Kindle Scout

Amazon launched Kindle Scout last Tuesday, using a crowdsourcing model to get people excited about a product. (HarperCollins is already doing something similar with Authonomy). With Scout, writers upload their 50,000+ word, never-been-published (including self-published) mystery, sci fi/fantasy, or romance manuscript to the Kindle Scout site, plus a book cover for it.

If you submit, there is no changing your mind. Amazon owns exclusive rights for 45 days, and then digital rights for five years if they offer you a contract. Those books worthy of contracts are discovered through some algorithm between reader votes--readers see your bio, cover, and an excerpt and can vote on whether or not they'd like it published; if a book they vote for is chosen, they receive a free e-copy of it--and the opinions of the Kindle Scout team.

The contract terms are non-negotiable. You also receive no editing or help with your cover; whatever you submit is what Amazon publishes, if your book is chosen (although you have 30 courtesy days after it's chosen to edit on your own if you like).

I am FASCINATED by this model. And repelled by it. Fascinated because it's smart. Kindle Scout is getting readers to wade through their slush pile while simultaneously creating an invested pre-audience for the books they publish. The contract isn't great--an auto-renewing 5-year contract with a $1500 advance which gives you a 50% royalty rate on the ebooks--but it also isn't terrible, particularly for unagented work. You retain print and dramatic rights, and Scout's out-of-print clause is clear:

"If you do not earn at least $25,000 during any 5-year term, you'll have six months after the end of that 5-year period in which you can choose to stop publishing with us and request your rights back." 

Plus, having the Amazon Algorithm marketing on your behalf is a magical thing. I have to believe they're going to pull GoodReads into this somehow to give it even more legs, and they'd be fools to not tie this all in with NaNoWriMo, which begins in two short weeks.

I think I am repelled at the idea of Scout being seen as a publisher (it looks like Amazon is trying to institutionalize the EL James/Amanda Hocking model of success) because they are really just marketing your book (you have to design your own cover, provide your own editing, and possibly provide your own formatting, in addition to publicizing your own Scout campaign). That gives some faint Chitty Chitty Bang Bang child-stealer-feel to this. (How's that for bringing a knife to a pillow fight?) But if I look at Scout not as a publisher but as a marketing tool for self-published books? In that case, it is promising.

Specifically, if I had a professionally-edited but unpublished mystery manuscript sitting on my computer that I was going to self-publish anyway, I'd have a professional design me a cover and submit the package to Kindle Scout. I really would, particularly if it was part of a series and could be used as a loss leader to pick up the pace on the rest of their series. Their contract is not heinous, and I love an adventure. Plus, I have a feeling that the early books marketed through this model are going to do crazy well.

Your thoughts?