ROBUST discussion

Amazons' Select program requires you to make your book exclusive to Amazon, that is, withdraw it from sale everywhere else. Here is a list of problems with the system for writers:

http://eawestwriting.blogspot.com/201...

Anyone contemplating signing up.

Not at the moment. I suspect the actual financial rewards for someone in my lowly position would be scant, and it's asking a big deal to take books off other sites....

Oh god. Was discussing this with a group of writers earlier. One of them sent the contract to her lawyer, who pointed out the phrase which allows Amazon to possibly force you to take down every single one of your books on other platforms if they could be considered competition for the one you are making available through KDP Select. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Ten foot barge pole is not long enough.

Rumors of this deal were floating around for a while. I was eager to get into it, watched the first of December (the rumored start date) come and go, and worried that it wouldn't happen. I signed up as soon as I heard it went live today. I'm also taking advantage of the promotional program. For five days (beginning tomorrow) all my indie titles under my own name and Sierra Philpin will be free. If my books weren't aimed at different audiences, I would have staggered the freebies instead of making them all free at the same time.

Mhairi, I think that part of the contract simply protects Amazon from someone putting the same material out in a different form, such as an e-book with bonus material that's designed to be nothing more than a workaround that thwarts their rules. But suppose Amazon did enforce it the way the attorney suggested -- if that's not acceptable to an author, all s/he has to do is withdraw from the program.

What Amazon giveth with the one hand, Amazon taketh away double with the other hand.

-- King James version of an Amazon contract

Andre Jute wrote: "Amazons' Select program requires you to make your book exclusive to Amazon, that is, withdraw it from sale everywhere else. Here is a list of problems with the system for writers:

http://eawestw..."

That blogger doesn't seem to know that public libraries pay for the books they loan for free. Authors get royalties for those sales.

Let us know if you get rich, Sierra. (We'll help you spend your money...)

I see the Amazon lending program more like the Public Lending Right (PLR) in the UK, Australia and elsewhere, where writers are paid from a common pool for lendings of books on library shelves, the logic being that a single royalty is not enough recompense for however many lendings.

Andre Jute wrote: "Let us know if you get rich, Sierra. (We'll help you spend your money...)"

I already have the money spent.

I'm one of those authors you disdain. I really don't care if I make any money.

I might be tempted, but not indefinitely.

For example, you sign up for 90 days at a whack. I could certainly see getting the book up there for the 90 days prior to the official release and using the program for my ARC copies or (assuming I ever have one) a special preview for my fan club.

Then get off of it as soon as the book goes live.

Likewise, once I've got a series that's complete, going for 90 days or so at a time to take advantage of the freebie on Amazon might be a good plan as well.

So sure, one, maybe two titles (depending on how big my catalog gets) at a time and as a promotional measure.

As a long term strategy, nope.

This has completely put me off Amazon on a semi-permanent basis. I guess I will just struggle along with 'all of the rest'... I detest anti-competitive behaviour.

Amos wrote: "This has completely put me off Amazon on a semi-permanent basis. I guess I will just struggle along with 'all of the rest'... I detest anti-competitive behaviour."

I don't understand why it upsets you that Amazon's offering to let authors into a lending library and giving them the option to give their books away for five days in a 90-day period. They're not forcing anyone into the program, and they're not making authors remove their books from the Kindle Store if they don't participate. This program is in addition to the traditional deal with KDP, not instead of.

Nor do I see their offering of this new program as anti-competitive behavior. It's competitive, not anti-competitive, and competitive is what businesses are supposed to be. It's up to folks like B&N and Smashwords to determine if they want to offer something more appealing to indies or if they just want to surrender. Do you think if they came up with a weapon capable of smashing Amazon they'd hesitate to use it?

I'm talking about their requirement for the book to be exclusive to be in their select program :) Being exclusive removes competition.

There is a risk that you will be removed if you fail to offer the book exclusively as per their agreement.

It's more than just a risk, and that's as it should be if you make promises you don't keep. By "you" I don't mean "you, Amos" but any author that decides to accept Amazon's offer then ignores the terms attached to the offer.

I knew what you meant re exclusivity. I just take issue with your point.

