Did you know that offering bonus content with your book can land you in trouble with Amazon?
Even if you genuinely created or added bonus content to add even more value to your reader, it could raise red flags. This is happening more frequently now with Kindle books if it appears the author is using incentives to encourage downloads whether for free or paid books with a view to increasing book or sales rank.
Bonus content definitely has its use and value whether it is inserted into the book or included via a clickable link. However, Amazon KDP has very clear guidelines about what is and is not acceptable.
They say that bonus content should be relevant to the customer and not distract from the reading experience. They require placing additional content at the end of the book but you can include on the table of contents that bonus material is included.
They also make it clear that links going to the wrong place or promises of gifts or rewards are not allowed. You can imagine buying a €4.99 ebook and immediately being met with outlandish bonuses worth a disproportionate amount!
Amazon cracked down on this as they found authors were exploiting the advantage of the free “Look Inside” feature and readers were availing of the free bonuses and not buying the book. Not good for Amazon.
There are some workarounds for this such as naturally linking to something that supports the content in a particular chapter if you are writing non-fiction. It is less “in your face” marketing and tends to work best for readers genuinely interested in a book and its content as opposed to the “freebie seekers” who surf Amazon for free offers and never buy.
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