Thom Kephart, Amazon's Community Outreach Product Manager (right) will drop by on Tuesday, 28th January 2014, to answer ALLi members' questions about Amazon's publishing platforms for indie authors, KDP and Createspace.
We've got questions coming in about how to best publish on those platforms, about book marketing vehicles for indie authors, including the possibility of pre-orders; Amazon “author has a new book out” feature; and whether indies can get opportunities for paid promotion.
Lots of questions too about how to best promote our work in Amazon stores outside our home territory.
NOTE: If you have a question (Alliance of Independent Authors Members only, if you wish to join you can do so here), leave it here in the comment box below — and we'll do our best to ensure that it's asked at the event.
HOW TO ATTEND
Just turn up to the ALLi's YouTube Page or Google+ page at 11am PST (Vancouver), 3pm EST (New York), 7pm BST (London), 6am (8th) AST (Sydney), when the event will be live streamed. No codes needed, no passwords, no hassle.
See you then.
And please have our very best wishes for a creative and productive year in 2014. It's going to be a great year for indie authors.
Happy New Year!
from
Orna, Philip, Karen, Geraldine, Debbie, Nerys & all at ALLi.
PS The link, again, if you wish to join ALLi and ask a question, is here. Or find out more about membership benefits, go here.
I’m still hoping to attend this event but in case I pass out (it starts at midnight, India time):
I’m asking this question as a reader because we need to make it as simple as possible for readers to download books.
Often I’ll come across a book I want to get and I’ll find that I already downloaded it a while ago. If I want to download it again, I find that I have to jump through hoops. The order page should have a simple button which lets you download it again easily (since it was already paid for/downloaded during a free run), but instead it tells you to view the order (which isn’t as simple as it sounds).
Why would I need to download again? I had a lot of books on my old kindle, which is now dead. My issue:
1. There is no easy way of transferring all the books that resided on the older kindle to the new one
2. When I click on view orders, then go to manage my kindle etc in order to track this book down so I can manually download it again, I have to get to the search bar. This searching mechanism is really bad. It will not bring up books by title or author name unless it is exact, sometimes not even then. Sometimes I’ve had to do the search as: Last-name, First-name Middle-name which just doesn’t make sense.
Please fix this.
I’d like to know more about being able to order in stocks of books for delivery to me from within the UK if I select the Amazon UK distribution channel. As I do a lot of school events being able to order this way regularly is important to me. At the moment I’m using LS UK for my UK channel because my understanding is there is a long lead time if ordering from CreateSpace…(At one stage the implication was that the books were printed in the US but I’m assuming they are printed here – and probably by LS??).
A question for tomorrow. Amazon appear to do very little to promote titles outside of the Kindle Singles and the Kindle Daily Deals, all which appear to be traditionally published titles, or indie books that are part of their imprint. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
How can indie authors who are not selling high enough to catch Amazon’s attention, but have produced a good book by customer standards (4.0 or higher) benefit from similar promotions? A lower tiered list than the coveted Daily Deals or Singles list featuring unknown or starting out authors would be a good place to start. At the moment, the only way an author can boost their books’ visibility on the site is to pay for a good external promotion. Amazon don’t provide any help at all, which seems counterproductive in my mind, because all sales lead to money in Amazon’s pocket.
I am really impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your blog.
Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself?
Anyway keep up the nice quality writing, it’s rare to
see a nice blog like this one today.
Hi,
i come from Romania, and searching for information i have discovered you. Please hel me if of course, you can. I wish to understand how the kindle direct publishing works, is there a copywriting security, how can a writer coming from eastern europe join this kindle direct publishing works …. how does it work, if it works…. one that rights a book can publish it there without fearing it would be copied, … there are many things that are not clear to me …. can you help me please ….thank you
First of all, thank you for doing this! I think this is a great way to learn about Amazon! My question is regarding reviews. I’m a technical trainer at heart. I write non-fiction books that are focused at helping authors. These are niche books that come from my work teaching authors about technology. Really, the only audience is authors. I’ve had 15 or more authors contact me to tell me that Amazon refuses to post their reviews for my books. The vast majority of these authors I don’t know. They aren’t clients and aren’t friends. When they inquire as to why the review isn’t going to be posted, the reason commonly given is that they are an author. Whenever I’m contacted about this, I thank the author for their efforts and ask them if they could possibly post on Goodreads. This is not the solution, but is there a solution? What is Amazon’s solution for authors wanting to post a review about a book they have read and that book’s only audience being authors.
I’d appreciate any insight!
I will immediately snatch your rss as I can’t in finding your email subscription link or newsletter service. Do you have any? Kindly allow me realize in order that I may subscribe. Thanks.
I’m so sorry, we seem to have a technical hitch – our sign-up box has disappeared! Will get our technical whizz on the case first thing Monday so please do come back to check again then!
Hello again, I’ve just checked and our subscription box has now been restored to the top right of the page, so please do revisit and sign up! Thank you for your patience.
I have a question. How come amazon weights reviews more than sells on the popularity rankings? I been selling about 100 books each day on “Countdown” and NO boost. But when someone left a review your ranking goes up? Back in 2012 when amazon was crushing the competition they gave indie authors everything we would ever wanted, being able to do a promotion with bookbub and get a great boost after. Now there’s nothing, they just put us in the corner with “Countdown” and gave us no boost afterwards. I seen many sites accusing indies like; Matthew Mather, Hugh Howey, John Locke of having fake reviews. And I completely understand why they did it too, that’s the only thing that boost your rankings now. I think you guys need to count sales a lot more than reviews in your algorithms or you will see a lot more fake reviews or take the reviews system out completely for books.
In 2012 the algorithm was perfect. You sale and you get a boost that simple. I asked readers at the end of the book to leave reviews but how often do they? Maybe 1 out of 20? If you’re lucky. You guys really need to fix this problem.
I hope I can see an answer to this.
Ps. I am all over Facebook, Twitter and goodreads to ask my fans for review. But there’s just enough time you can ask people for reviews. The next solution is just buy them if that’s the only thing that works.
Will this be available in recorded form afterwards, as I will not be able to attend that date.
Yes Mary, you can check out all our video events on youtube.com/user/IndieAuthorALLi. Thanks for your interest
Hi Mary, please note the change of date to 28th, perhaps you might be free to attend?
I’ve put it on my calendar … thanks for letting me know about the change.
I’d like an update on the degree of convergence planned between different territories of Amazon and Goodreads, in particular with regards to book reviews.
I try to review all the books I read (whether indie or trade published) on Amazon US & UK and also on Goodreads, copying the same review across to each of those three sites. Not many people have the time or inclination to do that. Many readers won’t even be aware that there are different Amazon sites for the different territories. Streamlining the process e.g. allowing a review to be attached to a book, wherever it appears across the Amazon/Goodreads empire, would encourage more reviews on each site, which ought to be good for retailer, author and reader alike. Is there any chance of that happening, and if not, is it for reasons of technical constraint or is there a political or marketing reason?
On the list Debbie, great question, thank you.