Self-published books

[DiapDealer]

Sounds like a decent way to handle it to me. Customer gets a say; authors get some free editing advice; and atrociously-formatted books get pulled (if reported enough). Only problem is: I'm pretty sure this is always the way it's been with KDP (with the exception of the visible indication that a book may contain issues). Sounds like this is adding one more welcome level of granularity before the suppression of books for sale. I rather like the idea, myself.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by mitford13

Seems an odd way to handle the issue, to me.
"Attention customers: please be aware that some of the items we sell are validated crap. Only fair we should warn you right up front.
Have a nice day!"

It's seems like it's worth trying. It may act as a "deterrent" to publishing books that have not been adequately edited or proofed.
What are the alternatives?
Not making customers aware and perpetuating the perception of low value as they find out for themselves?
Not selling them at all, which would require a great deal of additional manual labor to vet every submission, putting up BPH-like hurdles and costs to the self-publishing platform?

[mitford13]

Cool. So now instead of "we don't need no stinkin' gatekeepers", there'll be a crap by committee vote. I guess it's progress.
ETA: Just another form of the review system.

[DiapDealer]

"Crap by commitee" has always been in play. *shrug*

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by mitford13

So...looks like this is gonna be a thing...

An author posted this text from Amazon, in the Writer's Cafe:

"Our shared goal is to provide the best digital reading experience for customers on Kindle. When customers contact us with quality issues in a book you published, we validate the issues and send them immediately to you to fix.

Starting February 3, 2016 we will begin showing customers a warning message on the Amazon.com Kindle store detail pages of books that contain several validated quality issues. We will remove this message for a book as soon as we receive the fixed file from you and verify the corrections -- typically within 2 business days.

We understand that even with the best quality controls, defects sometimes make it through. That's why we've limited this messaging to books with several issues. Books with more serious quality issues will continue to be suppressed from sale."

Seems an odd way to handle the issue, to me.
"Attention customers: please be aware that some of the items we sell are validated crap. Only fair we should warn you right up front.
Have a nice day!"

Very interesting.
And sounds like a good idea if the book has gotten multiple reports.

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by mitford13

Cool. So now instead of "we don't need no stinkin' gatekeepers", there'll be a crap by committee vote. I guess it's progress.
ETA: Just another form of the review system.

I very much doubt this has anything to do with content review. Errors in spelling, layout etc. don't say anything about the quality of the writing or the content, just of the production value. And these have the benefit of beeing quite objective measurable.

[Cinisajoy]

What some people may not be aware of is there is a report box on every ebook.
There are 4 choices.
"If you need help or have a question for customer service contact us."
"Would you like to report poor quality or formatting in this book?"
"Would you like to report the content as inappropriate? "
"Do you believe that this item violates copyright? "

This is what amazon is talking about.

[Fbone]

Amazon places the feedback box at the very bottom of the page. It was years before I first noticed it as I never scrolled down past the reviews.

[mitford13]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

I ...Errors in spelling, layout etc. don't say anything about the quality of the writing or the content, just of the production value. And these have the benefit of beeing quite objective measurable.

There's a large number of authors posting since this came out who'd beg to differ with you on the 'objectively measurable' factor - lots of reports of past customer complaints that have been forward for action to the author where the customer/reader was just wrong: reporting British English spellings, informal conversation within dialogue tags, words invented for a fantasy/sci-fi story, etc., etc.

Ultimately it will just come down to how well Amazon implements the 'verification' factor. For me, a red badge of shame on a retailer's product page is just silly.

[Cinisajoy]

Hey Mitford,
Would you rather upset a very small supplier or upset your customers by not warning them about crap?
Note: it is Amazon not the supplier that deals with the credit card fees.
Let's say this supplier makes Amazon $5 a month. The average customer spends $100 a month.
If said customer runs across ten bad books in a row, the customer could decide that everything they order will be bad and shop elsewhere.
Take a loss of $60 a year or a loss of $1200 plus who knows how many people they told.

Oh and by the way, the author gets a letter telling them about the complaint.
All the authors had to do was tell Amazon it was British spelling or fantasy names and Amazon sends them back an ok.
Those won't get the warning tags. I personally talked to a couple of authors that happened to. (Too).
They weren't the ones complaining. They just took care of business.

Never mind. Hitch already did that rant.

Personal opinion, if you get your nose bent out of shape because several someones reported the bad spelling or formatting or both, perhaps you are in the wrong business. Oh and didn't I see that same bad speller complaining last week because they are not selling.