TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
The Look Inside feature on Amazon e-book advertisements is a wonderful tool that allows the prospective buyer to see a certain percentage of the book from top down, an automatic process that is, however, not always advantageous. The “self-publisher” has to contact KDP every time they wish to change the percentage of their e-books visible on the Look Inside function or to have Look Inside entirely eliminated.
The Look Inside The Book (LITB) program could be easily improved by giving the e-book creator an opportunity to flag a particular chapter or chapters, depending on what percentage of the book he wants to exhibit, instead of the automatic 10% top-down process. Therefore I made a reasonable suggestion to KDP, albeit without high expectations because my experience has been that KDP will say "thanks for your feedback, it helps improve our service," and that will be the end of it. That is to say that KDP is what it is, just a bookstore, it would have us believe, and not a publisher per se, so take it or leave it you "self publishers."
"If the first part of a book is not enticing to a reader, then perhaps it's not worth buying," some say.
But I beg to differ. I often skip over the long preliminaries in some types of books, and I am not alone. Sometimes, of course, the author has someone write an introduction that is far superior to the content of the book itself!
However that may be, so accustomed have content providers become to the machine that they prefer to conform to the the top-down program and tend to behold anyone with suggestions for change as deranged. That they are not, although they may be fools for not complying with the status quo.
CORRESPONDENCE
May 31, 2022
Hello David, Thank you for reaching out to us at KDP. We are here to help you with whatever queries you have. I understand you want to know if LITB percentage can be reduced to 5% for a book. Yes, currently, for eBooks, we can change LITB viewable percentage to be between 5% and 45% and for paperbacks the same is 10% and 80%. To request a percentage change, please reply to this email with the percentage of pages you'd like to be viewable. Paperback percentages should be in 10% increments and eBooks should be in 5% increments. Please feel free to write back to this email if you have any further queries. I'm here for your assistance. Thanks for using Amazon KDP. Your feedback helps us improve our service. Kindle Direct Publishing
June 1, 2022
Dear KDP Team: Thank you. As you know there has been considerable discussion about the Look Inside feature designed for publishers. Some feel the Look Inside gives away the store, or would like to control what is seen by prospective buyers. It seems like a program could be created for that, say, when CREATE is used? David
Jun 1, 2022
Hi David, Thanks for taking time to share your thoughts about the "Look Inside" feature. We really appreciate input from our authors to help improve the platform for all users. I've passed on your thoughts and we’ll consider your input as we plan further improvements. Have a wonderful day, stay safe and take care. Thanks for using Amazon KDP. Your feedback helps us improve our service. Kindle Direct Publishing
June 1, 2022
Dear AMAZON KDP:
Regarding my suggestion to give publishers more control over what they show to prospective buyers if the publishers are real publishers, your standard response to suggestions is you will pass them along, and my experience is that is the end of it. I am informed by a long time insider as follows: “LITB has been the same now for 10 years plus. Same percentage, same capabilities, same everything. Nothing has changed in ten damn years. To which I responded: "I guess that goes to show you that change is evil. Is the suggestion box over there a toilet?. A small change could be made to Create giving the author the opportunity to flag what he wants to show up front.”
