Final Beta Released
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I have released what I think should be the final Beta.
It is post editor. It turned out to be a lot harder to merge back than I thought.
Can you all check your biggest hot button issues to make sure they are included.
I do have a new Stainsberry scene indicated in red in the PDF ToC. It’s a Field of Zombies/Stainsberry section.
I called the Beta, Beta 5—I think it should have been beta 4 but I got off on my numbers.
I’ve also included the Appendix links in what I think are good spots. But feel free to suggest moving them to better locations.
I have a small request. When you push the final out to Amazon, can you make sure Page Flip is enabled? I have an issue with my Kindle app, where sometimes it forgets to swipe to the next page, and instead stops in between pages. It doesn’t do that with Page Flip.
…unless Amazon charges extra for that, then don’t worry about it. :-s
I have no clue how to do that. There is no setting that I’ve seen on the publishing pages. Maybe there is formatting code?
I will look into it though.
A lot of these features are sort of random/they turn them on, or are very obscure. The don’t document them at all.
That makes sense of some things that have puzzled me.
I’ve read several new books the last few months. The previous book in the series would be page flip enabled, and the new one wouldn’t. Dang, Amazon’s been doing good things lately, seems like they’d spiff up their publishing tools.
…if they have publishing tools. Not being a writer, I’ve never investigated how Kindle books are actually made.
Well, you could always “fake it” it doesn’t cost anything other than time to set it up.
The tools are pretty simple, and very poorly documented. They have this community forum where people ask questions and experienced authors reply, but Amazon says very little in terms of answers.
They have official documentation, but it’s marginal at best.
Take for example getting your book into different categories.
You are allowed two main categories. Period.
So I chose
Fiction > Fantasy > Epic
Fiction > Fantasy > GeneralThey also let you have 7 “keywords” or “phrases” officially used for people doing searches (according to instructions)
And those were the only places I was listed, or ranked on the book’s page. But then I saw that other books form other authors were in more categories.
I had to search and search both forums and google to find out how they did this.It turns out that if your keywords match certain categories, e.g. “Sword & Sorcery” EXACTLY then they will put you there (or in one of them, if the category is in two places
e.g.
Fantasy > Sword & Sorcery (goes there)
Teen & Young Adult> Science Fiction & Fantasy > Sword & Sorcery (not here)And there are other places down other trees where Sword & Sorcery appears (e.g. College & New Adult) and it doesn’t go there.
It’s all trial and error.
About all I can control is:
Match Book (meaning free or cheaper ebook with paperback)
Kindle Unlimited
Allow LendingAnd that’s about it. Most everything else is a random act of Amazon or something for those who “figure it out”
Shelfari was the biggest secret. I randomly filled out details on stuff there for the first book and voila X-Ray turned itself on.
Then they killed Shelfari and there is no good tool for independent authors to populate official “X-Ray” or at least not that I can find.
Have you thought about releasing your books via [url=https://www.smashwords.com]Smashwords[/url] as alternative or even as an additional publishing stream???
Upload your book to Smashwords and it will then release it to multiple platforms, such as: Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.
When I looked into it a couple of years ago, they were releasing to Amazon as well – although I don’t see it listed as a platform anymore.
Would mean that you couldn’t go exclusive publishing with Amazon – but would open up other markets for you.
Hi,
Yes, I did that originally.
I was at Smashwords and published to various of their subsites and several others on my own. Google Play, Apple, BN.com etc.
However, what I quickly discovered is that none of them could come even remotely close to the volume on Amazon.
Mainly because it was very hard to find the book on some of those platforms. BN and Apple are too focused on the big publishers. Smashwords has a lot of lower end stuff (and lots of porn).
Smashwords probably sold the most after amazon, then google play, then BN. Apple sold none.
Amazon did nearly 100x as much business as the others in the first months. Literally.
In the first month on Amazon, I sold 1,161 copies. I sold 10 at Smashwords, 2 at Play, 1 at BN.
And then comes Kindle Unlimited. It’s optional, but exclusive. To be on Kindle Unlimited you cannot have the same book at any other e-bookstore. You could have, say an illustrated version on Apple, or compendium of 3 books etc, but not the same book.
Now, at first the payment wasn’t so great since they treated all books the same and this ended up being advantages to people that wrote lots of short books. They changed that in the summer of 2015. Now they pay per “virtual” page read. I make pretty much the same amount of money whether it is KU or purchased. (although if they don’t finish the book–I only get paid for how much they read with KU. However, that is not noticeable)
So I signed up, and at first it boosted my income by 50%, even after dumping the other sites.
Once they changed the payment scheme last year?
I make 2x as much money (on average) from Kindle Unlimited readers as from sales of the e-book. That is simply volume, since the royalty is about the same.
And this has been consistent. Sales of Books 1 and 2 are being boosted by my ads for the preorder of Book 3.
I.e. people see Book 3 and go and check out books 1 and 2.
At the moment, people reading it via KU have brought in almost exactly 2x as much as people buying books 1 and 2.
So….long story short, for most indie authors, KU is a very profitable drug. Quitting it to put your book on other sites can be very expensive and not worth it.
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