I noticed that the "Look inside" preview of one of my print-on-demand books on Amazon.com includes the front cover, the title page, the copyright page, the dedication, and the back cover. It doesn't display any of the actual "meat" of the book's contents. Is there a way for authors to control how much of their book gets displayed in the "Look inside" preview?
you can vary it in 5% increments between a min and max amount, but the default should be more than that anyway https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200644250
Yes, the default should be 20%, which for a book of almost 800 pages is 160 pages -- that certainly should be enough, but it doesn't display anywhere near that many. They don't make it easy to find, but I finally stumbled across an obscure "Contact Us" link that allows authors to request a change in the Look Inside setting. It's not something that we can change, we have to request that Amazon change it. I have submitted a request to change it to 30% -- I'll be interested to see what happens (if anything happens).
The worst is when it shows all the front matter, blank pages, table of contents, maybe a forward or acknowledgements page, and then skips straight to the index and/or glossary. 6 or 7 pages of that rather than the introduction or first few pages. Sorry Sapere, this is off your specific topic but related. I hope you can get your problem resolved.
That's probably why the default for printed books is [supposed to be] 20% whereas for e-books the default is 10%. I don't do much with e-books (as a reader -- I prefer dead trees editions that I can hold in my hand and physical pages), but my impression is that they don't seem to have as much front matter cluttering up the start of the book. Not that far off topic. We're all here to learn, and we learn by discussing.
Update: I submitted a request to KDP to adjust the percentage of the "Look Inside." I meant to ask them to change it to 30 percent but either I made a typo, or Amazon's staff can't read. Here's the e-mail I received today (Friday): Well, that made me curious, so I checked it again. The book is 744 pages -- 20% of that should be 148 or 149 pages, depending on whether they round up or down. When I look at the Look Inside preview, all I get is The front cover The half title page The title page The copyright page The dedication page The back cover. That's a fair bit shy of 148. So then I checked the other two books I've put up on Amazon (thew printed versions of each), and they are both very far short of displaying 20 percent, too.
this could be to do with the device or browser you are viewing it on... it'd be worth checking before you contest what is viewable with amazon