That being said, here is what I wanted to show on the particular book, which I thought could be easily done if your current e-book creator was modified to allow one or more chapters up to a certain percentage limit to be FLAGGED. Look Inside is a great feature, I did not want to eliminate it entirely, but still.... Please advise if I am wasting my time with this suggestion. See this example of the choice I would make for my great grandmother’s book:
PREVIEW TO THE SEED THAT FELL ON ROCKY GROUND
Sarah E. Walters’ unusual book from a century ago reads better than a current novel, yet an appendix of newspaper articles from the period verifies that everything she says is true . Her story is that of an extraordinary ordinary woman with elementary schooling who married a man of her dreams, a doctor, no less, who, in reality, and despite his redeeming qualities, turned out to be an alcoholic, carouser and womanizer who disappeared until shortly before he died. She fought all along to save their marriage and support their children, cleaning floors, working for a restaurant chain and on steamboats, a dangerous occupation allowed to women in those days. She also fought city hall when her boy became addicted to heroin illegally peddled by the drug store, thanks to unethical officials. And for that she was thrown without a hearing into the infamous madhouse where she wrote her book, hoping all the while to go on a book tour to save others from suffering her similar ordeals, but she died while cleaning a floor at the height of the Spanish Influenza. Her book did not see the light of day until this day, and is offered by her great grandson with great respect.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapters include Prologue and Dedication, Putting First Things First, My New Castle Charmer, My Skating Lesson, Elopement & Philadelphia, Our First Baby & First Quarrel, Misfortune At The Brothel, I Was Afraid Of Him, Eddie Is Born & Teddy Rejects Him, Valentine Cruelty, Death Knell Prelude To Desertion, Pittsburgh And That Woman, My Own Attorney Molests Me, That Brazen Harlot Attacks Me Again, I Catch My Attorney With That Woman, Good People’s Poison Is Bad People’s Meat, I Take Work On The Steamboats, The River Gets Into The Blood, Steamboats Wrecked By Greed, I Swallowed A Bitter Pill, My Great Dishonor, The Infernal Liquor Traffick, My Brother And Husband Pass Away, False News And The Funeral, A Foolish Thing Well Done, A Barking Dog & The Brutish Alderman, The Tragic Death Of Stella Murray, We Take In Elizabeth And Mary. Charles Asher's Suicide. Mr. Hill Fights The Dens Of Iniquity, The Reverend Detective Got The Picture, The Poison Bottle, Don't Talk Loud At The Drugstore, I Am Called A Heroic Woman, The Pull Of Catholic Law Breakers, They Threw Me Down Courthouse Steps, The Gang’s Horrible Infamy On Me, Brain Specialists Call Me Insane, She Said She Was Taking Me Home, Nurses Say Insanity Runs In The Family, Judges Dig Into Statute Books, I Want My Baby! I Want My Baby, Present-Day Hypocrites, Judge Haymaker Condemns Me To Hell, There Was No Billy Club On Me, Poor Creatures In Marshalsea, Judges Dare Not Buck The Gang, Good Judge Thomson Releases Me, My Letter To The Judge Got Me Freed, Our Great Big City Is An Awful Pity, Why Asses Have Ears, Difference Between Men And Animals, The Suffrage Movement Exposed, The Trial Of The Dope Sellers, The Fleming Druggists Appeal, Epitaph & Epilogue. Appendix – Notes And Press Reports.
SAMPLE CHAPTER
Chapter 14 – THAT BRAZEN HARLOT ATTACKS ME AGAIN
I went into the crowded courtroom with my dear children, who attracted attention everywhere. I sat down behind Mrs. Kelly, and she, hearing the little ones, turned around, looked at me first, and then towards the door where Teddy had gone out. She got up and ran out to him. Law clerks told me that they left and were seen drinking together.
Oh God, the shame of it all! The newspaper reporters and the curiosity seekers were there.
She came back in; he hurried away; the case was called. I took the stand and told a straight and full account of the assault. I said I had faith in the law and felt sure I would get justice from the tribunal. The judge, for one thing, asked me how I kept from striking her. I said I simply had not done so. He charged the jury to weigh well her testimony and mine and to judge rightly between us because we had no witnesses.
I wanted to call my husband to have him testify to the truth. I thought he would do so, but he would not be called; my lawyer had taken a dislike to him, which was returned in good measure by the doctor. The judge, however, after hearing the testimony, expressed a desire to see the cause of all the trouble. The crier called my husband’s name, but he was seen hurrying away.
That brazen harlot had tried hard to make me out a liar. She was reprimanded by the judge for her contemptible attitude; the drink was telling strong on her. The jury saw certain things too. After being out a few minutes, a not guilty verdict was returned in my favor on her counter charge against me, and she was ordered to pay the costs.
I never thought that woman, who had made such a show of having more money than brains, would be embarrassed by a court, but such was the case. I don not know how they arrived at the verdict, but I do know from the lies she told that she would have won if it were not the sweet faces of my little children.
