Theodore’s Comments (group member since Apr 01, 2017)

Theodore’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Is anyone else not receiving publication notices from Amazon KDP?

I recently submitted updated Kindle and paperback versions of a few books (fixing minor errors, adding an award here and there), but of late, have NOT received e-mails from KDP, indicating the updated editions were for sale. I did see, however, on my KDP Bookshelf, that the books were again available for promotion and advertising (meaning that I should have received an e-mail notification to that effect).

Am I the only one experiencing this problem? I've called KDP (reaching India...not sure what's happened to the old CS support centers in RSA and Costa Rica), and they attempted to resend one message of the type I'm missing...twice. Neither was received.

Just wondering.

Ted

Dale wrote: "Alyssa wrote: "Thanks, gang...it's been a slog. Ted and I have been posting stories since March 3, 2017.

Persistence!!!!! (;>)"

I can see why they picked that one. It was very nicely done.

I on..."

Thanks, Dale. I have no idea what goes through the editors' heads, sometimes.

Alex wrote: "Hey everyone, just letting you know that I won't be as active here or on twitter for a while. I had a minor operation yesterday (nothing serious so no need to worry) and it's going to be a while be..."

All best wishes for a speedy recovery, Alex!

Carmel wrote: "I got the same email. I was relieved there were no issues with my one book. :)"

Always nice to see, for sure.

Hello,

Below is the weekly status of titles with quality issues in your eBook catalog as of 28 Jan 2019, 06:38:54 -0500..

• Number of titles removed from sale: 0
• Number of titles with quality warnings: 0
• Number of titles with open issues: 0

Please address the quality issues Needing Your Review on the Quality Issues Dashboard by clicking here or from the notification at the top of your KDP Bookshelf.

For more information about the dashboard and specific book errors (including why some errors are more critical than others), see our Help page: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/top...

For a complete guide to building a book for Kindle, see the Kindle Publishing Guidelines:

https://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/Am...

Thank you for using Amazon KDP.

Best Regards,

Kindle Direct Publishing

Dale wrote: "Soooo . . . doing a minimal amount of research (i.e., Googling it), I found that Jeff Bezos mentioned the 1,000 making $100k+ figure in his annual report to shareholders. The article that cites thi..."

That's an interesting analysis, Dale. Thanks.

Frankly, I'm suspicious. We all know how much we earn per page view or by the sale of each book: bupkis! You'd have to sell a ton of books to make that much. And even if your gross revenue got anywhere near those lofty heights, show me your marketing costs, and then, net them out! I posit the bottom lines of most authors is nowhere near what that article "inferred." It's barely possible to break even these days (at least in my experience), even using my favorite venue, ENT, and substacting the marketing costs. And then, of course, there is Uncle Sam. The government may be closed, but his inbox isn't.

Alex wrote: "Theodore wrote: "Carole, Alex...I agree...show me the numbers. There is a strong whiff in the air of what the dairy farm down the road from me produces in great quantities every day!"

That's a des..."

LOL Oh my gosh...our land is adjacent to a farm...fortunately, it's farmed. But down a road about one-half mile is a dairy farm, and next to it, a place where they stable horses. Quite nice, I must say. Still, some nearby land is available for commercial lease, which does not sit well with the "locals." Just a matter of time, I suppose, considering we're just off the Interstate.

Carole, Alex...I agree...show me the numbers. There is a strong whiff in the air of what the dairy farm down the road from me produces in great quantities every day!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/they-own...

Is you have a subscription, this article will interest you. It talks about how Amazon is increasingly dominating the publishing industry. The penultimate paragraph, stated without backup data, was a "bit much" however:

"An Amazon spokesman said thousands of self-published authors in 2018 'earned more than $50,000, with more than 1,000 surpassing $100,000 in royalties.' . . . ."

Most of us have seen what Amazon pays per page view or for a book sale, paperback or Kindle. Those kinds of numbers are startling, given what you'd need to sell just to reach the $50,000 mark, let along $100,000.

One observation that clearly stood out was the fact that Amazon increasingly is dominating the romance market, putting the hurt on such publishers as Harlequin, among others.

Alex wrote: "I have to get D2D to contact Amazon for me because I don't publish with KDP, it's such a pain, but D2D has excellent customer service so things normally get done fairly quickly."

Understand...you only can work directly with B&N, Kobo, etc., on books YOU self-published. On books, say, AuthorHouse (for example) published for you, THEY would have to correct any errors found on a retail book site.

Alex wrote: "I've just checked and my books seem to be okay, which is a relief, but thanks for the reminder.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has a bad habit of getting complacent about their books, not bother..."

