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Showing posts from December, 2018

Is Amazon Unfair to Independent Authors?

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Is Amazon unfair to independent authors? Of course, I'm discussing here Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform or KDP. I hope you don't stop reading at this point but I believe the answer is a firm yes...  and no. The other day I was perusing through the Amazon bestseller list and noticed several kindle books at the top of the list that had a release date that was nearly a month away. In addition to this, each of the books had about 200 reviews. A later viewing showed books releasing at the beginning of next year with most reviews under ten. But still, they were all bestsellers already on the 2nd of November, 2018. "How is this possible," I thought. Of course, I know that an author with KDP can set a future release date but these early releases do not accumulate actual sales (although future sales have value in Amazon's algorithm) and can submit literary reviews through Author Central but Amazon does not allow a reader to post a review on somethi