My attorney told me to go home, leave the children there, and return for my witness fees, which I sorely needed. I had neither coal nor food in the house, and the rent was coming due again. We were renting from Black & Gloniger. They were very exacting, demanding rent in advance, especially with a widow woman like my mother.
And then that woman attacked me again! I was returning through the big door of the courtroom at about two o’clock in the afternoon when I encountered my husband coming out with his face as white as snow. He seemed like another man. He stopped, as if he would speak, then he hurried out of sight. My knees knocked together but I never turned back. I was going into the sheriff’s office to collect my fees and go right home when I encountered that woman, whom I thought had settled up and gone on her way. She was terribly intoxicated, having gone out with the deputy sheriff for dinner and got the both of them drunk. My husband’s errand was to help her stow the deputy behind a desk to sleep upon their return from their debauch. She was prancing up and down the corridor outside the door when she saw me coming in. I did not see her, so I was unprepared for her second assault on me.
It was terrible what she did. Every tooth in my head seemed to be loosened up by her blows. I was bruised and battered in less time than it takes to tell. She was taken off me forcibly, and I was rushed onto the elevator to go right back to the courtroom. The same men were on the bench; I wanted them to see and be convinced this was a bad case. My attorney heard me coming. He hardly knew who I was; my face was swelling rapidly and turning black and blue. The judges were thunderstruck with the evidence before their eyes. They told me to go straight away to bring an information against her, this time for assault and battery with intent to kill. This time she was in for it.
The papers were full of the fight. My husband ran away and hid for six weeks, more from shame than from fear, during which time I nearly died from poverty, misery and disgrace. That beastly woman was intoxicated all the while. Mrs. Wadsworth finally got frightened and put her out of the boarding house. My own mother-in-law took her in! Oh, the shame of it!
I was at my wits end to know what to do in justice to all concerned. I was willing to let her go and give my husband yet another chance for my children’s sake. I got busy with the pen and wrote to John C. Kelly, her supposed husband. I asked him if she had any claim on him, and to come and take her away. He wrote back, saying she was nothing but a harlot and that nothing could be done by him. He did cut off her remittances right away. My life then was even more in danger from that brutish woman.
The new case was pending in court. The Grand Jury had again found a true bill, and we were waiting, waiting, waiting. I was determined to bring my husband to his senses. I went to Alderman Anderson on Eighth Street and swore out a warrant for non-support because my attorney had told me if I went into court without trying to bind him, my case would be weakened, and the judge and jury would think I was trying to shield my husband.
Mind you that Sarah Walters herself struggled with whether or not she should derange the natural order of her book and rearrange the sequence of events as modern writers were wont to do to grab attention, but she put first things first, unaware, a century ago, that Kindle Direct Publishing would do just that, automatically, and that her great grandson would beg to differ, although he himself did just that when editing and abridging the manuscript simply to preserve the integrity of the narrative.
Chapter 02 - Putting First Things First
An author is always puzzled where to begin when she has a story to tell, and I am all the more puzzled because this is my first book. You have a whole corps of people to introduce whom readers do not know. One thing so presupposes another that, whichever way the reader turns, the figures in the patchwork still seem ill arranged.
“Pray, who were all these people?” you will ask. The intermixture of the Campbell and Walters and McLafferty clans of yore adds to the confusion. The reader feels overly taxed trying to distinguish the Scotch from the Irish and the English by the same names appearing on all sides of our extended families. Yet we are one people withal, and, therefore, as I have often said, we are of one church, for we all have our origin in God. Still we battle with one another, and no evil without good is found on any side.
My late husband Edwin Walters was in part a member of the House of Campbell of Scotch-English history, one of his ancestors being Edwin Colin Campbell. Our surname, “Walters”, as we know, means “son of Walter the Great,” a branch that so happens to include the Dr. Walters who examined and dressed Mary Queen of Scots after she said her prayers and was beheaded. In all, I found such a mixture of good and bad in connection with my husband's family that I could never quite fathom the depth to which I was dragged nor the height to which I was raised.