It's also the way they do it, in that it has essentially become the default option and you have to opt out if you don't want it, correct? They offer a small carrot to try to pull people's books from the competition. That is really a bit sad. It is not something I will deal with and as I say, it has personally put me off Amazon. I don't care what other people do. That is their business.

I do think it is a good sign as they must be seeing the other distributors as real competition and that has to be a good thing. The last thing we need is an ebook monopoly.

We were on our way to a defacto ebook monopoly a few months ago, and we could be again if the Apple Board decides to make peace with Amazon now that Jobs is gone. Nobody else besides Apple is capable of providing a focus for the Big Six, who suddenly don't look so big. Not Google; their management is scum who tried to steal from every writer and publisher in the world already, and were only stopped by a principled judge.

But sooner or later a US Attorney General will have to tackle Amazon. That will be years of entertainment for us...

Sierra is the only person I know who will feel sorry for Jeff Bezos when some lawyer who fancies himself Bobby Kennedy reincarnated gets his teeth into Amazon's restrictive practices. It will make the Justice Department's persecution of Bill Gates and Microsoft look like a little light pigtail pulling. Amazon is so much more culpable and guilty.

PS. If there were justice in the world, the AG described above would go after Google well before Amazon, but Google knows better than Bezos how to keep a low profile.

I'm with you, Amos. I don't like being told what I can and can't do with my book. I do sell most of my copies through Amazon, but I like that it's also available to iPad users etc. In fact I met a friend in a cafe one day, got talking about my book and she immediately pulled out her iPad and bought it. That wouldn't have happened if it had been exclusive to Amazon.

Do you think it's because we're farmers, Amos? Too used to diversifying to guarantee income rather than putting all our eggs in one basket?

Could be the farming thing. lol. No way I will go exclusive :)

Amos, you don't have to opt out. You have to opt in if you want to participate.

What do you mean by it's "essentially the default option"? It's opt-in, not opt-out.

Not saying I'm not very dubious of it (and don't intend to sign up when I publish*), but let's not misrepresent what's going on here.

My #1 issue with not having other sales channels is that Amazon can (and has) have database hiccups that have removed books from sales, and there's limited customer service for KDP means it can take a while to resolve.

There was a popular book on Amazon.UK that took something like ten days before the issue was corrected. This was a fairly significant loss of sales for the authors (co-written book) involved.

There's another author I knew who basically spent months trying to get similar issues resolved.

Even if most sales are through Amazon, the mere existence of other sales channels means that one little database hiccup won't annihilate your income stream.

"income stream" J.a? I'd like to see that!

I haven't looked at the Amazon deal closely. I read a review that said it was essentially opt out. Or at least it was automatically opt in every three months once you start. I dislike the idea either way of course and I won't go exclusive with anyone. It's the exclusive clause that is the issue. It goes against the entire idea of being independent. lol.

Me, too, Katie!

Andre, you better quit bad-mouthing my boyfriend (Jeff Bezos) or I'll pull your pigtails.

Piece of this post removed because it was erroneous. Thanks to Patricia Sierra for giving us the true facts.

***

I can easily foresee a time when Amazon will say, KDP is ours, and if you want to use it, you must use only Amazon to distribute your books, no one else. I've always developed a coffin-hollow laugh whenever the dumber indies would go on about how Amazon was greater than Allah -- for giving an essentially unwanted bunch of writers their chance at glory. Amazon did no one a favour, ever. DTP, as KDP was called back then, was merely a tool to force book prices down, and Amazon didn't do that either out of any altruism or idealism about the sanctity of learning, but as part of a plan to grab the market for their Kindle from Google's Android and Apple's iPad. That plan failed, so we can look forward to the indies being gun fodder in the next plan...

Patricia wrote: "Andre, you better quit bad-mouthing my boyfriend (Jeff Bezos) or I'll pull your pigtails."

You have a new boyfriend every week, love. I'll just wait until the new one arrives and Jeff is cast off in the gutter.

The others are flirtations. Jeff's my true love.

You're wrong about that lending button, Andre. This new thing -- KDP Select -- operates in an entirely different way.

