Why Kindle Scout Makes Sense to Me …

…But Might Not Make Sense to You.

Have you heard of the (relatively) new quasi-crowdshare program called Kindle Scout?  I say “quasi” because it doesn’t involve donating money, but it is all about reader input.

Kindle Scout launched last fall, but is apparently still so new that many of the Kindle customer service operators I spoke to recently hadn’t even heard of it! I did get my questions answered eventually, however, so I decided to put my latest novel, The Depth of Beauty, into the program.  You can vote for it here (and I hope you do): http://amzn.to/1ElzAQL.

Kindle Scout works like this: You upload an excerpt and cover of your book for a period of 30 days, during which time you promote it via your own social media contacts (as well as friends, family members, and various pets!). Readers who have Amazon accounts go on the website, read your excerpt and (hopefully) nominate it.  At the end of the period, if the Kindle Scout Selection Committee deems it worthy, they will publish your title through Kindle Press. You sign a contract that gives them e-publishing rights (you keep paper rights) and they pay you a slightly lower royalty than you would normally get.  The contract period is five years to start with, and if your book doesn’t sell like it should (terms are spelled out), then you can get your rights back. Readers who nominate a winning book, by the way, get a free copy of it.

What’s a bit mysterious about the Kindle Scout program is that they don’t tell you how many votes your book needs in order to pass muster.  At first that bothered me, but now I see their reasoning.  They don’t want readers to vote for a book simply because a lot of others have voted for it. Plus, I suspect the selection committee doesn’t want to rely entirely on votes gathered, in case someone has figured out how to automate the voting process. James M. Jackson, whose mystery, Ant Farm, was selected by Kindle Press in March of this year, writes about the vagaries of the process, as well as how to promote your book during the 30-day campaign. http://bit.ly/1fIxHSd. 

It’s a controversial program, to be sure. Writing for The Global Indie Author, Michele (who has written about the program more than once) doesn’t recommend it.  http://bit.ly/1NJPu9y.  In fact, she goes so far as to say, “Why would any critically thinking author submit to a program that pays no more than a traditional publisher yet offers no production benefits and restricts the author’s sales to a single retailer and its digital formats?

In response to that, I can only explain why I (whom I consider to be a “critically thinking author”) decided to give it a shot:

• As an Indie author I already take pride in making sure my books are well written and professionally edited. I also work with an excellent (imho) cover designer to get the cover that feels right to me.  With traditional publishers, when someone else pays for those aspects of your work, you no longer have control over them.  So in fact, having someone else give me an advance to help me pay for work that I controlled is a good thing.
• There’s no greater motivator than a deadline to spur one on to do the often exhaustive work of marketing one’s work. We all know the drill: FB, Twitter, blogs (like this one), etc.  I have 30 days to get the word out about The Depth of Beauty for Kindle Scout.  Oh, and by the way, it’s up on a website being seen by a heck of a lot of readers who are checking out everybody else’s work and may be attracted to mine as well.  So even if my book reverts to me after the campaign is over (i.e. Kindle chooses not to publish it), I will still have raised awareness of my novel and my “brand” (A.B. Michaels).
• Let’s say the worst happens (according to Michele) and my book is picked up by Kindle Press. Yep, I will get less royalties per e-book.  But I’m counting on the fact that Kindle, because it’s going to make more money on each Kindle Press book it sells, is going to market my book a bit more than it would if I were not on any special Kindle program.  And more marketing for The Depth of Beauty will most likely have an effect on sales of my other books as well. Logic tells me that will happen, since Kindle is in the business of making money.  Thus I don’t mind taking a smaller percentage of greater sales (again, assuming increased marketing leads to those sales, which it typically does).
• Now, what if the book doesn’t do well, and reverts back to me in a few years? As Michele puts it, “If so, the book is now two years old and has failed commercially. What chances do you think the author can then resell it to another publisher, or self-publish it with any success?” My response to that is, “Really?” That reasoning reflects the more traditional mindset of what I call “books as babies.” Thanks to a great weeklong workshop I attended last year given by prolific authors Dean Wesley Smith http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/workshops/  and Kristine Kathryn Rusch http://kriswrites.com/   I no longer think of my books as my “children,” whom I have creatively given birth to and whom I must coddle to make sure nothing bad ever happens to them. I’m not advocating giving them away, certainly, but rather I’ve become realistic about the part each one plays in building my writing career.

In short, I’ve come to think of my novels (to use Smith and Rusch’s metaphor) as pieces of rental real estate.  They can be rented separately or together over a long time span (check out the many backlist titles touted on book sites to see this playing out).  If one doesn’t rent today, spruce it up. Change the cover, change the marketing approach, and it’ll rent tomorrow.  I can’t tell you how liberating it is not to think of each title as a do-or-die proposition.  I don’t want to have one “Great American Novel” inside of me.  I want to be known as a great American storyteller.

 

Having said all that, I don’t imagine the Kindle Scout program is for everyone.  If you can’t afford to invest in professional editing or covers, for example, then sheer economics might keep you from uploading your work. Nobody wants to read poorly edited fiction—it’s been one of the biggest knocks on Indie writers, and personally drives me insane when I come across it.  Also, If you don’t have the time to promote it during the 30-day period, or if you feel in the long run your work will get better exposure if it’s sold on other e-platforms besides Amazon, then you wouldn’t want to go down the KS road.

But for me it’s worth a shot, so here goes. If it works, great.  If it doesn’t, see my last bullet point above. In the meantime, see you on Twitter and FB!

 

P.S.  A bonus to joining the KS program is that you meet (through social media, at least) fellow authors who, in a spirit of “we’re all in this together” are willing to help you out.  One such author is J.M Sherman, whose book, The Revenge Network, is in the midst of its own Kindle Scout campaign. Each reader gets three votes, by the way, so you can vote for J.M.’s book here:  http://amzn.to/1fIGpjk.

 

I’d love to hear your reaction to my post and any experiences with Kindle Scout that you’d like to share.