Author Topic: What can and can't be shared in a KDP account: questions for a publisher  (Read 2703 times)

garygibsonsf

Hi folks. I got chatting with a fellow author and publisher who runs a UK small press and I mentioned my experience with metadata and promoting and advertising my one self-published book on Amazon, which includes reading a veritable truckload of books by Michael Alvear, Brian D. Meeks, David Gaughran etc.

He then asked me to help him out on that front by giving me access to a couple of the books he's published to see if I could help boost their sales and profile. He mostly hand-sells at conventions and events, which is fine, but he's made no serious inroads into online selling beyond putting titles on Kindle through a single user's KDP account. As small presses go, it's definitely on the 'small' side, very much a one-man operation.

He's recently taken on board someone to manage social media and try and promote that way, and that led to me talking to him via email about metadata and so forth, and its greater importance, and that led to his suggestion I get involved.

However, to do so in an effective manner I'd really need access to his KDP account. I know that can't be done, but then it occurred to me that actual publishers--and he surely is one by now--must have some means by which more than one person accesses that company's ebooks on Amazon.

I hardly imagine Penguin or any other major publishers have one bloke sitting in a basement with sole access to their books on Amazon, so there must be a way.

Does anyone have the knowledge or experience to tell me whether or not a sizeable small press can get that kind of account support? Otherwise I'm going to have to put together metadata and email it to him so he can put it into the relevant KDP pages himself.

While that's doable, I'd prefer to find out some way I can access things more directly and alleviate him of the relative burden...IF there's a way to do so.

If not, so it goes.

The other thing I need to do is get him to set up a UK vendor account so he can run ads via Amazon Advertising in the UK. Unfortunately, I've since lost the link to the Word document that detailed how to do that for self-publishers. Does anyone have that link? EDIT: FOUND IT.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2018, 03:30:21 PM by garygibsonsf »
 

She-la-te-da

Re: What can and can't be shared in a KDP account: questions for a publisher
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2018, 11:32:37 PM »
Actual publishing houses would have a different account than us. They don't use KDP. I imagine their accounts are accessed by someone in various departments (accounting, marketing, someone over all of the company).

The only way I know of for you to access this guy's account would be for him to give you the log in information, and I wouldn't want to be in that position. You'd be subjecting yourself to potential legal and criminal issues if something went wrong. Perhaps if you could get some sort of legal documents set up, done by an attorney, it would be worth the risk. And I'm not even sure Amazon allows it, as the accounts aren't supposed to be shared.
I write various flavors of speculative fiction. This is my main pen name.

 

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Re: What can and can't be shared in a KDP account: questions for a publisher
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2018, 02:07:27 AM »
It is expressly against the KDP Terms of Service to allow anyone else to access one's KDP account. Doing so could potentially get both parties permanently banned from Amazon.
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garygibsonsf

Re: What can and can't be shared in a KDP account: questions for a publisher
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2018, 06:21:10 PM »
I refer you to my statement in the original post wherein I very clearly state "I know that can't be done". I chose and phrased my words carefully.
 

She-la-te-da

Re: What can and can't be shared in a KDP account: questions for a publisher
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2018, 06:29:24 AM »
And I refer you to the fact that people often don't hear what they want to hear, and will hand out access to people who have no business with it. It's just a friendly reminder. I don't know you, I have no idea if you actually meant you knew it couldn't be done, or were fishing for some sort of contradictory statement that it would be okay. I've seen plenty of that before, and it turns into a "well, I'm going to do it anyway, Amazon doesn't care" thing, and the next post will be how Amazon suddenly terminated the account for no reason.

So, again. Big publishing houses and any small press recognized by Amazon -- and I'd bet he is not one of them -- don't have to play by the rules we do. So, tell him to either work it out with Amazon or risk having someone get access to his account information, including his bank data and/or lose his account.
I write various flavors of speculative fiction. This is my main pen name.

 

garygibsonsf

Re: What can and can't be shared in a KDP account: questions for a publisher
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2018, 02:49:52 PM »
And I will refer you back to my original question's title, where I wrote I'd really need access to his KDP account (but) I know that can't be done,. I don't know how much more clearly I can put it.

Let me reframe the question.

Let's say, for argument's sake, you're a digital publisher with several titles by different writers available through Amazon.

You want to expand the range of books you publish, but in order to do so, you need more hands on deck. The days of being a one-man show are fast evaporating as you expand and grow. Most especially, you need a person expert in metadata and maybe also another expert in marketing.

However, the books you publish are, at least for the moment, published only through your single KDP account. In the long term, that's less than optimal, since your metadata expert won't legally be able to access those books and work on them directly without risking the account being shut down. You know this, I know this.

So you do some research and discover that there is such a thing as an Amazon publisher account. I found the following article after I posted my original question: https://kindlepreneur.com/how-to-start-a-publishing-company/. Apparently, all this gives you a second KDP account through which to upload ebooks.

You search online for information about such accounts and how they work. What you want to know is whether or not a publisher's account offers the ability to allow, say, an employee, intern, contractor or such the ability to access the metadata associated with each of the company's publications so you, meanwhile, can get on with the business of editing.

The only problem is searching on such things returns a vast amount of information related only to single self-publishers publishing nobody's books but their own.

The person most likely to be able to answer my question, I suspect, is someone who now runs a digital press or something like that. It may be the answer is simply 'no'. That would be sufficient, if disappointing.

Again, I am not talking about handing details of a single user's account to someone else. That is against Amazon's rules, as I've said from the start I'm aware.
 

EllieL

Re: What can and can't be shared in a KDP account: questions for a publisher
« Reply #6 on: November 28, 2018, 12:12:04 AM »
I used to have my own publishing company until a couple of years ago, with well over a hundred authors. I had two separate KDP accounts, one for my personal, and one for my business. I was not able to provide access to anyone else into my Biz account, without giving them MY log in details, which gives them access to everything. So no, it can't be done. Amazon has not created a system as of yet that gives you the ability to choose what another user can see and what they can't. It would have been nice to have help with some of the admin stuff related to that business, but I wasn't willing to let someone else in for full access to my business financials, or God forbid, have the ability to change banking info and so forth.
Hope that helps.
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garygibsonsf

Re: What can and can't be shared in a KDP account: questions for a publisher
« Reply #7 on: November 28, 2018, 12:14:37 AM »
I used to have my own publishing company until a couple of years ago, with well over a hundred authors. I had two separate KDP accounts, one for my personal, and one for my business. I was not able to provide access to anyone else into my Biz account, without giving them MY log in details, which gives them access to everything. So no, it can't be done. Amazon has not created a system as of yet that gives you the ability to choose what another user can see and what they can't. It would have been nice to have help with some of the admin stuff related to that business, but I wasn't willing to let someone else in for full access to my business financials, or God forbid, have the ability to change banking info and so forth.
Hope that helps.

Enormous thanks, Ellie, that's exactly the info I was looking for. Guess I'm just going to have to email the metadata!
 

EllieL

Re: What can and can't be shared in a KDP account: questions for a publisher
« Reply #8 on: November 28, 2018, 03:12:48 AM »
Yeah unfortunately. You certainly can do some stuff through Author Central, but sadly, metadata isn't one of those things.
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