I really need this question answered: Is Amazon Kindle accepting new authors? I read somewhere they were not accepting new authors, but what are they now doing in 2020? Can I get an answer to this question, thank you!
Anyone can publish on Amazon. That doesn't mean anyone should. In fact, I'd argue that most people who have published there had no business doing so in the first place. It's why the site is glutted with absolute unprofessional garbage. Every person who publishes because their ego wants them to, those people harm actual authors who are doing their best.
I disagree. The more the merrier. Isn't there a review function at Amazon? Related question is that I read that Amazon can kick out books that are of poor quality. Wonder how often that happens.
Problem with that is, if your ego wants you to publish, it'll just tell you that you're an actual author who's doing your best. Egos are sneaky that way. Honestly, I think self-publishing has been a great thing overall. Not an unmixed blessing, because nothing is, but a huge net benefit. There's a lot more unpolished stuff out there now, but there's also a lot more interesting ideas that the publishing industry would never have touched because it wasn't a sure sell. And with Amazon Kindle in particular, filtering out the unmitigated crap is what the sample function is for. Your read the first ten pages for free, and that usually tells you whether the author can in fact write or not.
while KDP are a self publishing platform, it is worth noting that there is also an amazon publishing house with a number of imprints... if people are telling you that amazon are closed to new authors this may be what they had in mind ... apub are not open to unsolicited submission https://amazonpublishing.amazon.com/about-us.html
They can if they get too many returns, but that assumes that people buy it in the first place. Otherwise, it just clogs up the system and makes quality books hard to find.
Which is why egos just get in the way. Anyone who says they just want to see their book for sale, they're probably doing it all for the wrong reasons.
To produce something saleable. Amazon is a business. It is not a fanfic site. It is a place where people put items for sale. If you're just throwing something up there as an ego project, then nobody is making any money and Amazon is wasting resources. They are not a charity. It is selfish to treat them as such.
Have you ever been on Steam, or eBay, Amazon item shopping, or anything of the sort? How often do you find complete scams or awful prices? Or just pages of junk that pop up in your results because they have the right "tags"? That's what happens when there is no curation. Anyone can put up their things for display. Clearly, not everyone puts in the effort to put something up well, or has anything worth to offer to begin with. Same goes for popular writing platforms. People are looking to spend their money on something of quality, that has never changed, but now with such an easy way to promote/display yourself it has become a literal bog of mediocrity and ineptitude that you, the consumer, has to waft through in hopes of finding what you actually want. It slows down or entirely hinders someone's search or worse it gets them used to lower quality content. That's the negative side of a open market like this. Everyone deserves a chance but clearly some people write down their first thoughts and never even bother to edit them later. And that's the issue. There will always be people who ruin it for everyone. It's why many still prefer traditional publishing: it's just a safer bet to get good writing.
although self publishing well done should be indistinguishable for the customer anyway (at least without looking at the publisher field in the meta data, and even then a lot of self publishers use imprint names) also a great amount of god awful dross has been trad published over the years
Somehow I don't think Amazon is run by a bunch of bleeding hearts who are being taken ruthlessly advantage of by amateur authors. If they let anyone put their stuff up on their site, it's because that's what they think makes them the most money. And it probably does, too. No matter how much of a piece of crap something is, there is someone who's crazy enough to love it. To this I can only say, er... I entirely and completely disagree. Most traditionally published books are crap. They're just more polished crap. There are fewer glaring faults that someone with a red pen and a solid grasp on grammar and spelling would have noted. On the other hand, there are also fewer interesting ideas and labours of love, because everything has to appeal to the widest possible market. And I also think it's possible that interesting ideas get filtered out because the sort of erratic weirdos who come up with interesting ideas aren't the sort of solid, reliable work horses who'll spend months editing and re-editing a manuscript to perfection. Just possible, and I won't state it as a fact, because I'm not sure of this one - but I do feel like I'm seeing both a lot more interesting ideas and a lot more spelling errors in Amazon books these days than I used to.
