[Publisher] Amazon Kindle Scout

eqb · Oct 15, 2014

Amazon has recently announced its Kindle Scout program. Here's the link:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/submit

In short, you submit your manuscript, cover art, blurb, and logline. You also submit your photo and bio. Once Amazon reviews the submission, you then go through a 30-day "campaign" where readers read and nominate the books they like. Get enough votes and Amazon will publish your book. Readers who nominated your book get a free copy.

What the author gets:

$1500 advance
50% royalties on net for ebooks
25% royalties on net for audio books
20% royalties on translations

What you don't get:

Editing, copyediting, or proofreading
No cover art or cover design
No additional advance for foreign rights or audio books

Other red flags:

5-year contract
Amazon reserves the right to stop publishing you without any notice
Contract is non-negotiable. By submitting, you automatically agree to its terms.
If your book is selected, the contract goes into effect *immediately*
It's unclear if you get any marketing at all

Here's a link to the agreement in full:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/agreement

My own reaction is to run, run away as fast as I can. Jim Hines has some commentary on his blog as well. (Link)

Filigree · Oct 15, 2014

Yes, I'd run from it. It seems to combine the worst aspects of popularity contests and vanity publishing.

Undercover · Oct 15, 2014

This is scary that someone would want to do this. No editing? No proofreading? No this no that, no thanks.

Filigree · Oct 15, 2014

There are many desperate and ill-informed authors out there. Amazon will have plenty of entries.

Moldy · Oct 15, 2014

Hines noted the 50% royalty rate. I wonder if that means they'll be pricing the books either higher or lower than the amount they're priced at to qualify for the 70% of royalties category.

I suspect the potential advance will attract many.

Sheryl Nantus · Oct 15, 2014

Wow.

Just... wow.

WTH are they doing? This is going to be the worst of the worst scraping votes to get to the top....

*shakes head*

Saskatoonistan · Oct 15, 2014

Phronk should submit BABOON FART STORY - THE SEQUEL. I predict it will get tons of votes.

EMaree · Oct 16, 2014

Yeah, nothing about this scheme seems like a good idea for writers.
(Great idea for Amazon, of course. All those rights to exploit!)

victoriastrauss · Oct 29, 2014

Kindle Scout

For anyone wondering whether to submit to Kindle Scout, Amazon's new crowdsourced publishing program, I've written a detailed overview, including analysis of the publishing agreement.

Kindle Scout: The Pros and Cons

- Victoria

victoriastrauss · Oct 29, 2014

Just to note: Kindle Scout is neither a contest nor a YADS. It's kind of a weird hybrid, but IMO it would more properly be classified as a publisher, since publication is the end result of submitting your manuscript.

- Victoria

frimble3 · Oct 29, 2014

Organize a campaign to get your buddies to nominate and vote up your book? Shades of Authonomy. Any good come of that festival of desperation? The tit-for-tat, the pleas, the whining, the signing up of random people to vote for you. Now, in a Kindle edition.

eqb · Oct 29, 2014

I had labeled it a publisher. Someone renamed it apparently.

(ETA: Reverted title to how I originally had it)

Katrina S. Forest · Oct 30, 2014

I'm confused. If someone was planning to use CreateSpace to publish anyway (and presumably had already hired an editor and cover artist and was confident the book was ready for market), in what way would entering this be harmful? I'm not saying it's likely to do any good, but I'm not sure how it hurts either. Again, I'm strictly speaking about a manuscript that an author was already prepared to put on the market themselves.

Dhewco · Oct 30, 2014

Heh, the only thing that scares me is the fact that you have to provide your own cover art. I couldn't afford to hire a professional or an amateur in training...and I sure as heck couldn't do it myself.

I think the reason it could harm you is for future works. If you ever want a publisher that pays real advances, they'll probably find this work and if it's not publishable them...it could harm your chances.

Of course, I could be way off on that.

gingerwoman · Oct 30, 2014

Dhewco said:
Heh, the only thing that scares me is the fact that you have to provide your own cover art. I couldn't afford to hire a professional or an amateur in training...and I sure as heck couldn't do it myself.

I think the reason it could harm you is for future works. If you ever want a publisher that pays real advances, they'll probably find this work and if it's not publishable them...it could harm your chances.

Of course, I could be way off on that.

Gorgeous cover art can be bought for $60. The scary bit is no editing. The cheapest professional jobs you could get would cost more than half of that advance.

Self publishing doesn't hurt your chances with trade publishers in this day and age, but an unedited book could hurt your chances with readers.

eqb · Oct 30, 2014

Speaking only for myself, I don't think the $1500 advance makes up for the rights grab and the drastically lower royalty rate (50% net vs. 70% cover price from self-publishing). I'm also not keen on that paragraph that says Amazon can stop publishing or make changes without telling the author.

If they changed the royalty rate to 50% cover price and made the contract negotiable, it would be a lot more attractive, imo.

Dhewco, no, publishing through Kindle Scout won't hurt an author's future chances, any more than self-publishing would. (And to be clear, self-publishing won't hurt your future chances.)

