What Do You Call A Cent In Euros?

I got an email the other day that said my payment from Amazon was pending, about to through. However, it doesn't tell you anywhere in the email how much that payment might be. It's generally quite meager, because who would buy a BD Anklevich joint? But I find it interesting, somewhat, to know. So, I went to my account on Amazon to look.

The payment was indeed meager, but that's not what I wanted to talk about. Instead, I saw another payment that was also pending. You see, I will be receiving 0.05 EUR from Amazon.de soon as well.

I was surprised. How does something like this happen? I mean, it's five cents. Kindle Unlimited allows people to read as much as they want, and pays authors by the page read count that the KU readers consume, but what is gonna earn me five cents? Is that one page? Or is it more? I have several stories that are only about 1,000 words long, and probably aren't worth paying more than five cents for, maybe this person read one of those?

Then there's the other thing...this is Amazon.de. That's Deutschland. Germany. Who the heck is reading BD Anklevich in English in Germany? A soldier on base? No, a soldier on base would have enough depressing shit to deal with without reading another downer by BD Anklevich, right? I don't know. It's interesting though.

That's one thing that is really neat about the internet. I can sell to people anywhere. There's no limit on my reach except my own, self-imposed limits that come with constantly writing depressing stories and keeping my audience super small. For example, back in December, I got five cents from Amazon.com.au. Five Australian cents. That's cool, right?

Would have been even cooler if the exchange rate didn't bring the payment down to only three cents, but hey, I've earned three cents in Australia. I better watch out, their IRS will be after me for their portion of that, soon, I suppose.

I once got 36 pence in Great Britain as well.

That was even cooler, because the exchange rate on that made it 45 cents in America, so I was rolling in it.

The one that surprised me the most was down the list where in April of last year I got 1.39 Indian Rupees from Amazon.in.

I definitely never expected that. When you do the exchange rate on that, it comes out to two cents. Which makes it even more baffling. What the heck? Is that half of one page? I mean, what was it that they read that was worth two cents? My guess is that they clicked on something incorrect by accident. Maybe they were looking for something about cricket, and they accidentally clicked on my story "Fireflies" and went, "Wait a minute, this is a totally different insect, and it's got nothing to do with sticky wickets!"

All the same, I can say that I have made money in all of those countries now. That's something that not everybody can claim...though, with the internet, a lot more people can claim it than before.