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.
Here is a copy of the email, which is a form letter:
Hello,
During a quality assurance review of your KDP catalog we have found that the following book(s) are extremely short and may create a poor reading experience and do not meet our content quality expectations:
Name of Short
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.
We ask that you fix the above book(s), as well as all of your catalog's affected books, with additional content that is both unique and related to your book. Once you have ensured your book(s) would create a good customer experience, re-submit them for publishing within 5 business days. 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 on a Galleycat
article and in the KBoards
forum say they have published stories shorter than 2,500 words, so Amazon has let them through in the past.