New Castle in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, was an industrial nexus, the American home to my clan as well as the Walters clan. Mother was a Walters before she married a McLafferty, and then I married a Walters. My side hailed from Ohio, my husband's directly from Bilston, Staffordshire, England. His mother's name was, like mine, from the Bible and very popular among our people, namely, Sarah.
My sister Annie and I were brought from Ohio to Pennsylvania, she in 1870, and I in 1872, where God blessed me with my sister Mattie. My grandfather, the elder Hugh McLafferty, a descendant of the earliest English-Irish settlers, was murdered for the payroll he was taking to laborers who were towing timber downriver to planing mills. His body was hidden somewhere along the Allegheny River, a headstream of the Ohio River.
My father, the younger Hugh McLafferty, died of typhoid fever in 1880 when I was a little girl, He was a mill worker, very poor, and a very good man who taught me well. He caught me in a lie after I spilled his lunch on the ground one day, picked it up and put it back in the bucket, just like I had seen Mother do, and took it to him where he was working. He must have been watching. I lied and made all sorts of excuses. He taught me then and there that it is best to always be truthful. He also taught me never to be lazy.
Mother told us tales of her girlhood out in Ohio during war and famine, how the wild hogs once chased her, trampled and ate everything in the garden. But the best story she told was how the bull chased her first beau and lifted him clean over the fence.
"What impressed us the most," she said, "was the danger at hand from the Indians. They would watch and wait until the men had all gone, then terrify and outrage the women, sometimes burn their houses down."
"I was scared to death," my father said, "and dared not make a sound as I listened to the Indians gabbling. I watched them pass after I climbed into the branches of a big tree in the forest."
Father called Mother to his side just before he lapsed into unconsciousness for the last time. He asked her never to give any……
June 2, 2022
Hello David, Thanks for taking time to share your thoughts about the look inside feature. I’m sorry to hear you’re dissatisfied with the limitational control of use thereof. We value your input and we use suggestions like yours as we plan further improvements. Feedback like yours helps us continue to improve our author and publisher experience. I’m sorry, currently we can’t select specific pages to show within Look Inside. But we can adjust the percentage shown. Would you like to do that? Your feedback helps us improve our service. Nadia, Kindle Direct Publishing
June 3, 2022
Dear KDP, Thanks for your expected response to my suggestion, which I supposed, rightly or wrongly, would be of benefit to everyone concerned I am not so much "dissatisfied" as interested in an easily made improvement that would assist "self-publishers" become real publishers. It will be helpful to know the reason why the platform administration/owner is unwilling to allow the so-called publishers to simply select which chapters they want their potential customers to see instead of the currently automatic top-down display of content, which causes KDP content providers to write for or game the Machine and become sort of cogs therein instead of choose the most advantageous display of their books. That often happens to work out well, but many times not. Readers do not sit down and read the first 10% of a book to make a decision to buy it. Ordinarily they delve at a random into it or what seems to be an interesting part, and read very little of it, and if they buy it and take it home there is no refund. I'm sure there must be a reason that would help everyone concerned understand why KDP does not want to provide this significant although small advantage to its content providers aka self-publishers, who have, after all, taken almost all the traditional burden of publishing off the real publisher. Best Regards, David
June 4, 2022
Please restore Look Inside to what it was. I am using the link to the book to demonstrate the difference between my recommendation to the existing Look Inside program.
June 8, 2022
On the advice of KDP Customer Service, I have mailed my suggestion for a minor but significant improvement of the Look Inside feature to the Marketing Department in Seattle. I also included my recommendation that Amazon provide the traffic counts on books even if the content providers do not pay for advertising as is required now to see that data.
