Indie Book Collective discussion

Authors, what are your thoughts on this program? Good for us or not?

Really depends on what you expect to get out of the program. KDP Select is perfect for authors who want to use free book promotions to gain visibility. Giving your book away does and WILL lead to increase visibility. Whether that will translate to actual sales when the promotion is over is another story.

Many authors have done quite fine for themselves by using the free book promo option. As for whether or not the money authors get from the Kindle Lending Library program is worth it has not yet been determined. But the idea that you can make money from Amazon Prime owners borrowing your book is a good one in theory. But since the money is divided up in a monthly pool among all participating KDP authors who have had their books borrowed, it's left to be seen exactly what kind of money is to be made.

Overall, the proliferation of new Kindle owners has helped sales surge across the board among KDP authors in general. But since there are also many drawbacks to being in KDP Select, this is a risk every author must decide for themselves.

Please forgive my ignorance, but how exactly does a free promotion increase visibility, aside from the author's own efforts to announce the promotion via social media? Does Amazon itself somehow notify consumers what Kindle books are available for free on a given day? I ask because it's not clear to me how effective the tool can be for authors who do not already have a pretty substantial community of online followers.

It's simple. For the day or says you have your book set for free, you make a good number of 'sales' because there are always people looking for free books (entire websites built to help you find them, ereaderiq.com for example). Every free book you 'sell' drives you close to the top of your category's best-selling chart. The closer the book is to the top, the easier it becomes to find for someone looking through that genre or subgenre (or if you're very successful - the entire list), and so you give away more books.

This is all exposure. More people reading your work, who will then, it is hoped, review the work and/or spread the word about it. The quality of this exposure is very luck-of-the-draw. It's not as if you'd just sent hundreds of review copies to book bloggers, some of these free books may never be read. Nevertheless, for almost no effort, it's a very nice promotional tool.

I have no online following to speak of. I'm something of a recluse in my real and virtual lives. I've avoided twitter and facebook for years. Even so, I gave away two hundred copies of my first novel, on the first day. This is with almost no useful promotion and is very much on the light side of numbers I've seen reported.

Paul, I'm trying the KDP select for the very reasons you list. Will let you all know how it goes.

I have tried KDP Select for my lowest priced book, which has some humorous poetry. I had it listed for 99 cents, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to make it free on KDP Select. It hasn't been borrowed much at all, but I did see a surge in sales of some of my other ebooks (however, that could just be because so many people got Kindles for Christmas). I have tried free promotions on Smashwords, and yes, it gives you an ego boost to see hundreds of people downloading your books, but when the promotion is over the downloads slow to a trickle. I'm really not convinced that offering your work for free translates into any extra sales.

I was one of the few indie authors whose books were beta-tested by Amazon with a free price. So I've been playing the free game on Amazon since 2010. One of the biggest mistakes that authors make when they enroll in KDP Select is to underestimate the sheer volume of free books that are now available in the Kindle store. When my books went free before Select, it was easy to get several thousand downloads in a day. The visibility I got immediately translated to sales of my other books, because there were fewer free books in the Kindle store to compete with.

Readers would download a free book, read it, and decided if they wanted to read more books by the author. Now, there are so many free books out there that readers are chasing after free books rather than reading the ones they download. With so many free books being downloaded all the time, it's easy for your free book to be lost in a sea of other free books waiting to be read on a reader's kindle.

I don't recommend anyone join Select, unless A) your sales are dreadful and have nothing else to lose or B) have considered both the up and downsides of offering your book exclusively on Amazon.

The brief visibility one gets with a free promo can easily backfire if your book sits on a readers Kindle and never gets read.

Okay Kevis, I think you've convinced me to do a complete flip flop and not put my book on KDP which was my instinct in the first place. Thank you for this.

There is a lot of discussion about KDP Select going on right now- many people love it, many people dislike it. It's a good program for authors who have little following and I think it would be GREAT for a NEWLY released book, to have it on Kindle exclusively for a few months. What I dislike about Select is that it really cuts off those who have ereaders other than Kindle. You are cutting off a whole other audience that might enjoy your book just as much. I have many readers state that they don't have a Kindle and would love to have an ebook copy of my dark fantasy novel, Spellbound by Fire.

