Here's the message Kindle Select customers received in their email today:

What's not to like about all that?  Quite a bit, as it turns out.

1. In order to participate in this program, an author must remove his book from all other outlets. If you sell your books to Nook users, or in Apple's iBooks, or in other distributors' catalogues, you have to remove them completely.  Can you spell monopoly?

2. The Kindle Unlimited agreement says the author will receive "a share of the global fund" each month for every time a book is accessed.  But "Share" is not defined, and we already know that the "Global Fund" varies in amount from month to month.So there's no solid information about how much each book access will amount to, except for the fact that it is always subject to change (and I'm betting that change won't be for the better!) The author gives up a set royalty for a gamble.  And just like a casino, you can be pretty sure that the house [read: Amazon] will always win.

3. There's another small detail that bothers me.  The author doesn't get paid until the reader reads more than 10% of the book. Now, how many times have you purchased a book and then discovered that you don't have time to read it right away?  How many books are in your own "to be read" stack?  So in this new arrangement, the author has to wait for you to read the book before he gets paid. Have you ever gone to a movie where you didn't have to pay before you went in?

4. Furthermore, readers, how do you think Amazon is going to know how much you've read? Does that sound like a little invasion of privacy to you? It does to me. And since they don't pay the author if you don't read the book, will they refund your money if you don't read the book? Not a chance!

Is this good for Amazon? Of course! They're betting on those automatic payments of $9.95 a month ($120.00 a year!) to add up, especially when some of their customers forget to cancel the account when they quit ordering books.

As for what it will do for authors who do not drink the kool-aid, that remains to be seen.  Will my readers continue to pay $4.99 for "Damned Yankee" when they can spend $9.95 and get ten books? I hope so, but the prospect is worrisome. I hope you'll think carefully before you jump on this particular bandwagon.

Amazon seems to be in the mood to help my marketing efforts this morning.  First, I discovered they had added a link to my new audio version of Beyond All Price -- so it looks like this:

And then I received one of their "Deal of the Day" e-mails that said:

So thanks, Amazon, for help me spread the word.

With just three days to go, I've been busy all day punching buttons.  I've given the "PRINT IT" word to CreateSpace, and they in turn have created my "Damned Yankee" book page for their own site, so if you want to order a print copy, the book is technically available, although you wouldn't receive it until May 1 or thereafter.  CreateSpace has also forwarded the book to Amazon, and the word on that is that the paperback book will become available in 3 to 5 days.  It may appear in their listings earlier, but again, it will take a couple of days to fulfill any orders.

My next project was to prepare the Kindle edition.  That one took most of the morning because of all the details that needed to be filled in.  Then I started the upload process, which involves letting the upload take place, followed by formatting checks, spell checks, etc.  The file was rejected once because of three spelling errors.  To correct them, I had to resubmit the entire file.  Then, with the second round of checks, I realized that there was an error in the ISBN, which required a third upload.  Everything is set to go now, but because Kindle publication takes only 4 to 6 hours, I won't give the final "OK, publish it" command until Wednesday evening.  It should be there when you wake up Thursday morning.

I'm pretty well satisfied by now that the Kindle version will be as good as it can possibly be.  But of course, in the process, I had to realize that those same three typos will appear in the print edition, and I'm obsessing over them.  It's too late to stop the print editions, of course, so I just have to hope that most readers will not notice 3 types in a book of 105,000 words. As a percentage, that works out to 0.0000285% of the words are incorrectly spelled. Maybe I should offer a prize for the person who spots them all!

What's next? Well, among other things, the Katzenhaus website needs to be re-worked to take into account this latest publication.  But that's a project for another day.  For tonight, I'm off to a dinner meeting -- if the tornado warnings don't get us first!

A quick update.  I spent all of yesterday corresponding with the Kindle Matchbook team, over the way the Matchbook notification appears on my Amazon product pages.  I see it plainly on "Left by the Side of the Road" and "The Dilemma of Arnulf  of Lisieux."  So what's the problem?  Well, neither of those books has ever sold in paperback on Amazon, so no one is eligible to ge a Matchbook deal on their Kindle editions. Yes, that's the first thing to remember about all of this.  In order to get a matching Kindle version at less than half price, you have to have purchased the paperback version first from Amazon.  Buying the book at a book talk or from my own website doesn't count.

But that's not the biggest problem.  I couldn't see the announcement at all on my product pages for "Beyond All Price," "The Road to Frogmore," or "The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese."  Those three books all sold multiple paperback copies on Amazon, so their purchasers were eligible for the bargain Kindles -- provided they could see the link.  I could not verify that the links were there.  They still don't appear when I access the pages.  However, others have told me that they are there.  And I saw them myself when I logged in on someone else's account.  Kindle can't explain it either,  We've tried most everything -- resetting programs, emptying the cache, refreshing the screen, changing browsers.  You name it -- we've already done it.

If you purchased a paperback version of one of these books, you can get a Kindle edition for just 99 cents.  Hope someone tries it so we know for sure.

In the meantime, I suspect Amazon is trying to pacify me, because they issued one of their special promotional emails this morning:

I probably won't take advantage of it.  I happen to have several copies of that book. But maybe someone will.

Just yesterday someone asked me for advice on using KDP publishing.  What can I say? Working with Amazon is always an adventure

Enrolled titles include Life of Pi, The Bonfire of the Vanities, , WOOL, The Alchemist, Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site and All-New X-MEN Vol. 1

--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2013-- (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Today,  launched Kindle MatchBook, a new benefit that gives customers the option to buy—for , , , or free—the Kindle edition of print books they have purchased new from . Over 70,000 books are enrolled in Kindle MatchBook, with more being added every day. Now customers can visit www.amazon.com/kindlematchbook to see all of their print books that are eligible for the Kindle MatchBook edition. Customers can also see when a book is eligible for Kindle MatchBook on the book’s detail page.

The program was announced on  with over 10,000 titles. Since then, thousands of popular books like Heaven is for Real, The Things They Carried andThe Way of Kings have been added from major publishers such as HarperCollins, Macmillan, Houghton , , Wiley, Chronicle Books, and Marvel, as well as thousands of titles from  authors like The Walk by  and Falling Into You by .

“It’s been great to see the positive response to MatchBook from both readers and publishers,” said , Vice President, Kindle Content. “MatchBook enrollment has grown from 10,000 to 70,000 titles in just a few weeks and we expect it will keep expanding rapidly in the months ahead.”

Kindle MatchBook features include:

KDP authors who have a corresponding print book on  can enroll their titles in the program now at http://kdp.amazon.com. Authors that would like to create a print version of their book for free can visit www.createspace.com

I'm withholding judgment on this program from an author's point of view until I see whether it makes any difference in my purchasing reports.  So far, only Left by the Side of the Road shows up as a Matchbook offering, although I've enrolled the others. But I wonder what readers think.  Note that if you buy the print version of a title, you get to buy the Kindle version for less than half the list price. But do you want both versions? Will this offer lure you to order the print version just so you can get the Kindle version for 99 cents?  Will you go back and buy Kindle versions of books you purchased in the 1990s?