Amazon has just launched a new notification system for non-fiction titles in select markets. It is called “Great on Kindle.” This program has a few compelling aspects; the Kindle books with this notification are cheaper than the print edition. The average non-fiction title often has many images midway through a book, and Amazon is selling the fact that all of them are high-quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look. They also promote Wikipedia integration, but almost all Kindle books have this. Great on Kindle is hard to miss; it is positioned right under the book formats, such as Kindle, hardcover, paperback, audiobook and CD. Amazon has also launched a Great on Kindle landing page, which lists all of the ebooks.
Great on Kindle provides a ton of value to consumers, the ones that are buying the Kindle edition. The notification is only part of the story; it is what authors must do to enroll in the program. That is one of the most defining features.
Quality matters for authors to be included and get the notification badge on the book description page. There must be no blurry images; all images must have high resolution and the correct tags. A book must have no metadata errors, such as a proper table of contents. Spelling, grammatical errors and other formatting issues must be addressed; if a book even has one reported mistake, it automatically gets kicked out of the Great on Kindle.
A book must have all of the Amazon extras turned on, such as Enhanced Typesetting, a series of typographical and layout features that provide benefits such as faster reading with less eye strain, a beautiful page layout, and large fonts. Please take a look at the benefits of Enhanced Typesetting. X-Ray must also be turned on and enabled. X-Ray is a Kindle ebook feature that allows readers to learn more about a topic, event, place, or any other term by pressing and holding on to the word or phrase that interests them. Nonfiction readers love X-Ray to get answers to their questions—all without leaving the book. Finally, an author who wants to enroll their book must have an author page; the book must have proper keywords and genres selected.
To qualify for Great on Kindle, authors have to do the following;
- Written in English or French language
- Selected to participate
- Available for sale on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com.au, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.in, or Amazon.fr
- Submitted in one of these file types: DOC/DOCX, MOBI, EPUB, or ZIP
- Have no open recommendations or issues on the Quality Notifications Dashboard
- Must be priced lower than the print counterpart
The only uncertain thing about Great on Kindle is, say, an author does everything outlined above, there is no automatic approval system, but Amazon does not go into any details on how a book gets approved, but that’s by design. Great on Kindle is new and denotes quality; a book is of a certain level, and there is nothing wrong with the digital edition. If Amazon gave away all of the secret sauce, there would be an inundation of indie authors or book spammers trying to get badges on their books to sell more copies. However, most book spammers only do a Kindle edition, whereas to get featured on Great on Kindle, you have to have hardcover and paperback options too, and most of them need more time to do so.
I don’t know how recent Great on Kindle is, but nobody else online even mentioned it, so it must be really new. Amazon hasn’t even talked about it on their blog yet, or issued a press release.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.