Amazon Kindle X-ray from the Authors Perspective

This is an update to my previous post on Ebook Marketing: Amazon Kindle Xray Feature: Using Shelfari, Goodreads, Wikipedia, Youtube  and why Authors should use it.

Amazon Kindle XRAY is a great feature every author should strive to implement into their ebooks, but how it is done remains somewhat of a mystery. Amazon knows but isn’t telling – exactly. While there is some speculation, my guess is book sales have a lot to do with it.

As usual, when you want to know something you go straight to the source.  I knew the response would be canned, but I wanted to see if perhaps Amazon would shed some light on this great but little used feature:

Amazon offered this “POLITE BUT VAGUE” answer to “As an Author, how can I add XRAY to my ebooks?”

Hello Suzanne,

Thanks for reaching out to us and it is our pleasure to provide you the information.

The X-Ray feature on your Kindle Touch enables you to explore “the bones of a book.”

When you tap the top of the screen, “X-Ray” will appear at the bottom. Then tap “X-Ray” and it will present a list of all passages from the book that mention the idea, person, or topic you’re interested in, as well as detailed descriptions from sources like Wikipedia.

At this time, the X-Ray feature is only available on Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Touch, Kindle Fire 2nd Generation, Kindle Fire HD 7″, and Kindle Fire HD 8.9″.

While this isn’t currently a feature you can build into your KDP book, we’re working to make it available on more Kindle titles every day. You can check back from time to time to see if the X-Ray feature has been added for your Kindle title.

Thanks for your understanding.

Further research found this post on Amazon KDP Commuity

Amazon sets XRAY specifically for the top selling books, probably the top 2% based on the number of copies sold per day.

PROBABLY? — no one really knows why (exactly) some books have x-ray and others not, but my inclination is that this statement is dead on.  Sales have everything to do with having XRAY.

Contacting Amazon KDP support directly to ask for XRAY added to a book didn’t offer much more insight –  as you read from  the “canned” response above; there is no  indication of how to implement Amazon Kindle XRAY, nor any offering to do so.  (I know it is a canned response because a client received the exact same word-for-word response.)

So, it appears the best way to get Kindle XRAY implemented in your ebook is to write a killer book, make a lot of sales, and keep writing.

Have you had XRAY implemented into your book? Do you want XRAY enabled? Please comment below and share your thoughts…