# Amazon going after short shorts



## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find anything about it with the search function, so here it is.

Today I received an e-mail from Amazon about one of my short stories (the shortest one I have ever written). The email was as follows:

_Hello,

During a quality assurance review of your KDP catalog we have found that the following book(s) are extremely short and may create a poor reading experience and do not meet our content quality expectations:

Name of Short

In the best interest of Kindle customers, we remove titles from sale that may create a poor customer experience. Content that is less than 2,500 words is often disappointing to our customers and does not provide an enjoyable reading experience.

We ask that you fix the above book(s), as well as all of your catalog's affected books, with additional content that is both unique and related to your book. Once you have ensured your book(s) would create a good customer experience, re-submit them for publishing within 5 business days. If your books have not been corrected by that time, they will be removed from sale in the Kindle Store. If the updates require more time, please unpublish your books._

The short in question is a charity piece that I don't get many sales on, so I just unpublished it. It's free on all of the other retailers anyway. I typically try not to write anything under 3k.

Anyway, just thought I'd let you guys know, for those who write shorts and didn't know.


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## TexasGirl (Dec 21, 2011)

Holy moly!

I don't have anything that short, but still. When did they make THAT decision? A lot of erotica will be affected.


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## Kwalker (Aug 23, 2012)

Wow. That is unexpected.  I can't imagine that many people could get additional content both written and edited by an editor within 5 days, so I imagine most people that get that notice would have to unpublish.

I do kind of like that they are trying to put more emphasis on quality standards. That can only be good for all of us who strive to put out quality material.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

I don't write anything under 10K but I can see a lot of other writers being affected by this.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

TexasGirl said:


> A lot of erotica will be affected.


My thoughts exactly.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

I wonder if this is triggered by autobots going after people publishing PLR articles?

It's worth knowing that they are cracking down on shorter works though, so thank you for sharing.  I don't have anything that length at the moment, but it's something I might have considered in the future if I was trying to make something permafree as a lead-in to a series.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

Oh wow!

My shortest work on Amazon is about 7000 words. I'd been toying with the idea of making it perma-free, and now I think I better do so!


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

Amanda Brice said:


> Oh wow!
> 
> My shortest work on Amazon is about 7000 words. I'd been toying with the idea of making it perma-free, and now I think I better do so!


I certainly hope they don't raise the bar that high. If they started going after anything under 7k, about 1/3rd of my catalog would have to be re-written. Not a pleasant thought.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Ah, first they take the porn out of the search results, now they're going after the shorts.
There goes my brand new smut-writing career I was moving into!


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## Nessa Quill (Jul 16, 2011)

TexasGirl said:


> A lot of erotica will be affected.


If that's true, then those 2,500 words eroticas are nothing but one long sex scene. This might be the "porn" Amazon is supposedly cracking the whip at.


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## markobeezy (Jan 30, 2012)

Readers know what they're buying, right? Can't they just look at the estimated page count and make an informed decision from there? I understand what Amazon is doing, but some stories are complete and cohesive with under 2500 words.


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## Hilary Thomson (Nov 20, 2011)

A solution is to bundle your shorts as a two-pack minimum.


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## Guest (Apr 24, 2013)

TexasGirl said:


> A lot of erotica will be affected.


This is a good thing! Maybe we can unclutter the marketplace a bit and get rid of all those 2,000 word "books" that people spit out in 15 minutes!


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

Thanks for the info.  I just checked the short story I have up but it's over 4000 words.  I have been thinking of pulling it anyway but would rather make that decision myself rather than have it made for me.


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

I can normally justify Amazon's moves...I might not like them, but I can at least see their side of it.
This one puzzles me. I can think of many examples where shorts are worthy...poems...articles...in-depth product reviews...short stories.

The cutoff is a mystery as well. I wonder who picked that number.


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## AnitaDobs (Sep 18, 2012)

WynwoodPublishing said:


> This is a good thing! Maybe we can unclutter the marketplace a bit and get rid of all those 2,000 word "books" that people spit out in 15 minutes!


2,000 words in 15 minutes? Impressive.

