Kindle Scout is now closed to new submissions

There, that’s the problem right there. I’m sure many of us have received the notification by now…. Kindle Scout is coming to an end.

I received the email about it April 2 some time in the afternoon…. a few hours earlier and I might’ve thought it was a poorly-timed April Fool’s prank, and one in poor taste at that. But in truth, there is no time zone that the email could’ve been sent from to justify the timing of the email. Nowhere on this planet could it have been sent on April Fool’s and receive an April 2 afternoon datestamp anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. And as it is now April 3…. well, even if it was an April Fool’s prank, that time is now over and it would be long overdue to edit the page.

I still hold out hope that this is a poorly done prank, but if it is real–and I must assume it is real until changes to the site confirm otherwise–then I will admit there is one small personal benefit, at least to me as a reader…..
I have a major backlog of Kindle Scout samples that I still need to sort through and nominate. I used to be better at that; I used to have only a few days here and there where I forgot to log in in time to nominate whichever saved books were due to expire. But somehow, over the last month or two, I ended up…. not reading the samples. Not saving things to my list of books to nominate. Oh, I bookmarked them in the browser, so I still know which samples I’m interested in reading. And every time I decide I like a sample and add it to my saved list, I remove it from the browser’s bookmarks to easily keep track of which one’s I’ve read. But time got away from me, and somehow I soon went from a day’s worth of samples to read, to a couple of days, to a week, and finally a full month’s worth of samples.
Therefore, if Kindle Scout is truly ending soon–if they are truly no longer accepting submissions as of today–then the benefit to me as a reader is simply this: While I still have my backlog to go through, there will be nothing more to add to that backlog.
(Apr 6 Update: Well, eventually. “No longer accepting submissions” doesn’t mean they don’t have submissions they’re still processing, as evidenced by the fact that, three days later, I’m still seeing samples that were posted today. End Update)
Maybe once I’m done with these samples, I’ll have a little more time to tackle my other backlogs, like books in need of reviewing.

But that is a benefit that exists only for the reader. For the authors, all I can say is…. good luck. I wish you the best in this and any other campaigns you use to find readers for your work.