The loan button that was pre-selected was for buyers to be able to loan the title one time for a period of two weeks. Say my Aunt Millie wants to read your book and I have it. I can loan it to her, but no one else, and it disappears from her Kindle at the end of the two-week loan period. I think that is still the default on new uploads.

The program announced Thursday is for Prime members only (borrowers) and the length of the loan is forever, or until the borrower wishes to borrow another book. The most a Prime member can borrow from the library is one book per month and there is no roll-over if you go a few months without borrowing.

With the button you mentioned, the author gets nothing when the buyer of a title loans it to someone else. The new program provides payment to the author when a Prime member borrows a title from the Prime lending library, though the amount of that payment is very much undetermined. There is no limit on how many times the books in the Prime lending library can be loaned.

Authors can withdraw their books from the Prime lending library, but they cannot withdraw them from the one-time loan that is attached to KDP uploads.

A quick question - the lending function - is it global now or still confined only to US members or members with a physical address in the US?

You're right, Patricia, and I'm wrong. Two different sorts of loans.

Claudine: US Prime members only. But the free book side of the KDP Select puts an author's books in all of Amazon's non-US markets if the author has world rights. I woke up today to see that folks in the UK have grabbed a bunch of my free books.

Katie wrote: "income stream" J.a? I'd like to see that!"

Are you familiar with the "creek"? I'm honestly unsure if it's a regional American thing, but in many places over here it tends to suggests a smaller stream.

Income drip

Patricia wrote: "Rumors of this deal were floating around for a while. I was eager to get into it, watched the first of December (the rumored start date) come and go, and worried that it wouldn't happen. I signed up as soon as I heard it went live today. I'm also taking advantage of the promotional program. For five days (beginning tomorrow) all my indie titles under my own name and Sierra Philpin will be free. If my books weren't aimed at different audiences, I would have staggered the freebies instead of making them all free at the same time.

Mhairi, I think that part of the contract simply protects Amazon from someone putting the same material out in a different form, such as an e-book with bonus material that's designed to be nothing more than a workaround that thwarts their rules. But suppose Amazon did enforce it the way the attorney suggested -- if that's not acceptable to an author, all s/he has to do is withdraw from the program."

Not quite. An author can withdraw from the programme but would still be bound by the exclusivity agreement for the full 90 days. In addition to that, if Amazon enforced a "breach" they could kick the author off the KDP platform altogether. I see what you're saying, but I just can't see this as a good idea. If you're signing all your books up, that certainly reduces the competition risk to zero. But personally, I just can't see the gains being as huge as Amazon made them out to be in the email. Particularly as the pool of funds is limited, but the number of authors who can sign up for it is not, which means the additional income stream will be tiny for all except extremely popular authors and possibly not enough to compensate for a complete lack of sales on any other platform.

However, since I'm not published it doesn't affect me either way, so I will carry on editing my novel and watch with interest to see how things unfold.

My books aren't for sale anywhere but Amazon, so the competition issue doesn't weigh into this for me.

When I say you can quit the program anytime, of course I mean after your 90 commitment is fulfilled (though you also have 3 days to drop out and it's as if you never signed up if you haven't used any of the free promotions available to you, though that applies only to the first time you use the program; each 90 days after that, they figure you understand what you've signed up for). For an author making lots of dough on other sites, that 90 days would probably feel like a long time if they wanted to the return to those other sites, but it'd be meaningless to me. My titles will continue to be for sale on Amazon even though I'm participating in the program, and it's not like I'm getting rich on those anyway if the program does take away from them.

At about 3am my time today, my books went to $0.00. When I woke up this morning, several hundred had already been downloaded. I was surprised to see that the book that had the fewest sales when it carried a price is the one that has been downloaded the most in the US and the UK. I'd bet my last cent that none of those downloads represents a lost sale.

The downloads are treated like sales for the purposes of establishing a book's rank, and they'll also affect how many more times a title will turn up in those "Customers who bought this book also bought" lists. I'm having a lot of trouble seeing the downside of this.

About that pot of money Amazon has set aside for participants: They've said the amount will be under review every month, with adjustments made if the numbers indicate a need to do so.