XXX
FROM FEB 22, 2013 PUBLIC KDP COMMUNITY THREAD
The comments below are from individuals interested in the subject. As can be seen, not many were interested. As disclose above by KDP Customer Service, the Look Inside Feature is automatically set at 10% and can be changed upon request to between 5% and 45% for e-books and between 10% and 80% for paperbacks. The Community blog is owned, operated, and monitored by KDP. It has been my experience that the commentators, many of whom remain anonymous, like members of crowds everywhere, tend to hew to a common line dominated by a few persons. Authors who would vary from it or improve on it are viewed negatively. For example, my suggestion that "self-publishers" have more control over the Look Inside feature gave an insider in the business an occasion to call me a whiner and my effort a "bitchfit" that served only to demean me, to which I responded:
"Not whining at all, just making a suggestion for a minor improvement, and, one of my favorite sociological subjects is the mechanization of human beings. I find it amusing that hackneyed phrases have been automated in Amazon word processing to respond to suggestions, as if Amazon was being attacked by customer complaints, without realizing that behind every complaint is a positive ideal whether right or wrong. The Jesuits began an automated process that eventually turned into a book of standard business letters that would address any subject, a handy thing for clerics and secretaries. Now I have been kindly referred to people in Seattle who have some discretionary latitude and time to think. And I'm sure they have a circular file. If that's the end of it, fine, I don't mind, even if it were my epitaph as a "whiner" and "bitcher.," and I don't mind you saying so, and I naturally considered it more or less an industrial echo."
Jennifer DeRosa-134668
Can I remove the "look inside" option?
Does anyone know how to remove the "look inside" option on my Kindle version? I've tried customer support at amazon and create space in addition to kindle- I've gotten nowhere.
Daylon-148947
An author out of Dallas writing about whatever my deranged mind can muster.
I don't believe that you can remove that. There is a separate "look inside" thing that gives a greater look inside you can opt out of I believe, but if you mean the basic Look Inside, then I don't believe you can opt out of it.
cdalebrittain ( Top Contributor )
Fantasy writer and professor of medieval history. My Guide to Knowing Your Self Publishing, reports, payments, book reviews, & pirates, ASIN B089RTXH1V
No, you can't remove "Look Inside." Amazon considers it a help to the customers, who after all are the ones paying money. But why would you want to remove it? It's about 10% of the book, enough to give a customer a nice taste. Assuming it's interesting and well written, it will make the potential buyer more likely to actually buy. It's no different from a physical book, where the customer will stand at the shelf leafing through a book before deciding to go ahead and buy it.
Jessican-136676
Mother of four and wife to one. I love pushing the envelope and making people squirm. I am an author for YA, I want to inspire and challenge the young and impressionable. Watch out.
The look inside sells it if it’s good. I always download that look inside first! Keep it, it will help you sell. Not that you had a choice, but still….
2davidvandyke
http://www.amazon.com/David-VanDyke/e/B008EZHPC4/
If you really want to not give anyone a look - and I think you will lose sales by doing this - just put a bunch of junk or blank pages in front, up to 10%, and they will see whole lot of nothing. No idea why you would want to, but... Personally I would like to see us able to set the exact percentage up to, say 25%, so that we can more easily show exactly what we want them to see with cliffhanger or whatever.
Jessican-136676
I've been to writing seminars and they can’t stress enough how important the first chapter is. so, if it is an excellent chapter and the reader loves it then they will buy it.
cycyycy
A self-defeating and ridiculous notion to consider altogether. Why in the world would anyone want to disable one of the most valuable and proven tools that an author has? Absurd, and makes zero sense.
Clemlaw
Just put a bunch of junk or blank pages in front. As others have said, I don't think it's a good idea, because that's what sells the book. But if you reveal the secret of the universe 9% of the way into the book or something, this is how you avoid doing so. But I don't think that you can do it with blank pages. I'm pretty sure that the 10% figure is 10% of the actual text. So to move the secret of the universe to the 11% point, you'll need to add text, such as the table of contents, dedication, preface, introduction, etc., etc.
notjohn
I'm pretty sure that the 10% figure is 10% of the actual text.
That's correct.
This thread was blocked by the original post author or due to lack of activity, so no more replies can be added
But interesting to watch your discourse with Amazon. And certainly an interesting way to promote your really interesting story that was long forgotten.
Ron