Not to my publishing schedule but to how I’ve been doing things here on the blog. Specifically, on how I’ve been posting blurbs from the Honor & Duty series in preparation to posting a couple of weeks of blurbs of Victory from Ashes pre-release in September. The problem–or potential problem–is Amazon has started challenging rights if snippets appear elsewhere prior to publication. For the most part, when I’ve seen this, it has been in connection with books listed as Amazon exclusives. But, this being Amazon, I need to be careful and do my due diligence.
That said, tomorrow will have the already scheduled snippet from Risen from Ashes.
So now I’m digging through the Amazon KDP terms of service to make sure I am in compliance before posting any snippets of something I have set for publication. (That doesn’t include Russian Nights because I’m not sure when/if it will go live. So those snippets will continue.)
For now, what I see in the ToS is that they can demand confirmation of rights at any time and for whatever reason and the onus is on the author to provide enough information to satisfy their concerns.
I can see why the platform might have concerns about off-site snippets from titles published through KDP Select/KU. Those titles are supposed to be exclusive. At one point, they did allow up to 20% of the book to appear elsewhere for promotional purposes. I don’t know if that is still the rule.
Nor do I know if their automated crawlers are tagging non-KU books for violation of the exclusivity rule. So discretion is the better part of valor right now. Hopefully, before next Tuesday I’ll have an answer. If not, I’ll let you know ahead of time and figure something else out.
For now, this is simply a head’s up, something might change from what was announced sort of post. Fingers crossed, this is just me being overly cautious.
Until later.
