For what it's worth, I put a book in Kindle Scout last Thanksgiving in the second round of the program. At that time, there weren't that many books there, and the ones in before me were all by authors who were entrants in Amazon's publishing award contest. Hot and Trending is nice, but not necessarily how books are chosen. In the first rounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas, most of the first entrants were chosen. I studied which books were chosen for about two months, and this is what I found:
- Popular genres (one of the first books chosen was a billionaire book)
- Author name recognition (Yes, H&T is important as they want authors who bring a following with them)
- Authors that they want to lock up. A number of the "winners" are trad published mid-tier authors who have decided to go it alone. Others are successful self-pubs who haven't truly broken out yet but Zon wants to keep them away from the trad publishers because it looks like they may be close to breaking out
- Well written. Yes, they're looking for books with great covers and the editing and formatting Zon has to do is minimal
That said, some of the winners are selling very well, others not so well. Although Zon does market them, having a following and doing your own marketing is still important.
Just my 2 centavos.