Regular users of the platform know it: it is better to look at the estimated number of pages of an ebook before buying it, especially if the price is very low. Indeed, while we regularly find ebooks of 200 to 400 pages, we also find others that are just a few pages long. Amazon seems determined to tackle this problem head-on, and has sent the first letters to the authors concerned.
Thus, the self-publishing platform KDP now refuses to include in the catalog ebooks whose word count does not reach the minimum of 2500 words.
Short format or too short?
To give an idea, this post is barely less than 500 words. It is therefore easy to understand that Amazon imposes this limit of 2500 words. We can also compare to Kindle Singles, short format put forward by Amazon, have between 5000 and 30000 words. Titles of 2500 words are therefore not supposed to bring anything to the reader.
What is true for a novel or for a practical ebook is not necessarily true for poetry or for very short stories. As always with this kind of rules, there are therefore cases that pose problems, even if overall, the user should find his way around.
The authors concerned by the problem and who have already published ebooks have also received a letter from Amazon asking them to update their ebooks within 5 days so that they reach critical mass, or that they unpublish them. time to do this update. Otherwise, they will be deleted from the catalog.
Amazon decided to clean up its catalog
Amazon's strategy so far has been to increase the size of its catalog as quickly as possible, perhaps at the cost of limited control over the quality of submissions. But now that the catalog is really important, Amazon could logically develop a more qualitative approach.
We will remember the “case” of duplicate ebooks on the self-publishing platform, where we found the same content behind many titles. Amazon had to intervene to prevent its platform from being totally polluted by this kind of ebook by monitoring that there were no duplicates.
This is also the approach applied with Kindle Singles, short ebooks (between 5000 and 30000 words) that Amazon chooses to promote thanks to a real team that seeks out rare pearls and gives them additional visibility.
There is more than one category where there would be need for a good household, in the catalog of Amazon as in others. After the catalog construction phase, we are entering a new phase in which Amazon will certainly always allow everyone to offer their creations, but where users will have to be given quality guarantees.
