The Invisible Traps of Amazon’s Publishing
Nasim Smadi
Founder, Editor In Chief @ Edara.com | Futurist, Novelist, Business Coach, Life Coach, Leaders Developer, Influencer, Speaker. Authorship: Beyond the 7 Habits, Sweetening the Dead Sea, ????? ??? ?????
Self-publishing can be a wonderful opportunity to share your work with global book buyers who are provided with more than one version of your book. However, it can be a cumbersome experience if you don't know what you are getting into. So, what exactly are the cons of getting your book published on Amazon's Kindle Distribution Publishing, KDP for short??
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Amazon Self-Publishing Tools Has a Learning Curve
Uploading your book on Amazon can prove harder than you thought. This is due to the nature of Amazon's KDP rules and steps, which can sometimes hinder the ease of getting your book up and running on the platform.?
Thus, a non-tech author might have trouble setting up their book on Amazon's platform. Especially the payment part, which can discourage any author from following through with the publication of their book.?
Low Barrier Entry
KDP has a low barrier that can be considered by many as an advantage. However, it is no longer considered an advantage when this low-barrier entry allows spammers to abuse the system for their financial benefit.?
Spammers use Amazon's publishing system to upload and publish the same book with slight alterations to maximize their earnings.?
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Everchanging Terms
If you choose to self-publish on Amazon exclusively, make sure you have considered the terms and conditions that will specify how your book will be visible to others.?
After you have considered if Amazon can change the terms and affect your book sales and visibility for good or worse, you should also keep in mind the casual errors that can cause your author profile or your book to be pulled out from view due to randomly occurring errors.?
Getting assistance means you play the long game
Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world, and authors from all over the world use Kindle Distribution Publishing daily to publish their books. This means that because of the large volume of authors who publish their books every day, getting immediate support might not be at all easy.?
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For example, if your book happens to have been unlisted due to an error or your book's reviews are randomly disappearing, it might be hard to get assistance. According to TrustPilot, 84% of the total votes are dissatisfied with Kindle Distribution Publishing, with most authors stating the following problems they encountered with the service:
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Amazon's paperback printing can be a gamble
Amazon's printing can be a hit or miss for some authors who printed and sold their books through Amazon. There are countless complaints about authors receiving their books with the following:?
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This also negatively impacted the sales of authors who suffered the damage of shipping mishaps.?
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You’re on your own with the marketing
Marketing your book is your sole responsibility. This means that you have to market your book from start to finish.
Also, it gets tricky because if you happen to violate the terms and conditions of KDP, you’ll lose the royalty and copyrights of your book, which means you have to be extra careful about where and how you market your book. ?
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Your book can be overshadowed
The most important part is that the success of your book is dependent on how much money you spend on your book, not the quality and value of your books.
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This puts the average writer at a huge disadvantage in the face of other authors whose books don’t provide much value but spend a lot of money on the marketing of their books or writers or influencer who have a big social media following.?
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Visibility is dependent on the reviews?
The most tricky part about having your book on Amazon is that you can no longer control if your book will be visible to readers or not. This means that the most important aspect is left to things beyond your control, like the number of reviews or availability in the inventory. Not to mention that Amazon charges a fee for digital delivery, unlike other similar platforms, like KOBO.?
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A one-sided communication with your readers
Despite the visibility that your published book might receive on Amazon, communicating with your reader will remain a one-sided experience that you witness only through your book's reviews.
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This is because Amazon doesn't have many options for readers to interact with you, like asking you questions or stating if they want to read your book or are currently reading it, unlike Goodreads, for example.??
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In conclusion, Amazon's KDP is an easy way to publish your book for global readers to buy and read, but it definitely has cons that don’t make it the best way to get your book published.
housewife at None
10 个月it was also my understanding a few years back that a beginning unknown author would often have most of their book copies shuffled into the 'dead letter" section (where unsold books go to die) and they got no credit for them. Even if they had contracted X number of books from Amazon to be printed, the books would be placed in a holding area and sold as used copies. I've never trusted Amazon, once I saw that done to a friend of mine. She was devastated and so was I.