I wish I had your pen.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

FWIW the general rule of thumb on erotica shorts has been 3k+


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

I have one that is very short, around those guidelines. It's step-by-step instructions for accomplishing one very specific end result. If they remove it, oh well. I won't fluff that one up. *shrug*


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

Well, there goes THAT pen name. Uh, I mean, how peculiar.


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## Catana (Mar 27, 2012)

markobeezy said:


> Readers know what they're buying, right? Can't they just look at the estimated page count and make an informed decision from there? I understand what Amazon is doing, but some stories are complete and cohesive with under 2500 words.


Length isn't necessarily a measure of quality, but no, readers don't always know what they're buying. I've clicked on many titles that don't show any page count. Many readers don't understand file size and it's unhelpful anyway, because there's no way to tell how much is taken up by front matter or text that isn't part of the story. If there's no page count and the writer hasn't mentioned in the blurb that it's a short short, then readers have a right to be majorly pissed off.

I've seen too much stuff on Smashwords that doesn't qualify in any way as a book -- a single poem, a short essay, etc. Unless Amazon goes too far, some kind of cutoff is a good thing.


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

My short-shorts are bundled in collections. But with standalones, my bestseller ever is about 7800 words long, and I have quite a few others under 10K words. I don't mind a cutoff, but for selfish reasons, I hope they don't raise it any higher.


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## KaryE (May 12, 2012)

Hmm, bummer. 

I have a 99-cent, 2,000 word short short (spec fic). Reviews are good, and the only negative one was a content squick, not an objection to length.

Pooh.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

I have a fantasy short story of 2300 words that's a complete story. I'll be rather annoyed if I get a letter on that.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_A Clean Well Lighted Place_ has 1,140 words.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

markobeezy said:


> Readers know what they're buying, right? Can't they just look at the estimated page count and make an informed decision from there?


There's a vast number of ebook shoppers who either don't realize Amazon lists the page count or don't think to check it. I know because they tell me about it in their reviews.  I assume Amazon's new move comes because they're getting a lot of length complaints. To a certain extent I do think it makes sense to have a length requirement to publish via KDP. I'm just not sure what that requirement should be.


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## The world would be prettier with more zebra strip (Apr 20, 2011)

Ouch. So much for my children's books.  Guess I better get them to Draft2digital so they are somewhere.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

That's a good point.  Surely they can't be including children's picture books in that minimum?  It may even be only books in certain genres.

Hopefully they'll update the guidelines/terms and conditions to reflect what they're looking for.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Hey, what's wrong with my short shorts?










But seriously, the problem doesn't seems to be short books, but instead people not getting what they expected. Why not let the authors enter the page count (not including supplemental material) and display that number prominently on the book's page?

Some people would never pay even .99 for a 2k story, while others have no problem with it.

Personally, my shortest are around 5k, and I only charge .99 for them. I've been tossing around the idea of writing a series of 1k shorts, and then packaging them into a collection.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I have two shorts which are 2400 words long (minus backmatter, which should push it over the limit). I don't publish shorts under 2000 words as standalones anyway, so I guess I'll have to up that limit to 2500 words. 

I'm still not happy with this. E-books are ideal for selling standalone shorts and most short story writers clearly label their short stories as such.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

WynwoodPublishing said:


> This is a good thing! Maybe we can unclutter the marketplace a bit and get rid of all those 2,000 word "books" that people spit out in 15 minutes!


I guess that's what happens when people read those 'Get Rich by Selling Ebooks' books that are out there.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Was there really ever a time before digital publishing where people were expected to pay for a single, solitary 2k page story? Wasn't that what anthologies and compilation magazines were for?

No offense to anyone that actually uses this model, but it surprises me to find out that stories _that_ short were being sold standalone.


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## Hilary Thomson (Nov 20, 2011)

I've noticed that Amazon sometimes lists a new work's size in terms of kilobites, not page count.  This gets turned into a page count after the work's been listed on Amazon after a certain length of time.  That's Amazon's fault and no one else's.  Amazon could fix that coding problem easily enough if they wanted to.  I suspect the Zon likes having a difficult-to-understand length listing while the books is on the 30- and 90-day New Release lists.  That way Amazon makes more sales.  I suspect the conversion only appears after the title drops off those lists.


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

If people can't find the erotica titles they're looking for on Amazon they'll go elsewhere. So Amazon can continue to shoot itself in the foot.

