Repost: Amazon takes aim at scammers.

Amazon is an extremely innovative company – and usually quite responsive to self-publisher’s concerns – but sometimes it gets things very wrong too.

Today is one of those times.

I’ve received several reports from writers threatened with having books removed from sale, and heard even more worrying stories from others who had their titles actually removed from the Kindle Store without notice.

What were these authors guilty of? What crime did they commit for Amazon to adopt such heavy handed treatment? Something completely innocuous: the Table of Contents was at the rear of their books instead of at the front.

Yep, that’s it.

Read the rest at Let's Get Digital!

Kindle Unlimited Thoughts

Re-Blogged from A Newbie's Guide to Publishing

Like everyone else in KDP Select, I've been paying attention to my Kindle Unlimited page reads.

When the new accounting began at the beginning of this month, I had 33,000 daily page reads. I had no idea if this was good, or bad. It was what it was.

But I was intrigued to see my Amazon Author Rank go up. My best rank was #1, but for the past two years I've been hovering around #1000. On June 30 I was #854.

Now I hover around #400. I got to #267 last week, and now I'm at #441.

Since I haven't released any new solo novels in two years (I have three coming out by fall, two Jack Daniels thrillers and a Jack Kilborn horror), the only explanation I have for this jump up was the new KU rules.

By the end of the first week, my daily reads were up to 60,000. By the end of this month, they're at 85,000.

Now, this all could mean absolutely nothing. Maybe my page reads have remained static, and Amazon's new accounting system is simply finding its groove.

Maybe people are finishing my books, and the more they read the more they want to read. Or maybe a lot of people are starting them and not finishing them. The likeliest answer is some readers finish, some don't. Page reads, by themselves, don't give us enough information.

Amazon has the tech to pinpoint how much a reader has read of your work, and where they stopped reading. I've pleaded with Amazon to allow authors access to this information. It would be invaluable. As writers, we've never been privy to how quickly readers read our work, if they finish it, or when they choose to put the book down. I'd love to look at trends. Do I have any books where readers tend to quit before finishing? Where do they quit? I know I could use this information to fix books, make them more reader-friendly, and get a higher page read.

Read the rest at A Newbie's Guide to Publishing

Writing is not a career for the weak. It comes with seemingly everlasting periods of writer’s block, glooming fits of self-doubt and often little recognition or remuneration in return for great dedication. Perhaps the biggest bother, though, is constantly having to defend who you are, what you write and why you write it. For many people, because they know how to write, they carry an assumption that writing is easy. What they don’t realize, however, is that writing, the tool you learn in school and use to jot texts, refrigerator memos and the occasional letter, is quite a ways away from writing, what novelists, poets, journalists and others who connect words professionally do. Read more at http://observer.com/2015/07/tenthingsnottosaytoawriter-hashtag-has-famous-authors-venting-and-bonding-on-twitter/#ixzz3hN0d9fNn Follow us: @observer on Twitter | Observer on Facebook Read more at: http://tr.im/KmiUp

Writing is not a career for the weak. It comes with seemingly everlasting periods of writer’s block, glooming fits of self-doubt and often little recognition or remuneration in return for great dedication. Perhaps the biggest bother, though, is constantly having to defend who you are, what you write and why you write it. For many people, because they know how to write, they carry an assumption that writing is easy. What they don’t realize, however, is that writing, the tool you learn in school and use to jot texts, refrigerator memos and the occasional letter, is quite a ways away from writing, what novelists, poets, journalists and others who connect words professionally do. Read more at http://observer.com/2015/07/tenthingsnottosaytoawriter-hashtag-has-famous-authors-venting-and-bonding-on-twitter/#ixzz3hN0d9fNn Follow us: @observer on Twitter | Observer on Facebook Read more at: http://tr.im/KmiUp

Just good enough, is not good enough anymore.

A recent post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch served as a real eye opener for me. You can read the full post here if you would like: http://kriswrites.com/2015/04/02/business-musings-the-hard-part/#sthash.AQhcuMq2.dpbs

She talks about a lot of things that directly affect the success and or failure of a writer in these somewhat turbulent times. Turbulent at least for indie writers who have seen their sales drop over the past year. Some of the problems are the result of outside influences that are beyond the control of the average writer. Such as Kindle Unlimited, and the reduced royalties of those writers who chose to participate. That’s an Amazon decision and as much as we may want to complain about it, it is one of those things that are totally out of our control as writers.