Also good too check Kobo, from time to time.

As well, you can fix problems on Amazon by going through AuthorCentral or directly through KDP...whether by e-mail or phone, I've found the Amazon agents extremely helpful for fixing/changing such things as LookInside percentages, linking paperback and Kindle editions, setting up series, and so forth.

I don't know how many of you search on your own name from time to time on B&N, but recently, upon doing so, I found a number of errors (e.g., unlinked paperback and NOOK books; incorrect associations of paperbacks with their NOOK counterparts (this happened with my two short-story anthologies); a missing paperback edition (though the NOOK edition was listed)).

All of these errors were quickly corrected by sending e-mails to:

corrections@bn.com

What I had to provide were such data as a detailed description of the problem, the B&N EAN number, paperback ISBN numbers, eISBN numbers (if any), and so forth.

The people at B&N were very responsive to my requests for assistance...once I determined to where such requests needed to be sent.

Anna Faversham wrote: "Cor... I didn't know you could alter the 'Look Inside' feature. Thanks Ted."

Yes...percentage is a variable.

Just a short word about looking in now and then on how Amazon, B&N, and Kobo are displaying your books. Based on some recent observations, it could make a difference in your sales.

For example, on Amazon.com, the default for their LookInside feature, if I recall, is 10%. My books have significant front-end material (e.g., frontispiece, copyright page, dedications, and so forth), and so, in some cases, at 10%, little of a book's actual text can be read by potential buyers. For this reason, I set my LookInside percentage at 40%.

The easiest way to do this is to go to your AuthorCentral account and, using the Help feature, send them an e-mail, providing your book(s) information (ISBN/ASIN) and the percentage you would like displayed. Alternatively, use the "call me" feature and handle such issues on the telephone.

On B&N, issues I have found include missing paperback covers when I do a search of my books and unlinked paperback and EPUB issues. (Both should be listed under one cover.)

Kobo is pretty good, though covers are not always displayed on your account page. Time to publish can exceed 24 hours. And, as I have noted elsewhere, to find you foreign-language books, you'll have to search under that specific foreign language...they will NOT show up on a general search using the English language.

Regardless of the sales venue, it doesn't hurt to look in on your books' Webpages from time to time, if only too ensure "weeds" haven't sprung up.

Just posted an ad on ACX for a narrator/producer to bring the Italian version of Pepe Builds a Nest to life. If you are that special someone (or know that person) who is Italian or who speaks the language fluently and who can narrate and produce audiobooks, they are welcome to audition on the Audibles platform.

Just a heads up when publishing books on KWL in languages other than English: they will NOT show up on English-language searches in the US on the Kobo Website when using the author's name or the book's title as keywords. Unlike on Amazon or B&N, on Kobo, foreign-language books will only be shown on searches conducted for a specific language.

I have pointed out to the people at Kobo that, at least in the United States, they are giving up their foreign-language market, to a large extent, to Amazon and B&N, both of which will show all books written by an author, regardless of language. Consider the following statistics regarding languages spoken in this country:

• English only – 229.7 million.
• Spanish – 40.5 million.
• Chinese (including Mandarin and Cantonese) – 3.4 million.
• Tagalog (including Filipino) – 1.7 million.
• Vietnamese – 1.5 million.
• Arabic – 1.2 million.
• French – 1.2 million.
• Korean – 1.1 million.

BTW, Italian – 0.58 million (#14)

I only determined this "flaw" on Kobo after publishing three foreign-language versions of Pepe Builds a Nest (Spanish, French, and Italian) over the weekend and repeatedly being frustrated at not being able to find them on an English-language search. . . even though my dashboard showed them as "published."

Whether or not Kobo will address this issue, at least for their US market, is unknown.

Carmel wrote: "All good to know. Glad you were happy with the final products."

Thanks...yep, things did work out well.

I just made some minor changes to the children's book.

I've said it before: when using the KDP file editor (their system software that processes your pdf, Word, etc., book file), do NOT (!!!!!) click on the viewing capability in a lower window until the process has been completed and the note on the screen, indicating their system is processing your file, disappears.

If you click on the viewer too early, it will delay the processing of your file.

This time the covers--front and back--were rendered perfectly! On both books (one of those delivered was one of my flash fiction anthologies). So, perhaps, Amazon is slowly getting the bugs out of the switchover to KDP.

Theodore wrote: "Carmel wrote: "Goodness. What a runaround. I'm glad you got better news, and I hope they follow through sooner rather than later."

Thanks.

Just saw that the delivery is on the truck.

What's a s..."

And they just arrived!!!

We're good!