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Amazon Kindle Crackdown On Ebook Quality
Amazon Kindle warns readers of poor quality ebooks
Ebook authors and publishers who ignore quality issue warnings at the time of publishing, or later, on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) now face the reality that readers will be warned that their ebooks are sub-standard.
Hopefully, this move will lessen the number of Kindle scams that have no place in self-publishing.
A range of warning messages can now appear on an ebook’s sales page on the Kindle Store, highlighting very clearly that the ebook files have content issues. In addition, quality concerns that have been raised by Kindle ebook buyers can also lead to an ebook sales page carrying a warning.
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing has a help page, Guide to Kindle Content Quality, which gives full details about all issues concerning ebook quality.
However, this short excerpt clearly states that there are two possible results from publishing sub-standard ebooks.
The combined impact on the reading experience of a book with excessive Distracting or Destructive Issues can lead to the book being removed from sale until the corrections are made. A moderate amount of Distracting or Destructive Issues can result in the book remaining available for sale, but with a temporary quality warning displayed on the detail page of the book on Amazon.com until corrections are made.
So the penalty for poor ebook quality is either ugly warning messages on the sales page, or removal of an ebook from sale and more nasty notices as per the examples below.
Each and every one of these notices are of course an instant sales killer, and no author in their right mind would want them.
Not only do these warnings dissuade ebook buyers but also buyers of print books. If an ebook is riddled with errors, there is no doubt that the paperback will be equally as bad.
Poor quality ebooks should be highlighted
From my own viewpoint, I believe this crackdown by Amazon is well and truly overdue, and that it will be wholeheartedly welcomed by every hard working self-publishing author and will help reduce the number of Kindle scam publishers.
For too long, critics of self-publishing have used examples of the very worst self-publishing can offer, and then tarred all self-publishers with the same brush. Amazon’s action then, in taking a strong position to remove the trash, is a huge and positive step forward.
If an author ignores the (quite lenient) KDP spellchecking system suggestions at the time of publication, then let them suffer the consequences. Sadly though, this new warning program is only available on amazon.com at present. One can only hope that Amazon will roll this feature out on all their Kindle Stores as quickly as possible.
How you can report a poor quality ebook
It is not a pleasant thing to have to do, but sometimes you may want to report an ebook that disappoints you because of poor formatting, abundant grammatical errors or lots of careless typos. If you wish to do this, you need to go to the bottom of the book page to the feedback box.
Once you click the link, you can then complete a form with the details of the issues you have experienced. As ebooks can display in various ways on different devices, you should, in fairness, note your device in your submission.