Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hi. I published my first book through Kindle Direct Publishing and put it in the Kindle select program. I am curious about the experiences of any other indie authors using Kindle Select. Is it too restrictive? Is it better opening up to a wider more saturated market through Smashwords or something similar? Your thoughts?

Cheers,

Tom

Hi Tom. I am a select author and have been for years. I chose exclusivity based on two things. One, I was new and unknown, so I wanted to have the ability to run promotions. And two, out of all of the readers and apps I had used, I liked the Kindle the best. I'm not yet living large, but thanks to my ability to promote, I am selling regularly and I am getting borrows through KU and Prime.

I've considered taking my earliest series out, but the only reason I would do that is to put the first book on a pwrmafree promo, but I haven't ben able to justify it just yet.

Christina wrote: "Hi Tom. I am a select author and have been for years. I chose exclusivity based on two things. One, I was new and unknown, so I wanted to have the ability to run promotions. And two, out of all of ..."

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm on the verge of indie publishing on Kindle Direct and am excited about the prospects, based on my mentor who's been quite successful. It's a lot of work, but can pay off quite nicely, especially for those of us who are unknown authors.

Christina, how do you promote? I have a book on Kindle also

Christina wrote: "Hi Tom. I am a select author and have been for years. I chose exclusivity based on two things. One, I was new and unknown, so I wanted to have the ability to run promotions. And two, out of all of ..."

Thanks Christina. I like the promo ability as well, but you are limited to once during a 3 month period. How do you manage to leverage that?

Hi all! Sorry, long day and I haven't had a chance to come back here. Amazon gives me up to five days free or one Countdown of up tobseven days. I use the free days on the first book in my series and I've run countdown sales on most others.
The way I work the free promo is that I try to give away a book on either the first or last Sunday of the month. If I am running a Countdown on the other books in the series, I start it on the same day as a free promo on book 1.
I will note that I've had good luck pushing the series with a free promo in the first, but for my two standalone books, I haven't had much luck in the way of either. It's really tough to sell a one off book.

My first e-book will be coming out in March. It's the first in a series.

Question: why do you do your give-away on the first or last Sunday of the month?

I think the key to the freebies is to get as many reviews on Amazon that you can from the largest number of people who download for free and like what they read.

Having a lot of reviews improves your credibility as a new author, and when the freebie ends, and people see you've got a good number of reviews, they'll take a chance and buy your book. At least that's my understanding.

I wish us both luck, Victoria!

Dianne wrote: "I think the key to the freebies is to get as many reviews on Amazon that you can from the largest number of people who download for free and like what they read.

Having a lot of reviews improves y..."
Agreed. But I find its hard to get reviews.I had a bunch of free downloads and only got one review so far. I would love people to comment on my blog, good or bad just to see some kind of reaction

I have tried giving my book away twice on Amazon and although quite a few people downloaded it, no-one actually wrote a review afterwards. As there were no critical reviews I hope that means no-one actively disliked it, but it's difficult to judge without any feedback at all.

Reviews are tough. Less than .5% of my buyers have left reviews. The free promos work by getting your books out there and into the 'also bought' feeds. Get yourself high enough in the ranks and you'll see a spillover effect. This happened to me once. I had a book in the top 100 overall and the next day it was selling at a rate of 2 per hour.
One thing I should note is that they aren't nearly as effective as they were once upon a time. The best thing you can do is hope for a burst of downloads that will push your ranking up. I know there are promotion sites and such, but I haven't found any free sites that help much.

And for Dianne's question: Sundays have traditionally been my best days. I think more people are sitting around and browsing on Sunday than any other day. I do the first or last because that's my own quirkiness. It keeps them properly spaced out so I don't run too long without a promo.

Thanks for the sage advice Christina. I concur with your comments regarding the promo sites out there. I have used a few with only marginal/nil success. At some point I think you need to spend some money on advertising to get any results, but I am not there yet.

I am right there with you. I would perhaps pay to promote a 99¢ countdown sale, seeing as I might make back my invetment, but on a free book, I'm not interested. I don't make enough to have an advertising budget yet.

I have only published one book so far and was advised not to offer it for free until I have a few more out there. But at the same time, I'm not really getting much feedback except for the few friends and family and also a couple facebook reviewers. So I'm not sure that I should offer a freebie yet or not.

Christina wrote: "Reviews are tough. Less than .5% of my buyers have left reviews. The free promos work by getting your books out there and into the 'also bought' feeds. Get yourself high enough in the ranks and you..."

Thanks, Christina! Your logic about why Sundays work sounds good to me...