Updating a Kindle book - what happens?

[Chris Paton]

I currently have short story in kindle format for sale on Amazon. I want to add another short story to the same kindle book. My question is this: what will happen to the existing kindle books that people have bought? I don't want to cheat the original buyers out of a second story. Will their copy of the kindle be updated and how can I be sure or ensure that it is?

Hope you can help. :O)

Chris

[Gil Michelini]

No, your current customers will not see the updates UNLESS you tell them there is an update. They can then update their books but they will lose all their notes, bookmarks, and highlights.

[Chris Paton]

Hi Gil

Thanks for your help. I guess there is a means of telling customers that the book is updated. I'll check out KDP.

Thanks again.

Chris

[Joe Perrone Jr.]

How does one notify previous purchasers that an updated version is available?

[jeff ashcroft]

The way I think it goes is what they bought is what they get. I've added an extra short story to one of mine but it didn't update the copies my friends bought.

[Chris Paton]

I remember getting a notification about an update to a kindle book I had bought. I just can't remember if I received an email or I saw a message/highlight in the "Manage your Kindle" section of my Amazon account.

As I am still working on the update in question I haven't yet checked out the options on Kindle Direct Publishing. I don't want to tinker around with the settings too much until I am ready. ;O)

[Virginia Frazier]

I agree with Gil. From what I have learned, if you update your  book on the Kindle, an e-mail or some other method will notify the customer who has purchased your book that there is an update. They will have a choice of downloading the updated version or not. If they do download the new version, their notes, highlights, etc. will be lost. You won't personally notify them that there is a change.

[DrDLN]

I would suggest that just update with second story and find out if amazon informs previous customers. New customers will get it anyway and you need to update. Good luck!

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"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly": http://amzn.to/dMBLWW

[Chris Paton]

Hi all

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. I'll go ahead and update and see what happens.

[Rachel Cotterill]

I emailed KDP a few months ago to ask them to send out one of the update emails, when I updated some formatting errors in my second novel, but they haven't done it yet (though they said they would). You sadly can't trigger this process yourself.

[Rochelle Campbell]

Hi Chris,

I had the same issue a couple of days ago.  In my case the entire TOC was a MESS.  So, I re-uploaded the book with the corrections.  I emailed KDP cust svce and they said there is no way that previous buyers can get the update automatically.  The buyers would have to email KDP themselves and KDP would have to manually send them the update to their Kindle and the buyer would sync it and get the download.

They did this for me for and the download is perfect.  So, you would have to inform all previous buyers what to do.  KDP did tell me they understood this was an issue and they were working on fixing it.

Hope this helps!

[Chris Paton]

Hi Rachel and Rochelle

Thanks for the info. Perhaps when I received an update message for a book I had bought, the author was more lucky than not. I really think I saw the message in the "manage your kindle" section of Amazon.

When I finally update my book I'll be sure to do add some kind of message in the hope that the current owners of the book - short story - will get the message to update.

We'll see.

Thanks again everyone!