Amazon Finally Did Something Right

     

      Yes, they did, believe it or not.

      It's no surprise that, as a working novelist, I'm very deeply embedded in the writing community on Facebook (Or is it Meta, yet?). So it was with great surprise and excitement that one of the first things I read on the platform early yesterday morning was one of my friends asking if anyone knew that Amazon is finally publishing hard cover editions.

     I'd seen something referencing hardcovers on my KDP dashboard last week as I was checking my royalties and either thought I was seeing things or that the hardcover editions were a beta trial of some program you had to join. As it turns out, I was half right.

     The hardcover editions are in the beta trial phase but all you need is an existing Kindle Direct Publish account to create a hardback edition of your book. Apparently, Amazon, for some bizarre reason, rolled out this new feature very quietly some time last month and it's very slowly filtered its way through the writing community, which is still largely unaware of this new publishing option. Proof of this is that trade publications and news sites have hardly mentioned it, despite the game-changer it could prove to be.

     Suspecting that it would be very user friendly, last night I set up an experimental hard cover edition of Hollywoodland, my latest novel, and it went live just a little over 12 hours later. The transition from paperback to hard cover was almost perfectly seamless. In other words, if you've already successfully published a paperback on Amazon, you should have no problem with rolling out a hardcover edition. Amazon even helps out tremendously by importing all the information about your hardcover from the previous paperback and Kindle projects.

     The only boo I've heard so far is that Amazon, for some strange reason, actually glues the dust jacket to the cover, which simply shouldn't be done. What can I say, I'm old fashioned that way.

     Essentially, if you stick with the same files you used to create your paperback editions, you shouldn't run into any problems. The only change is in the trim sizes. I typically publish my novels in a 5"x8" format (postcard size) and upload a cover that corresponds. Amazon can't go lower than 5.5"x8.5" for hardbacks, which leaves a bit more white space than you may like and maybe even raise the page count. But making the transition from 5x8 to 5.5x8.5 using the same sized files is still a lot easier than reformatting the entire interior file (or the text of the book).

     So, when I got word that Hollywoodland's hardcover edition was live, I immediately ordered a copy for myself (the price is $21.99, which isn't a bad deal considering the fucking book is nearly 186,000 words and traditional publishers charge anywhere form $25 to $35 for their hardbacks). Then, once I do some quality control on the hardcover (binding, gluing, etc), if it passes muster, I'll do hardcover editions for all my other novels.