KDP X-Ray

I was unsure where to place this thread - it's not a marketing thing, so I was reluctant to put it in the publishing thread... so, I put it here.

KDP X-Ray is a new feature for Kindle e-books that allows a reader to select a character, topic, term, event, or place and have a window pop up with more information about it. On the surface this could be a good thing - but maybe there are pitfalls - has anyone else tried using this feature, and if so how did it turn out?

More info about it HERE

TIA

benbenberi said:

Are you looking for input from a reader perspective, or a creator? As a reader I like the feature -- but I'm an end-reader, so the spoilery aspects don't bother me, in fact that's sometimes what I'm looking for. YMMV. Since a lot of new books don't have X-Ray turned on, I can only assume it's something of a hassle to set up, but that's just a guess since I've never tried.

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Experience of a reader or writer is all good with me - starting from zero, any knowledge is a leg up.

I set up my last book for X Ray this morning. Depending on how much information you want to display (this is controlled by the writer), it doesn't take a lot of time to set up. My book is Sci-Fi - so I was more interested in linking to such things as the space elevator and quantum computing, which incidentally were already linked... so I'm unsure if I gained anything. If I had written Fantasy, with magic and a lot of world building, X Ray might have been a better fit. You can't include images in your descriptions, so no fantasy world maps, but you can still give information for readers to drill down to - which may take some of the pressure off the urge to have prologues.

For my next book (which is the second in the series) I may link a few references to characters in the first novel. I've been careful to not have dependencies to the first novel in the series, so even without X Ray I'll be fine - but there may be some value in adding it in.

benbenberi said:

I would probably never see this extra information. My interest in X-Ray pretty much starts and ends with the character appearances in the text (so I can prepare myself in advance if an author kills a character I like -- as I said above, I'm an end-reader). But I can imagine this feature of X-Ray could be valuable for others.

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My wife always has to read the last chapter soon after starting the novel - for the same reason, she wants to know if the MC lives or gets on well at the end. She only wants to read the story if she's certain it has a happy ending.