Thursday, May 16, 2013

New Adult Category on Amazon - But What About the Indies?


So there's good news and there's bad news.

Amazon has a new category: "New Adult & College Romance."YAY for readers! Now we can find more of the books we're looking for! That's always a good thing, when things are classified well and readers can find them. 

The bad news?

Apparently, it's only for the traditionally published, or for the "uber-super-mega selling" indie authors who clearly have some pull or clout with Amazon.

Folks, something smells bad here...

Maybe I'm just being crazy or paranoid. But so far, on Amazon's KDP platform, there is no way to choose this new category for self-pubbed authors. I looked, I checked, I searched, I hunted. I scoured the category listing in my KDP dashboard. There is no access for indies to this awesome new category. Which makes this "new adult & college romance category" a little bit of a coup for traditional publishing, does it not?

Let's just hope I'm jumping the gun here, and Amazon just hasn't programmed it into their KDP platform... yet. Although to give to traditional publishing with one hand, while withholding from self-publishing with the other, seems quite unfair and a little hypocritical, especially given the fact that most of the names on the New Adult & College Romance bestseller list were once actually self-published...

So what's the deal Amazon? Are you just slow in implementing your new category (that's bad enough, really) or are you going to withhold this indefinitely from indie authors?

Either way, it seems like a little bit of #amazonfail to me. 


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