[Arthur Slade]

Has anyone had an experience changing the name of a book/series after it has been out for awhile. I have a series called The Hunchback Assignments, which was selling well on Amazon.uk but has dropped off. My German publisher named the series Mission Clockwork...which I kind of like and also suggests the steampunk nature of the books. But what are the pitfalls? Advantages? I'm feeling experimental.http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005H7Z8WG

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I'm going to keep an eye on this thread because I've wondered about this too. Especially when rights revert back to me from the publisher.

 

[Arthur Slade]

I wouldn't want people to accidentally buy the same book twice, so I assume even with the name change that Amazon would warn them that "you already own this."

 

[Rick Gualtieri]

I wouldn't want people to accidentally buy the same book twice, so I assume even with the name change that Amazon would warn them that "you already own this."

This would depend on whether or not you actually pull down the old book and relaunch it anew, or just change the existing KDP entries. If the latter, then it's the same book as far as Amazon is concerned and people wouldn't be allowed to purchase it again. If it's a different entry in KDP then it's a different entity entirely (different ASIN).

 

[aring633]

I just did this for a two-book series. These books had only been with Amazon, and I wanted to update covers, change titles, and distribute wide.

I'm an idiot and didn't plan very well. I submitted the changes to KDP on 3/19, they went live (according to them) the next day, but no changes were visible. Took 2 days for the new covers to show, but the sample and Look Inside were still old. Today, 3/26, one of the books updated. The other still hasn't. I made the mistake of announcing my new covers and titles on the 19th, and readers were eager to download, but they balked at seeing the old stuff still on the website (and I don't blame them). Supposedly, buyers who already have the book should be able to sync their Kindle libraries and get the new version, but it hasn't worked for me yet, and I'm waiting to hear back from Amazon about this. Ugh. I should have waited to announce the changes until everything had gone through.

At the bottom of my blurbs, and on the copyright pages, I put that the books were previously published as (FORMER TITLE). Not all authors do this, I've noticed, so I don't know if it's relevant or helpful. These books were pretty much dead, so even though the conversion process has been irritating for me, it hasn't impacted my sales much.

I also have paperbacks of these via Createspace, and I stopped their distribution before I started this process. You can't just update Createspace titles - you have to delist them, then create entire new books. It's been about two weeks, and the old books are still for sale on all the distribution sites (like B&N). That process, of delisting wide, is very slow. Again, poor planning on my part.

I'm already seeing sales on other sites (iBooks, B&N), but I don't know if it's because a) I suddenly went wide, b) my new awesome branding, or c) I put the first book free. This publishing thing needs to come with a manual. If I had to do it over again, I'd make one change at a time, planned well in advance, so I could properly track how each change affected the bottom line. Sigh.

 

[Cherise]

You can just change the names on the ebooks and keep your reviews and urls.

However, this will not work with paperbacks.

 

[G. Henkel]

Supposedly, buyers who already have the book should be able to sync their Kindle libraries and get the new version, but it hasn't worked for me yet, and I'm waiting to hear back from Amazon about this.

I believe in order for this to work you will have to delete the existing book on your device and then re-sync. Just syncing probably won't pull the new version from what I remember.

 

[Arthur Slade]

Thanks for the info everyone. It's certainly something worth trying and doesn't seem to take to much extra time, other than fixing up the books. I'll be curious to see whether or not it affects sales. And you're right, Aring, I should get everything in place before I announce it.