That being said, I do think it should be a requirement that authors list the word count on their books, and there should be something that translates that into book pages at publication, *not* a few weeks later. I put my word count on everything I publish that's under 70k. I prefer people to know what they're buying, in order to minimise the returns.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

I always list word count in the description, this doesn't seem to phase people though. I've seen plenty of other authors who've had complaints about the length despite saying "this is a 3000 word short."


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## JTCochrane (Feb 6, 2012)

WidowD said:


> This might be the "porn" Amazon is supposedly cracking the whip at.


Nice play on words


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

It's difficult for me to find the length of things, and I'm more in-the-know than typical non-author consumers. New releases often won't have the estimated page count on the page at all.

If Amazon did something very bold to help show length, it would make readers very happy. If they standardized that all books had flat covers (there go our boxed sets), they could render a 3-D image with the cover complete with relative depth. Then shopping online would be more like shopping in a book store, in that you could see at a glance if something's a George RR Martin-sized book or a Ray Bradbury novella.

I'd happily opt into something like this, because I have everything from shorts to novels, and I try to make people aware of the length in my descriptions (word count and page count), but sometimes people miss that and get disappointed.

Of course, providing consumers with more information is not necessarily in the interest of business. Try to compare mattresses between two stores or manufacturers. Bigger businesses tend to do what works, not what we think would be nice for sellers or buyers like us.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Way back in the 1970s I co-authored a book "Write from the beginning - all you need to know about writing the short story" and we defined a short story: "Short stories may be up to 5000 words long, although they are rarely longer than 3000 words, and in fact many editors prefer stories from 1500-2000 words". This was when most magazines featured a short story. I see that they are now termed 'shorts'. My short stories are all around 1800 words, but I compiled 17 of them into one book and have priced it at 99c. 

I hope short stories come back into fashion as readers now seem to prefer something to 'get their teeth into' rather than nibbling at short stories. I thought e-readers would be ideal for short stories as people can read them while waiting in queues or on public transport etc.


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## Carry Lada (Oct 30, 2012)

swolf said:


> Hey, what's wrong with my short shorts?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Nice backpack


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## George Applegate (Jan 23, 2013)

Perhaps we need a KB thread for authors of short works who want to combine with others into anthologies.


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

> Perhaps we need a KB thread for authors of short works who want to combine with others into anthologies.


Easier said than done. There are tax issues and the problem of who collects the royalties and distributes them. I think I'd rather stick with creating my own collections, for the most part.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

George Applegate said:


> Perhaps we need a KB thread for authors of short works who want to combine with others into anthologies.


I'm in a few erotica anthologies, and it worked out well, but only because our goal was to make the books free. Until they went free, the organizer just split the money up and sent us Amazon gift cards periodically.

But if you're doing it for royalties, the money could turn into a headache. Whoever gets paid is going to have to send all that money out, and do the tax forms and other paperwork.

I wish the book sellers had a way to enter multiple book publishers, so that the royalties were split up before they were handed out. It would make anthologies so much easier.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Carry Lada said:


> Nice backpack


 

Thanks. I work out.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

With two exceptions, all of my books are 10k+. One runs ~3600 words; not really worried about that one. The one that worries me (and this goes to the comment above regarding children's picture books), is my 99-cent 557-word pastiche of "Go the F**k to Sleep." It's actually a pretty regular seller, and nobody has complained to me about the length (although I do get the occasional return). Maybe once I illustrate it, it'll be safe.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

I write flash fiction (under 1k), but I combine them into short story anthologies so the reader is getting between 8K- 10k. I also define what flash fiction is in my description, so they know what they're getting.


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## dkgould (Feb 18, 2013)

My question is, if Amazon is really trying to make its customers happy and not "disappoint" them as to length, why don't they break up the novels from the shorts and let customers browse that way?  I like to read both, and I do pay attention to word/page count.  And disappointment doesn't always go one way, sometimes a book is too long for the time I want to devote to it.  Sometimes, I really want to read a short story.  Sometimes I'd rather get into a novella.  And sometimes I want to lounge for hours with a novel.  But you can't browse that way - at least, not that I can find.  If I could go to the "short" section or the "novella" section and know that's what I was actually going to find there when I browsed, I would be a much happier reader.  There's obviously a market for all sorts of lengths.  The problem doesn't seem to me (as a reader anyway) to be with the content, but how the content is sorted and displayed when you are shopping.  It just seems like Amazon is cutting off their nose rather than write some more code that could potentially make EVERYONE more money and garner less complaining.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

dkgould said:


> The problem doesn't seem to me (as a reader anyway) to be with the content, but how the content is sorted and displayed when you are shopping.


