Quote:
Originally Posted by abeonis
I see. If the "paid service" or "add another income stream" arguments didn't work, nothing will work. Forget the "increased customer satisfaction" one.
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It was simply an observation. I've been monitoring or posting on the KDP forums for years. I have a Tech. Acct. Manager at Amazon, and I have, on rare occasions, spoken to the VP of Digital Operations at Amazon by phone, on one thing or another. I'm simply telling you that this is an oft-requested feature, but I think you should consider and respect everything that Amazon already does for its publishers, and also recognize just how
onerous it would be for them to create or respond to requests to adjust the LITB/samples for hundreds of thousands of books, the vast majority of which were not published by people with any technical skill to make their own.
With regard to "customer satisfaction," I think you might also consider that Amazon's customers are their book
buyers, not their publishers. Amazon makes available to you a platform upon which you may sell books, if you find their terms acceptable. You are free to sell elsewhere if not. They provide you with the platform; the world's largest storefront; foot-traffic/exposure you could not obtain anywhere else, certainly not on your own website; they provide you will ALL the customer service and support, for the millions of people who wouldn't know how to download a file from a browser, much less sideload it to their devices; they handle all the billing, all the collections,and pay you. They apply DRM if you opt for it, which, even if it existed for MOBI, you would likely not be able to afford, if it were to be anything like ACS for ePUB (currently priced at, IIRC, $6200 and requiring someone trained to use it, full-time). They do all this for their share of the royalties, which, for most books, over their lifetime, will not amount to even $10.00 in Amazon's pocket, as the average ebook is lucky to sell 10 copies a month.
I think that very,very few authors/publishers have ANY idea of the customer service burden that Amazon already shoulders, at no expense whatsoever to the publisher--I mean, even if 20 people take an hour each to figure out how to download their copy of your book, it's not like Amazon back-charges you for that. As someone who runs a business that is used extensively by the very people that are Amazon's eBook-buying demographic, I know quite well what the customer service burden is of providing "tech support" to folks who don't know what the USB cable is, don't know if they have wi-fi or not, and have no idea what "side-loading is," much less how to download a file from a browser (many don't even know what a "browser" is, much less which one they are using). All of this, Amazon pays out of its pockets,
whether your book makes money or not. All these resources are essentially put utterly at your disposal, at NO real expense to you, and certainly no upfront expense. Does Amazon endeavor to recover those costs, via their share of the sales? Of course...but think, of the now-million-plus eBooks self-published there, of how many they have that are NOTHING but expense.
I'm not making Amazon out to be saints; but I think it's fair that occasionally, people who complain about how Amazon "won't" do this or that for them be reminded just how much they DO do for them.
As far as sharing their user data--why would they? Does eBay give you their user data? As to who visited your page, looked at your item? No. Amazon's customers have the right to their privacy, too. I'd suggest that you take a poll, up in the main forum section, of the readers, and ask precisely
how many of them would keep shopping at Amazon if Amazon gave their names out to the authors whose books they'd bought. People would leave Amazon in droves, not wanting to be harassed or stalked by authors trying to sell books, or
other vendors trying to sell
other products. I certainly don't want my name given to the company from whom I buy electronics, for example. A book is a product just like any other product on Amazon. People who buy there do not want their names and contact info freely given away by Amazon to vendors so that they can start being spammed, sent catalogs, and the like. In this, Amazon
is responding to customer demand: they are listening to their customers
very clearly state that they want their privacy protected.
As you noted: you're now a publisher. All the things you are discussing are indeed the publisher's job. Nobody who authors likes doing it, but, like any other product, it's simply a business, and the business is to sell it. It's the entrepreneur's hat. I think that, all things considered, Amazon makes it as easy for you as is realistically possible, given that they have their
own business to run, and the primary source of book income for them is from buyers, as they do not charge the self-publisher for all the resources, etc., placed at his disposal.
Just my $.02.
Hitch