Information and tips, focusing on publishing, publicity, promotional ideas, author profiles, design resources and more.
Uploading your book to Kindle Direct Publishing / Amazon is the beginning of a process rather than the end. The next task is to optimise your metadata for visibility / search. Reedsy is offering a free course on the basics of Amazon advertising.
“In this article, we’ll reveal the importance of choosing the right categories and provide you some practical steps to perfectly place your book on Amazon’s bulging shelves. ”
“Amazon is more than just a retailer: it is a search engine as well as a book discoverability website. In fact, it’s the world’s leading search engine for books, where the majority of buyers go to find their next read.”
Reedsy is offering a short, free introductory course for those interested in using Amazon advertising for their books. The course covers the following topics:
The fundamentals of how the algorithms work
How to optimize your product page for the algorithm
How to pick the right categories and keywords
How to ascend the various lists on the Kindle store
The right way to launch your book
A very dogged author relates his trying experiences with Amazon KDP and organising the payment of royalties. He does arrive at a solution, but only through sheer persistence:
“Amazon is probably the best outlet for Indie authors, but manage your expectations when dealing with their customer service.
Their help/assistance/advice to me was either inconsistent, vague, given in Amazon’s internal technical speak, incomplete, or simply wrong.
I put my latest novel up on Amazon as I did with my previous two, only this time, I put both eBook and paperback on all markets, not just Australia.
When sales started occurring, I followed those on my KDP account site. I found their reports informative and helpful. They gave me statistics for each marketplace and the estimated royalties.
When my Australian royalties started arriving in my Australian bank account by EFT, I thought I would find out why my sales in the other markets were not reaching me.
I then discovered those royalties could not be paid by EFT into my Australian bank account, only by cheque or wire. Then I found that not only could an EFT transfer not happen, but that Amazon had a withdrawal threshold of 100 units for each market, e.g. US$100, CA$100, €100, or £100.
None of my book royalties in any market outside Australia is ever likely to break these thresholds, e.g. Canada royalties were CA$2.88, Eurozone (Germany) €7.80. So, I put the question to Amazon – how do I ever get paid these royalties?
Amazon suggested I open an account with Payoneer for each marketplace, which I did. So, Amazon from each marketplace could now transfer my royalties to those Payoneer accounts. However, my problem then became twofold:
Payoneer does not have a banking arrangement with UK or Canadian banks. So these royalties could not be transferred to my Payoneer accounts.
Then I discovered that Payoneer also has a withdrawal threshold of US$50 per transfer.
Finally, a solution:
In your KDP account go to the Getting paid tab.
In your non-US/non-Australian accounts, change your payment method to your US$ account and transfer any outstanding royalties in those other non-US accounts to the US$ account.
Under your Amazon US account, click and highlight every tag except Amazon.com.au.
All royalties from sales in all those other marketplaces will now be currency converted into your US$ account.
If or when your US$ account balance reaches above US$100 you can transfer to your Australian bank account.
In my case, I have my Amazon US$ account balance transferred to my Payoneer US$ account (lower withdrawal threshold). Amazon’s US$100 withdrawal threshold does not apply here.”
For Amazon KDP authors struggling to figure out how to aggregate their royalties, see the note below from an independent author:
“At last, I found someone at Amazon KDP who knows their job. I have now tagged all Amazon marketplaces to have royalties paid into my US$ Amazon account, e.g. outstanding UK royalties have now been sent to my US$ KDP account, as well as German and Canadian royalties. It is, therefore, now easy to transfer all that money to my Payoneer US$ account so that I can get paid into my Australian account – PHEW!”
For context, and earlier email from the same author:
I am now experiencing a separate crisis with Amazon, who are not paying me my due royalties. They have told me they have only paid Australian royalties by EFT but cannot pay me for all the other markets, which must be paid by cheque until royalties reach 100 in each currency. I have asked them how I will achieve those thresholds when I have, for instance, only sold one in Germany, and I am unlikely to sell anymore there - do they, therefore, keep my money? It’s very frustrating, and the whole exercise with Amazon is proving a nightmare. I have spent A$2035 on Amazon AD’s with a supposed return of A$474.36, of which I have only received A$153.28. I’m still waiting for an answer from them.
and more…
At this stage, I have read every word on both Amazon’s KDP and Payoneer’s websites. I have determined that Americans set up both sites specifically for Americans – so much for a Global Company.
