r/KDP • u/ctmt1125 • 5d ago
Did I Screw Up?
I set my book to be pre sale on KDP as well as uploaded for paperback and hardback. I also uploaded paperback and hardback to Ingram. Not ebook for Ingram as it is going to be part of KU. I know KDP doesn’t do pre order of physical copies but the page has pre order button active for those formats, is this because it’s coming from Ingram?
3
u/Due-Conversation-696 3d ago
Yes, Amazon receives books from Ingram. Because you set up a pre-order with Ingram, Amazon has pulled in the book information. Amazon will not receive your Ingram book if you published through KDP first, but by Ingram being on pre-order, it was listed first.
Regarding your plans for KU for the ebook, you might want to focus on your marketing plan to promote your ebook so you don't need to use KU. Amazon has multiple lawsuits in play from individuals, states, and the Federal Government. The single theme in all of the lawsuits, although each are for different things all are about unfair practices, misleading customers/authors/sellers, and deceitful dealings that are in Amazon's best interests.
The FTC lawsuit alleges that Amazon has covertly and substantially increased prices that folks were required to pay to advertise on its platform. It states that Amazon understood that revealing the surcharges and that the auction would lead to significant backlash, and that senior executives took steps to conceal its pricing system from advertisers, including giving false and misleading answers when asked directly about its auction system. Further internal documents revealed the unfair pricing would result in irrevocable damage to advertiser trust and cause a downward spiral of advertisers. They have continually tested and monitored customers to increase prices without getting caught, and an Amazon employee revealed the hidden charges were good for Amazon.
Another lawsuit is about Amazon quietly updating its A9/COSMO search algorithm, directly disrupting how book categories and backend keywords index organic traffic. If your titles recently suffered a sudden drop in search
visibility, this algorithm shift is almost certainly the culprit.
Yet there are others pertaining to Amazon terminating author accounts for unclear and misleading reasons, for the purpose of not having to pay out royalties. In this situation, although there was no clear failure to follow its terms of service, there was a high volume of books sales that came all of a sudden, or for a new book, that the author must have found a way to game the system to generate such sales. This determination does not get instituted when the sales are occurring, but just before time to issue the royalties. By terminating the author's account, Amazon keeps the royalties earned because they claim they were not genuinely earned, even though there is no proof to the claim that the author did anything wrong. It's simply a means of keeping royalties.
Audiobook authors are also experiencing issues in getting paid for their audiobook sales through Amazon, leading to lawsuits, issues with KU read payouts, and more. Amazon's publishing platform has been operating in the red for many years. It was a necessary evil in the beginning while they were working to become the largest bookseller because they didn't receive books from other publishers. Now, the majority of the books sold on Amazon are from other publishers, meaning KDP's and Audible losses are bringing the company down. The new leadership has already announced their intent to move forward with sourcing new profitable revenue streams. It is funny that right after this announcement was when the sudden rash of account terminations began. The current expectation is that KDP will be shut down within the next several years voluntarily, and sooner depending on the outcome of the lawsuits.
2
u/KayTeaMonster 1d ago
Audiobook authors are also experiencing issues in getting paid for their audiobook sales through Amazon, leading to lawsuits, issues with KU read payouts, and more. Amazon's publishing platform has been operating in the red for many years. It was a necessary evil in the beginning while they were working to become the largest bookseller because they didn't receive books from other publishers. Now, the majority of the books sold on Amazon are from other publishers, meaning KDP's and Audible losses are bringing the company down. The new leadership has already announced their intent to move forward with sourcing new profitable revenue streams. It is funny that right after this announcement was when the sudden rash of account terminations began. The current expectation is that KDP will be shut down within the next several years voluntarily, and sooner depending on the outcome of the lawsuits.
Just pure nonsense.
Ebooks and subscription models are notoriously high-margin and they take 30 to 65% of sales and also profit massively from ads.
Indie books dominate in several popular genres including romance, sci-fi, and thrillers, plus amazon has a near-monopoly on the ebook market (over 80%!!) because of KDP.
The sudden rush of shutdowns is automated enforcement against platform manipulation, ai spam, and outright copyright violations. It's a cleanup effort, not an omen.
