I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find anything about it with the search function, so here it is.
Today I received an e-mail from Amazon about one of my short stories (the shortest one I have ever written). The email was as follows:
Hello,
During a quality assurance review of your KDP catalog we have found that the following book(s) are extremely short and may create a poor reading experience and do not meet our content quality expectations:
Name of Short
In the best interest of Kindle customers, we remove titles from sale that may create a poor customer experience. Content that is less than 2,500 words is often disappointing to our customers and does not provide an enjoyable reading experience.
We ask that you fix the above book(s), as well as all of your catalog's affected books, with additional content that is both unique and related to your book. Once you have ensured your book(s) would create a good customer experience, re-submit them for publishing within 5 business days. If your books have not been corrected by that time, they will be removed from sale in the Kindle Store. If the updates require more time, please unpublish your books.
The short in question is a charity piece that I don't get many sales on, so I just unpublished it. It's free on all of the other retailers anyway. I typically try not to write anything under 3k.
Anyway, just thought I'd let you guys know, for those who write shorts and didn't know.
Wow. That is unexpected. I can't imagine that many people could get additional content both written and edited by an editor within 5 days, so I imagine most people that get that notice would have to unpublish.
I do kind of like that they are trying to put more emphasis on quality standards. That can only be good for all of us who strive to put out quality material.
I wonder if this is triggered by autobots going after people publishing PLR articles?
It's worth knowing that they are cracking down on shorter works though, so thank you for sharing. I don't have anything that length at the moment, but it's something I might have considered in the future if I was trying to make something permafree as a lead-in to a series.
I certainly hope they don't raise the bar that high. If they started going after anything under 7k, about 1/3rd of my catalog would have to be re-written. Not a pleasant thought.
Ah, first they take the porn out of the search results, now they're going after the shorts.
There goes my brand new smut-writing career I was moving into!
If that's true, then those 2,500 words eroticas are nothing but one long sex scene. This might be the "porn" Amazon is supposedly cracking the whip at.
Readers know what they're buying, right? Can't they just look at the estimated page count and make an informed decision from there? I understand what Amazon is doing, but some stories are complete and cohesive with under 2500 words.
Thanks for the info. I just checked the short story I have up but it's over 4000 words. I have been thinking of pulling it anyway but would rather make that decision myself rather than have it made for me.
I can normally justify Amazon's moves...I might not like them, but I can at least see their side of it.
This one puzzles me. I can think of many examples where shorts are worthy...poems...articles...in-depth product reviews...short stories.
The cutoff is a mystery as well. I wonder who picked that number.
I have one that is very short, around those guidelines. It's step-by-step instructions for accomplishing one very specific end result. If they remove it, oh well. I won't fluff that one up. *shrug*
Readers know what they're buying, right? Can't they just look at the estimated page count and make an informed decision from there? I understand what Amazon is doing, but some stories are complete and cohesive with under 2500 words.
Length isn't necessarily a measure of quality, but no, readers don't always know what they're buying. I've clicked on many titles that don't show any page count. Many readers don't understand file size and it's unhelpful anyway, because there's no way to tell how much is taken up by front matter or text that isn't part of the story. If there's no page count and the writer hasn't mentioned in the blurb that it's a short short, then readers have a right to be majorly pissed off.
I've seen too much stuff on Smashwords that doesn't qualify in any way as a book -- a single poem, a short essay, etc. Unless Amazon goes too far, some kind of cutoff is a good thing.
My short-shorts are bundled in collections. But with standalones, my bestseller ever is about 7800 words long, and I have quite a few others under 10K words. I don't mind a cutoff, but for selfish reasons, I hope they don't raise it any higher.
There's a vast number of ebook shoppers who either don't realize Amazon lists the page count or don't think to check it. I know because they tell me about it in their reviews. I assume Amazon's new move comes because they're getting a lot of length complaints. To a certain extent I do think it makes sense to have a length requirement to publish via KDP. I'm just not sure what that requirement should be.
Ouch. So much for my children's books. Guess I better get them to Draft2digital so they are somewhere.
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