Passive Guy is usually sympathetic to Amazon, but he's sees this news as a disaster in the making. I tend to agree, mostly because it undermines the public's faith in Amazon's ranking systems. That faith is the foundation for the retail store's success. It used to be that Amazon was the sole source available for lots of obscure products, including some books, but that's not true anymore. There are plenty of alternatives for consumers today.

TimothyEllis, Everything you say makes sense to me. Thanks for posting. I found it clarifying. I'm an indie author who enrolled in KDPS in 2018, when I published my first in series. It didn't work for me. I had very few sales and only a few thousand page reads. Also, I could never figure out if I was getting paid appropriately. I went wide in 2019. I now have three books in the series published, and I've sold several hundred books this year. I hope to break a 1,000 sales next year. I sell about 60% through KDP and 40% wide, with B&N selling the most.  I admit I have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. I think they treat their customers well, but not their vendors. And I suspect they are predatory in their business practices.  Again, thanks for the post.

Only eight versions?  LOL.

In my current WIP, for example, I have 1,080 files.  Now, eight of those files are for the cover art and type as well as notes but the other 1,072 are the WIP itself.

But, then again, I do things probably way different then most people.  Some day, if any of my work survives and if the contents of any of my hard drives survives, literary archaeologists will have a field day analyzing all my revisions and progress (or lack thereof) and whatnot.

::image::

So true!

I now also put a date in the name but that comes after "really this is the last one 2.docx"

I have a running list of text files labeled 'this is how the story/plot/character development works' in the binder in Scrivener. For a while I tagged the latest as 'THIS ONE' but now I just add dates. Same with texts/messages to myself at 2 AM in the morning.

So true!

I now also put a date in the name but that comes after "really this is the last one 2.docx"