Support for Indie Authors discussion

Has anyone tried the Kindle scout program?
https://kindlescout.amazon.com/
It sounds interesting but do any of us have any experience with it?

Interesting concept...I just might have to see about doing this with one of my books and see how it goes. I would also love to hear other peoples experiences with this.

I'm considering it with my next standalone story if they're taking submissions in my genre at that time. When the program came out, I was working on a series and didn't know where I was going with it, so I didn't want to be locked into some expectations.

The only part I don't like is the crowd sourcing encourages you to have your friends vote. I would rather the stories be submitted anonymously and to an impartial panel of top reviewers or something similar. I don't have a huge social network to begin with and I would feel disingenous asking them to vote for me.

Christina wrote: "I'm considering it with my next standalone story if they're taking submissions in my genre at that time. When the program came out, I was working on a series and didn't know where I was going with ..."

Yeah but you have us! WE can vote for you without feeling negative about it.

I checked it out briefly when it was introduced, and I'm not sure what to think. If I recall, there is an "editorial board" that has final say on submissions.

I'm completely guessing here, but maybe the idea is to using crowd sourcing as some kind of proxy for marketability and then a, editorial function to see that some degree of quality is there.

I'm leery of crowd sourcing because it can be gamed and it seems (to me) to reward things unrelated to writing. I'd think Amazon knows this and I wonder if this is mostly a trial balloon.

Personally it goes against my grain, so I doubt I'd ever try it. But that's just me and I don't see any reason it couldn't work for others.

PS: related to what Christina said, I'd be much more comfortable if Amazon had a way to see which submissions passed muster and then submitted them (in some fashion) as anonymous works to see what response they got. (Although it seems Amazon could troll their books and select work just as well. I believe they do that already to some extent, leading me to wonder about the trial-balloon aspect.)

Owen wrote: "I checked it out briefly when it was introduced, and I'm not sure what to think. If I recall, there is an "editorial board" that has final say on submissions.

I'm completely guessing here, but may..."

For me, if your a new unknown author and the option is not a scam of some sort then you need to take it. As long as it isn't unethical, immoral or illegal.

Hayden wrote: "For me, if your a new unknown author and the option is not a scam of some sort then you need to take it..."

Always a good idea to read the fine print first.

We've talked about this Owen. If you're gonna start conducting yourself like an adult then I am outa here:)

Christina wrote: "I'm considering it with my next standalone story if they're taking submissions in my genre at that time. When the program came out, I was working on a series and didn't know where I was going with ..."
Ditto Christina, a lot of these just want to access your contact list to boost their feeds, but you really don't get anything in return.

Well to be fair, this is through Amazon. They certainly have no need to use my handful of supporters to boost their anything.

Pregnancy and Men

it does not involve non-fiction genre as well as book manuscript needs to have 50,000 words or more + never been published.

my book is not eligible there at this point :(