrics separate the books themselves:

  • KENP read (promoted) counts pages read in books directly promoted in the campaign, with click and view versions.
  • KENP read (halo) counts pages read in "highly relevant books that were not directly promoted in the campaign," again with click and view versions.

By PPC Land's count, that makes nine separate KENP read figures: the total, the click and view splits, and the promoted and halo versions of each. The halo metrics are Amazon's attempt to capture a halo effect inside a catalogue of books. A reader who clicks an ad for the first book in a series and then borrows the third would be a plausible case. Yet the page does not define "highly relevant." It does not say whether relevance means the same author, the same series, the same genre or something Amazon infers from reading behaviour.

The view-based figures raise a separate gap. The only attribution window the page states is the 14-day window after a click. No window is given for reading credited to an ad that was seen but not clicked, and the notes describe the metrics entirely in terms of clicks. On the retail side, Amazon has already changed how it handles views: from January 1, 2026, it moved view-based conversion metrics to a shopping-signal model across 28 markets for Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display viewable CPM and Amazon DSP Store campaigns, with windows shorter than the previous 14-day standard. Whether reading follows that model, the old 14-day rule or something else, the KENP page does not say.

From pages to borrows

The second and third metrics on the page are where the change sits. Kindle Unlimited qualified borrows counts the number of times a subscriber downloaded a book and read enough pages to qualify for a royalty payment, attributed to an ad interaction. It comes in click and view versions, with promoted and halo versions of each.

Estimated Kindle Unlimited royalties then puts a money value on those borrows. The page describes it as estimated royalties "for qualified borrows attributed to an ad interaction," again split by clicks and views, by promoted and halo books, and offered in a converted version for advertisers who report in a different currency. Amazon adds that actual royalties may differ from the estimate and points authors to their KDP author reports for actual earnings.

What the page no longer offers is the page-based estimate. Amazon introduced KENP read in its advertising console in July 2020, with data reported from July 15 of that year and limited to Sponsored Products, according to Roger Packer's self-publishing news site, which covered the launch at the time. An estimated KENP royalties metric followed for US advertisers in early November 2020, calculated as the day's pages read multiplied by that day's KENP rate, with the latest published monthly rate used when the current one was not yet available, according to the same site. By December 2020 it had been extended to KDP authors advertising in the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Australia, the site reported.

That metric had a simple logic. Every page read after a click carried a value, and the value followed the published per-page rate. The replacement works at the level of the borrow. A borrow either qualifies or it does not, and the page gives no threshold, no rate and no method for how a qualified borrow is converted into an estimated royalty.

The term itself is not new to Kindle Unlimited. Before July 1, 2015, Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library paid authors per qualified borrow, and Amazon switched the payout basis to pages read from that date, according to StoryADay's coverage of Amazon's announcement at the time, and the Authors Guild, which reported that the royalty pool would be paid per page starting July 1. Eleven years later, the phrase is back in Amazon's advertising documentation, but without the definition that came with it in 2015.

A program with a new name

There is a further complication. The ads page uses the name Kindle Unlimited throughout. Amazon's publishing side no longer does.

In late October 2026, Kindle Unlimited became Kindle+. AuthorSupport, a publishing services newsroom, reported that Amazon announced the new name in an email to subscribers on October 22; a column on EPIC Indie dated the announcement to October 21. Amazon's KDP help pages now describe Kindle+ as a subscription program in which customers can read and listen to enrolled books for a monthly fee, without needing a Prime membership, with enrollment running through KDP Select.

The KDP page on royalties in Kindle+ is specific about how authors are paid. According to that page, earnings are based on Kindle+ subscribers' reading and listening activity measured in Kindle Edition Normalized Pages, and an author is paid the first time a subscriber reads or listens to a given page. Audiobooks in Kindle+ are available in the US marketplace only. The same page reports total KDP Select author earnings of $69.3 million for September 2026. It describes no borrow threshold of any kind.

Set side by side, the two Amazon pages do not tell the same story. KDP says royalties accrue page by page from the first read. The ads page, updated about three weeks after the rename, speaks of borrows that read "enough pages to qualify for a royalty payment," refers only to reading Kindle eBooks, and makes no mention of Kindle+ or of listening. Does a page heard in an audiobook count as a KENP read for advertising purposes? Does the qualified-borrow threshold reflect a payment rule that KDP has not published, or is it an internal modelling choice for the ads estimate? The Support Center article answers neither.

Six campaign types, one 14-day rule

The scope of the metrics has grown well beyond the Sponsored Products-only version of 2020. According to the page, KENP and Kindle Unlimited metrics are available for Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Display, Streaming TV, DVA+ and full-funnel campaigns.

