Kindle Unlimited

shelleyo said:

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the author did this intentionally to make a buck off you. There's a pretty decent chance her book was like that long before KU was even a rumor, and a chance many other authors' books were like that long ago, too.

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I was basing my comment on the AW poster's statement that this was a week-old release. That's why I quoted it in my reply.

shelleyo said:

Shady intentions would probably be my last assumption. Unless you know the author or know something that leads you to believe otherwise, I'm not sure why you would even jump to that conclusion.

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I'm happy you're not as cynical as I am. As a reader, I jump to all sorts of conclusions when making my buying decisions. I don't personally know... 99.99% of the authors whose books I read. I make decisions based on the cover, on blurbs, on reviews, on whether I disliked that author's work before...any and all of which can be flawed bases for decision-making, but that's the way it goes.

I don't have one bit of a problem with acknowledgements or a page or two of praise blurbs at the front of a book. I have never seen it take up 10% or more of a book. Once again, amniehaushard related her/his experience, and I was commenting on it.

I stand by my statement: This is an issue that Amazon should address. Is it 10% of total printed content or 10% of the author's work, starting on page/chapter 1? If a reader ends up feeling tricked into paying for a book she/he hasn't even started because of frontmatter, it's not good for the author, the publisher or Amazon. Even if one can receive a refund, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

shelleyo said:

I'm sure there are other reasons, not the least of which is that Kindle samples are 10% of the book. A lot of people, misguidedly in my opinion, have always front-loaded to keep their samples shorter than that.

Shady intentions would probably be my last assumption. Unless you know the author or know something that leads you to believe otherwise, I'm not sure why you would even jump to that conclusion.

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Many authors -- and publishers -- don't understand what's going to end up in the sample. Some authors are just clumsy at putting a book together. Some do dumb things without thinking how it will affect the sample, and without bothering to check the sample themselves.

If a book is a special edition with a preface and foreword, and then a special preface to the latest edition, etc., you might end up at 10% before you know it. That's what happened when I started reading 7 Habits of Highly Effective People through KU. However, I doubt the Covey heirs did this to get more money; it just happened to be a special edition of a beloved book with lots of tributes.

As another example, I'm a fan of Ash-Tree Press, a small publisher known for publishing limited editions of supernatural fiction. (They're not in KU, but I think their books are lendable. ) They go out of their way to find authors and collections that would otherwise have been lost, and they're also well known for lengthy introductions (biographical information, etc.).

However, this means that sometimes the samples in their ebook editions don't show the actual writing of the author they are extolling. I'm sure they didn't plan it that way. They just had a very good introduction, and the introductory material was so long that it took up the entire sample. In those cases, I sometimes bought them anyway. Because Ash-Tree.

ElaineA said:

I'm happy you're not as cynical as I am. As a reader, I jump to all sorts of conclusions when making my buying decisions. I don't personally know... 99.99% of the authors whose books I read. I make decisions based on the cover, on blurbs, on reviews, on whether I disliked that author's work before...any and all of which can be flawed bases for decision-making, but that's the way it goes.

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I jump to those conclusions, too. But I don't think the blurb, cover or reviews would ever lead me to question the character or the motivations of the writer.

Look, are there going to be some people who front-load in the hopes of getting more people hitting the payout 10% percent spot? I'm sure there are going to be some that do it, in the same way there are people who write 7-page sex scenes, put a title on a racy picture in comic sans font and try to sell these at three bucks a pop. Those types of people will always be there.

Maybe even the writer in question did move stuff from the back to the front for that purpose, I don't know. I didn't check the writer's other books not in KU to see if they're similar or investigate to try to form an opinion. Short stories can hit 10% with the turn of one or two pages. They get paid the same per borrow as a 150k epic fantasy. I'm not going to assume things about short story writers who put their work in KU.

I was just surprised to see that automatic assumption of ill intent. I don't know why I'm surprised anymore, one would think I'd have learned not to be by now, but I was.

If a reader ends up feeling tricked into paying for a book she/he hasn't even started because of frontmatter, it's not good for the author, the publisher or Amazon. Even if one can receive a refund, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

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I agree. In the case of KU, though, the reader isn't tricked into paying anything, since the reader pays ten bucks no matter what. The people who should really be upset about it are the other self-published writers with books in KU. They're the ones with the per-borrow share that goes down every time someone hits that 10% on someone else's book.

shelleyo said:

Look, are there going to be some people who front-load in the hopes of getting more people hitting the payout 10% percent spot? I'm sure there are going to be some that do it, in the same way there are people who write 7-page sex scenes, put a title on a racy picture in comic sans font and try to sell these at three bucks a pop. Those types of people will always be there.

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Yep. And Amazon is known for changing their algorithms every so often to help cut down on the unscrupulous writers who want to game the system. So if that is something that happens regularly, they'll find a way to make it a little more equitable.

bearilou said:

Yep. And Amazon is known for changing their algorithms every so often to help cut down on the unscrupulous writers who want to game the system. So if that is something that happens regularly, they'll find a way to make it a little more equitable.

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Undoubtedly. Do you have anything in KU? I'm releasing a serial soon that I plan to put in as an experiment. I used Select only once previously and wasn't impressed. I dislike the idea of exclusivity on principle, but I figure it's still worth 90 days of it to see what's what.

I plan on signing up for the free trial in September when I'll be able to spend the month exploring it. I don't plan on paying for the service, but I want to poke around and try it anyway.

Here's something to consider in the "Authors are gaming the system" conversation...

Kindle almost always starts the sample at the beginning of the story. Sometimes, the sample starts at the first page of the frontmatter or the cover. Most of the time, when this happens, it's because a custom title page was used. In my book, for example, I wanted custom fonts and a custom design for the title page so I had to place it as a pdf image. That image, for some reason, tricks kindle into starting the sample at the very beginning.

shelleyo said:

That's what I do. I think a longer sample is the best way to sell a book, too.

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The indie books I bought and paid more than a dollar for, I've done so because of the sample.

The frustrating thing about one of them was that I was completely hooked after reading the (lengthy) sample, but wasn't within wifi reach to be able to download the rest of the book!