Amazon KDP - 'From The Publisher' section in book details - how to use

JBWELL

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Hi All,

Does anyone know how to add a 'from the publisher' section in your book KDP details?

There does not seem to be an option to add this in normal KDP setup, so is it something you got to ask Amazon to add separately?

The reason I am asking is it looks like you can add images to this section whereas I don't think you can add images in a regular book description...

Here is random example with a book that has a 'from the publisher' section, and here, for comparison, my own Amazon book page with no publisher section.

Thanks for any help.

James BWELL
 

Al X.

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Hi All,

Does anyone know how to add a 'from the publisher' section in your book KDP details?

There does not seem to be an option to add this in normal KDP setup, so is it something you got to ask Amazon to add separately?

The reason I am asking is it looks like you can add images to this section whereas I don't think you can add images in a regular book description...

Here is random example with a book that has a 'from the publisher' section, and here, for comparison, my own Amazon book page with no publisher section.

Thanks for any help.

James BWELL

I think you have some bigger issues to resolve first. There does not appear to be a preview feature for your book for starters.

Do you actually have a publisher? The first step in the KDP setup process includes an optional publisher listing. I suspect you would have to list a publisher to get the option that you seek.
 

JBWELL

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Hi - thanks v much for the feedback. I will check out adding a preview feature and get that sorted asap.

I am self-publishing so don't have a traditional publisher, but part of the conceit of the novel is that there's a real world existence to some of its elements so I did specify a publisher as part of setup. I'll check out what the amazon requirements are for a publisher listing.

Thanks again.

James BWELL
 

JBWELL

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Just been looking into the preview 'Look Inside' program - is this the one you meant, or is there something else as well?

Seems that 'Look Inside' is auto added to Kindle titles 'within a week of the on-sale date', so I guess that is why my preorder does not have it yet...

Have also looked at a couple of other preorders and they do not seem to have it either, eg Ian Rankin here

If there are other preview functions I can add though, thanks v.much if you can let me know.

James BWELL
 

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Nothing to do with what you've asked, but I think 'USURUAPION' must be a typo in the book blurb. (It might be deliberate, but I thought I'd mention it, just in case.)
 

JBWELL

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That is a damn good spot. Thanks v much for taking a look. Have made the update. Regards, James
 

Al X.

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That is a damn good spot. Thanks v much for taking a look. Have made the update. Regards, James

I did not catch that it was a preorder. Why are you submitting your first work as a preorder? An established author with a following might sell some books on a preorder basis, but nobody is going to buy a book from a new independent author without previewing their work.

Regarding the listing of a publisher, I suppose you could plug in some fictitious publishing entity if you want, and I'm sure plenty of self published authors do. I don't know what the Zon's stance is on that, I doubt they care, maybe they do, but it isn't going to add credibility if that is what you are after.

Also, six quid is a pretty steep price for a full length ebook novel, let alone a short, and literary fiction is a tough market to begin with. You might want to see what other similar authors (and I mean new independent authors) are charging. I personally charge $3.99 USD for my own full length action adventure novels, and I do have a bit of a following.
 

JBWELL

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Thanks for that - some real good feedback.

Have done preorder not with the expectation of any sales, more just to familiarise myself with the amazon system and have a mess around. Guess as well thought maybe there is a small benefit to sending out for review requests with a link to a preorder page...

The publisher entry was more about the ability to add some images in that section rather than an attempt to add a meagreness of credability, as agree with you that it would not.

Also agree on the price and will do as you suggest ref research. I guess I was thinking to have a higher preorder price whilst I am sending out free copies for review (ie to give a sense of value being given for free) and then to wind it down to, I dunno, 0.99 or 2.99 for launch.

Thanks again.

James BWELL
 

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I think you have some bigger issues to resolve first. There does not appear to be a preview feature for your book for starters.

Do you actually have a publisher? The first step in the KDP setup process includes an optional publisher listing. I suspect you would have to list a publisher to get the option that you seek.

