Support for Indie Authors discussion

I recently stumbled onto the Kindle X-ray feature and decided I'd give it a go for my ebook. But since I've only recently started using it, I thought I'd start a discussion to hear from people who've had more experience with it.

For those who don't know what Kindle X-ray is, it's an Amazon KDP feature which allows the author to add descriptions for characters and terms that appear in their ebook. You can either add your own custom description or link to a wikipedia article, so for example if you tag the term "espionage", you can either link to the wikipedia article for espionage or add your own custom description. Either way, when the reader clicks or hovers over the term, they can see either the wikipedia article or the custom description you wrote (depending on which option you selected).

Since my book is a science fiction story, I think it will be really useful for explaining fictional terms I've made up for the story. But I'd like to hear from both authors and readers who've encountered the X-ray feature before (and anybody who hasn't but would be interested in it).

Do any authors find Kindle X-ray useful for adding background material to their stories, or is it not worth the trouble? Do any readers like using the X-ray feature, or is it a distraction from the reading experience? Any tips on what terms to tag or not to tag?

Hopefully, it goes without saying that you should never add spoilers to these custom descriptions, but any thoughts or comments would be welcome.

Also, I have no idea which folder this topic should go under, so if you're the moderator feel free to move this discussion to somewhere more appropriate.

This is yet another feature from Amazon I didn't know existed!

Thank you, John.

Anna Faversham wrote: "This is yet another feature from Amazon I didn't know existed!

Thank you, John."

You're welcome!

I knew about this as a reader and when trying to find textbooks for my son. It never occurred to me it could be useful now that I'm trying to get other people to read my stuff. I have a feeling its strongest use will be in science fiction, but since I am writing about the 1940s now, it might be fun to try adding some description or explanation about things I've researched, and see if the readers do use it. I wonder if there's a way to get analytics on whether or not and how much it is used.

Cece wrote: "I knew about this as a reader and when trying to find textbooks for my son. It never occurred to me it could be useful now that I'm trying to get other people to read my stuff. I have a feeling its..."

I haven't found any way to get analytics on it, I'm afraid, so there's no way to know how much it actually gets used. That's partly why I set up this discussion. It's all down to the author to decide what should be tagged and how.

I started using it, and put it on about half of my books. I would do the others, but it takes up quite a bit of time, and so far i have yet to see any benefit. However, it is early days.

I recently stumbled across x-ray as well and added it to all my books. Why not? It surprised me how many words benefited from further description or clarification such as the Beatles and the Northern Lights. As a reader, I sometimes appreciate further clarification. My books are literary fiction and chick lit but somehow I found words or terms that benefited in every book. I mostly used Wikipedia but sometimes my own explanations worked better. I haven't had any feedback from readers yet but it may be appreciated by some. It didn't take long to add for each book.

Interesting. I had heard of it, but didn't really look into what the feature was all about. I write historical fiction that covers the Ottoman Empire. I could definitely see how it could be beneficial for terms used in my novels as it's an entirely different culture, not just time period. However...I'm going to hold off on using it for now. It would just be another distraction pulling me away from writing my sequel. Gotta have laser focus :)

Amie wrote: "Interesting. I had heard of it, but didn't really look into what the feature was all about. I write historical fiction that covers the Ottoman Empire. I could definitely see how it could be benefic..."

That's a good excuse. Although, you can add or remove as many or as few terms as you like in one go, so you could just do one or two at first and then come back later when you have more time. I'm still not finished adding terms to my book.

This is an interesting find. I probably use it, but since I've only written one book, most of what I'm explaining is in the books that follow, so not sure that I would use it till after I publish a couple more.

Awesome tool ^^ I used it for my Georgian mythology fiction, and it helped me greatly to clarify many terms which may be vague for English-speaking readers :) I'd suggest anyone using Kindle X-Ray. Readers often require more clarification to certain terms or even characters, so this tool is a nice one.

It sounds worth a try. One of my books is partially set in the dark ages, and Kindle X-ray could be useful to add clarity to past events. Thanks!

I haven't used this myself, as it seems less productive for an e-book + print book combination. My primary concern is: What happens if you update your e-book and upload the modified version? Do you have to redo X-Ray completely, or can we hope for some automagical solution handling at least most of it?

I may give it a try for my e-book only book.

Zoltán wrote: "I haven't used this myself, as it seems less productive for an e-book + print book combination. My primary concern is: What happens if you update your e-book and upload the modified version? Do you..."

I'm pretty sure that since it works by tagging particular terms, as long as the tagged term appears in the modified version of your ebook, there shouldn't be any need to redo X-ray.

Common sense should prohibit Amazon from forcing authors to redo X-ray tagging and descriptions every time they modify their ebook, although I don't know.

Commenting so that I can follow this thread. I am thinking of adding this as well, but it is at the bottom of a long list.

I have used Xray to all my books not that that has helped sales. I am using all I can to promote by books; which takes alot of energy, and away from writing.

Mary wrote: "I have used Xray to all my books not that that has helped sales. I am using all I can to promote by books; which takes alot of energy, and away from writing."