Several of those names are recent. On September 29, 2026, Amazon put a four-step DVA+ campaign builder into closed beta in the US, with general availability targeted for the first quarter of 2027 across 35 markets, and on the same day renamed its combined advertising platform Amazon Ads Agent. Full-Funnel Campaigns, which carry a $100 daily minimum and let Amazon allocate budget across formats, were the subject of an ADOTAT column PPC Land covered on October 18, which argued that Amazon's defaults push buyers toward automation.

The KENP page lists Display and DVA+ as separate entries and does not explain whether "Display" refers to Sponsored Display. Nor does it explain how reading on a Kindle device is connected to a Streaming TV ad that was watched rather than clicked. Since a television ad cannot be clicked in the usual sense, any reading credited to it would presumably fall under the view-based metrics, for which no window is stated.

Counting rules elsewhere in Amazon's system are also moving. From January 1, 2027, display impressions for DVA campaigns on Amazon Store will be counted only when the ad appears on screen, with Amazon expecting about 63% fewer impressions on average. Fewer counted impressions could mean fewer views available to credit with reading, but the KENP page does not address the change.

Reconciling ads data with author reports

The notes at the bottom of the page explain why the ads console and KDP will rarely agree. The total number of pages read in an author's KDP reports includes pages read from books obtained without any ad click. The ads figures are estimates limited to reading attributed to a campaign. They are not meant to add up to the same total.

There is also a visibility threshold. KENP metrics appear in Reporting only if at least one campaign promotes a book with at least one KENP read attributed to it. An author running ads for a title that has drawn no attributed reading will not see the columns at all.

The "Reporting" in question links to Amazon's reporting page. Amazon has spent 2026 moving its advertisers onto a single reporting system: unified reporting reached general availability on June 8, 2026, with the older sponsored ads and DSP report pages set to be retired. The KENP note does not say whether the removal of estimated KENP royalties is connected to that migration, or whether historical values of the old metric remain accessible anywhere.

Why the metric matters to book advertisers

For most Amazon advertisers, a click that leads to a sale is the outcome that counts. Kindle Unlimited breaks that model. A subscriber who borrows a book pays nothing at the point of borrowing, and the author's income arrives later, from the KDP Select fund, according to how much of the book is read. Sales-based figures such as attributed sales and advertising cost of sales do not capture that income. The reading metrics are the only place inside the ad console where it shows up at all.

That is why the shift from a page-based estimate to a borrow-based one is more than a renaming. The old metric could be compared directly with the per-page rate KDP publishes each month. The new one depends on a threshold that the page does not disclose, which makes it harder to check against the earnings that appear in KDP reports.

Amazon has been widening the advertising options open to authors. On August 28, 2026, authors gained Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns for audiobooks in the US, after first claiming their pen name in Author Central; before that, they could advertise only digital and print editions. In November 2025, Amazon launched Kindle Translate, a beta translation service for KDP authors, noting that fewer than 5% of titles on Amazon.com exist in more than one language. And in October 2025, Goodreads was added to Amazon DSP as a supply source for US advertisers.

Each of those steps gives authors more ways to spend. The KENP page shows the measurement following the spending into streaming TV, programmatic display and Amazon's automated full-funnel product. What it does not yet show is a definition of the unit on which the new royalty estimate rests.

What the page leaves open

Several questions sit outside the article's text:

  • How many pages, or what share of a book, a Kindle Unlimited borrow must reach to count as qualified.
  • When estimated KENP royalties were removed from Reporting, and whether past values can still be retrieved.
  • What attribution window applies to the view-based metrics, given that the page states only the 14-day click window.
  • What makes a book "highly relevant" for the halo metrics.
  • Whether the metrics cover listening in Kindle+, now that KDP pays for audiobook pages measured in KENP in the US.
  • Why the page still uses the name Kindle Unlimited after Amazon's publishing pages moved to Kindle+.

The page itself carries no announcement and no release note. Its date, November 11, 2026, records only when it was last updated, not which parts of it changed on that day.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads and the self-published authors who use Kindle Direct Publishing and advertise eBooks enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, which Amazon's publishing pages now call Kindle+.

What: A Support Center page on KENP metrics states that estimated KENP royalties are no longer available in Reporting. It lists KENP read, Kindle Unlimited qualified borrows and estimated Kindle Unlimited royalties, each split by clicks and views and by promoted and halo books, across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Display, Streaming TV, DVA+ and full-funnel campaigns. Reading is attributed up to 14 days after an ad click, and offline reading can take a week to appear.

When: The page was updated on November 11, 2026, about three weeks after Kindle Unlimited was renamed Kindle+. The page does not say when the estimated KENP royalties metric was removed.

Where: In the Amazon Ads console's Reporting, for KDP authors; the page does not restrict the metrics to particular marketplaces.

Why: The page gives no reason for the change. Its effect is to move the console's royalty estimate from a per-page basis, which matched how KDP describes Kindle+ payments, to a per-borrow basis built on a qualification threshold that neither the ads page nor KDP's royalty page defines.