Amazon listed my poetry book, She Wasn't Allowed to Giggle, for free for about a week and it got over 200 downloads. Several sales followed as it was effective in getting the book into the Top 100 in the child abuse category of Amazon. However, sales have trickled right down again. So in essence it's really a short term fix. Nothing still overpowers the genuine hard work authors still have to do to market their own books. There isn't anything more effective. This just shows that even after the rush of free downloads end, you are still back to marketing it yourself.

Personally, I haven't put my books into KDP Select for the reason I stated earlier- I don't want to cut off my wider audience by making it available exclusively on Kindle. I think without that silly "exclusive" clause, KDP Select would be an absolutely awesome program. But the exclusivity clause just makes it look like Amazon is trying to monopolize on the self-publishing revolution. Which, really, they are.

In the end, it's all in what works best for the individual author.

Melissa T. wrote: "I looked into it, but as everybody says it cuts off all the other people with different e-readers. I considered it for a second, but glad I didn't enroll. My friend had his book up with KDP for fre..."

That's my attitude as well. My sales between Smashwords and Amazon are about the same, so I really have no reason to enroll my books in KDP.

Appreciate all these comments. Feels now, like I have some substance to base my decision on. Will definitely not enroll.

Darlene wrote: "Appreciate all these comments. Feels now, like I have some substance to base my decision on. Will definitely not enroll."

I think KDP Select is a viable program and worth trying out. But it may not be in many author's best interest to pull a book already available for sale at other retail channels. If I could make a recommendation, it would be to publish a new title and enroll it in Select for the 90 day trial period. That way you can see for yourself if the benefit of having your book/s in the program is worth not having it sold elsewhere. If you don't like what you see at the end of your 90 days, then you can leave the program and publish it at other venues.

Kevis wrote: "Darlene wrote: "Appreciate all these comments. Feels now, like I have some substance to base my decision on. Will definitely not enroll."

I think KDP Select is a viable program and worth trying ou..."

I think that would be the best way to go about using KDP Select. I still dislike cutting off the readers who don't have Kindles. Seems unfair. But that's just me. As I said, ultimately up to the individual author. I would love the program if not for the exclusivity clause, but that's Amazon's style.

Kevis, your suggestion sounds like a viable compromise. And Lavinia, have to agree.

Darlene wrote: "Kevis, your suggestion sounds like a viable compromise. And Lavinia, have to agree."

I have to say the exclusivity clause is the only thing stopping me from enrolling in KDP Select.

For me, it's not the only thing, but it's a big factor.

Darlene wrote: "For me, it's not the only thing, but it's a big factor."

What else stops you from doing so?

My personal belief that authors shouldn't be giving books away free - we deserve compensation for our work - and a concern that all the free books may ultimately undermine authors and the value of there work to a point where no one will pay for books.

I am in the 'watch' mode at the moment. I can see all kinds of things that would make this a problem, exclusivity being a big one (I have more sales at Smashwords than at Amazon). The Non-compete is also so open-ended that it could stop you from publishing anything in the same story universe if Amazon wanted to interpret it that way.

You might want to look over this article in Vision: A Resource for Writers (yes, I publish the ezine) From Indie Corner: Amazon KDP Select - An Overview

http://visionforwriters.com/visionjoo...

That is so so true. Only time i give books away is to reviewers and during giveaways and that really is just to get the book's name out there. Other than that I don't give out books.

Thank you very much for this article, Lazette.

Lazette wrote: "I am in the 'watch' mode at the moment. I can see all kinds of things that would make this a problem, exclusivity being a big one (I have more sales at Smashwords than at Amazon). The Non-compete..."

That article sums up how I feel about KDP

Interesting discussion. I wanted to add my experience with KDP. I joined it two weeks ago and chose to list my book for free for 48hrs. I did not share that information on ANY of my social media sites. Because my book has 54 five star reviews and is the Top Rated Fantasy Romance book on Amazon, it was listed as a 'great free opp' by many of the Free Kindle Books websites. In 48 hrs it was downloaded by over 12,300 people, taking it up to #40 on the Free Bestseller List on Amazon. How did this affect sales etc AFTER the promotion was finished? Before the promo, the highest my book ever got in the bestseller rankings for paid books, was 9,000. Its been a week since the promo ended and my book is now ranked #580. Its reached #10 on the Fantasy Romance bestseller list and my daily sales have more than doubled.This will probably taper off soon, or maybe (hopefully) the rise will continue, but in my experience, KDP has been a great help with increasing sales and exposure.

That's great to hear that you did so well with your book. Wishing you continued good sales.

