Just this week there was what I call a "White Out" of books on Amazon. That means books that are actually listed for sale, that we as authors have uploaded were showing as unavailable.
It seems that this geographic glitch hit thousands of authors in a range of ways. I personally found books on the Amazon AU site that weren't showing as available on the Amazon US site and vice versa.
This makes it kind of hard to sell books...
David Gaughran wrote a really good post on it and both readers and authors should have a read because it's going to impact on readers as authors take stock of their situation.
For me, I've always been wide, figuring its a case of make it easier to buy my books. For those locked into Kindle Unlimited though, the situation is much harder to sort. These books are locked into a contractual period where you can only get that title via Amazon.
That's great in terms of royalties until something like this white out comes along and makes the book unavailable.
So, I'm gathering data from authors about where they see their future. Who is only with Amazon and who is Wide and for those with Amazon only, will they remain there? Time will tell, but the results I'm seeing are interesting to say the least.
For authors, though, I'd love your feedback. So I've uploaded a survey to Survey Monkey. There's only a few questions and they estimate the completion time at 1 minute. Would you do me a favour and fill it out?
It seems that this geographic glitch hit thousands of authors in a range of ways. I personally found books on the Amazon AU site that weren't showing as available on the Amazon US site and vice versa.
This makes it kind of hard to sell books...
David Gaughran wrote a really good post on it and both readers and authors should have a read because it's going to impact on readers as authors take stock of their situation.
For me, I've always been wide, figuring its a case of make it easier to buy my books. For those locked into Kindle Unlimited though, the situation is much harder to sort. These books are locked into a contractual period where you can only get that title via Amazon.
That's great in terms of royalties until something like this white out comes along and makes the book unavailable.
So, I'm gathering data from authors about where they see their future. Who is only with Amazon and who is Wide and for those with Amazon only, will they remain there? Time will tell, but the results I'm seeing are interesting to say the least.
For authors, though, I'd love your feedback. So I've uploaded a survey to Survey Monkey. There's only a few questions and they estimate the completion time at 1 minute. Would you do me a favour and fill it out?
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