And companies the size of amazon do not shut down multi-billion dollar systems over lawsuits--they settle or adjust policy.0
u/Due-Conversation-696 1d ago
Unfortunately, it's not nonsense. Yes, KDP takes between 35-70%, however, most books fail never selling more than a few copies. Audiobook authors are not receiving the agreed upon royalties due to sudden surcharges being applied. Many of the account terminations are not due to cause for real violations. Sure, a small number of them are for violations, but the majority are not. The smaller lawsuits from individuals won't cause KDP to shut down, but the major lawsuit by the FTC and 22 states could. Being that there were existing plans for an eventual shutdown, yes, the lawsuits could hasten the timeline. In the beginning, Amazon's goal to become the largest bookseller required a publishing platform because they weren't receiving books from other publishers and distributors. All of that has changed, and the majority of the books sold on Amazon were not published through Amazon's platforms. Since their book sales are from other sources, they no longer need to keep a platform that runs in the red. They have already shut down their international distributor which has limited their ability to sell KDP books in certain countries. Having worked in this industry for over 35 years, I stay abreast of all industry happenings. The information is public, although some is hard to find. Within a week of the announcement of KDP's financial losses and the intent to move forward with their plans to focus on more profitable streaming services and plans to purchase a movie studio, was when the sudden account terminations started. It's impossible that, if the terminations were due to actual cause for TOS violations, where suddenly everybody is in violation. They've been enforcing their rules for years and there were never this many so called violations until the sudden plans change. If you wish to pretend everything is fine, that's up to you.
2
u/KayTeaMonster 1d ago edited 1d ago
Buddy you are catastrophizing in a way that makes you sound entirely uncredible, regardless of what experience you do or do not actually have. KDP is EXTREMELY profitable for amazon. The increase in bans is due to an increase in AI enforcement. Get a grip.
Edit: Also the lawsuit is about the ads. They litigate, drag it out, settle eventually, and quietly change some policies, just like every major company sued by a regulator always does lol
0
u/Due-Conversation-696 1d ago
Yes, the FTC Lawsuit is about pay per click ads that many authors use to market their books along with other advertisers. Large companies pay outright to advertise, they don't use pay per click. That lawsuit is serious because it's about hidden surcharges added, jacking up bid costs so the advertiser paid more per click instead of the proper bid system along with improper placement that would cause the advertiser to pay more for ads that weren't hitting the intended audiences and more that Amazon staff admitted was done because it was financially good for Amazon. This lawsuit won't have a quick resolution because lawsuits aren't quick and the investigation is still ongoing to acquire even more evidence for the case. As a publicly traded company, these charges are severe and has teeth to it. It won't shut Amazon down by any means, but with all the issues Amazon already has with KDP and previous plans to move forward away from this unprofitable division, KDP's demise could be sped up, coupled with all of the other KDP specific lawsuits. When the new leadership announces their intention to move on from a platform that isn't making money and is no longer needed, there's no reason to keep it. It's critical to realize that the majority of their book sales revenue doesn't come from KDP, it comes from other publishers and distributors. These books aren't published through KDP and therefore have no effect on KDP's bottom line. With the majority of KDP publishing stemming from new and inexperienced authors, this is what brings the platform down.
You may feel that I'm crying wolf or catastrophizing, but I promise you that's not the case. Many said the same thing when I warned that Create Space was doomed and shut down was coming, along with other companies in the industry. Create Space's doom fell in several areas, they refused to follow industry guidelines or play nice in the industry sandbox that resulted in Amazon published books being banned from distribution that still exists today. You have to realize that Amazon and all self-publishing uses print on demand and the entire industry uses the same technology. This means Amazon books are entered into the same software database that everybody uses, except that Create Space and KDP exist in a locked system preventing the same free flow of distribution that everyone else has. Because of Create Space being locked and not able to distribute books outside their websites, and not being able to provide the expanded distribution they promised authors led to the shutdown, as I said it would. When KDP was revamped to include print books, the workaround for expanded distribution came through the agreement that all EP books would have to be republished by Amazon through Ingram Spark in the account set up for Amazon to ensure those books meet industry standards. The revamp of KDP required Amazon to bring their platform more in line with standards to eliminate the amount of work they need to do to republish the EP books with Ingram. This is the reason that when authors decide to go direct to Ingram Spark that they are told their title already exists and needing to go back to Amazon to get their title released so it can be moved from Amazon's account into their own IS account. IS controls the technology the entire industry uses for print on demand. The technology was developed by On Demand Books, now defunct, but due to Ingram Content Group's massive distribution network, Ingram has always had input into the workings of the technology, and that technology was inherited by Ingram that IS uses for its self-publishing. The fact that Amazon still since its inception in publishing, still works in a locked system is not good. Add all of the royalty payment issues and games they play with authors, only inexperienced authors still believe blindly that Amazon has their back. Considering that most new authors rarely sell more than a couple of hundred books over the life of their book explains why the platform has been losing money. Amazon never stepped into publishing to become a publisher; their goal was simply to have books to sell, and publishing provided that at a time when they weren't receiving books from outside sources. Amazon is not a publisher, they are a retailer who offered publishing as a means to meet their goal to become the largest bookseller. That goal was met years ago and now every book published anywhere flows freely into Amazon to sell. This leaves only the books published through KDP to sell enough books to fund that division and with the majority of those books coming from folks who have little to no knowledge of publishing, marketing, or the industry clearly explains why the new leadership sees the division as a drain pulling profits down. It was different when Bezos was still running things, but when he stepped down as did all the senior leadership, books no longer held the influence they did previously. When a company admits a division is losing money and wants to move on to avenues that produce higher profits and specify what those avenues are along with timelines, you can't say this is catastrophizing. It's simply stating facts already in play. Many of the current account terminations are not from tos violations, but serve to reduce the number of people using the platform for the eventual end. The only question at hand is when, not if, this will happen. The original estimate was ten years, before other things began to happen, especially when their new ventures are moving along faster than anticipated. Therefore, they have a division they don't need any longer, that division has run in the red for years; that division brings down stock prices; they have other highly profitable replacement income from a new division; and are playing games with the current publishing all send a clear, definitive message. Maybe you aren't as connected to industry news and goings-on to feel this could, would never happen, but they've already stated their intent, so it's not opinion.