Good point. It might be interesting to see Amazon sort ebooks into shorts, novellas, novels, etc categories.


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## Sam Kates (Aug 28, 2012)

I suspect that I might be a lone, dissenting voice here, but I think this is a good thing. 

What's the biggest problem trying to get noticed in the saturated market of Amazon? Isn't it the sheer volume of new titles flooding the marketplace every day? Amazon has to do something to stem the tide and this is a start. 

I've seen people advocating some sort of quality control, but how the heck would that work? It's far too subjective. This will at least prevent people from publishing their shopping lists (I know, I know, you could have a 3,000-word shopping list or publish an anthology of 'My collected visits to Tesco/Walmart'). 

Okay, 2,500 words might be arbitrary, it might catch out some genuinely good work and good authors (who'll easily find a way around it), but it will also weed out a lot of dross. Isn't that to the good?


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## Nigel Mitchell (Jan 21, 2013)

I think this is a good move. There needs to be some sort of standard for how long ebooks should be, because it's not like a physical book where you can look and see how long it is. There are other ways of telling like the estimated page count (which doesn't always appear), authors putting the page count in the description (not all of them do), and guessing from the file size or sample (which is very inexact), readers shouldn't have to wonder if the 99-cents they shelled out is going to get them a half-hour's reading time or five minutes. As well intentioned as most authors are, and as much as we'd love to say that all the short-shorts are perfect at their given length, enough readers must have complained for Amazon to take this step.

I do think children's books should have an exception, because some of the greatest are very short. Dr. Seuss would get kicked out. Likewise photography books.


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## Nessa Quill (Jul 16, 2011)

JTCochrane said:


> Nice play on words


Thanks!


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

If the cover is included in the file, it's hard for Amazon or anyone else to get a word count from file size. If I was at Amazon and someone suggested authors input word count, I'd ask how we could check to see if they were fibbing. Putting bonus material at the end of the file also confuses the issue. So I don't know how Amazon could get a good word count. Anyone smarter than I am?


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

Several of my non-fiction are under 2500 words, but they are clearly labelled as 'essay length'. They do tend to attract more one-star reviews than others, almost exclusively from people who thought they were too short. 

The main selling point of many of my short non-fiction is that it is concise and it would be a pain the backside if Amazon enforces an over 2500 words policy. Especially since those who have complained would have complained if the essay had been over 2500 words. They would probably have complained if it had been upto 10,00 words. They were looking for complete books and would probably not have been satisfied with anything less.


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## ChadMck (Feb 25, 2011)

I'm sorry if I missed a post but did Amazon come out and specifically state they were implementing a 2,500 word threshold? 

Not sure if Amazon is making a clear statement or if we're just making assumption. I know some honest people will get hit, but I think it's Amazon cleaning house on a few bad apples trying to make a quick buck.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Tangential, but... paper book thickness? Has little to do with word count.  I've seen books that were 70k words take up 400-500 pages (the publisher wanted the hard covers to look the same even if some books were shorter) and books that were 200,000 words take up only 600 pages (very thin pages, tiny font) because the publisher wanted the mmp to not be too thick since they couldn't justify increasing the costs any further.  It all depends on layout.  So you might think the 300 page novel you picked up is X amount of words, but really, without counting, there is no way to know. Look at James Patterson. His thrillers sell like crazy and pretty much none of them is over 80k words. Yet they are just as thick on the shelves as any other mega selling paperback or hardcover other than a few outliers like the stuff King writes, etc.  Page counts are about packaging and marketing.

As for Amazon sending out these notes, it is interesting. I hope they will officially change the policy if they are going to do this, however. Letting people upload something and then telling them later they broke some unwritten rule doesn't seem very fair to me and it seems like it will just create more work for them.


