Don't Make This Mistake.

[I. J. Parker]

Two years ago, when I lost my third publisher and my agent told me she couldn't place my books again, I asked her if they would manage my electronic rights, both for the books in print and for 4 that had not sold yet.  There was a huge amount of hesitation and delay on their part, but a year later, one of the sub-agents agreed to put 4 Akitada titles on Kindle. I won't go into the details about the formatting problems that followed.  Suffice it to say, the books went up, and 4 others followed over the next 6 months or so.

Since then, it's become obvious that the system wasn't working well. I am now calling in the books, starting with the first 4.  They have been taken down. 

My efforts at reloading them under my own name have shown me how bad a mistake I made a year ago.  The books need reformatting that I will pay for. Furthermore, the agency informs me that I'll lose both reviews and rankings and will start as if from nothing. Amazon has confirmed this. This is, of course, a very heavy price to pay for letting the agency handle the e-books when I could have done a better job myself.

 

Does anyone here know a solution to the disaster?  I have a hard time communicating with Amazon, who seem to be most obliging to agencies but won't give me the time if day. I basically need a contact person there.

 

And if there is no help, at least beware of letting someone else handle your e-books.

[Dana King]

Sorry, Ingrid. I handled both of my books on Kindle myself, and had no need to deal with a person there. I'll keep my ears open and will let you know if I hear anything.

Good luck.

[I. J. Parker]

Just had another reply from KDP to another appeal.  Apparently there is a way to preserve some reviews.  I care more about these than the rankings.  The rankings will build again.  Anyway, we'll see.  I'm waiting now to see if the formatting can be fixed by my very good formatters. 

[Benjamin Sobieck]

I went through something similar with my novel and short stories. However, when re-uploaded with the exact same title, the reviews stuck with it. Example.

My advice is to re-upload them with the exact same title.

[I. J. Parker]

Yes.  Thanks.  I'm hugely relieved.  The fact is that I can do a better job with e-pubs than my agency.  My sentimental attachment doesn't make good business sense, and I must learn to be a businesswoman.

[Count Otto Black]

I'm new here. so maybe I'm on the wrong thread, but this whole thing about e-books - are publishers and agents still relevant at all? Reading this thread, and reflecting on the state of the art in general, it does seem to me that, once people realize that the old stigma about "self-publishing" is obsolete, well, why not self-publish?

I don't mean physical books of course; but if you're a new author who doesn't have any books out there made from actual dead trees, what's the problem with being your own agent and publisher? Any text of whatever length I type on the machine I'm using right now can be converted into various e-book formats in seconds if I click a couple of buttons. Production costs zero, print run infinite!

The only problems I can see with that are getting recognized in the first place, and ensuring that I own the rights to my own e-books (or any real books that may come to pass if I happen to be tremendously popular). Incidentally, I personally know an author who has published 33 novels thus far, most of them best-sellers in the UK, and he's planning to go entirely digital within the next two years. Ironically, to prepare his back catalogue for e-book release, he's having to download pirate copies of his own novels and correct the numerous typos (which raises an interesting pirate-copy-squared scenario - any copyright lawyers reading this have just imploded).

Does anyone have any practical advice? Especially first-time authors who haven't necessarily been physically published on paper, but who got what they feel to be a good e-book deal?

[I. J. Parker]

I'm not a first-time author and I have been traditionally published,  The advent of KDP and other self-publishing options, especially for e-books, has demonstrated to all writers what an incredibly poor deal they were getting from publishers.  Many of us are self-publishing even while our print books are still up.

 

The best scenario exists for writers who write bestseller-type books, i.e. thrillers, hardboiled mysteries, romance, paranormal, and erotica.  These are the sorts of books consumed by the largest spectrum of readers.

I'm not in that category, so my income remains modest.  On the other hand, my peace of mind is worth a lot to me.

If you aim for a publisher, you will need an agent, or at least an IP lawyer.  You cannot trust those guys.