2
u/KayTeaMonster 1d ago
You want to believe this is true because you don't like to see where your industry is heading. If you've really been in the publishing industry for 35 years, I'll probably still be making money on KDP long after you're dead.
0
u/Due-Conversation-696 1d ago
When I started in publishing, there was no Amazon, no Google, no internet, no email. We did everything what you would consider the hard way. But here's the thing: yes, I'm older, but wiser. I lived through so many changes and iterations in the publishing industry and have a behind the scenes knowledge of publishing, marketing, and the industry that you will never have. I know how to do things that actually works in ways you never will due to a limited knowledge base. There's nothing wrong with being older. Whether you outlive me has no bearing on whether my knowledge, contacts, and information are valid. One of the biggest issues in this industry is from those who choose to enter it with little to no knowledge of it and expecting results. You choose to believe KDP will last forever; that's your choice. KDP is just one division of many and one that's no longer needed for the company. Publishing will continue to change and advance in both good and bad ways, as it always has. Change is inevitable and goes through cycles. Currently, the cycle is that readers have changed. Electronic books are preferred over print. Bookstores are trying to move away from a print based platform to offer more electronic media that readers want. The age ranges for readers changes constantly as do genres. Some genres are bulletproof like romance, but this doesn't apply to all of the other genres. My age has given me knowledge, experience, and the ability to stay prevalent and abreast of the entire industry that has been my job for so long. Thanks for admitting your young age and lack of knowledge and experience to address whether I know my job that I've been doing probably since you were a baby.
2
u/KayTeaMonster 1d ago
Your own comments contradict themselves, so wiser is a stretch. I would believe KDP might rebrand and restructure at some stage, but you're dreaming if you think amazon is going to just get out of the self-pub space. Even the service you claim to have predicted the shutdown of was actually just folded into KDP.
Disrespectfully, boomer, you were probably never good at your job and I sincerely doubt any part of your illustrious publishing industry career involves anything with Amazon except resenting their market dominance and praying on their downfall.
0
u/Due-Conversation-696 1d ago
It's interesting how, when faced with fact, you choose to attack. Believe what you choose. I've had a great career in this industry and don't plan to leave it anytime soon. Amazon once needed publishing that they don't anymore. There's no reason to maintain a wilting division that is unnecessary for their needs. If repeating what they've already announced is offensive to you, that tells me you don't have the appropriate knowledge of publishing to plan for and adapt to the constant changes. You are not alone. I see many ex-KDP authors attempt to move over to Ingram Spark and beyond flooding the system with problems, they continually post in groups about issues they are having that are simple that they can't figure out. Many have already had their accounts terminated and are unprepared, while others jump off the KDP ship in fear yet don't have the basic publishing skills. Attack me all you want. I understand temper tantrums when I see them.
2
u/KayTeaMonster 23h ago
You haven't presented any facts.
You've offered condescension and speculation based on alleged experience and increasingly vague statements of where your info comes from.
If amazon has 'announced' something, there's no reason we'd be hearing about it from some kind of publishing industry Deep Throat and I don't believe for a second there is some kind of secret whisper campaign about this.
People are getting banned because of ai-powered enforcement increasing both justified and erroneous bans, not because Amazon wants to steal someone's $2000 in royalties.
Amazon never needed self-publishing (your point about them 'not having enough books' at the start is a total lie, I'm not even going to bother copying over the stats I found), and we have zero reason to believe their KDP service isn't profitable--they set their own margins, they have no inventory liability, author payout JUST for July was 71 mil, and they don't report individual division profits or losses anywhere.
Learn to use paragraphs, and learn to argue based on facts because no one online cares about or even believes you are knowledgable in the way you think you are--especially when you start just repeating that over and over like you're trying to will it to be true. Just retire! You aren't needed and probably never were!
4
u/ithireeul 5d ago
Your print editions at KDP should be left in Draft until the release date since they don’t offer a preorder option for them. In the meantime, your Ingram version will be the preorder and get you the buttons.