Kdp AmazonReviews of kdp.amazon.com

I absolute agree with the former review. KDP is a nice idea but has tons of problems. Among them: *) new authors get thrown under the bus and don't really sell *) payments take too long *) The cut they take, is far too much. Taking 30% on exclusive deal in a certain price range is already a lot. But taking 65% on non-exclusive deal? For what? Are they offering twice the work? They don't even do much for the 30%! If there were at least sales. But this i more than Clickbank takes, more than Fiverr takes, more than Upwork takes,... FOR WHAT?? *) btw, according to my calculations they are giving me 67% instead of 70%... $2.70 for a $3.99 product. Do the math (2.70/3.99*100). *) you can run only one promo in 90 days. But before you do, you first have to wait for a month and can't change the price in that time. As a new author you can't offer a deal. You either offer for free or not at all *) speaking of... you can't run both, free promos AND a countdown deal in 90 days. *) countdown deals only available either for US citizens or UK citizens, not everywhere! Again damaging business for all involved parties *) even funnier: ever notice that feedback is only shown on the page of the buyer and nowhere else? Not like the books was written in only one language and say 2 stars vs 5 stars would be demonstrative, no matter if you can read the comment or not. God forbid. Using feedback on ALL pages would help generate sales. On the other hand, I've seen bought feedback and feedback that doesn't even belong to the item many times. But feedback that belongs to the item, doesn't get shown. Well, actually you can't even run a countdown deal. Reading that most sales happen on weekends, I wanted to start on Friday. Well, too late. Not possible. Not like it is all digital and automated or something. So, I started the countdown deal with Saturday. Well, it was scheduled, but it's not working! Funny thing: the category list says, the book is available for $0.99. But the the actual page says, it's still in there for the original price. No countdown deal. Neither is is listed in the countdown deals page. Another funny thing: this already happend in 2018 and in 2013 and people wrote about it on the community pages. Same thing. They didn't get an answer for 3 days. When they finally got an anser, Amazon said, they are aware of the issue and working on it. Again... NO. Didn't happen. I'm running out of time and budget here. And nothing happens. I've promoted this promo on like 15 websites. Now it's not working. Of course in my country there is no phone support. So, I have to write an email. Of course the form says, they are going to reply within 24 hours. Oh, good! Most sales on weekend, I get a reply on Sunday... IF I'm lucky. Not a solution. A REPLY! Great stuff! 2 days lost. The most important days. I'm so glad. After so many sales (four), the promotion not working and the most important days lost. Great service, Amazon! Meaningwhile I've lied to potential buyers and readers and everything stands still. Well, of course there is more... the Youtube channel shows you how to format your stuff... in Word and Word only. Not something free like LibreOffice. Of course, there is no way you can format it the right way, so it actually looks good in the end. Because Amazon offers you to use a number of formats. All of them including their applications showing several formatting issues. And at the end, Amazon converts it once more to make sure, it never looks right! No... there is more! Amazon also offers a webinar on "developing a promotion strategy". Well, that's a very misleading title. Because it just gives you a brief overview of the options, that pretty much doesn't go beyond Amazon and GoodReads. And that is it! Nothing about a strategy or experiences what works or where to start... As great as the KDP idea might be, new authors are completely on their own. The more you put into it, the more of it is wasted time. Because nothing works. You just spread your data here and there, and sales... well, what sales? Not kidding: I have more free readers than actual sales!!! That is what Amazon does for you! It gives away for free, what you put weeks of work into! Let this be a lesson: In a month of publishing on Amazon, I've made Amazon 8 bucks back. And I need to wait for more than 60 days to actually get that out of there. Impressive. Dear Amazon: this needs vast improvement. This is HORRIBLE! Especially with the countdown deal that is not working, you have really outdone yourself. That's business damage of the highest order! Everything promote on more than 15 websites and you are damaging the reputation of the writer and the promoting websites. If it doesn't work, don't offer it!!! @Trustpilot: you are the next ones. 1x poor + 1x bad results in average? How does that work? I've mentioned this before a few years ago. Still completely wrong!!!

I was quite excited to upload my book and press the publish button. But there are a couple of things that are pretty disappointing about publishing on Amazon. a) They take a steep cut. 30% of revenues on digital books. That's pretty high considering that they are just providing the Kindle software platform. b) They take a long while to pay you. 60 days! You would think that one of the biggest financial juggernauts in the world could process payments a little faster. They also don't tell me how much I'm getting paid, I just have to wait for the payment to arrive in the bank. I'm not real happy about Amazon but as an author, you have to be on Amazon. Update: I wrote a second book, that got my KDP account suspended, about dating for men. The title/cover/description makes it very clear that the book is for men. The book was pulled from Amazon's digital bookshelves for "content that is considered offensive" and violates Content Guidelines, which is frustrating as they don't give you the vaguest clue as to what was considered offensive in your book.