What do you mean by preview? You mean the OP has no Look Inside feature? The author doesn't control when the Look Inside appears. It comes up automatically and can take as much as a week sometimes longer. Authors have been complaining about lag times with this. If this isn't what you meant then I am confused.

- - - Updated - - -

Just been looking into the preview 'Look Inside' program - is this the one you meant, or is there something else as well?

Seems that 'Look Inside' is auto added to Kindle titles 'within a week of the on-sale date', so I guess that is why my preorder does not have it yet...

Have also looked at a couple of other preorders and they do not seem to have it either, eg Ian Rankin here

If there are other preview functions I can add though, thanks v.much if you can let me know.

James BWELL

Exactly. Authors have no say over when the Look Inside appears. That's on Amazon.
 

BradCarsten

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I see your book is listed as an alt-crime fairytale, but it's weighing in at 29mb. That seems unusually large for a novel. The delivery costs on that are going to be $4.35, unless you go for the 35% royalty rate. Are there a lot of illustrations in it?
 

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What do you mean by preview? You mean the OP has no Look Inside feature? The author doesn't control when the Look Inside appears. It comes up automatically and can take as much as a week sometimes longer. Authors have been complaining about lag times with this. If this isn't what you meant then I am confused.

- - - Updated - - -



Exactly. Authors have no say over when the Look Inside appears. That's on Amazon.

Yes, I was referring to the Look Inside feature. What threw me was that there was an image there, which did not appear to be a place holder for a lack of cover image, as well as the preorder status.

And yes, the Look Inside can be wonky.
 

JBWELL

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Hi Brad,

Yeah, there's a bunch of illustrations in there. Also the text is not 'reflowable'. The idea is for it to be swipe-viewed on a mobile phone, so the text size is large and my input to Kindle Create was a 1200 page PDF. I think this is why it's listed as a 'print replica' even though there is no print version, and a print version would not even really work as there are a loads of internal hyperlinks etc.

Must admit I don't really understand the file size on the listing page. In KDP it says 'your book file size after conversion is 8.2 MB', but as you say on the listing the file size is 29MB. At current price of £5.99, the delivery is £0.82 and the royalty is £2.92, so it looks like those numbers have been calculated based on 8.2MB rather than 29MB. Maybe the file size gets bumped when Amazon package it for download???

Thanks v much for your feedback anyway, is appreciated.

PS - more than happy to send you a PDF of the book if you would like to see how it's formatted. No probs if not.

Regards,

James BWELL
 

JBWELL

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Yes, I was referring to the Look Inside feature. What threw me was that there was an image there, which did not appear to be a place holder for a lack of cover image, as well as the preorder status.

And yes, the Look Inside can be wonky.

Thanks both for confirming it's the Look Inside feature I should be waiting to see enabled on my listing page.

Ref cover image - I am afraid that is the working cover image, in landscape format as the book is designed for viewing on a mobile device tilted to landscape...

Regards,

James BWELL
 

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Ref cover image - I am afraid that is the working cover image, in landscape format as the book is designed for viewing on a mobile device tilted to landscape...

Something that I noted when I checked your page previously is that you wanted to pack it with everything you could... and as a result, I had little idea what the book was about. The fact that it's only intended for phones in landscape is the sort of information people need, as otherwise they'll assume it can be read on an ereader. (This is likely to reduce your sales drastically, but being upfront at least means you'll keep down returns and not annoy people).
 

JBWELL

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Something that I noted when I checked your page previously is that you wanted to pack it with everything you could... and as a result, I had little idea what the book was about. The fact that it's only intended for phones in landscape is the sort of information people need, as otherwise they'll assume it can be read on an ereader. (This is likely to reduce your sales drastically, but being upfront at least means you'll keep down returns and not annoy people).

Yeah, I think you're probably right, I've lost that sense of being clear about what the book's about in order to slavishly fill up the character count. I will revise the entry.

