In reply to Prasenjeet.

Hi, Prasenjeet! I read and enjoyed your post. I’m probably a bit more Scout-friendly than either you or KKR, but in the end I agree with you: not for me. That said, I hope for the best for those who enter the contest, and I’m sure you do too! {8’>

Hi David

I saw your comment about Kindle Scout on Kristine Rusch’s blog that I regularly follow. I too wrote an entire blog post about Kindle Scout and am glad that you have the guts to discuss KS. I see very few authors discussing KS.

Like you, I too read Amazon’s TOS regarding KS and thought it was disturbing to say the least. The TOS clearly says:

Amazon is taking away your World E-book rights, but unlike a traditional publisher, they are not guaranteeing to publish your books on iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, etc. So for 5 years, which is quite a long time, you are stuck with Amazon alone. Now, we all know how Amazon is trying to create exclusive content through KDP Select, but from the writer’s point of view, that may not be such a good thing.

So this new programme then just sounds like a KDP Select or Kindle Unlimited on steroids.

Auto-renewal of the 5 year term: This really bothered me. If the book underperformed (i.e. it made less than $500 in the first two years or less than $25,000 in 5 years), the rights will revert to you. But if it performed beyond expectations, the 5 year term will be auto-renewed. At least with KDP Select, you can decide to opt out (at any time even if your book is performing well) and go wide after the 90 day period expires.

I feel that if the book starts doing well on its own without Amazon really promoting it, you would be losing out on readers from other platforms. The worst part is that then there is also no escape from Amazon’s clutches.

For those who are following this discussion–I strongly recommend Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s recent post “Business Musings: Prince, Estates, and The Future (Contracts/Dealbreakers/Estates),” especially when she talks about the terms of a contest she chose not to enter.

That contest’s rules are apparently in some ways worse than the Kindle Scout Submission and Publishing Agreement, and I doubt it offers as much to the losers as the KS version. But there are some strong similarities.

When I think about these things, I consider long-term issues–such as what I’ll be leaving behind for my family, but also “little things” like what I suspect I’ll wish I’d done a decade or two down the line, if I happen to be around that long.

I completely understand the appeal of short time horizons and insta-success. That success isn’t actually guaranteed by KS, but it may be more likely to find some of us within a few months or years if we enter Amazon’s contest. But…what if we’re going to go build up a fairly large body of work over time? Maybe a KS success story will actually help/inspire us to do that! Or maybe we’ll have several books out, all (eventually) earning good money, and the one that trails behind the rest will be the one submitted to Kindle Scout.

Lots of things might happen, and I have no crystal ball. I do think consideration of the terms of the contracts we sign ought to happen. I don’t think short-term success stories are very convincing arguments–after all, there are trad-pub bestsellers too, and they’ve been known to argue that the system works just fine.

All that said? I’d still probably try KS, if I were capable of producing several books in a year, just because–while the loss of control of that particular book could potentially affect me for the rest of my life plus (currently) 70 years–at least I’d only be risking a few months’ effort. But that provision letting Amazon enforce my copyright however they choose is still a deal-breaker for me.

Though…if I submitted something under a Creative Commons license…hmm. {8’>

Good luck to all of you out there!

In reply to Cindy Rinaman Marsch.

Thanks for the comment, and I’m sorry it took so long for me to approve it–I read the thing via email last night, nodded, enjoyed it, and didn’t notice it had been flagged to require approval. Sometimes I can be…uh…slow.

What you say makes sense to me–not only about your results, but the notion of actually watching specific books to see how they do.

Some people seem to think Amazon has a magical promotion machine–and of course they could have built one. But I suspect the KS ebooks are as dependent on story, title, description, and so forth as any other. OTOH, watching to see what sort of promotion Amazon is visibly doing might give us all a better idea of what Amazon believes is likely to work. They’ve got better data than anyone else.

Yes, they might have built their systems to give themselves more of an advantage than that. But my guess (which is just a guess) is that they haven’t. If it ever got out, there might be considerable backlash. And lawsuits.

Just my opinion, here. Thanks again for telling us your story!

As a Kindle Scout winner, I would like to add one thing that needs to be considered. Before the book is made available to the public, everyone who nominated it receives a free copy. This means that the sales of your book do not include downloads by your diehard fans (assuming you already have a platform), so most of the people who are actually spending money on your KS book are likely NEW fans (or at least potential fans!). These are people who will hopefully like your book so much that they will investigate your other pieces.

This was the main reason I decided to go with KS. I saw their ability to bring me brand new readers who had never heard of me before. I gave up a lot of sales by having Amazon GIVE everyone who nominated it a free copy (since many or most of my nominations came from my existing fanbase), plus I gave them the 20% that has already been discussed. I felt that if they marketed it and gave me the minimum number of sales they indicated they could, it would be worth it.

I only have one month of numbers to work with, but so far I have been pleased. The amount of money I made was a bit more than the minimum I was hoping for per month, and they haven’t even run a promotion yet. It was my highest-selling book for that month, and its rank has been the highest of all my books for this month, too.

I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t read the contract very carefully beforehand submitting and likely wouldn’t have submitted if I had because the points you’ve made would have scared me away! I’m glad I didn’t know then what I know now since I’ve been really pleased with my experience so far and would not want to have missed out.

So my advice is to not let all the “what ifs” and worst case scenarios keep you from going for it. They’ve been very great to work with thus far and they want their authors to be successful!

NOTE: Don’t subscribe to the new-release mailing list while trying to subscribe to comments on this thread–you’ll lose your comments!

Brief version of what I just tried to post . . .

