Improvements to Amazon Samples

[SCION]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I've found that different stores have different sample lengths. Google usually has longer samples.

Hhhmmm, I'll have to keep that in mind.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Disappointing Really.

I wanted them to improve their samples so that even the short ones skip the cover page, copyright page, foreword and table of contents. That way we might see a tiny bit of the actual book.

But the copyright date and page and the TOC are valuable for telling you what you are getting. Which might be a retitled old book or one with additional sections.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Phogg

I wanted them to improve their samples so that even the short ones skip the cover page, copyright page, foreword and table of contents. That way we might see a tiny bit of the actual book.

If I were buying an anthology or short story collection, the things I would want most in the sample is the copyright page and table of contents.

[TCSimpson]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The uploader determines what percentage of a book is available as a sample, so it's their responsibility, not Amazon's, to ensure that the percentage they choose allows a reasonable sample of the "book proper" to be seen.

Actually, not true. Amazon has a basic percentage THEY use for every ebook. For print books they are more flexible and the publisher can determine what he wants sampled when he submits his pdf. https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A25WS075EUM6NF

"KDP takes the first 10% of your content and creates a sample that customers can view before purchasing the Kindle Edition of your title.

The 10% is 'rounded up' - this means that if your content consists of five images, for instance, the sample would consist of one image (it wouldn't cut off half the image). "

For ebooks, it ends up being on the shoulder of the formatter/publisher in terms of: The author/formatter/publisher must decide what he wants to do. He can lessen the front matter, make some of it back matter, which is what I do. For folks like you who like to see the TOC, it can be placed in the front. As a person who formats his own books, I've tried to get more of the sample available by having less froth matter. My books generally start with a Welcome Page. On that Welcome Page are 4 or 5 links. A link to the ToC, a link that says Start Reading that IMMEDIATELY jumps to the start of the book, one to the maps, another to my newsletter, and another to a list of my other books. After that page may or may not be Acknowledgments, then my maps, then the first chapter. A lot of books have twice that amount of stuff at the start.

As for jumping chapters, I'm certain there's code that could be added, the same way I add code to tell the book where to start on the VERY FIRST time the reader opens my book, which is on that Welcome Page. Whether Amazon would code something separately just for samples would take some work.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by TCSimpson

Actually, not true. Amazon has a basic percentage THEY use for every ebook. For print books they are more flexible
[...]
books. After that page may or may not be Acknowledgments, then my maps, then the first chapter. A lot of books have twice that amount of stuff at the start.

When designing the book you could move almost everything to the end.

One author never has an introduction but has an afterword instead. Acknowledgments at the back too.

For a collection or anthology you want a representative item to start but if there is a BRAND NEW by BIG AUTHOR you probably don't want it in the sample zone.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Mike L

But for me, letting us see more of the actual book would be much more useful than being able access samples from the cloud.

For me the access from the cloud is a welcome new feature. I do use samples as kind of wishlist - and being able to add the sample in the collection of the rest of the series. Not being dependent on remembering which device has the sample is great.

For KU I am sending myself a sample after returning the book to keep track of what I finished reading and may want to read again at a later time.