Independent market is ripe with possibilities, and I dream of the day where there will be thousands of small niche curators daily sorting the slush instead of a few select traditional publishers ham-handing it with their limited resources. My hope might be impractical given the medium, though. @Baeraad, pretty much +1, but with a caveat: I personally refuse to even hypothetically correlate a lack of polish with higher merit (more interesting in this case). If he hasn't made it fine, it ain't worth my time.
I am self-published, but you have to put the effort into making it indistinguishable from a traditionally published book. If you want it to sell, you have to do your own curation. Reason for self-publishing? I self-published in 2017 at age age 69, after several months of querying. While I am not morbid, at 69 I had a sense of a finite amount of time remaining, and even if I hit on a publisher, I would be looking at 2-3 years of time before my book hit the market. So I self-published. Self-publishing means self-marketing, and I put a lot of work into that also. I have just past 10,000 readers, 7500 KDP giveaways in about 12 shots and 2500 paid readers, 85 reviews and ranking in the top 100K, so it can be done. But be professional! Crap does not sell, and frankly, if you are 30, with plenty of time on the clock, and probably not much money or talent for marketing, go traditional, it's worth the wait. But at my age, I have no regrets. Not making much money, but I am getting readers who like what I did, and so does my wife Karen.
The Amazon 'look inside' feature is one of the best things about the site. Traditionally published, self-pubbed ...it doesn't really matter as long as you can take a look at the actual writing before you buy. It's the most reliable indicator of quality. Even reviews, which can be helpful, can also be very biased or even 'fake.' But if you like what you read in the 'look inside' feature, chances are you'll like the whole book. Or at least enough that you won't have wasted your money buying it. As somebody who buys lots of non-fiction for research purposes, I also appreciate being able to see the Table of Contents as well. It's a feature of "look inside." I often think of the money I did waste—back in the late 1990s, when I was doing lots of research—buying books with good titles and covers from Amazon, only to discover they didn't actually contain what I needed! A quick gander through the Table of Contents would have told me the book wasn't really for me.
A. M. P. If the problem is that you can not find the gems, you have to look for a reviewer that has the same taste as you and that you can trust. If there is none, be one. Surely this is not a new problem? Amazon already has lists of most sold im different categories.
Which is why I remain convinced that Amazon needs to start gate-keeping, at least for basic quality. I also think they need to start charging authors some reasonable fee for uploading their books. Charge a $20 non-refundable fee and use that money to hire people to read the first couple of chapters of every book that gets uploaded. It will stop garbage from being uploaded and it will make people think twice before sending up their vanity projects. It will also get rid of the scams that plague Amazon.
We are moving away from the original post. However I don't disagree with the sentiment of you post. But, I don't belive a gate keeper or charging should be used . I belive unrestricted access is better .
For who? Because as I said, Amazon is a business. It exists to make money. It isn't a charity. It isn't Wattpad. It isn't selling advertising as a way to remain online. KDP is there to sell books, period. It's like saying that Walmart should allow anyone to take anything they make at home and display it in any store in the land. That's not how it works. Walmart, like Amazon, is a company and they exist to make a profit. They do not exist to stroke anyone's ego. If that's what someone is after, there are plenty of places out there that cater to that demographic. Amazon is not one of them.
Gatekeepers... Quality control... It's starting to sound less like self publishing. And charging would probably just make them more of a vanity press than anything else.
end of the day the ultimate gatekeepers are the buyers... if its crap it won't do well (thats not entirely true vis for example 50 shades, but crap that sells is very much the exception)
So long as you do it yourself, it's self-publishing. It's the definition of the word. Self-publishing never included the right to be put on a business site without any oversight. Not sure where anyone got that idea.
I don't quite get the Walmart connection. Also Amazon is not actuly free . I understand you believe open unrestricted access is allowing loads of rubbish to swamp good books . It is debatable ,what is a good book and Amazon is not interested in any definitions . There are some rules, no porn for example , but beyond that, the market is king . What sells is good what don't will sink to the bottom of the swamp. Amazon is a machine , beyond discussion and complaint .