Lani that's great news, but I think your situation is a bit different. Obviously your book has already gotten some notice, and I think books like that are going to benefit the most from KDP Select. Your book already had a track record so that probably helped in Amazon listing it as a "great free opp", which boosted downloads. I still haven't seen any evidence that KDP Select is going to help a relatively unknown author get more sales by making their book available for free. One question, though: how were you able to limit the free downloads to 48 hours? I thought KDP Select required you to list your book for free for 3 months.

John
13 Horror Stories

Hi John - no KDP Select only gives you the option to list your book as free for up to 5 days every 90 days. You can choose to when you want it to be free and for how long. You can split up yr 5 free days anyway you like so I chose for it to only be free for 48 hrs and will prob run a similar promo at a later date.
Hope this helps.

Lani:

I must be missing something. I just checked on my bookshelf, and the ebook I enrolled in KDP Select doesn't say anything about 5 free days. It just says my book is enrolled for 90 days. Can you tell me how to specify how long I want the book to be free?

John
13 Scary Stories

Hi John - if you click on your title on your amazon BOOKSHELF page, then click on ACTIONS at the top left hand side of page, at bottom of the options it says - MANAGE PROMOTIONS. A new screen will come up with the FREE days options and you choose your promotion Free days. You can cancel your free days promotion at any time.
Remember, making a title FREE is diff from making it avail for LEnding. KDP select enrolment means your book can be borrowed for free by those customers who are Premium amazon customers. But making your bk free for 1 - 5 days will make it appear priced at 0.00.

Lani:

Thanks! I didn't know about that one. I just signed one of my books up for it. I'll let you know what happens.

John

I don't like the exclusivity requirement, but I'll probably try it for my next book and see how it goes. I wouldn't go through the trouble of taking by existing work down from all the other ereader platforms for a promotional opportunity that may or may not work.

But for a new book, I'd be willing to try it for a month or two and see what happens.

Long term my worry is that the other distribution channels will introduce similar schemes for pushing exclusivity and we'll get knocked around as B&N, Amazon and Apple slug it out with each other.

Just wanted to offer my two cents with the KDP Select program. I've had my book "Facebook Ate My Life" listed in KDP Select since mid-December. I had a few copies borrowed, but not much. A couple of days ago I listed it for free, and 160 copies were downloaded in about 48 hours, moving it up to #13 for free poetry books on Amazon. I've sold a few copies of my other books in this time, but nothing more than usual. I had expected that the free promo would help sales of my other ebooks, but that doesn't seem to have happened.

John

Darlene wrote: "My personal belief that authors shouldn't be giving books away free - we deserve compensation for our work - and a concern that all the free books may ultimately undermine authors and the value of ..."

I agree we shouldn't have to give our books away, but there are so many books out there now at $0.99 that it's hard to sell one for more. There may be some hope for those who write series and can get readers hooked enough to pay a little more for subsequent books in the series. However, except for big names with big followings and the occasional new name blockbuster, supply is so great that the market is driving prices lower and lower.

Darlene wrote: "Authors, what are your thoughts on this program? Good for us or not?"

Thanks so much to everyone who posted on this. i learnt so much.

I hope I am not too late - I also have four of my books in the kdp select program. Over the holidays I did a promotion and gave away 9x more books than I had sold all year. In my case I now have people looking at my other books. Yes, it isn't many (1 or 2 a day), but it is more than before (1 or 2 a month). I look at it as building a brand. I am at the early stages so I don't expect too much yet.

Cyn

Cyn:

Are the sales you're getting from promoting on KDP Select making up for the ones you're losing by not offering the books in other outlets? Amazon's exclusivity policy is a problem for me, because I get a good number of sales from Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc.

John
13 Horror Stories

John -
For some reason my books were not doing well on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc. I pulled four of my books as an experiment for the Select service. And yes, the KDP select has been better for me, but only after my promotion. One of my books has been borrowed a few times since I had the promotion.

I have a memoir about my illness and how I was diagnosed. This one is my best seller and it is now getting noticed some. My fiction is still slowly getting fans. (Horror/supernatural)

Cyn

My novel set in an opera school where young students learn drama, music, movment and languages, will be free tomorrow (Saturday 14th January)

Here are the UK and US links.

http://www.amazon.com/Vissi-darte-ebo...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vissi-darte-e...

Joanna wrote: "My novel set in an opera school where young students learn drama, music, movment and languages, will be free tomorrow (Saturday 14th January)

Here are the UK and US links.

http://www.amazon.com/V..."