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## writer_of_pulp (Apr 22, 2013)

This does seem to be targeting erotica and maybe short 'how-to' guides. I can't imagine the authors of children's books or essays or poetry collections getting this email.

Maybe Amazon will update their TOS to clarify this issue. (Unless it's currently in there and I've missed it. I'll have to give it another once over.)

Sorry that you had to go through this Marla.


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## Hilary Thomson (Nov 20, 2011)

This would not be much of a problem if you could search Amazon's subcategories by story size.  I think I've suggested this to Amazon in the past, but it's been ignored.  In the fanfiction world, searching by story size is a given, because some readers prefer only long (or short) stories, or may randomly be in the mood/have time for reading stories of a particular size.  I've come across readers who want only novels, and others who say they have time/patience only for short stories.  Amazon doesn't do much to help these people find reading to their preference, and is actually ignoring a genuine marketing demand they could make money off of if they'd just add more capability to their search feature.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "As for Amazon sending out these notes, it is interesting. I hope they will officially change the policy if they are going to do this, however. Letting people upload something and then telling them later they broke some unwritten rule doesn't seem very fair to me and it seems like it will just create more work for them."


When something isn't working well, it's reasonable to fix it. It's also reasonable to give people with existing shorts a few months to comply. Official policy doesn't work too well for many things. There are simply too many variables to cover in a guide book. Business people have to act swiftly when it's needed. They can't wait for an official policy to be published.


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## J H Bogran (Jul 19, 2011)

Oh, wow. 

I can't say that I'm surprised. 

My shortest story is about 3,500, but with the added content, it comes up to about 5-6k. And still I've gotten a couple of one-star reviews from readers claiming they loved the plot, story, characters, everything else, but hated the short length.


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

"In the best interest of Kindle customers, we remove titles from sale that may create a poor customer experience."

Oh, the irony. This is the last thing Amazon does from what I can see.

I have a couple under that length, but I think they're bumped up by novel chapters. I guess this means all children's picture books ever will be deleted. Best grab your e-copy of The Hungry Caterpillar while you can ...!


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> Today I received an e-mail from Amazon about one of my short stories (the shortest one I have ever written). The email was as follows:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> ...


I looked at your books and noticed something unusual. None of your books are enrolled in Select. Perhaps you wouldn't have had this problem if the book had been enrolled in Select?


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## ElisaBlaisdell (Jun 3, 2012)

This might be a good moment to share something I  noticed. Recently, a traditional publisher put out a free short story by a fairly big name in the genre, mainly to advertise the novel that's showing up this summer. Forty percent of the 'book' is the short story; sixty percent is a preview of the novel. The short story is somewhere between 5000 and 7000 words, I'd estimate. And, it's good quality. I can easily visualize it being published in one of the big women's magazines, sixty years ago. True, it doesn't have a HEA--not even a HFN. That's hard to do when your two main characters are only about to meet a split second after THE END. You could call it a HOH, hope of happiness, but it's an upbeat and satisfactory story. 

So, traditional publisher, big name author, good story. Right now, its star rating on Amazon is 2.7, with 224 reviews. 44 five star reviews, 75 one star reviews. You can guess why, I think. 

(I hope this doesn't violate WHOA--I think it's valuable data for us.)


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## ElisaBlaisdell (Jun 3, 2012)

C.C. Kelly said:


> I have several short stories under that limit and no emails yet. Setting an arbitrary word count might eliminate some of the noise, but we'd lose a lot of amazing stories as well. Fredric Brown frequently worked in shorter lengths and I'd rather read 2000 of his words (again) over the majority of the NYT bestsellers list.
> 
> There is a demand for individual shorts. And 99 cents for a short story is reasonable. In fact, $2.99 is reasonable for short novellas and novelettes.
> 
> ...


Why and how would we lose the amazing stories? Back into the far reaches of the past, short stories have always been published in collections.


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Barbara Morgenroth (May 14, 2010)

I published 2 photographic essays and they had no words.  I said in the description it was photos only and got a 1 star review saying "I read that there was no text, but I didn't believe it."
I wound up unpublishing all the essays because I really wanted to give them away and of course Amazon doesn't let you price to free.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> The modern day equivalent, for Indies, is the stand alone short story.


