Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 10

A Chronicle of the Amazon Page Flip Controversy: Or, how to piss off a ton of your vendors all at once

For the past several weeks (and in some case months), authors publishing through KDP Select have been noticing a massive decrease in the pages read (KENP = Kindle Edition Normalized Pages). I blogged about his before here and here, mostly about how it has hit me personally. In this post I would like to attempt a summary of what’s been going on and what the authors affected think might be causing it.

Most of what I know comes from a discussion thread on Kboards, a forum for indie authors. The...

Jutoh Page-Flip Hack

If you need to make your books non-page flip compliant in Jutoh, here’s a quick lesson.

Source: Jutoh Page-Flip Hack

Note: I haven’t tried this myself, since I don’t have Jutoh, but I have unpublished Yseult for now, since Amazon hasn’t allowed me to get out of KDP Select. I can’t do that with Shadow of Stone, since I have a promo I’ve committed to coming up. But for me, Yseult is the main culprit for lost pages, since it is over 900 KENP long. That’s a lot of money lost when reads only count...

More “Tales of the Rose Knights” up on DSF starting today!

Daily Science Fiction is starting a new round of stories in the Tales of the Rose Knights that I wrote with Jay Lake. Today, “Descanso Dream”:

Descanso is the smallest of the Rose Knights, and perhaps the strangest. He is a dream made flesh, a pale man with skin the white of the ocean’s dead, riding a horse of fog and silk. His banners trail behind him like a wind from the Orient. His smile gleams of starlight and the gentle thoughts of a loving woman.

Read more.

(c) Rakel Leah Mogg, Creati...

Bye, Bye, KDP Select; Or, How I Got Screwed by Amazon (and You May Have Been Too)

I blogged a couple of days ago about how some kind of software glitch seems to be swallowing authors’ pages read, and posted the email I sent to Amazon about it.

Well, two days later, still no answer. Two days with a total of 24 pages read, when my daily average is closer to 1000. For all of October, I have have had less than half the pages read that I usually have in a single day. My pages read have flatlined, my rankings have tanked, and my sales have come to a halt. It looks like I’m going...

Amazon KDP Select authors are losing page reads, apparently due to software glitches

Here’s another, longer report than the one I did yesterday on the present Amazon glitch in pages read.

I love Amazon’s KDP Select almost as much as I love Buster, my 13-year-old Pekeapom, a mix of Pekingese and Pomeranian, the dogyou see to the right.

But my rescue pup dirties up the carpet every now and then. And in a way that’s exactly what KDP has been doing lately.

Last month, some alertauthorssmelled mismatches and oddities in the reporting of their page reads from subscribers toAmazon...

Possible glitch in pages read (KENP) for Kindle Unlimited books

Since the beginning of the month, the numbers of pages read of my Kindle Select titles has gone from a daily average of about 800 to a measly 50. Okay, it’s only one week, I kept trying to tell myself, it will pick up again — and then I read this thread on the Kboards: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,242225.0.html

It looks like it’s an actual glitch on the part of Amazon, and one that they’re denying, to boot. Which means that a lot of us may be out of a lot of money, and no way to fix...

Indie Author Interviews: T.S. Vale, Exscendent SF Series

I am very happy today to welcome T.S. Vale to the indie author interview series, a dear friend going back to Clarion days, and a writer of both beautiful words and amazing ideas. Take it away, T.!

First off, please tell us a little bit about you and your work.

The single unchanging passion I’ve had my entire life — is for story-hearing and story-telling. It’s a powerful call that never fades.

As some who know me are aware, I experienced early success in traditional publishing in terms of bo...

Over 100 #FREE SFF E-books for October!

From Oct. 1-2, it’s time for our monthly group promo again, and this time we have another 100+ free ebooks for your perusal, organized according to retailer. Another great selection of SFF books, and you can’t complain about the price.

Indie Author Interviews: K. J. Garnet, Oracle urban fantasy series

Every now and then on this blog I do interviews with indie and speculative fiction writers. Today I would like to introduce you to K. J. Garnet, the pen name of Kelly and Jenni, a pair of writers working on a new urban fantasy series about the oracle Val Ferrel.

First off, please tell us a little bit about you and your work.

K: I’m the “K” (Kelly) of the K.J. Garnet writing team. I’m the author of 3 non-fiction books and freelance writer in my field for magazine and editorial work.

J: I’m th...

The monthly SFF promo is here again! Over 100 books for 99c each, Sept 3-4

We have another great promo for fans of science fiction and fantasy this month — over 100 books, all for only 99c! The sale officially starts tomorrow, Sept. 3, but a lot of the books are already reduced in price. Like my contribution, Shadow of Stone. the second book in the Pendragon Chronicles series, available on Amazon for only 99c. Or my collection of short stories, Oregon Elsewise, available on B&N, Kobo and Apple for only 99c.

So check out the sale, and good luck finding something y...