Amazon Cracking Down on Very Short Kindle Books

Posted on April 29, 2013

A user of KBoards, a discussion board for Kindle, has shared an email she received from Amazon about minimum word length. The email says that Kindle content shorter than 2,500 words is often disappointing to Amazon readers.

The email is a form letter. Instead of the title is says "Name of Short." The portion of the email that discusses length says, "In the best interest of Kindle customers, we remove titles from sale that may create a poor customer experience. Content that is less than 2,500 words is often disappointing to our customers and does not provide an enjoyable reading experience."

The email goes on to ask the user to fix the book or books in question within 5 business days. The email also says, "If your books have not been corrected by that time, they will be removed from sale in the Kindle Store. If the updates require more time, please unpublish your books."

The KBoards user said her short ebook is a charity piece that did not get many sales, so it is possible Amazon is just sending the email out to authors of short shorts that don't have very many sales.

Amazon's criteria for Kindle Singles lists a length of 5,000 to 30,000 words. Amazon also says it does not want chapters excerpted from a longer work. Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing website does not appear to list a minimum word count anywhere for ebooks. Some commenters in the KBoards forum say they have published stories shorter than 2,500 words, so Amazon has let them through in the past.