I ran a very successful Kindle Scout campaign in December/January but did not have my book chosen. I wrote about the value of the campaign here: http://selfpublishingadvice.org/how-to-run-a-kindle-scout-campaign/

After three months on my own with a debut launch on KDP Select of a novel that doesn’t quite fit the usual quick-consumption genres, I’m happy with my performance and my reviews. My rankings compare favorably in the “pack” of Kindle Scout winners and non-winners from my era (November – February, as detailed on the KBoards thread linked in another reply above).

Of course I would prefer to have won, but I’ll gladly take my 70% royalty and the awesome connections I’ve made through the campaign. Here’s a tip: follow the Kindle Scout campaigns, read the samples and blurbs, pick a few to nominate and follow in the months and years to come, and see what YOU think about their performance. Despite what a couple of people said above, the distinct message to Scoutees on KBoards via a winner who asked was that Kindle Press authors were expected to promote their work actively and cooperatively with Amazon, and that a backlist was a distinct advantage.

In reply to Jill.

The thing that struck me most when reading this was…you finished the third book? That took grit.

I have two volumes of a trilogy out there. I had folks asking me for volume two for years, and kept putting it off. I finally wrote it, and it did essentially nothing. It was fun to write, but I’m not getting that time back. I’d still love to write the third–I have 10K words sitting around waiting for me to get back to them–but I’m not sure I can make myself do it.

This is self-inflicted, of course. I should have done book two much, much sooner.

So, the thing is, I now have book three to write. Or not write. And now you come along and casually mention that you just did it in spite of how difficult that sounds to me.

Inspiring. If nobody else has told you, which they should–that’s inspiring.

Anyway, on to your main point: hmm. I really wish there were more numbers to look at, to help people make a decision. Not being on sale, ever, seems like a terrible decision on somebody’s part.

Personally, though, I think that if you wrote that third book, you’ll be fine regardless of what Kindle Scout does or doesn’t do for you.

Thanks for coming by to tell me about that.

I am also a Kindle Scout winner, and my book has not received the same level of promotion of many of the other books. It did okay without those levels of promotion, but writing the additional books in the series knowing that I would have no way to promote the series was difficult. I’m pretty sure that I will never make my investment back on that third book.

Another thing to consider about Scout is that at least 2/3 of the Scout books “sales” are actually KU borrows. You get 50% royalty for these, so you probably earn more than if you earned by KENP (especially as KENP payments continue to drop).

I would put another book into Scout under these conditions:

1) It is a standalone book or prequel to a series.

Putting in a book that is first in series or can’t stand alone means that if your book isn’t selected to be a hit, you’ve lost the option to advertise it yourself. My book (after seven months) has never been on sale except for one day to a selected group of people who own Kindles. With a series, being able to advertise a sale for that first book is critical. I have never been able to do that.

For me, I think the idea situation would be to run a great campaign and get lots of people nominating the book and then lose! Many of the books that did that around the time mine won are still doing better ranking-wise than mine.

In reply to David.

Hey, anyone interested in a related sort of issue? Joe Konrath has good news over on his blog. Not related to Amazon or Kindle Scout, but it’s one of the possible types of problem that were in my mind when writing this post. Only the good guys seem to have won in the end… {8’>

In reply to Steven L. Hawk.

See, that there is a rational viewpoint, and I appreciate it.

I’ve been thinking pretty hard about this whole issue today. I don’t have any percentages or details available, but it seems likely from the feedback thus far that KS authors as a group do pretty well. How much of that is due to the selection process, how much to Amazon’s promotional efforts, and how much to any lingering new-car smell is not clear to me.

I don’t know what the long-term results will be for anyone, in or out of KS. If an author were to tie one novel out of, say, twelve, to KS? That would make sense to me. OTOH I wouldn’t even consider it unless I were planning to publish much else via other methods. Some have decided that I’m demonizing Amazon in this post and my comments here and elsewhere…but I don’t see it that way. I do, though, try hard to keep in mind that Amazon might go out of business at any time. Or be sued for its business practices, with unknown (to me) results. Or just the Kindle Press bits could be shut down, or sold. What then? Who gets exclusive ebook rights? Would that entity handle them well?

Does it even matter? Are the short-term results sufficiently good that all that can be ignored? Maybe! Many seem to be implicitly endorsing this view. They may well be right.

It’s also not clear to what extent Amazon is leveraging their access to their own platform to promote KS titles. I hope the answer is “not at all,” because that seems safer in the long run for everybody involved. The Bookbub thing seems entirely legit. The question: what are they doing, exactly, besides the things authors can do for themselves? I’d really want to know before proceeding.

All that being said, if I were to make a pure risk/reward analysis here, I’d come down on the side of submitting to KS–at least that would be my choice if I had a significant backlist or expected to produce multiple books in the reasonably near future. I’d be risking one novel’s worth of intellectual property, and if it were one of many I’d almost certainly take the chance.

On the topic of intellectual property, though, I think some of the contract terms will keep me out of the KS pool. I’m not willing to delegate enforcement of my copyrights to Amazon, or anyone else. The idea of some story I wrote being used in that way–meaning to enforce current copyright law–is too much for me. I’ve pulled books from retailers who applied DRM before, too, and I’d do it again if necessary.

Who knows? I may change my mind. I’ve already done it at least once today. There are other terms in the agreement that bother me…could I live with them? Probably. For one novel, or a few novels.

I suppose it’s always possible that this blog post has already ensured that I’d never “win” anyway, in which case I might as well submit a novel! There would be no downside of which I’m aware. Heh. Tempting to test it.

But…the copyright thing, in its current form, is a dealbreaker. I’m pretty sure: KS is not for me. I wish all the best to those who choose otherwise, though.