How does the 10% work?

I haven't seen any controls on that. If there is, I'd like to know too.

I have read and understand Amazon will allow a specification of the 10% able to be viewed from anywhere in the book. I'm not sure how this done. But I am sure I've read this on the forum linked to the Amazon site. I can't find it now though.

This was the route I was planning to take.

Thanks everyone. I didn't realise the 10% included all the copyright notices etc. I've just been bulking up my word count and may now have to cut again.

Abderian said:

Thanks everyone. I didn't realise the 10% included all the copyright notices etc. I've just been bulking up my word count and may now have to cut again.

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What do you mean by bulking up your word count?
Your first book sample contains all of the first story and a good portion of the second story.
I hope that helps you figure out how you want to do the next one. It showed opening at 20% of the sample.

cinisajoy said:

What do you mean by bulking up your word count?
Your first book sample contains all of the first story and a good portion of the second story.
I hope that helps you figure out how you want to do the next one. It showed opening at 20% of the sample.

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The book in my sig is an anthology where one of my stories appears. I didn't upload it to Amazon, so I didn't know the sample contained 20% of the total. That's strange, because one of my beta readers said Amazon would show a preview of 10% of the novella I'm about to upload. That's the one where I'm currently juggling word count. So is it 10%, or 20%?

I think it's "approximately 10%." I was curious about this myself, and checked the first 10 percent of one of my own. Amazon definitely published more than 10%.  But a lot of people make their decision on whether or not to buy based on that preview, where as they might not give the book a chance otherwise.

I also think Amazon did a little more than 10% on my book. 10% was well into chapter two, and while I don't purposely keep my chapters the same length, they usually end up pretty close. At 15 chapters, 10% should be a little less than the first entire chapter, if I'm doing my math right. I'm also not a big fan of where it cut off, since it cut off right as I was building to something, but it doesn't bother me too much. Still, Amazon is giving away more of the book than I am, so that's kinda weird too

It seems like we don't have much control over how much is shown. That's a shame because it would be great to cut off at meaningful point. Oh well, I'll see what happens.

Abderian said:

The book in my sig is an anthology where one of my stories appears. I didn't upload it to Amazon, so I didn't know the sample contained 20% of the total. That's strange, because one of my beta readers said Amazon would show a preview of 10% of the novella I'm about to upload. That's the one where I'm currently juggling word count. So is it 10%, or 20%?

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You misunderstood me. The sample was 10% total but where it opened with all the front matter showed at 20% of the sample.
Which means the front matter took up 2% of the book.
My point was, it gave all of one story free. So what you need to do is figure out where you want your sample to end and put that at 10%.
So add or subtract front matter as needed.