I just noticed that over the past two months lots of stories have been removed by their authors, including three authors who had several stories here. Is there some sort of problem? Is SOL losing authors? Any insight?
I just noticed that over the past two months lots of stories have been removed by their authors, including three authors who had several stories here. Is there some sort of problem? Is SOL losing authors? Any insight?
Nothing out of the ordinary. This happens all the time.
The other day I was looking through things and found that of the stories posted between 2000 and 2005, more than half have already been removed by their authors over the years.
The reasons vary.
Some authors find god, some authors get a girlfriend that frowns upon 'filth', some authors get published, some author retire and decide to take their work with them. One author removed his only story because somebody gave him a vote of 5!
I believe that if you want to publish your stories on Amazon as Kindle Unlimited, they can't be available elsewhere. Some authors may be removing their stories for that reason. This applies, I think, only to stories published in the Kindle Unlimited $10 per month subscription service, not all Kindle stories.
With Amazon access to the higher commission rate and some of their publication services depend on the story being exclusive to Amazon. Also, they have a price matching policy that applies to everything. If you have the same story available elsewhere at a lower price they will automatically amend their price to that. So, if you have it at Amazon as an e-book for $1.99 and free at SoL as html, and Amazon find out, they'll adjust your e-book price to $0.00 without even talking to you. So if you want to sell through Amazon and make any money, you have to pull the story from SoL. It's another reason why I use Lulu and not Amazon.
With Amazon access to the higher commission rate and some of their publication services depend on the story being exclusive to Amazon. Also, they have a price matching policy that applies to everything. If you have the same story available elsewhere at a lower price they will automatically amend their price to that. So, if you have it at Amazon as an e-book for $1.99 and free at SoL as html, and Amazon find out, they'll adjust your e-book price to $0.00 without even talking to you. So if you want to sell through Amazon and make any money, you have to pull the story from SoL. It's another reason why I use Lulu and not Amazon.
Sorry, Ernest, but that's not true. You can't sell the story cheaper anywhere, but there's no limitation on where you can post it. It's KDP Select that imposes a 90-day exclusion period, and you can extend the exclusion period as often as you want.
I've published a couple stories on Amazon that were already available online, and Amazon questioned whether they were my stories or not. I explained that they were, simply published under a pseudonym (Crumbly Writer) instead of my name, and they never pressed the issue. You're free to 'market' the story however you wish, you just can't sell it via an alternate source putting Amazon at a disadvantage by making the stories cheaper to purchase.
Amazon Unlimited is a separate program, though signing up for one usually involves signing up for the other as well, but you can sign up for Select without choosing to use Unlimited.
Sorry, Ernest, but that's not true.
CW,
I never said you can't post it elsewhere, the starting phrase was With Amazon access to the higher commission rate and some of their publication services I thought that was clear it applies to some and not all their services. If you want to use the service that gives the highest royalty / commission to you it has to be exclusive to Amazon. If you go with the lowest rate you can publish elsewhere, but the price matching comes into it then.
We've had this discussion in the old Discussion Group and I closely examined their terms at that time, and many times since. So I'm very aware of how they operate. That's why I was careful in the wording to not say it was all their services.
We've had this discussion in the old Discussion Group and I closely examined their terms at that time, and many times since. So I'm very aware of how they operate. That's why I was careful in the wording to not say it was all their services.
It was your explanation that threw me. Amazon requires the lowest price across the board, for all the books they carry, but the exclusivity arrangements are particular to the KDP Select program (The Unlimited requires you to already be on the Select program).