I raised the issue with Amazon about being able to track your royalty figures as an independent author shortly after publishing with them. I was trying to find my way around the account that you are issued with on signing up with them. You only have the dashboard in that account and the figures issued there are generated by Amazon for Amazon. How can an independent author actually verify the amount of times that their book has been purchased for Kindle downloads or distributed(as a print on demand book?)
There is no third party verification that the amount of books sold, downloaded or distributed is accurate. This is even more the case if you use an Amazon generated ISBN number for a printed book. An ISBN number is a unique number issued for each book printed and when you publish on Amazon you are given the option of using one of their ISBN numbers for free. This gives Amazon publishing rights as they own the ISBN number for your book, but they do not own the contents though.
However Amazon also gives you the option of supplying your own ISBN number. Nielsen is one of the UK providers for ISBNs. The prices start at £99 for one number issued by them, including VAT ( You can purchase ISBN numbers in batches of 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 the prices rise accordingly and are listed on the Nielsen website.)
An ISBN number enables the tracking, sales and distribution of a book. One title has a unique ISBN number issued to it, ( a certain number of copies have to be held by law in UK libraries once a book has been issued with an ISBN number). So if I self publish another print book on the internet I will be providing my own ISBN number to see if I can actually independently track sales and distribution of it rather than relying on a huge company to supply that information.
So all I all Amazon self publishing is easy and quick to use but I haven't personally found it particularly profitable. That might just be my experience and others may do so. I also wonder if self publishing or vanity publishing as it is known is off putting to people.
Is a self published book considered to be of less worth than one that has been picked up by a reputable publisher and printed by that merit?
Is self publishing on the internet actually just flooding the market with sub standard work because there are no editors involved in the process? Or is it giving people a voice? Or is it actually a way for the Big Boys to get their hands on masses of original work for nothing and make a profit from it? Or all of the above?
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