This past month I had the privilege of interviewing T.L. Zalecki, who is one of the first speculative fiction writers to be published by Kindle Press via its Kindle Scout program. She was selected by them while the program was still in beta. For new authors who like the short turnaround times and direct access to sales data of indie publishing, but who also want some of the marketing power and editorial support of a publisher, this is a program to consider.
The basics are:
- Your book must be already written.
- You post it on Kindle Scout’s page and readers can preview a sample of it. If they like what they see, they nominate it. They can have 3 nominations at any given time and your book is open for nominations for 30 days.
- Nominations help Amazon decide which books to look at more closely (but are not definitive. It’s still an editor who makes the final call.)
- Within 15 days of the end of your nomination phase, Amazon will decide whether or not to offer you a publishing contract.
- Once they publish the book, everyone who nominated it gets a free ebook of it.
If they offer you a contract, you sign over your ebook rights to them in exchange for an advance. If you go this route, your ebook will be exclusive to Amazon for the duration of the contract. You retain your print rights, however, and can either exercise them or sell them to a print publisher.
Take a look at what T.L. Zalecki has to say about the program, though. My interview with her is 40 minutes long. As with all the interviews I do and put up on YouTube, there are timestamp links in the description, so you can skim these, pinpoint which parts of the interview interest you, click the link, and you’ll jump to that point in the interview.
Click here to see the interview.
Oh, and I’m near the end of her first book Rising Tide. It’s a good read, and a relatively clean one. The main character does have a boyfriend who stays the night, but there are no graphic or gratuitous scenes on this score. Another thing that impressed me about her world building was that, although religion has been co-opted for evil purposes, it is quite clear that this is because an evil corporation has taken control. Religion itself is portrayed as a force for good.
When I conducted the interview, nominations for the second novel in the series were open. She has since received a publishing contract for that one as well, so keep an eye out for it!
And head on over to Kindle Scout to see what’s on offer. Pick a few winners, and you get some free books!
Great interview. It’s good to know about the increasing variety of publishing options that are out there.
One question I had was whether posting through the Kindle Scout program would constitute first publication in a way that would make traditional publishers refuse to look at a book, even if Kindle didn’t pick it up for publishing. Any insight on that?
First off, no, because people can only see a sample. Second off, that’s a pretty outdated worry these days. The real issue nowadays isn’t whether or not the book has been published, but rather whether or not the book will sell. The risk you run publishing it yourself is establishing a poor sales record for it.