Also agree I can be clearer on the mobile phone bit. In fact, the book can be viewed on any size of screen and in either landscape or portrait, but I guess I have tried to optimise it so it's best viewed in landscape and can be easily viewed on a mobile device. The experience I have tried to create is for quick-swipe screens/pages, a bit more like how content is swipe-viewed online rather than a traditionally formatted book page - ie the book is about 40k words but 1,200 screens/pages, so around 30-40 words per screen/page.

Regards,

James BWELL
 

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Also the text is not 'reflowable'.


Is there a particular reason you don't want the text to be "reflowable"? Because a lot of readers have less-than-stellar vision and need to enable this feature in order to read digital books. You might well be costing yourself potential readers here, I'm afraid.
 

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Is there a particular reason you don't want the text to be "reflowable"? Because a lot of readers have less-than-stellar vision and need to enable this feature in order to read digital books. You might well be costing yourself potential readers here, I'm afraid.

Yes, this.

James, is the book so graphic-heavy that it needs to be non-reflowable? Just because it looks great to you in one format and is easy for your eyes to read doesn't mean that presentation will be the preferred reading method for every individual reader (there's a reason devices let you choose how you like it) and that every pair of eyeballs will be able to access it at that size. If it's like a graphic novel or full of pictures, by all means. But if it's mostly text, I wonder if you're doing yourself more harm than good in terms of coolness versus sales?
 

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Yes, this.

James, is the book so graphic-heavy that it needs to be non-reflowable? Just because it looks great to you in one format and is easy for your eyes to read doesn't mean that presentation will be the preferred reading method for every individual reader (there's a reason devices let you choose how you like it) and that every pair of eyeballs will be able to access it at that size. If it's like a graphic novel or full of pictures, by all means. But if it's mostly text, I wonder if you're doing yourself more harm than good in terms of coolness versus sales?

Hi Old Hack and KBooks - thanks v much for the feedback.

Agree with you both that a text size that works for one is not always good for another, but this type of swipe-view thing is something I've wanted to try for a while now to see if it can be made to work. You are prob right it will appeal to less readers, but maybe that is ok...

Anyway, these are the main couple things I was looking to achieve with the non reflow format:

- Reader to experience quickly swipe-viewing the text so that each screen takes less than a minute to read and no scrolling up and down a page required

- Each screen should work as much as possible as an individual unit. For example, if during drafting a single unit of story wrapped from one screen onto the next I rewrote the unit of story to fit all the words onto one screen. I allowed some flex, but the principle was that the screen space was the space in which I would write. Again, the reason for this was to create a swipe-swipe-swipe experience. If the text reflows, who knows where the page breaks would occur and control over delivering the rhythm of the units of story would be lost

With ref to illustrations, there are about 50 and there are some other screens with bold, highlighted, exclamatory-type text, but the main reason for the format is trying to create a swipe experience. How successfully I have done this I dunno.

PS - in mitigation, the font size is large anyway so its prob more that people would normally have it much smaller rather than think it too small.

I will post up a couple of screenshot links tomorrow in case anyone is interested.

Thanks again

James BWELL
 

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Anyway, these are the main couple things I was looking to achieve with the non reflow format:

- Reader to experience quickly swipe-viewing the text so that each screen takes less than a minute to read and no scrolling up and down a page required

[...]

If the text reflows, who knows where the page breaks would occur and control over delivering the rhythm of the units of story would be lost

But you can insert the equivalent of page-breaks while allowing text to be reformatted by the reader, so could have the best of both worlds.

PS - in mitigation, the font size is large anyway so its prob more that people would normally have it much smaller rather than think it too small.

Having a large font size is helpful for people with vision and other issues but it's not all they need. Some fonts are easier to read than others (for example, there are differences in how readable fonts with and without serifs are for people with dyslexia), and the less control your readers have over this the more you're likely to see sales falling away.
 

