[Richardcrasta]

[Edited]
If you republish a book you had unpublished many months back and that had been up only a few weeks . . . perhaps you have changed it substantially or even changed the title . . . is it better, in such a case, to use the "Add New Title" mode in KDP and get a fresh start?

I can see 2-3 reasons for doing that:
1. Your book has a new start
2. If your title was up for a short period of time, and then unpublished for a long time, you've lost your possible "ranking" in Amazon--it still looks like an old title to Amazon, one that has not had any sales for 4-6 months.
3. Any review referring to a matter that has been taken care of in the new edition--you also lose this review, because it's no more applicable, and would mislead the potential reader.

Has anyone else gone this route? Does Amazon prevent a writer from doing this if the title is the same (in some cases, it might be)? What are your suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Richardcrasta]

Sorry, this is a decision I need to make soon, and I think it is a topic that might interest other, newer writers--maybe this post got overlooked? In any case, the topic and the post has been reframed.

 

[Klip]

I don't see any problem with publishing it as a new book 
It would be like a new edition?  I can only see the benefits (no confusion with older version).

Would be ideal if it was possible for people who bought the older version to know about this one...

 

[dalya]

New ASIN, unless you have reviews you want to keep.

It's possible readers might re-buy the same title by accident, but you have to do some math to figure out how likely that is. If you sold a dozen copies, then you're pretty safe.

I'm sure Amazon has something in place to stop people from continuously doing this as a strategy. Me, I don't like seeing "draft" things in my dashboard, so I don't do it, but I haven't done any substantial revisions to pubbed books.

 

[Richardcrasta]

Thanks, Dalya, Masha.

No, there were close to zero buys on one or two, and not more than 6 or 7 buys of one--and some of these may even have been friends.

Do you feel the same with Smashwords/ Apple? I notice especially that Apple seems to get confused when you change the title (going through Smashwords) Also, know nothing about whether they have algorithms.

 

[brendajcarlton]

I did that with Drug Money.  When I finally published The Accident, 3 years later, I wanted both of the books to have the oilpainting cover, and I also improved Drug Money some.  The downside that I found is that even if you have Amazon "retire" the old version it never goes away when you search by author name, and it's a bit confusing.  People can't buy it, but it just looks weird.  Customer support said they can't remove it.