I think Amazon is concerned with a modern day equivalent for consumers, not suppliers.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

C.C. Kelly said:


> I believe that "collections" are a rather new invention, relatively speaking and are often reprints. Short stories were published in magazines (not Asimov or Analog, but like Esquire and Saturday Evening Post). Those options don't exist like they once did. *The modern day equivalent, for Indies, is the stand alone short story.*


Wouldn't the modern equivalent be ezines and the publications that are still out there compiling short stories?

I respect the art form, but I question the business model. 2.5k words is five pages. And no matter how good a story is, I can't fault readers for noticing this and wondering why they just paid 99cents for five pages and a five minute read.

I feel that a better model for a short story writer who doesn't want to work with others would be the subscription blog model with compilation releases in ebook form. individual story releases is just playing chicken with the locomotive that is consumer expectation.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Vaalingrade said:


> I feel that a better model for a short story writer who doesn't want to work with others would be the subscription blog model with compilation releases in ebook form. individual story releases is just playing chicken with the locomotive that is consumer expectation.


There are plenty of authors out there making good money selling 5k short stories for .99 or 2.99. Ebooks are the perfect venue for this type of sale, since there's no cost of binding that forces a minimum size.

The only problem we're facing is making sure readers are aware of the size before they buy. There are plenty of readers willing to pay the .99 or 2.99 even knowing it's a short book.


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## MLKatz (Sep 8, 2012)

MegHarris said:


> My short-shorts are bundled in collections. But with standalones, my bestseller ever is about 7800 words long, and I have quite a few others under 10K words. I don't mind a cutoff, but for selfish reasons, I hope they don't raise it any higher.


I wish i had the knack. My novella started out at 25K and I got complaints it was too short. After I lengthened to 40K the complaints stopped. Apparently I don't do concise well.


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## FranceBarnaby (Feb 10, 2013)

Couple this with Amazon's recent changes to their book searches. It feels like they have a team trying different strategies to fix what they view as a porn problem. This is all driven by customer feedback. Customers come first as any good business and writer knows. 

Someone predicted this in an earlier thread. I would expect more quality control measures coming our way.


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

Wow. Look at how much we've changed Amazon in a year or so. Mostly for the worse, it seems.


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "Agreed. But we don't know if this a new policy or not."


I doubt it's new. I suspect it's like lots of things they encounter by hosting a system that is open to just about everything. They can't predict everything they will encounter in advance. Much of it is probably a surprise to them. They seem to be managing by nudging things rather than setting defined rules.

I wouldn't even call it a policy. A policy would define a specific direction, and would give a definitive answer to pertinent questions. But they also stifle unexpected innovation. So in this case I expect people will be complaining because they don't detect a specific and predictable policy rule. One short will get the axe, while another won't.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

MLKatz said:


> I wish i had the knack. My novella started out at 25K and I got complaints it was too short. After I lengthened to 40K the complaints stopped. Apparently I don't do concise well.


Book 2 of my fantasy series is 67k words. I literally just got a review calling it short and 'more of a novella'

Granted, fantasy is the land of billion page doorstoppers, but come on.


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "You may be right. I don't recall hearing anything like this before. I have seen posts here in the past noting odd notifications that no one else seemed to receive (KB folks that is). I guess I'll keep publishing and buying shorts and not worry about it."


In technical economic jargon, they're winging it.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

Vaalingrade said:


> Book 2 of my fantasy series is 67k words. I literally just got a review calling it short and 'more of a novella'
> 
> Granted, fantasy is the land of billion page doorstoppers, but come on.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

justsomewriterwhowrites said:


> I don't like it. I love short stories. I read more than I write and my shortest published story comes in at about 3500. Amazon has a short stories category. Do people use it? I do but I suspect a lot of people don't, preferring instead to try to get their stories into a genre specific category.
> 
> I wish the OP had said if the story in question was categorized in one of the short story categories.


It was categorized as a short story. It also had the word count in the description and that it was a short story. This was not erotica or PLR. The book had 0 returns too, out of the handful of sales it received. I truly believe it was targeted based on word count alone.


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## S. Shine (Jan 14, 2013)

How about an unhappy customer simply returning the ebook if they don't like it, eh? Isn't that what the return within seven day period was meant for?