What we can control though is what we, as Indie Writers, put out there.

When I first came into kindle and indie publishing around the beginning of 2012, the Amazon gold rush was going strong. There was this sense of get it out there now or lose out for good. I envisioned selling hundreds of thousands of copies of my work thereby allowing my wife and I to get away from the craziness of working for other people who honestly didn’t give a rat’s ass about you.

I got caught up in the rush to just get it out there.

The tides have turned, now just getting it out there is not good enough. All the tricks and gimmicks many had used in the past were just that. For me personally I lost sight of the most important thing to me as a writer, that connection with the reader.

In my rush to catch a wave of my own I allowed myself to accept just good enough when something even better was waiting in the wings had I slowed down to let the story mature in my mind.

But I’ve learned, as I always do, the hard way, that tricks and gimmicks are just that. Nothing will ever replace good writing. I also learned, for me at least, that writing is not a means to an end, but a lifestyle choice. It is not a hobby. Not something I merely dabble in when there is nothing else to do.

It is an integral part of who I am.

Are the machines taking over?

The publishing industry is reeling today after news broke this morning about Kindle Author, Amazon's new service that  generates high-quality fiction using complex software algorithms.

It’s like Build-A-Bear for ebooks. The reader tells Kindle Author what they want in a story, and then Kindle Author automatically generates the book .

In this post, I’ll explain how Kindle Author works and I'll share never-before-seen screenshots of the service.  I’ll explain the science that made this breakthrough possible, and then I'll wrap by discussing what this means for Smashwords authors and the future of publishing.

How Kindle Author Works

Kindle Author is a new option for purchasing ebooks in the Kindle store.  It's receiving heavy promotion on the Amazon home page, which tells me Amazon is making the service a strategic priority for their business.

Amazon is also advertising Kindle Author directly on the book listings pages of all books in their store.  A customer visits the listing page for a book written by a real author, and Amazon encourages the reader to create and read a free Kindle Author book instead.


Read the rest at Smashwords Blog

What's a writer to do?

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year you may have noticed a bubbling discontent with Amazon by a number of better known indie authors out there. J. A Konrath has recently stated, in the comments for his December 19 post, that he was stepping away from Amazon's KPD Select program, once his ninety days were up in late January. Holly Ward, who writes romances under the name H.M. Ward recently revealed that in KU her earnings have plummeted by as much as 75% as a result of borrows instead of sales.

For an indie author, enrollment in Amazon's Select program allowed them to offer the enrolled title free for five days for every ninety day term. Aside from price matching making a title permanently free it was the only way an author could offer their work for free to the massive audience Amazon has nurtured. The Select program, in its infancy, was directly responsible for a number of indie authors becoming bestsellers.

Earlier this year Amazon rolled out its subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, that allowed members to  borrow an unlimited number of kindle titles for one low monthly fee. It was Amazon's response to Oyster and Scrib'd, two stand alone subscription services that have done for e-books what Netflix has done for movies.

If the member read the borrowed title beyond ten percent it triggered a payment to the author. Some authors, those with titles priced from $0.99  to $2.98 actually benefited from the program as the payment was averaging about $1.30 per borrow. On titles priced between a $0.99 and $2.98 the author makes 35%, of the purchase price for each sale. So for a book priced at say $2.98, the author would make approximately $1.05, or $0.35 for each dollar.

Authors with higher priced books such as $2.99, who were used to earning 70%, or $2.06 for each sale, were taking a beating due to Kindle Unlimited. To add insult to injury it was learned that Amazon was also offering two payment tiers for its lending program. Trad published titles were being reimbursed at their agreed upon rate, while Indie authors were being paid from a pool, with payments ranging from $1.30 to $1.60 per borrow.

When I began this journey at the end of 2011, the possibilities seemed unlimited. But the times they are a changing, much has been said about the Amazon lending program both for and against it. Some heavy names have weighed in with their discontent.

But you know what?

Does anyone really have any control over what Amazon does?

No.

The only thing I have any control over is my own writing, whether it gets done or not in a reasonable amount of time. So while everyone's gnashing their teeth, and spouting off about what evil Amazon has once again foisted upon the world of Indie publishing, I'll be over here writing.

After all that's the only thing I have any control over.