KU or wide, and how I'd decide
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R. S. Breed Founder
This one comes up constantly and the answers tend to be tribal. Here's how I'd think it through instead.
Kindle Unlimited means making your ebook exclusive to Amazon as far as stores go. In return, subscribers can read it without buying it, and you're paid per page read out of a monthly pool, on top of any normal sales. (Since September, KDP's Select terms also allow public libraries, so library apps are no longer off the table for KU books: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GD9PMU58BV24QFZ7.) Going wide means your ebook is on Amazon plus Apple, Kobo, Google and the rest. You earn from sales everywhere, but nothing from KU page reads.
The page rate moves every month. Written Word Media tracks it, and October's rate, published mid-November, came in at $0.005007 per page:
https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/kdp-global-fund-payouts/
Call it half a US cent. A reader who finishes a book that counts as 300 pages earns you about US$1.50. That one line is most of the maths. KU pays well when readers binge long series and read to the end. It pays less well when people borrow a book, read a chapter and move on.
Where KU tends to make sense: fast readers in binge genres (romance is the obvious one), and authors who are already finding readers on Amazon.
Where wide tends to make sense: authors whose readers shop somewhere other than Amazon, and anyone who doesn't want one company setting their income.
Amazon keeps adding reasons to stay inside. Kindle Translate, announced earlier this month, lets its AI-translated editions go into KU.
On the other hand, exclusivity puts one company in charge of your ebook income, and platforms change their terms when it suits them. Authors tend to find out when everyone else does.
My take: if you write fast in a genre where readers devour series, KU is hard to argue with. If you write slower, write standalones, or have readers who buy elsewhere, wide is a long game that pays slowly. Neither side is more virtuous. Try it with one series, measure honestly, and don't let a forum make the decision for you. Including this one.