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## Lady TL Jennings (Dec 8, 2011)

Right... So let me see if I understand Amazon correct: 
Size matters then?

Hm, interesting. In that case:
a) Does that mean that long poems are better than short ones, then? 
b) Or that a seven minute long song is better than a three minutes long song?
c) A large painting is more beautiful than a small one? 
(-Somebody call Paris and tell them to stop exhibit Mona Lisa immediately! 
The painting is too small, no one wants to see it!)

I had no idea, but I am sure Amazon is right, as always.

Since I write Victorian romance and erotica short stories by longhand (which by the way takes forever) I will be hit hard by this.
I know that many of my short stories are short and I think that is pretty clear for the customer: 
A _short_ story should be just that: _Short. _(The name sort of indicates that, yes?)

Most of my readers seems to get that and just to be on the safe side I always state the word count in the description, 
plus that Amazon add the "approximately word count". I really do not think that any returns have anything to do 
with a surprised reader going "Huh? But, dude, it's a short story!" and then return it.

Several of my covers have already been flagged as "Adult" (including the apparently "offensive" cover 
of my latest short story (bottom left in my signature tag, but do not look unless you are +18 years!).

So, yeah. In summary: Well played Amazon. 
Thanks for the dagger in the back and for severely reducing mine and other hard-working authors' sales.

Now excuse me while I scream in frustration and then I will go and make a nice cup of tea and start writing for the day. 
(Hm, I wonder if this is why authors suddenly kill their main character..?)


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Don't forget that readers outside of the US who have to use Amazon.com pay the extra $2 Whispernet charge. I'd be a bit miffed if I had to buy one 1800 word short story for $2.99    (I can buy a three course Sunday roast lunch with a glass of wine for $7.20)


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

i have a short story that is 1,000 words and has 28 reviews. but it's free. i wonder if that makes any difference.  i hope Amazon rethinks this because short stories are gaining popularity, and more people are snacking on them with their smartphones.


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## TexasGirl (Dec 21, 2011)

I actually am beginning to think this was an isolated incident.

I'm on several really big lists with authors all writing very short works, and no one else has ever gotten this. The guess is that it was triggered by a customer who decided to complain to just the right rep. Amazon has a habit of overreacting in cases like that.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

TexasGirl said:


> I actually am beginning to think this was an isolated incident.
> 
> I'm on several really big lists with authors all writing very short works, and no one else has ever gotten this. The guess is that it was triggered by a customer who decided to complain to just the right rep. Amazon has a habit of overreacting in cases like that.


I'm tending to agree. If this was an official policy, you'd think they would mention something when you publish.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

TexasGirl said:


> I actually am beginning to think this was an isolated incident.
> 
> I'm on several really big lists with authors all writing very short works, and no one else has ever gotten this. The guess is that it was triggered by a customer who decided to complain to just the right rep. Amazon has a habit of overreacting in cases like that.


I read an article recently that said all Amazon employees had to spend two days in customer service every two years. Let the good times roll...


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## Thomas Watson (Mar 8, 2012)

TexasGirl said:


> I actually am beginning to think this was an isolated incident.
> 
> I'm on several really big lists with authors all writing very short works, and no one else has ever gotten this. The guess is that it was triggered by a customer who decided to complain to just the right rep. Amazon has a habit of overreacting in cases like that.


Dueling letters... http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2013/04/26/amazon-banning-short-short-fiction-from-the-kindle-store/

A letter is posted making a claim, a letter is posted claiming to debunk that letter, and the bloggers are off to the races. Again. 

I made the mistake of warning some fellow authors that Amazon was coming after their shorts. My apologies to Amazon. From now on, if it doesn't show up in one of their policy updates, far as I'm concerned it didn't happen.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

This was not a single incident, unlike that blog post states. Other authors have gotten the same email recently.

But I am inclined to agree that it was probably just another short Amazon freak out, like the time they were sending emails to authors about duplicate content when people would publish on other sites and weren't enrolled in Select. Or maybe the wind just blew the wrong way that day and they decided it was time to stir the pot again and remind us that they're the law. 

It would be a lot less unsettling if they wouldn't have posted a word count in the email. Whatever the case, it really doesn't matter to me if it's true or not beyond this point, considering that I only have one other short around the 2.5k mark.


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