Support for Indie Authors discussion

Last night, I went through all the motions of getting my e-Pub file into KDP. Formatting is flawless, the cover is right, everything is totally high-fives all around.

When Amazon finally publishes the book I can't:

- Get it to display the "Look Inside" (a feature that I constantly use as a reader)

- Set it up as a free book.

My publishing strategy is to sell the longer novel (90,000 words) that I wrote for $2.99 and publish a supplemental story (9,500 words) that accompanies it for free.

Using KDP's system, the lowest I could price the book was $0.99.

Naturally, Amazon's process takes forever to finalzie anything, so right now the book is published and available, but it's not free. I can see that I'll have to wait until some magical point in the future to revise the error.

What do I need to click to make sure the supplemental book is configured the way I want it?

This is the supplemental story http://www.amazon.com/Zalli-J-K-Wrigh...

The process is annoying. There's never just a page where you check off what you want and proceed. Everything has to be a set of frickin A-B options that railroad you toward this or that.

After pissing away half a day figuring out Sigil, it would have been nice if KDP had worked just a tad better.

Anyhow . . . what am I looking for to get the ebook to be free and to offer the "Look Inside" option?

Well, I set my book up on Smashwords first and set it up is free, and then sent the link to Amazon customer support asking them to match the price. I don't know if you are KDP exclusive if you can offer a free book there... I could be wrong, but I've never been KDP exclusive

I haven't played with Smashwords at all.

I'd really prefer to not have to contact customer support.

It will take a while for the preview to work. Wait a day or two. Amazon does not allow free books. In order to set it as permafree, it needs to be free at another store. Then Amazon will price match and set the price to zero.

That would have been nice of them to mention it. Cripes, I'm trying to build audience here.

They actually do mention it. Right in the terms. The price match can easily be don if you have other works for sale at a real price. They consider it marketing they. They will not just offer a first book for permafree.

OK, I have the Smashwords version up: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

Crap, what I'd give for KDP to be that easy.

So . . . slowest version if I wait for Amazon to figure this out on their own, right?

If ypu wait for amazon to change it they never will.

So, what web page allows me to notify them?

EDIT: I see at least one DL, and I'd like to say that anyone who wishes to offer me feedback, I'd welcome it here (can you PM people on GoodReads?), on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mrjkwright) or through my blog (https://whywriteit.wordpress.com/2015...).

Price matching is at Amazon's sole discretion and my impression is that they are getting more picky about it, since more and more authors have started to do this. Like it or not, Amazon is not in the business of providing a free publishing platform for authors. Smashwords is willing to do that.

You can click the "tell us about a lower price" box, but it's better if others do that. But don't expect them to comply.

I understand it from their viewpoint. I was unaware, however, that this was in fact their viewpoint. You see so many free books on Amazon that you just assume, as a new author, that it's an option that would be sitting right there in the interface.

KDP Select allows authors to set their books free for up to 5 days per quarter. Publishing houses also negotiate permafree book deals with Amazon, mostly for popular series (as far as I've seen). Amazon does seem to be willing to cut such deals if an author is successful enough.

These two factors account for most of the free books on Amazon at any given time. A few are also price-matched, but those are not a large share of the total, as far as I have seen.

Is using KDP select worth going dark elsewhere?

Hi JK,
For some, yes and for others, no. I have had a good experience keeping my books exclusive to Amazon and take advantage of both the free promos and the countdown sales. I do not pay for marketing, so for me, that's valuable visibility that I would not get if I were to expand to other markets. Also, the KU program has been beneficial to me.

Others sell well in places like B&N and Smashwords, so for them, Select may not have a benefit. Your best bet would ve to try each for a few months and decide.

The only advice I would give is that unless you have several books in a series, do not offer a permafree option. You would be better off with a planned, single day KDP Select promo because if you chart high enough, you will see some spillover sales after the promo.

@Christina:

What I have is a 97,000 word novel and a smaller story (10,000 words) about one of the characters at a much earlier stage in his life.

The novel is something of a dark, contemporary romance. It ended up only being really dark for about the first third, then it gets kinky/weird and eventually becomes funny as the two characters make peace with the fact that they can't drive each other way.

I don't know anything about the romance market. Hell, it's not even my genre as a reader.

What I wanted to do was use the smaller story as a gateway to the novel. Perma-free the shorter story and then let people follow it into the novel if they liked it.

I completely misunderstood how Amazon treats free books when I was thinking up this clever plan.

The KDP Select terms, frankly, seem onerous. OTOH, Amazon seems to be the only game in town for a lot of genres.

Right now I have the shorter story on Smashwords and Amazon, and I'm just getting started cleaning up the draft of the novel.

At $0.99 and no reviews on Amazon, no one is touching it. The free version on Smashwords seems to be getting DLed by about 60% of people who view the page, but no one is leaving reviews.

I have done nothing in terms of marketing. Right now I'm just trying to do a dry run through the epub software and the websites to figure out what the hell I'm doing.

The whole thing feels like a vicious feedback loop. You need reviews to get purchases, but you need purchases to get reviews. Then Amazon basically says, "Well, you can have a small days of giving out freebies, IF you concede to these really shit terms."

JK wrote: "@Christina:

What I have is a 97,000 word novel and a smaller story (10,000 words) about one of the characters at a much earlier stage in his life...."

Your novel is not released yet? In that case, lack of response is to be expected. Not having seen your work, I can only speak in generalities. Overall, short fiction does not sell well on Amazon. People rarely leave reviews. Most of the people who download a free work never read it. They have no investment in it -- it was just a click. Reviews don’t sell books and much as sales produce reviews. Books can sell just as well with no reviews -- this happens quite a bit.

KU can be good for new authors. It gives authors exposure and pays them while readers get the book for no additional investment. It doesn’t work for everybody. When it does work, it can work very well.

The value of a free story is limited and seems to hit the point of diminishing returns quickly. As Christina mentioned, free books work best when they are the first book in a well-established series.

"Reviews don’t sell books"

That's contrary to everything behavioral economics teaches. The reviews themselves would not be expected to sell the book, but their presence should be vital as a form of social proof.