Comments on: Amazon Quality Control and Table of Contents (TOC): Everything you Need to Know

By: Meetic 3 giorni gratis

Meetic 3 giorni gratis — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 11:30:07 +0000

This post is very useful and contains interesting information. Thank you.

By: Donna White Glaser

Donna White Glaser — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 18:36:29 +0000

Avid Reader, Most fiction books don’t really need a TOC anyway, but if you don’t have one you’ll get a notice from Amazon alerting you t that fact. Some indies thought they were required. They’re not, although they are recommended by Amazon even if it’s fiction. So! Many of us indies noticed that the TOC took up a lot of needless . space in the Look In Book sample. Wanting to give readers more of a “taste” of the book, we put the TOC and the copyright page in the back matter. This became an issue later when scammers took advantage of setting up a link in the front matter to send readers to the TOC in the back to fraudulently signal that the entire book had been read, thus earning more KU money.

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By: Clifton Hill

Clifton Hill — Wed, 25 May 2016 14:18:17 +0000

In reply to Avid Reader.

Hi Avid Reader, the concern addressed by the article has to do with Kindle Unlimited. Not sure if you are familiar with the service, but you pay like $10/month and get access to read as many book enrolled in the program as you want. Only way for Amazon to decide appropriately (and without emptying their vaults) is to pay authors based on how much of that book is read. Why would an author be paid the same if a reader dropped out 5 pages in for a poor quality book vs. another that gets read virtual cover to virtual cover. But since their algorithms to determine the # of pages read are smart, but not omniscient, some were gaming the system by putting in lots of filler pages and giving a link at the front that tricked readers into jumping to the end of the book and triggering a “full read” payout from Amazon.

As to why a TOC at the back of the book was considered good by some reputable authors? It’s nice to get it out of the way of the Look Inside sample and ebooks can jump to the TOC with a quick tap even if its at the back of the book. My epic fantasy novel Veil of a Warrior has a 100 chapters. That’s a lot of unreadable space (and scrolling!) for someone looking to sample the first chapter or two for a potential purchase.

By: Avid Reader

Avid Reader — Sat, 07 May 2016 19:09:54 +0000

A) If I buy the book, I expect the auther to get his fair share even if I don’t read it.

B) Who in their right mind would think that a table of contents at the back of the book is a good idea? By the time the reader gets to it, it’s too late!

By: Clifton Hill

Clifton Hill — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 18:08:51 +0000

Thanks for the post. Good to know. And curses to the scammers, again. I know it’s not in human nature, but I just wish people would stop trying to game the system.

By: Jackie Weger

Jackie Weger — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 16:32:32 +0000

Thank you for an enlightening post, Ricci. The serious problem with the scam book is that until January 2016, many of those books had up to 10,000 pages. Thus a Click Here message on the first page of the book to enter a giveaway or win a Kindle, took the reader to the end of those 10,000 pages. That sucked huge sums of $$$ out of the KENPC fund. Amazon’s response was to say: it will only pay up to 3000 pages. Still a nice return on the book. $14.40 royalty. Those scam books will have perhaps one actual book in English and that not well written. It is a borrow in the Kindle Unlimited subscription. If the reader doesn’t like it…the reader merely returns it for another–but seldom before ticking the Click Bait message. A dreadful situation and Amazon does not yet have a handle on it.

By-the-by, I got a Quality Control notice on one of my titles, a USA Today bestseller. It was triggered by a price change. I moved the TOC to the front matter. I also asked Amazon if this was a new, firm and fast rule. Amazon KDP said YES. So I paid to have a formatter move the TOC to front matter. But! I am going to move them all to back of book matter. I publish exclusively with Amazon. I’m not moving my units wide.