Can you search the kindle store for non-self-published books?

muddy_shoes said:

It's this part that I worry about when thinking of how Joe and Jane Average will start to recognise self-published fiction in the new world of Kindles and Nooks. Their experience so far has been that they look for books in a relatively "tame" shopping environment. There are books that they like and those they don't, but a load of filtering has already been done and there are all sorts of cues available to improve the odds that the book they pick off the shelf is at least in the ballpark of what they might like to read.

Reading samples takes time and energy and if the fishing is bad then people will start to look for ways to put the filters back on, even if they are as crude as "Remove all self-published books" or "Don't show me anything for less than $4".

This whole subject has been on my mind recently and, if you'll forgive the plug, I've started a blog about it from a reader's perspective. The first content post digs into a specific example of what a customer can end up seeing in the reviews and the intro post outlines my thoughts on the indie marketing problem.

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good points.

it doesn't help when some self-pub authors decide they're going to be cute and declare themselves their own company, like "Indie U See" listed as the publisher and whatnot. Believe it or not, it's pretty easy to see and find out who's got a legitimate company where they've bought ISBN's and am going through all the work to be a publisher and those who just want a cute name so it doesn't say "Smashwords" or "Pub It" or "Amazon".

Sheryl Nantus said:

it doesn't help when some self-pub authors decide they're going to be cute and declare themselves their own company, like "Indie U See" listed as the publisher and whatnot. Believe it or not, it's pretty easy to see and find out who's got a legitimate company where they've bought ISBN's and am going through all the work to be a publisher and those who just want a cute name so it doesn't say "Smashwords" or "Pub It" or "Amazon".

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This comment seems remarkably ignorant or elitist, not sure which. Not all self-publishers use a company name to be 'cute'. It can be a sound business decision to self-publish and use a doing business as / dba company name for financial and business reasons.

It's also not difficult for anyone to buy an ISBN. You'll likely need more criteria to use to differentiate self-published and traditional published works than an ISBN number and a publisher name.

In terms of finding a particular book, I just search for the book in the main page of Amazon. It will tell me if it has a Kindle edition. [Though I usually check if it's on Smashwords first, because I prefer to own, not rent, my ebooks. More and more established authors are putting out their backlist there, and some small presses seem to use it as well.]

As for the quality question, it's so easy to look at the first few pages these days. If the author is someone you're not familiar with, why not try before you buy?

Admittedly, I now buy in print from Book Depository and I've never used Amazon for random browsing. I get most of my recs from book bloggers, Goodreads, or from the "people who bought this also bought that" lists. But I look up books on Amazon because they usually accrue a lot of detailed description and information there. I ignore star ratings altogether and read the longer reviews because they usually explain _why_ someone liked or didn't like the book.

I've only been burned once recently on a book purchase, and that was a small press book, not a self-published one. Should definitely have read the first few pages of that one before clicking buy...

Yeah, I created a publishing company for two reasons: one, because keeping track of multiple pen names for tax reasons is simpler, and two, I intend to publish other authors at some point (probably through anthologies or shared world type things). Neither of those reasons were to be "cute". Though I don't mind being called cute... I'm getting old enough where that is flattering again.

If you want to filter out most self-published books (I won't go into your reasons because I don't care), just filter by price. Many indie published books are 3 dollars or less. Sure, you'll miss bargains that way, but you'll miss decent books anyway just by filtering out indies in general. There are enough books and readers out there that I doubt this will matter much

izanobu said:

If you want to filter out most self-published books (I won't go into your reasons because I don't care), just filter by price. Many indie published books are 3 dollars or less.

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Yep; this will help to some degree, though it'll be interesting to see for just how long. Eventually the traditional publishers will figure out that $9.99 and up is far too high a price for ebooks and will start bringing the prices of their ebooks down closer to self-published prices.

EDIT: Might already be starting. A quick look at Amazon's Kindle list shows a bunch of traditional pubbed books at $5.00. Dun dun dunnnnn!

I thought Amazon decided on the 9.99 price. I seem to remember a huge 'fight' with the publishers to let Amazon set the price on ebooks. I seem to remember a publisher's books disappearing from Amazon until Amazon got to set the prices. So, it's kind of annoying to see people still blaming the publishers for the prices on Amazon when Amazon played dirty to gain control of the prices.

Stlight said:

I thought Amazon decided on the 9.99 price. I seem to remember a huge 'fight' with the publishers to let Amazon set the price on ebooks. I seem to remember a publisher's books disappearing from Amazon until Amazon got to set the prices. So, it's kind of annoying to see people still blaming the publishers for the prices on Amazon when Amazon played dirty to gain control of the prices.

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It's true that Amazon has fought to control Kindle pricing but they were on the side of keeping prices down, not putting them higher than the publishers wanted. Retailers trying to compete for traffic will always push to have attractive pricing. When they're trying to create a new consumer channel with a level of lock-in they're going to push very hard indeed.

Amazon allowed my publisher to drop the price on my book to $5. B&N, too, on the nook version. And they discount the trade paper edition, but that seems to be by some formula with which I am unfamiliar.

I routinely buy $5 Kindle books, but I confess to paying exorbitant prices for stuff I really want ($11.99 for A Lonely Death by Charles Todd, for example, and anything by Lee Child.)

