Tuesday Tirade: Amazon Prime Reading

Amazon Prime Reading. As I understand it, it’s the kinda the same as Kindle Unlimited but different. Kindle Unlimited is a paid monthly subscription where you can read as many (hence the ‘unlimited’ moniker) books as you want, the catch being that the books need to be enrolled in the KU program, which is dominated primarily by indie authors looking for ways to make their books affordable and easy to access.

Enter Prime Reading. If you are am Amazon Prime member, you have access to the Prime Reading catalogue to read any of those books for free. Not really free, though, right? You have paid something. So you read for cheaper. The difference between the two programs is that Prime Reading books are a mix of traditionally published books and indie authors.

So a better selection, then?
Not necessarily. There are many stinkers in the main stream, too.

Anyway, I had nominated my book, The View from Here, for the last two years and it finally got accepted. Yay?

There are pros and cons. The con is that you do not get paid for any of the reads by Prime members. The pros are that you book is in an “exclusive” catalogue with bigger names, so the chance of it being read is better. If your book is a first in series, it’s like giving your book away and hoping that the reader buys the other ones. Reads also affect the rank which gives visibility to the book.

So, yay! Right? Sigh … this is Amazon, remember?

I accept. I am informed it will be included in the March – May offerings. Great. March 1st rolls around and I look up my—

Let me guess. It’s not there.
It’s not there.
And you email them.
I email them.
They say they have to look into it, then say they fixed it but when you look, it’s still not there, so they send you a screenshot but you can’t find it in the catalogue and you ask someone on a forum you are following to look it up and they confirm that it isn’t listed when they look, so you email the Amazon CSR again and they say they:

“… need a little time to look into the problem.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

-Leon

Last day!

Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, and a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words.