Making your own Kindle copies for ARCs & Reviews

[Jemima]

Just thought this might be something many newer indie authors may not realise, and reposting it from a reply to Alex in Read4Review.

"One thing you may not have realised - you can download your own file of the book from your KDP bookshelf (in the preview area). As long as it's DRM free you can send that to anyone by email, you don't have to do it through Amazon. I'm not sure if it's limited if you've got DRM enabled, but for indies there are plenty of very good reasons to make it DRM free. "

adding to that...
I'm not sure whether publishing from phones and apps has changed the way we work, but it used to be normal to upload and download book files from our desktops. Do you still write on a desktop/laptop with file systems, or is there a different way now? Is it difficult to get these things from the desktop with the Kindle App?

If you want a pointer to reasons to make your book DRM free, ask.

Also if you want to discuss ins and outs of Kindle publishing, there are several Groups on Goodreads which are probably very useful. The UK Kindle group is a good place for UK people :)

PS You own your book's Kindle file, not Amazon. You just give them selling rights. You cannot sell your kindle file made through KDP to anyone else, that is a breach. But you can make an independent Kindle file (i.e. mobi format) if you publish via Smashwords, and sell it wherever you want.

Maybe I should do a blog post....

[Justine]

I’ll have to go to you when I make that big leap, Jemima. It feels bewildering. Btw, what’s DRM?

[Rebecca]

Justine wrote: "I’ll have to go to you when I make that big leap, Jemima. It feels bewildering. Btw, what’s DRM?"

Digital Rights Management. It prevents people from sharing (pirating) your ebook, but sadly also prevents them from putting on both their Kindle, say, and their iPhone.

[Jemima]

The Smashwords view of DRM is that it prevents you from doing the equivalent of sharing a book with a friend. For an indie author, that's the best thing you can have - free recommendations!

Yes, piracy and selling your book so you don't get royalties can be a problem. Frankly, for most of us, getting picked up by a pirate in such a way that it actually reduced our sales would be unlikely.

In fact, it would be a darn sight cheaper than any advertising, if they sold our free copies and the people that bought them followed the links inside to get the second, third, fourth... in the series :)

So, all my books are DRM free.

[Rebecca]

Jemima wrote: "The Smashwords view of DRM is that it prevents you from doing the equivalent of sharing a book with a friend. For an indie author, that's the best thing you can have - free recommendations!

Yes, p..."

You are probably right about this aspect of piracy for most of us. But having read a lengthy debate and a poster (troll?)'s repeated assertions that piracy doesn't hurt authors so there's nothing wrong with using those sites, I want to be very clear: even though it is unlikely to hurt me, and might even work as free advertising, stealing books remains wrong, and people who download from those sites are stealing.

[Jemima]

Yep, I agree with that.