It's true that X-ray doesn't strike me as a specifically promotional feature - except perhaps as an extra reason to pick up a copy - but rather as a way of adding background information without cluttering up the prose in the story itself.

I've been adding periodically to mine over the past three days for the benefit of people who've already bought the book as well as for people who have yet to buy it.

I think the feature could be great for longer books, especially sci-fi (custom names for various tech gizmos) or fantasy (custom creatures, names, locations). I am seriously considering using it in my WIP when it's done, at least for main characters and the main custom words (demon species mostly). I can imagine it can help the reader if he forgets something.

I've seen it but never realized what it was. I saw a guy on Shark Tank promote a similar type of feature but I guess Amazon has him beat on it. So I like the idea of it but I feel like it would definitely take up time, I'd enjoy doing it but I'd wonder if it's worth doing. It would be a good benefit for helping readers with certain words and terms and it'd be good to get authors a better way to describe their own made up words or give descriptions on their own. So I see both the up and down side to it. I'll look it up and see if I can find any results on it and see if it's helped anyone.

2 questions for John or anyone else who wants to answer:

Should you use it both ways by linking it to a Wikipedia page and your own custom page?

Would it be worth it adding a note to your books description page telling people that the book uses xray? Kind of a way to promote the idea before hand.

When you scroll down on Amazon, there are things like: Text-to-speech, Enhanced Typesetting, and X-ray with Enabled/Not Enabled so it's there if you know where to look for it.

Based on what I was reading, you choose manually for which words to enable it and unless you write your own description, it'll default to Wikipedia. Plus, you can do it over time, define 2-3 items at a time, if you wish. Just remember to save it. The trouble is that if you do it this way (and not everything before release), the user will need to be connected to the internet to see what was added later.

I added x-ray to all my books after publication. It was easy to do. Sometimes I used Wikipedia and sometimes my own short descriptions. I don't know how many readers use it but it's there for those who do. I read a lot and I've used it in some books.

Can you do it if your books are already out?

Justin wrote: "Can you do it if your books are already out?"


Yes. I added x-ray to all my books after they were already published on Amazon.

Justin wrote: "Can you do it if your books are already out?"

In fact, the book needs to be uploaded already, even if not yet published or scheduled. As I said, it can be expanded continuously.

Which means that for those who know they'd use X-ray, it might be best to upload the book, then do X-ray and only then publish it (or set up for being published at some later date with preorders enabled).

Reviving this as I think I'm going to use it - trying it on one book. Does anyone know if it somehow uses the content you add to one book to another book in the series once you intiate x-ray for it? There will, of course, be similar terms used.

Is it actually useful? Like do readers get use out of it?

To Linda: I don't know about a direct way, but there's nothing preventing you from copy-pasting the X-ray definitions from one book to another.

To Justin: it's very useful for people who tend to forget names/places, especially of minor characters or less-important things. It's way better than the old approach of glossary at the back, because you can highlight a name right in the text to get a hint. It depends on the reader - I tend to use it, in the rare case the writer bothers to set it up properly.

Hmm..I may look into this. I know I thought about using it for my crime thriller set in Shanghai. I used real places so I could've used x-ray to describe the places in more detail.

Thanks for the reply, Tomas!

Justin wrote: "Hmm..I may look into this. I know I thought about using it for my crime thriller set in Shanghai. I used real places so I could've used x-ray to describe the places in more detail."

For real places and names, you can have X-ray pull Wikipedia entries (it uses the summary at the very top, which is usually a paragraph-long, just the right size)

Justin wrote: "Is it actually useful? Like do readers get use out of it?"

An excellent question Justin. If readers don't use it, then what's the point?

FWIW I decided to set this up on the first book in my Preeminent War series. I got a lot of feedback on the vast number of characters and stars in the book and this seems like a good way to mitigate that response.

It only took a few minutes to find almost 400 items for me to review.

It will take slightly longer than that for me to fill them all out.

Did I mention how it errors out every few entries and then you have to wait for the dialog to close so you can go back and check what did or didn't save and re-sort the list so it makes sense and then continue working?

Rock wrote: "Did I mention how it errors out every few entries and then you have to wait for the dialog to close so you can go back and check what did or didn't save and re-sort the list so it makes sense and t..."

That sounds like a real bummer, Rock :(

I did finally get through it for Silver Enigma. I got to about 93% coverage with 102 items, the rest being one-off terms/characters/nonsense that really didn't need to be defined.

One of the problems I had was not inserting spoilers for some characters/ships/whatever for where they might go in later books in the trilogy.

I don't know what the issue is with all the errors. It sure was frustrating. I tried it with both Firefox and Edge and the behavior was the same, so likely a problem at Amazon. I could complain but given their reaction to the Prime Reading question, I am not sure it's worth the time.

Sorry for the late reply - I was on holiday. I didn't have any issues with setting up X-ray personally. Also, the count will drop a lot when you merge duplicates (typical First name alone, First name + Last name, etc.) and cross out things you don't really need.

And yep, you may need different descriptions for individual books if they may be spoilers for later books.