The whole process described here sounds like a series of book promotion and sales hacks, some of which Amazon missed, and others of which they caught on to.
I think Amazon got to #1 by giving a crap about exactly one thing alone: customer experience. Getting an email about a non-critical update to a random purchase I made 2 months ago? Not a good customer experience.
I feel for you, artymiak, for being treated like a disposable piece of rubbish. Fact is, Amazon has their priorities straight, and helping every snubbed author feel better about their life's work isn't really part of it.
I got the strangest feeling reading this, it reads like the author is trying to hack a 'freemium' model into the Kindle experience and Amazon is thwarting his efforts. Is that what is going on here?
The punchline at the end is you can buy the PDF for $20? His counter example 'porn for housewives' is $10.
And there is the complaint about not being able to publish in Polish (ok so its a strange restriction I agree but ...)
Is it that hard to sell an epub version of the book from a web site for Kindle and others? O'reilly seems to do that successfully.
For me, this is the most important takeaway:
"But how do you let over 24,000+ readers know there is an update available? Amazon does not give publishers access to the customers’ email addresses so you cannot get in touch with them directly."
Amazon may have disintermediated publishers in the author -> publisher -> retailer -> reader chain but there is still opportunity to remove the retailer and have a direct author -> reader relationship.
To be honest, I don't care that there's an update available. I'm not interested in getting spam from authors of the books I buy. I buy a lot of books for Kindle, but the day Amazon lets authors spam me is the day I stop buying at Amazon.
I understand that an author's book is important to them, but most of their readers just aren't that interested. If I was really interested in new editions of the Vim tips book, I'd already be following the author online.
The last thing I want is my email address in the hands of every author of every book I've ever bought. Amazon has it right. They can notify me if there's an "important" update (hard to imagine for most books); if not, leave me alone.
One way to get around this is to offer an incentive to people who've purchased your book to give you their email address, for example, a workbook; and link to the email signup landing page within the book.
Disclaimer: This is all assuming the entry is factually correct. Considering the authors mindset I'm not too sure about that.
a) When they told readers they are working with the publisher while they don't
b) They are asking the author of a book if he has the copyright required for the updated version? What?
c) They should at the very least tell reviewers that there is an update when the review is below 5 stars.
I'm working on a platform that can make things like this easier to deal with. Docverter[1] is an online document conversion system, and one of the things that I plan on offering is sending a converted document to an email address, which very well could be a kindle address. It's in active beta right now, if you'd like an invite send me an email (in my profile).
[+] [-] Terretta|13 years ago|reply
I think this article is also part of that.
[+] [-] sirclueless|13 years ago|reply
I feel for you, artymiak, for being treated like a disposable piece of rubbish. Fact is, Amazon has their priorities straight, and helping every snubbed author feel better about their life's work isn't really part of it.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
The punchline at the end is you can buy the PDF for $20? His counter example 'porn for housewives' is $10.
And there is the complaint about not being able to publish in Polish (ok so its a strange restriction I agree but ...)
Is it that hard to sell an epub version of the book from a web site for Kindle and others? O'reilly seems to do that successfully.
Left with more questions than answers.
[+] [-] evanjacobs|13 years ago|reply
Amazon may have disintermediated publishers in the author -> publisher -> retailer -> reader chain but there is still opportunity to remove the retailer and have a direct author -> reader relationship.
[+] [-] jlarocco|13 years ago|reply
I understand that an author's book is important to them, but most of their readers just aren't that interested. If I was really interested in new editions of the Vim tips book, I'd already be following the author online.
[+] [-] admiralpumpkin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sachitgupta|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthewowen|13 years ago|reply
Your readers are not eagerly awaiting the advertisement for your new book that you want to send to them.
[+] [-] Semaphor|13 years ago|reply
a) When they told readers they are working with the publisher while they don't b) They are asking the author of a book if he has the copyright required for the updated version? What? c) They should at the very least tell reviewers that there is an update when the review is below 5 stars.
[+] [-] zrail|13 years ago|reply
[1]: http://www.docverter.com
[+] [-] tomfrompoland|13 years ago|reply
Maybe try to publish with http://leanpub.com platform?
Maybe this is a solution for your problem.
All the best Tom