Monday 11 July 2011

Have Amazon got it wrong?

Amazon seem have to got their thinking slightly topsy turvy - they recently launched their Amazon Singles platform to publish short stories for the Kindle, with each story having to go thorough a vigorous quality control process before being made available for sale.

This is has it should be and yet Amazon still allow anyone to publish a novel length work to the Kindle with no quality control. The Singles program has been hugely successful with  six titles in  the top twenty for all Kindle downloads, ebooks included. This seems to be one avenue in which Amazon is not willing to give authors free reign. All submissions of the 3,000 to 5,000 word titles are read and reviewed by real people before being passed on to the site for purchase and download.

Clearly Amazon need to adopt a similar process for novel length eBook before readers, who have been stung too many times decide to stop buying self published eBooks. The Good eReader Blog (Incidentally this is the blog to read to keep up on all things eBook related ) recently reported on this issue -

"Kindle at present only launches about three new titles per week, a number that Amazon seems happy with for now. This minimalist approach to digital short story publication has ensured that only actual titles make it past David Blum, the live gatekeeper who reads each submission prior to posting it live to the Kindle Singles catalog. It almost seems like Amazon has it backwards, as they are commissioning a live review of each title in the Kindle Singles division while knowing that those titles sell for as little as 99 cents, while their ebook division can charge far more for a title but does not provide the same attention to detail as the Kindle Singles."


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would be exstatic if they had some sort of publishing standards seal or some other kind of program that allowed readers to at least know that the company they are buying from has some sort of quality control.

I purchased a collection of Lancelot andrews sermons recently that was essentially a couple of hundred pages of gibberish.

Right now the only recourse is the community, and reading the 1 and 2 star comments can normally expose the works that are a hot mess.

Anonymous said...

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