My experience with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing

Having done a fair amount of reading on the life of memsahibs in India in the 19th and 20th century, I wrote on it, organizing my information in a cohesive manner. The manuscript was submitted to a Marathi publisher. Their editors called me over and suggested some changes which I carried out and they told me that they would go through it again. I took it as a provisional acceptance.

Then Corona struck and Marathi publishing came to a standstill. My hopes were dashed as the publishers were totally non-committal. 

As a way out of the inactivity and boredom, I started writing a novel on the life of memsahibs. As usual I made a rapid start and then things became slow. Had to push myself and somehow completed the project. It had a hasty ending.

Amazon sent a message about their publishing competition in India and suggested I could enter my new book. Why not, I said to myself and entered Empire in the competition. I had to publish it on Amazon first. The e-book was not a problem but the print version was. Only the e-book was enough for entry.

It did not make the grade. 

Then came another message about advertising the novel on Amazon. I demurred. They offered to run a short campaign for me but I was not interested.

Then one workshop about how advertising works on Amazon was organised online by Bryan Cohen, an American. I enrolled because I wanted to know the details.

I created some five ad copies and ran them while doing the workshop. The online ads are basically about choosing keywords and finding an appropriate category for your work. I settled on historical biographical fiction. Did not choose women's fiction. Had to generate some 100 keywords during the course. Then came the writing of the ad copy. I enjoyed learning all this. Unfortunately, my ads generated some clicks but not a single sale. During the course, it became clear that authors were expected to keep writing - whole series of books or independent books. One person in the community even declared that he wrote and sold low content books!

I was dismayed at the lack of response but then realized that the novel was a misfit. Everything on Amazon is governed by quantitative metrics. Quality did not come into it.

Things became clear after this realization. Also understood then why two libraries whom I had requested to look at my novel gave it a short shrift.

So Amazon KDP has no truck with quality. Indeed there is no editing or curating of the content. I think I will soon get Empire unpublished from Amazon.