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In the same way that you wish to "control" the reading experience of your readers, you might keep in mind that individual readers are likely going to have those very same feelings you are experiencing... while potentially not experiencing a favorable reaction to having something they paid for on their device not be adjustable when that's pretty much the industry standard.
 
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JBWELL

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But you can insert the equivalent of page-breaks while allowing text to be reformatted by the reader, so could have the best of both worlds. Having a large font size is helpful for people with vision and other issues but it's not all they need. Some fonts are easier to read than others (for example, there are differences in how readable fonts with and without serifs are for people with dyslexia), and the less control your readers have over this the more you're likely to see sales falling away.

Yes, that sounds a good idea. Will investigate your page break equivalent option. Certainly not my attention to make the book inaccessible to readers with different requirements.

Interesting on font size. I went with Verdana after doing some research on what reads well on a screen, but again I suppose that a font that works for one person does not necessarily work for all.


Regards,

James BWELL
 

JBWELL

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Right. Also, make sure to keep text-to-speech enabled! And in the same way that you wish to "control" the reading experience of your readers, you might keep in mind that individual readers are likely going to have those very same feelings you are experiencing... while potentially not experiencing a favorable reaction to having something they paid for on their device not be adjustable when that's pretty much the industry standard.

Yes definitely want to make sure text-to-speech is enabled. It's on my list to investigate how to make that happen for launch.

And agree with you on the possible reader reaction to their experience being 'controlled' against their normal expectations. I suppose it's not so much that I want to control the reader, more that I want each screen/page to be a snapshot of story content and for all the content of that snapshot to be visible on the screen at once, without needing to scroll. I have not written in poetic metre or anything like that, but in the same way you would not want to word-wrap a line of poetry from one line on the page to another, I wanted to attempt not wrapping content from one screen to another. However, as per above post, I will have another think about this and see if there is a better way.

Again, thanks for your comments. Really is appreciated.

Regards,

James BWELL
 

Polenth

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And agree with you on the possible reader reaction to their experience being 'controlled' against their normal expectations. I suppose it's not so much that I want to control the reader, more that I want each screen/page to be a snapshot of story content and for all the content of that snapshot to be visible on the screen at once, without needing to scroll. I have not written in poetic metre or anything like that, but in the same way you would not want to word-wrap a line of poetry from one line on the page to another, I wanted to attempt not wrapping content from one screen to another. However, as per above post, I will have another think about this and see if there is a better way.

The thing to remember with accessibility is that it isn't distracting to the person who needs it. I've had issues with games with no subtitles or tiny subtitles, because the devs thought it'd break the immersion. I've got motion sick because they thought camera shake added to the experience and didn't add an option to turn it off. Unsurprising, the things that break my immersion include not knowing what the characters are saying and feeling sick.

With books, if it's a font I can't read well, I'll struggle to know what the book is trying to say. I find serif fonts easier for books. The default font on my Kindle app is fine, so if books haven't set a default font (not setting one is recommended for ebooks), they display just fine. I do notice books that have overridden the default and not in a good way.

If it's too big, that's a problem for me, because it means more words end up getting wrapped around to the next line. Words split with hyphens are a big accessibility issue for me. But you don't want to set it too small either, because that impacts people who need it large. Which is why leaving it at the default size (by not setting an exact size), and making titles bigger in relative size rather than absolute size, is the best option.

Where you don't need to control something, it's better not to control it. Someone who has their text set really huge is used to poems that wrap across lines. That's not going to break the experience for them. Not being able to read the poem at all will break the experience for them.
 

JBWELL

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The thing to remember with accessibility is that it isn't distracting to the person who needs it.

Where you don't need to control something, it's better not to control it. Someone who has their text set really huge is used to poems that wrap across lines. That's not going to break the experience for them. Not being able to read the poem at all will break the experience for them.

Hi Polenth,

Yes, take your points for sure - think you have explained them really welll - and I will investigate how to best use the accessibility options.

Regards,

James BWELL