Joanna, this isn't a promotional thread. We're looking for comments about the Select program. Do you have any advice you can share with us?

I've posted on this subject on a few threads. I've seen increased sales since joining KDP but have no idea if it has anything to do with the free promotion. I'm leaning towards non-exclusivity when the 90 days are up.

Thanks Stephen. I flip flopped and in the end decided not to join.

I'm really curious about the success of Select when you have only one book (which is my situation). I sell very little on B&N and next to nothing on Smashwords, but it still feels odd to remove those avenues. Still, I wonder if it makes sense to get some visibility for 90 days and then republish.

I also worry about the problem of readers starting to expect books for free. We already worry about undervaluing books; some readers are reporting an unwillingness to buy books anymore since so many are for free now. I'm oversimplifying it, but thought I'd mention it.

Tina, that's exactly my concern. I do not believe that books should ever be free and I won't help promote free books. I even think 99 cents isn't right. I also don't like the exclusivity of only one company selling our books.

Hi Darlene,
Yep and yep. Sigh. But then again, I'm going to try it for a promo related to my mom (she turns 80 in March, and my book is based on her). But then I think that's it.

I'm also selling my novel for 3.99 (as of yesterday), which to some is dirt cheap but to others is crazy high. We'll see how it goes....

What's the book about your mom called? I'd like to check it out.

I've decided to go all in with KDP Select, at least as a 90 day trial. I have 2 books on Amazon. Like many others, Amazon provides the bulk of my sales, so removing my titles from Smashwords and the downstream retailers wasn't that tough of a decision. I am concerned about having all my eggs in one basket, and I know I could potentially lose some sales to people who, say, shop only on the B&N site. But my biggest problem right now is getting noticed, and nearly all of the noticing is going on at Amazon.

Something else I was encouraged by: One of my eBooks was free for about a month. Prior to that, sales were dismal. During that period, "sales" (downloads, really) were phenomenal. Now? The book is selling a handful/day, which is far better than how it was doing prior to the free period. This ties back into KDP Select, of course, b/c of the free promotion feature, which I want to try on my 2nd book which has not been getting the attention it deserves.

Just my 2 cents.

I've just put my second book out of eight on KDP Select. The first one wasn't selling on Amazon, Smashwords, or anywhere else and when I did the free promotion it got all the way up to #13 on Amazon's free ebook list. Now there are a few sales a week coming in, which is better than before. Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla in the ebook world and it seems like their enormous size could help an author get noticed. My second book was selling okay up to now, so I'm worried about losing sales because of the exclusivity clause. The trouble is, with Amazon you know exactly how you're doing almost in real time, because they update their sales so frequently. There's a time lag with Smashwords, because they have to wait till the retailers like B&N report sales figures. I hate that I never really know how I'm doing with Smashwords till the end of the quarter.

I have a concern that as KDP Select continues to catch on there will be so many books featured that we'll be right back where we (Indie authors) started: in the crowd trying to attract the attention of readers.

Good point!!

Great discussion. I think KDP is a good option. Right now I have all four of my books enrolled. I've had about 1200 free downloads since my first promo on Dec. 30th and prior to that I wasn't moving many copies as I had made my books available fairly recently.

If you're relatively unknown, I don't see this as cheating readers of other devices since 1) they wouldn't have known about you anyways and 2) it's only a 90 day decision. Once you've received your desired exposure, you can put your books up at the other sites again.

I'm looking at this gambit as a numbers game and being mindful that, free or paid, it ultimately comes down to how the readers feel about the work.

David wrote: "Great discussion. I think KDP is a good option. Right now I have all four of my books enrolled. I've had about 1200 free downloads since my first promo on Dec. 30th and prior to that I wasn't movin..."

I agree David. I think it is a GREAT tool for writers just launching a book or two. My two books, "Spellbound" and "She Wasn't Allowed to Giggle" were both released in the fall and have been out there for a while, and I have been advertising them as so. I think it would be unfair to advertise them different if they were exclusively on Amazon all of a sudden. However, I might enroll the next book I release. It'll be a poetry book. Because they tend not to sell much any ways, I tend to use them to experiment with promotional stuff and new advertising tactics. "She Wasn't Allowed to Giggle" while a very sentimental work for me, was my experimentation with self-publishing before I withdrew "Spellbound" from the publisher I had it at. Best decision ever. So who knows, KDP might be good for a new book's exposure.