Amazon’s Kindle Scout program has widened its range of genres to add Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, and Action & Adventure to the original categories of Romance, Mystery/Thriller and Science Fiction.
So far, there have been 26 Kindle Scout titles selected for publication and the first 10 have gone on sale. Thrillers continue to lead the way, as I reported in my previous article on Kindle Scout, with Mystery, Thriller & Suspense comprising 15 titles, representing 58%. Romance is in second place with eight titles (31%), while Science Fiction takes the remaining three slots (11%).
Some of the books chosen are crossovers covering more than one genre, so I have used the main category selection.
Kindle Scout accepts submission from authors of books which have not been previously published. Excerpts from the books are placed on the Kindle Scout website and readers vote for their choices which help to decide if a book gets published.
Books are published by Kindle Press with authors offered five-year renewable terms, a $1,500 advance, 50% ebook royalty rate, easy rights reversions and featured Amazon marketing.
“Since we opened our doors we’ve been busy weighing the feedback of over 29,000 enthusiastic Scouts who have nominated the books they want to read next,” says Dina Hilal, general manager for Kindle Scout. “These first 10 titles signal a new option for authors, who can choose to have their books discovered and supported by Amazon customers even before they are published.”
Stacey Cochran’s Eddie & Sunny (nice cover) is among the first 10 Kindle Press books. Cochran says, “Having Eddie & Sunny chosen for publication by Kindle Press has been nothing short of a dream come true. The reader enthusiasm galvanized during the Kindle Scout campaign was exciting beyond anything else I’ve experienced as a writer, but the thing that’s been most surprising in all of this is the community experience and friendships I’ve made with the other writers I’ve come to know through Kindle Scout after connecting on social media.”
After submitting a manuscript and having it accepted, a Kindle Scout campaign lasts 30 days.
Amazon has revealed some of the statistics behind Kindle Scout:
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9 — The average number of excerpts a Scout considers before nominating a title to be published
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3 — The number of minutes it took the fastest author to submit a manuscript to Kindle Scout
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3 — The average number of days in which a Kindle Scout author receives a publishing decision after submitting a book
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$25,000 — If a Kindle Press author does not earn at least this amount during his five-year contract, he or she can request his rights back
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10 — The highest number of free Kindle books an individual Scout has earned for nominating books to date
One of the major benefits for an author with Kindle Scout is Amazon backing their book with marketing, but it seems to have taken a low-key approach to Kindle Press books so far, unlike the situation with Amazon Publishing imprints, where pre-orders regularly feature in the Kindle best-sellers’ list.
This week, for example, saw five of the top six Kindle ebooks published by Amazon imprints, with only the runaway No 1 best-seller The Girl On The Train from Penguin holding back the Amazon tide. Three of the Amazon Publishing titles were pre-orders being published on April 1.
Amazon Publishing pushing pre-orders to top of the best-sellers