The Author Desk is a free newsletter for nonfiction business authors, including coaches, consultants, speakers and fractional executives who want their book to bring in clients. Every 7 to 14 days, Elizabeth Javor takes one thing she checks on every book that comes to her desk and shows you how to check it on your own. She has worked in publishing and book marketing since 2007.
Can you log into your own book?
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THIS ISSUE Can you log into your own book?This is one of the first things I ask on a call, and the answer tells me more than all the other questions combined. Can you log in today and change your book's Amazon page yourself, without needing anyone's permission? Plenty of authors can't, and they tend to find out at the worst possible moment. They paid a publisher, the publisher uploaded the book, and the account it lives in belongs to the publisher. Royalty statements arrive. Keys don't. This comes up because a product page isn't something you finish at publication. You rewrite the description once you've seen what buyers actually respond to. You change categories when the first ones prove wrong. You test backend keywords. All of that happens inside KDP and nowhere else. A+ Content is the same story with a harder edge, since Amazon's own help page says it's available for published KDP books. No KDP, no A+ Content, whatever anyone promised you. Most of the time none of this is a problem. If the book is in your own KDP account, you're fine. If you signed with a traditional publisher, they control the listing, and everybody knew that going in. If it went out through Ingram or an aggregator with no KDP presence, A+ Content isn't on the table for anybody, and that's just how it's set up. The problem is the one nobody warns you about. You paid like a self-publisher, you got the access of a traditionally published author, and nobody mentioned that was the deal. Anyone running this properly will answer all three in a couple of sentences. If you get hedging instead, you've learned something. And I'm not accusing anybody. Some of the best publishers I work with keep the account on purpose, because an author who changes metadata halfway through a launch can undo a month of work. The difference is that they tell you upfront, and they give you access when you ask for it. If you do find you're locked out, here's something most people don't know. Author Central is a different system from KDP. It covers your author page, your bio, and on US listings the editorial reviews that show up on the book's page. You can usually run those yourself even when the listing belongs to somebody else. It won't get you the description or the categories or the keywords, but it isn't nothing. What to do about it depends on where your book actually sits. You can republish under your own account and people do, but it costs you something, because the reviews and the sales history don't follow the book across. Worth understanding properly before anyone starts moving things. If you go and try to log in, I'd like to hear how it went. Reply and tell me. FROM THE INDUSTRY The FTC fined Publishing.com $1.5 million over what it told authors they'd earn The April order also covers refund conditions buried in the fine print and testimonials from employees and relatives that were presented without disclosure. The complaint itself is worth reading. FTC A usable definition of vanity publishing If you're not sure what you actually signed, hold your agreement up against this one. It draws the clearest line I've seen between paying for services and paying for a title. Alliance of Independent Authors Elizabeth Website · Substack · LinkedIn · Instagram · Facebook 600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246 You've elected to receive emails from The Book Marketing Source. Unsubscribe |
The Author Desk by The Book Marketing Source
The Author Desk is a free newsletter for nonfiction business authors, including coaches, consultants, speakers and fractional executives who want their book to bring in clients. Every 7 to 14 days, Elizabeth Javor takes one thing she checks on every book that comes to her desk and shows you how to check it on your own. She has worked in publishing and book marketing since 2007.
THIS ISSUE Your audiobook may already be in Kindle+ On October 22, Amazon renamed Kindle Unlimited to Kindle+ and added audiobooks for subscribers in the US. Subscribers can now read a book, listen to it or do both at no extra cost. Listening is paid the same way reading is now, by page, out of the KDP Select Global Fund, and KDP says it's adding money to that fund to cover listening. Some audiobooks went in with no new action from their authors. If you made an audiobook with KDP's virtual...
THIS ISSUE Nobody can sell you a TEDx spot Somebody emails you about a TEDx talk. They know an organizer, a spot is opening up, and there's a fee that covers coaching and the stage. TED's own page on how TEDx speakers get chosen answers that offer directly. Go and find that email, and look for the number. TED's rules for the people who run these events say that TEDx events "may neither pay nor charge speakers." On its page for speakers, TED is blunter. Any fee-based "TEDx service" is...
THIS ISSUE Who sees your Featured section Open a private browser window, search for your own name, and click through to your LinkedIn profile. Look at what's there. Then sign in and look at the same profile again. The first time through, your Featured section is missing. LinkedIn's help pages say that to view someone's Featured content, "the viewer must have a LinkedIn account and must be logged in." Anyone who reads your profile without signing in won't see anything you've featured,...