Tag: KDP

Ignored another Amazon KDP survey

Lynn

Once I realized how unresponsive Amazon is to the surveys they send out, it was easy to start ignoring their survey emails. It’s also easy to see how much it isn’t about being helpful to authors and publishers on their platform and is about collecting information about their competition. And gaining leverage over the authors who use their platform to publish their books.

This latest survey purported to be a survey to improve their print publishing, but the first batch of questions were clearly focused on gathering as much information about the competition as possible.

Many people will give away their valuable business data and think nothing of it. I decided a while back it was better to send feedback in an email and ignore these surveys completely.

Naughty naughty Amazon. :D

KDP has a new series manager

Lynn

I logged into KDP a few days ago and found the links to the new series manager.

Today, I noticed there is big link to it on the main Bookshelf page.

Image of KDP's Bookshelf notice for the series manager

I’m glad to see this. I once had a problem with one of my series books not showing up as part of my series, all because of an apostrophe. I didn’t enter the series name differently in the book details, but somehow the system did something totally weird and messed it up anyway.

Maybe now if something similar ever happens again, I can deal with it on my own. :)

My turn to move paperbacks from CreateSpace to KDP

Lynn

CreateSpace has been rolling out the migration from CreateSpace to KDP Print since sometime last week. I finally got the popup notice (although no email notifications) that I should consider moving my books.

I didn’t delay, just went ahead and clicked the “Get Started” button, because—

  1. I don’t sell oodles of paperbacks anyway, so if it messed something up I’m not losing much.
  2. I’ve heard that once the popup goes away, it’s gone for a long time.
  3. I’m impatient and I wanted it over and done with.

The migration actually seems to have gone off without a hitch. On the other hand, I haven’t examined any of the books in detail since moving them from CreateSpace to KDP.

I had to link two drafts to the ebooks, but all the other paperback books linked up on their own, matching to the correct ebooks without any trouble.

We’ll see later today or tomorrow if it actually went well, when I log in and check out the details.

I’m hesitant to do anything that’ll require me to approve a book at the moment, because if it leads me to needing to make cover or interior file adjustments, I’m not ready. I’m trying really hard to get this next book finished and don’t want to split my focus if I don’t absolutely have to.

Amazon has a help article up about the switch, and David Gaughran posted about the closing on his blog. And of course, it’s a big topic on Kboards.

Just an FYI, if you haven’t been paying attention, Kboards is under new ownership. I’m still considering how I feel about that and might use this as the push I need to cut Kboards out of my daily routine. I just need to find a replacement so I don’t feel especially cut off from news about big happenings in the SP world. Suggestions are welcome (but I don’t—and won’t—do Facebook). :D

(Facebook has rules about pseudonyms. I use pseudonyms for pretty much all my online activities. Furthermore, I have a unique name that makes it ridiculously easy to track my online activity when I don’t use a pseudonym, I hate being followed around online by Facebook, and I care about following the rules when it’s not something that’s going to hurt me. Enough said.) :-)