Pisco Sour · Oct 30, 2014

I've got an ms almost 'ready to go', which I was thinking of trying to self-pub, and this does look attractive to me. Kind of. My ms has had a professional structural and copy edit. One of my publishers has a fantastic cover artist who can produce a great cover for me for around $50. What's holding me back from Kindle Scout is the rights grab and those paras about making changes without my say-so, and stopping publishing. If the contract were negotiable, I might submit.

S.C. Wynne · Oct 30, 2014

Saskatoonistan said:
Phronk should submit BABOON FART STORY - THE SEQUEL. I predict it will get tons of votes.

LOL!

Dhewco · Nov 1, 2014

I'm a half-way decent editor when I try. Not sure about with my own stuff, but with others. Yeah, no editing scares me...but I've contacted professional cover artists and you must know different ones than I. The ones I contacted would take a good portion of that advance. Of course, this was five or six years ago when I was shopping around a YA fantasy. I asked her to draw a young girl with various glowing ribbons around her and with hair as white as Dakota Fanning in the miniseries Taken. Her price was several hundred dollars.

Maybe it's different now.

ETA: I was inquiring because I thought that the work would help inspire me to write with more regularity. Weird, I know.

EvolvingK · Nov 1, 2014

Dhewco said:
I'm a half-way decent editor when I try. Not sure about with my own stuff, but with others. Yeah, no editing scares me...but I've contacted professional cover artists and you must know different ones than I. The ones I contacted would take a good portion of that advance. Of course, this was five or six years ago when I was shopping around a YA fantasy. I asked her to draw a young girl with various glowing ribbons around her and with hair as white as Dakota Fanning in the miniseries Taken. Her price was several hundred dollars.

Maybe it's different now.

ETA: I was inquiring because I thought that the work would help inspire me to write with more regularity. Weird, I know.

To have cover art created specifically for your cover is going to run you several hundred dollars; most of the good cover artists I've seen start customs around $300-$400.

However, there are a large number of truly excellent artists out there who do premade covers where you specify your name and the title, and they add that on before they send it to you. Those are often somewhere between $40-$75, depending on your genre. Minor changes can sometimes be negotiated for not too much. The really good ones also will not resell the cover after you've purchased it.

As to the Kindle Scout thing...I'm not a fan.

Dhewco · Nov 2, 2014

I guess I was too picky, then. If I'm going to have cover art, I wouldn't want the chance that someone else would be really similar.

Old Hack · Nov 11, 2014

I'm going to merge this thread from our Self Publishing room with the existing Kindle Scout thread in BR&BC. Mike, I strongly suggest you read the blog post linked to here very closely:

victoriastrauss said:
For anyone wondering whether to submit to Kindle Scout, Amazon's new crowdsourced publishing program, I've written a detailed overview, including analysis of the publishing agreement.

Kindle Scout: The Pros and Cons

- Victoria

newauth · Jun 22, 2015

Kindle Scout

What's the verdict on Amazon's Kindle Scout program? I wasn't able to find a thread on it.

https://www.amazon.com/?tag=absowrit-20
http://www.victoriastrauss.com/2014...-amazons-new-crowdsourced-publishing-program/
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...n_amazon_s_kindle_scout_program_reviewed.html
http://indiereader.com/2015/02/one-authors-experience-amazons-new-kindle-scout/
http://blog.jamesmjackson.com/2015/03/kindle-scout-winners-report.html

Anyone have experience with it?

newauth · Jun 22, 2015

In reply to someone's comment w.r.t. the title of this thread, Kindle Scout is the crowd-sourced platform. Kindle Press is the publisher.

I can't see why anyone would bother going this route vs. 70%:
- The $1,500 is inconsequential (a slap in the face, really).
- Everthing else is neutral or negative.
- The only plus would be the extra marketing push from Amazon (a BIG maybe...).

I do like that Amazon is trying to innovate; it's one more motivational tool to get traditional publishers to up their eBook royalty rates to 50% (25% no longer makes sense to anyone)!

jenndoss · Aug 8, 2015

Kindle publishing contract with royalties [merged into Amazon Scout thread in BR&BC]

I got an email from Kindle and they have a new reader driven publishing opportunity. You submit your manuscript for 30 days and if your book receives enough nominations for publishing, they pick it up for publishing. You get an advance and 50% of the royalties while maintaining print rights.

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/help

[Publisher] Amazon Kindle Scout

eqb

I write novels

Filigree

Mildly Disturbing

Undercover

I got it covered

Filigree

Mildly Disturbing

Moldy

Sheryl Nantus

Holding out for a Superhero...

Saskatoonistan

Still the wrong side of Saskatoon

EMaree

a demon for tea

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

eqb

I write novels

Katrina S. Forest

Dhewco

gingerwoman

eqb

I write novels

Pisco Sour

S.C. Wynne

Dhewco

EvolvingK

Dhewco

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

newauth

newauth

jenndoss