Look, at this point I don't much care how much money is in the pot. I'd be using this as a replacement for books I would have given away free. Two pennies a lend is still more than I would have made otherwise.

Use it for book one in the series. Use it to build buzz before the next book comes out. Use it to get established as a name. And then drop your ass back out of it when sales have climbed to a nice level, you've got good word of mouth going, and you want to give all of your Goodreads/LibraryThing peeps a chance to buy where ever they like.

Ha ha ha, I was just about to start a thread on this, but I see y'all are way ahead of me as usual .

Andre said: ...If there were justice in the world, the AG described above would go after Google well before Amazon, but Google knows better than Bezos how to keep a low profile...

This I agree with. I now dislike Google even more than I ever did Microsoft (for entirely different reasons).

J.a. said: ...there's limited customer service for KDP...

Granted I don't have the kind of sales where a blip or two would affect me, but I've always had excellent customer service from KDP - it wasn't even as bad as authors complained about when they were DTP.

Katie said: income stream" J.a? I'd like to see that!

Make that three of us!

Patricia, if I'm reading this right, the exclusivity only applies to the ebook version of a book?

I've been negligent in getting a print version of my book out there anyway, but was thinking of doing so while I'm away in Ozz. Ditto, there's something about Smashwords that just puts me off, so haven't joined their ranks.

So I'm prime for trying this out...

Yes, only the ebook.

Thanks!. Thought so, but knew you would have researched it thoroughly.

J.a. wrote: "Katie wrote: "income stream" J.a? I'd like to see that!"

Are you familiar with the "creek"? I'm honestly unsure if it's a regional American thing, but in many places over here it tends to suggests..."

I'd be happy with an income drip right now, but the tap (fawcett?) seems to have seized up.

This idea from Amazon does seem to have polarised people. I'm happy to sit back and see what happens. I could easily opt in with my children's book, because I haven't sent it to Smashwords at all yet, but I can't see it being borrowed, so I'll wait and see.

It has polarised us. Dedicated smashwords junkies (like me) seem to be boycotting Amazon. lol.

Isn't it fabulous that we can be polarized and still friends...

At last count, I've had 1679 downloads from three countries spread across my six titles (that's in a day and a half of their being free). I don't know or care if that'll eventually lead to sales. It's just nice to know my work is finding homes in lots of Kindles. Whether the books will be read is another unknown.

My two worst sellers are the ones downloaded most often. A friend reports the same thing about his worst-selling book.

Edit: I just did a recount. The number of downloads is now 1701.

Interesting Patricia, keep us posted...

I'm watching to see what happens with you, Patricia.

My sales are non-existant at this point I'd sign a deal with the devil, or Van Man Go, if I thought it would help.

My sales dropped off through November. Was very sad. lol. I have spoken to the devil, but he has not returned the call as yet.

K. A. wrote: "I'm watching to see what happens with you, Patricia."

My download count is now at 1834. I remain of the opinion that the downloaders are not folks who would have paid money for my books, so I don't know what, if anything, any of this means. I'm expecting to return to my usual unimpressive levels the moment the giveaway is over (it runs through the 13th). But if my sales actually improve, I'll tell the Devil and he'll take it from there.

In a series I note I get maybe 2 downloads of sequels for every 100 free first parts. People download lots of free stuff they never read. I am guilty of that myself. lol.

Amos wrote: "In a series I note I get maybe 2 downloads of sequels for every 100 free first parts. People download lots of free stuff they never read. I am guilty of that myself. lol."

Me, too. I've read some posts by people saying they're not doing that, but I'll bet they are. I'm not downloading nearly as many as I used to, though. I finally caught on to my failings in getting the books read.

Amos wrote: "I have spoken to the devil, but he has not returned the call as yet."

I've been busy stoking the especially hot fire in which we melt the fat off the Christmas gluttons. It is not only good worker-relations for the boss to pitch in but it gives me a chance to take off my goatskin and let the pretty angels the other side of the gully of purgatory see my muscles rippling.

We at Lucifer Inc value your eventual arrival and will speak to you then if we don't call you earlier.

Yours expectantly,

Old Nick