Love them or hate them, there’s no doubt that if you’re an author, and maybe even if you’re not, you’ve heard of Amazon’s exclusive self-published author club, KDP Select.

This program offers authors a couple of benefits, in return for them selling their book exclusively through Amazon. So without getting into an Amazon war, I thought I’d list the pros and cons for KDP Select, and briefly explain why I’m choosing to enrol my book.

Pros – What Amazon Offers:

* Books enrolled through KDP select are available through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. This means your book is available for Amazon Prime users to borrow for free, and you get a slice of the KDP Select Global Fund. These amounts vary, but from the examples I’ve seen, they’re comparable with a book sale through normal means, if not higher. These borrows currently account for around 10% of my book sales.

* The ability to offer your book free for 5 promotional days out of 90. Though free book promotions were a lot more successful before the Amazon algorithm changed to make them count less towards the books overall ranking, many people still like to offer their book for free for a limited time to bring it to reader’s attention, gather reviews, or generate buzz.

* You get 70% Royalties (rather than 35%) for books sold in Japan, India, or Brazil. Probably not a big concern unless your book is specifically applicable to these countries, but worth mentioning just in case.

Pros – Extras I see:

* You only have to upload your book once, in one format – if creating and uploading ebooks is new to you, this can be a big plus, and make things seem less overwhelming.

* All your sales are through the one outlet, meaning they all count towards the one ranking. No matter how much you may hate Amazon’s business tactics, it’s hard to deny that at the moment, they’re the biggest ebook retailer, and most authors I’ve read have said most of their sales come through Amazon. I figure the more sales I can get through Amazon, the higher my Amazon sales ranking, which will lead (hopefully), to more sales.

Cons:

* You lose readers who have a different ebook reader, or prefer not to buy through Amazon. Of course, it’s hard to judge how many people this is, since most of them don’t write and tell you, they just go buy another book!

* Some people object to Amazon’s business practices, either because they’re asking for exclusivity, because they seem them trying to gain a monopoly, or for other reasons.

Why I choose to be Exclusive with Amazon:

Most of the above Pros were considerations when choosing to enrol Reckless Rescue through the KDP Select program. I wanted to at least try the free days promotion (I wrote a post on my experience here), I wanted to see how high I could get my Amazon ranking, and I figured mastering one format at a time was enough!

I am also no stranger to the exclusive business model. I’m an exclusive photographer with IstockPhoto, and while I’ve had my ups and downs, I’m happy with that position. Uploading and tracking a product once is enough. Also, my experience with Istock means I’m used to a lot of the practices many people are upset about. (Only getting a payout after reaching a certain amount of royalties, and not getting paid into an Australian bank account etc)

Overall, I’m happy with the KDP Select program, and don’t plan to change at this stage. In fact, I have a three day free promotion of Reckless Rescue coming up on the 15th of May!

promotion

How about you? Do you have any pros or cons to add to the list? Any experiences with KDP Select to share? Or do you only buy books for certain e-readers or from certain companies. Please let me know!