My Titles Are Now Available in Hardcover! Hooray!

To be honest, the title of this post is a little misleading.  My titles have actually been available as hardcovers for months now.  However, when Amazon invited me to part of the hardcover beta program, they stressed that it all had to remain confidential (i.e., I couldn't talk about it).

Needless to say, I was happy to participate, but the confidentiality part struck me as strange.  The conversation about it with Amazon went something like this:

Me:  This all sounds great, but this thing about confidentiality... I can't tell anyone about it?

Amazon:  No, everything about the program has to remain confidential.  You can't tell anyone that you're publishing hardcover books.

Me:  But when it's published, people will see it.  The fact that I'm putting out hardcover books will be in the public domain. It won't be a secret.

Amazon:  True, but you still can't tell anyone about it.

Me:  Even though, after it's published, it really isn't confidential anymore.

Amazon:  Correct.

Ergo, as instructed, I didn't tell anyone about it. And to be honest, it wasn't the first time Amazon had extended an invitation to me regarding somethng and asked me to keep it under my hat.  However, other people who were participating in the hardcover beta seemed to talk about it openly, but it's entirely possible that they didn't get the same confidentiality restrictions. (Or, like me, maybe they felt that after publication there really wasn't anything to keep confidential. On my part, however, it really wasn't something worth butting heads with Amazon over.)

Anyway, I jumped in with both feet and started making the necessary changes to create a hardcover, such as reformatting my interior files.  However, I hit a snag when it came to getting the covers right. Basically, the tools that Amazon itself provided for some of the cover requirements didn't function as intended. As a result, it took a fair amount of effort on my part to get covers to point where they'd get the green light from Amazon. 

Now, I've mentioned my efforts to work with covers before, and one thing I've learned is that when it comes to cover art, I really need to stay in my lane.  In other words, I needed my cover artist. But first, I needed to clear it with Amazon:

Me (after explaining my issues):  So bearing in mind that I can't really get Amazon's system to easily do what I need, can I use my cover artist for this?

Amazom: Sure - that's no problem.

Me:  So I can tell him about the hardcover program?

Amazon:  Oh, no.  You can't do that. The program's confidential.

Me:  But if he does the cover for me and then sees the hardback version on Amazon, he's going to know.

Amazon: That may be true, but you still can't tell him.

Me:  So I just need to get him to do covers for the hardback versions, but don't tell him anything else. 

Amazon:  Exactly.

Needless to say, I didn't care for those instructions.  My cover artist and I have been collaborating for a long time, so I wasn't wild about the idea of having to keep him in the dark about parts of the project. Thankfully, my cover artist is a gem and didn't ask a lot of questions.  His attitude was basically along the lines of, "What do you need me to do?"  And of course, he pretty much nailed it every time with each of the covers, thereby saving me lots of headache.

Despite the above, I don't want anyone to think that participating in the hardcover beta was some onerous process.  Aside from the skullduggery and cover issues, creating hardcovers was actually fun.  It was something I'd been wanting to do for a while but it was always cost-prohibitive in the past.  Bearing that in mind, I'm glad Amazon did this and has made this option available to authors.  I don't like everything that they do and I don't participate in everything they come up with (like Kindle Vella), but I love and admire the fact that they keep on innovating.  And, truth be told, I hope they never stop.