Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 5, Issue 5 | Page 35

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AMAZON’S KINDLE SCOUT CROWDSOURCED
PUBLISHING PLATFORM
SEPTEMBER 6, 2015. Amazon, the e-commerce giant, has continued to look at ways of
expanding its original, legacy business of selling books even as it expands into new
areas like food delivery.
In the latest development, the company announced that Kindle Scout, the company’s
crowdsourced publishing platform launched in October 2014 in the U.S., is going
global. Amazon says that authors in “Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South
Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, India and more” will now be able to submit books for
voting and potential publication — although Kindle Scout will remain limited to
English-language titles.

DO YOU HAVE A
COMPLETED
MANUSCRIPT AND
COVER?

ONE THAT HAS NEVER
BEEN PUBLISHED
ANYWHERE?

MAYBE IT IS WORTH
SUBMITTING IT TO

KINDLE SCOUT, THE
NEW KINDLE
PLATFORM.
READ THIS ARTICLE TO
FIND OUT MORE.

A word to the wise for those writing in a different language. Many translated books
can be found on the regular Kindle platform. They range from excellent translations
to okay to dismal. However, Kindle Scout will carefully review all submissions to see if
they fit the crowdsourced program, so if you are using a translator, make sure that
they are a “native speaker” of English. Otherwise the faux pas in translation could
result in a rejection.
Kindle Scout lets authors submit never-before-published manuscripts of novels to be
considered for publication. They are posted on a special site and readers can read
excerpts of the books and vote on which ones they would like to see published. A
team of editors at Amazon then has the final say on which ones make it through to
release via Kindle Press, the company’s publishing imprint. The sweetener for readers
to scout out interesting titles is that they get a free copy of the book if it ends up
getting published.
Amazon benefits from the Kindle Scout program on two sides of the equation. (1) It
gets power readers and Amazon users talking about books that they may like to see
published, and (2) it provides feedback for Amazon about what those customers
want to see published. Amazon has been trying to bypass the traditional publishing
industry and the revenue sharing that goes along with it, so this is also a useful way
of sourcing original reading content for Amazon’s Kindle platform.
Dina Hilal, General Manager of Kindle Scout said in their press release, “Expanding
our platform to authors and readers outside the U.S. has &VV