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Jamesaritchie said:

It means it's better than any self-published book you're likely to find and waste good money on.

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Maybe you're forgetting, or weren't aware, that many established authors are now self-pubbing earlier, traditionally published works when the rights revert to them, for whatever reason. It keeps their earlier works available to new readers, even after the books are no longer available from the publisher.

I've always thought that regular Amazon print books that had tons of used copies (second, third vendor?) available for sale was an indication of a book that was really taking off or had sold through a large NYC press. Anybody else notice this?

Here's what's really strange in my case--I have a hardback on Amazon and I'm getting a collection used copy sales, but I have no GD rank yet! The only thing I can think of, it that a bunch of people couldn't wait for the hardback and bought an ARC copy from my publisher. I'll have to ask him about that. Very strange, indeedeedoodee.

tri

muddy_shoes said:

It's true that Amazon has fought to control Kindle pricing but they were on the side of keeping prices down, not putting them higher than the publishers wanted. Retailers trying to compete for traffic will always push to have attractive pricing. When they're trying to create a new consumer channel with a level of lock-in they're going to push very hard indeed.

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I know that was the way it was to appear, that Amazon was fighting for the reader, but the bottom line is that Amazon was fighting for the right for Amazon to put the price that they want on the books.

I believe the publisher's intent was the ebook price match that of the paper versions as they came out. Horrors! let us have 9.99 ebook price when the hardback comes out. Which would have been economically bad for publishers who wanted to pay the people who worked and wrote for them. Everyone got so into that they didn't notice that the publisher's plan was to drop the ebook price to match the mmp price when it came out. So the ebook is now 9.99 and the mmp is 7. And this is blamed on the publisher, not Amazon, which is wrong.

You see, I thought from the beginning that Amazon was trying to and did succeed in getting the right to name prices. When Amazon gets this from all publishers, I suspect the price of Kindle ebooks will go up and then up again.

triceretops said:

I've always thought that regular Amazon print books that had tons of used copies (second, third vendor?) available for sale was an indication of a book that was really taking off or had sold through a large NYC press. Anybody else notice this?

Here's what's really strange in my case--I have a hardback on Amazon and I'm getting a collection used copy sales, but I have no GD rank yet! The only thing I can think of, it that a bunch of people couldn't wait for the hardback and bought an ARC copy from my publisher. I'll have to ask him about that. Very strange, indeedeedoodee.

tri

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I looked into this a little at one time. I know that Alibris buys copies of books as they come out, including self-published ones. They will then put them on the Amazon collectable lists pricing them as high as $40, when the original book cost $12 or less. The ones I found were not ARCs, or special editions, they were part of the lot that the publisher produced, trade paperbacks for $40.

Stlight said:

I know that was the way it was to appear, that Amazon was fighting for the reader, but the bottom line is that Amazon was fighting for the right for Amazon to put the price that they want on the books.

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I didn't say they weren't. The fact still remains that Amazon's general desire is to price books lower than the publishers would wish. If someone is complaining that Kindle prices are too high then it makes little sense to say "well that's Amazon's fault and not the publishers'" as if the pubishers want the prices lower. It makes no sense at all if the prices are from one of the publishers who are setting their own prices on Kindle.

There's nothing new in this battle, it's just a re-run of the Net Book Agreement back and forth between powerful retailers, publishers and legislative bodies interested in market competition that occurred in the UK. There too, the main beef was that retailers wanted to discount the publisher prices, not push the prices higher.

I was not aware that Amazon had lost the battle to control their pricing of the Kindle ebooks. I htought amazon was opposed to a sliding scale of ebook prices to relflect that of the paper books, higher for ebooks when the hardbacks first hit the shelves, lower when the mmp come out.

I thought Amazon won the fight to price the books as they wish, which for now is at 9.99.

Phaeal said:

I run the same check on any book, print, e-, or self-pubbed:

I read a few pages. Works every time.

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This is my preferred approach. I've come across one or two exceptions, but it's highly accurate nevertheless!

Jamesaritchie said:

It means it's better than any self-published book you're likely to find and waste good money on.

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Excuse me, but the top book on the Kindle right now IS self-published (children's books), and I know it's pretty high on the list of Kindle e-book bestsellers. It's got good ratings and doing marvelously with sales. Enough to make the NYT Bestseller's List.

Download the sample of any work that interests you to your kindle. Takes 2 seconds, even less to determine if the writing is any good. Doesn't matter if it's self-pubbed or not, a sample's a sample. Saved myself a ton of money this way and found a few gems I would have overlooked.

If enough customers want to be able to search according to this criterion, I imagine Amazon will find a way to make it possible. Such is the nature of the free market.

I expect it will eventually be possible to filter by publisher or something, or perhaps number of books published by a particular publisher.

Though filtering out self-publishers will filter out some of the books by authors like Kristine Kathryn Rusch, whose latest, "The Ballad of Davey Jones" is self-published. She's also self-publishing her backlist, but "Ballad" was rejected by all and sundry and so is a direct to self-publishing book (because there's no market for fiction about musicians, apparently).

I'm afraid I don't see any unfairness in self-published books being part of a list you can scroll through on Amazon. The mere existence of a book in a list doesn't effect TBR piles. If readers don't trust the reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, and find scrolling through lists tedious, then find a handful of book bloggers whose recommendations match your tastes and use them to expand your reading list.