Having now signed up for Payoneer, I find they can deal with EFT payments to Amazon USA, UK and Australia but forget Canada and Germany, where I have sold a few. Those few royalty amounts have gone into the Amazon coffers, given I will never reach the CN$100 and €100 thresholds.
I’ve written to Payoneer customer service to find out how they will arrange payments of my royalties from different Amazon markets, into my Payoneer account, and then into my bank account here in Australia – 5 days minimum response. Both websites state that once I have set up a Payoneer account, Payoneer will email Amazon and arrange payments to route through them - Mmm!
and
Payoneer has now advised that I can transfer currencies from one of my Payoneer Receiving accounts to another currency account. I can directly transfer €8.53 from my Eurozone Receiving account to my US$ Receiving account with a balance of US$44.53, thereby making the US$ account greater than US$50 (US$53.35), meaning I can now withdraw it to my account here in Australia. Phew! Getting that solution from them was like pulling teeth. However, I will leave it all alone until the new year in case any more royalties arrive in those accounts, but since I have canned my Amazon AD campaign there shouldn’t be much of that if anything.
What remains now is £36.40 sitting in my Amazon.co.uk account, which I cannot transfer to my Payoneer account as Payoneer doesn’t have an arrangement with a UK bank. So back to Amazon KDP with that one.
Dealing with Amazon KDP can certainly be a very frustrating experience, with Amazon making it extremely difficult to speak to an actual human.
Here’s a very long list of customer service issues with Amazon KDP.
If you are interested in running an Amazon campaign for your title/s on that platform, but would prefer to use a third party to manage the process, here is one author’s results and associated comments:
Fiverr allocated “bestbooks2020” who is managing my Amazon advertisements. They ran the first campaign in the Australian market only. That campaign ended yesterday. At the same time, I went onto Kindle Unlimited for 90 days.
Here are the results as of today:
Since launch;
Sales = 30 – <title 01> = 22 Kindle, 7 paperback. <title 02> = 1 Kindle. Royalties due = $145.75.
KENP READ (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages Read)
<title 01> = 6,988 in Australia, 175 in the USA = 7,163
<title 02> = 138 in Australia, 1 in the UK = 139
Total = 7,302
As I’ve had it explained, KENP READS can be from actual downloads or from reading the first few pages.
I have initiated two more AD Campaigns through bestbooks2020 for the UK and US markets. So it will be interesting to see how that goes. Two, three-day Ads in each market cost me circa $157 each. I was initially going to run AD campaigns for all three books simultaneously in both markets, but that would cost me $900+ (maybe another time).
KindleUnlimited
KEDP READS = 12,874 (11,522 for <title 01>, 1,352 for <title 02>, 0 for <title 03>). Amazon’s technical team are looking at <title 03’s> results to find out what is going wrong. Given the nature of the beast, it’s impossible to have 0 results for <title 03>.
Sales:
A total of 39, being 31 x Kindle and 7 x paperback.
The Amazon AD campaign Fiverr ran in Australia only resulted in 61 clicks for the first three-day blitz and 84 for the second, and a bill today from Amazon for $177.01.
The Amazon AD Campaigns start this Thursday in the UK and USA, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. Given the cost for Australia, I’m now nervous about how much that will cost me, albeit I can pull the plug on it at any time. I will monitor daily.
After years of printing in the US and shipping all the way to Oz, Amazon has finally opened a printery in Australia to service print on demand customers. This is very good news for independent authors, especially that subset who want to concentrate on Amazon. IngramSpark’s service has many pluses, but it interposes a layer between the author and Amazon, and costs a good deal more, particularly when authors wish to upload updated book files. With the new printing facility, Australian authors will finally be able to order author proofs and copies.
With the new printery, postage costs will be reduced and turnaround times improved. Here is the Amazon page addressing the topic.
