$500,000 isn’t enough for my book. What about yours?

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What is reading your book worth?No sooner had a I uploaded Hot Silver, my review of the Indian Pacific, than I received an email from Amazon inviting me to be part of KDP Select. This, I thought, is going to put the cat among the self-publishing pigeons.

Let us discuss…

What is KDP Select?

KDP Select is a way for self-publishing authors to put their books in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. The library allows Amazon Prime members ($79/year) to “borrow” one book per month for no extra charge with “no due date”. (“Borrow” is Amazon’s word, about which more later.)

How much will authors be paid?

Self-publishers will be paid pro rata from a pot of money determined by Amazon.

The pot is $500,000 this month and will be “at least $6 million” next year (i.e. probably $500,000 per month for the foreseeable future). Each time your book is “borrowed” you get one dip into the pot. If there are a million “loans” in a month and your book is borrowed once you will get a one-millionth share of the pot. If your book is borrowed twice, you will get two one-millionth shares and so on.

In this example each loan would earn the author 50 cents. If your book was borrowed 10 times, you would make $5.

If the size of the pot is the same the following month but two million books are borrowed that month, a loan will earn only 25 cents. Ten loans would earn you $2.50. You have provided the same product and earned half as much.

What are the conditions?

To participate in KDP Select, authors must commit to their book’s inclusion for at least 90 days.

During that 90 days the book must be available exclusively on Amazon.

The book can still be bought on Amazon, e.g. by Amazon customers who aren’t Prime members or by Prime members who want to own it not “borrow” it.

My take on it

I have deliberately not read much of what’s been written about this because I wanted to make up my own mind. Still, I’m reliably informed there’s reams of opinion out there so you can see all sides of the discussion with a Google search for “KDP Select”. I’d certainly love to know what you think.

The pie is too small

The pie is too smallMy gut feeling is that there will quickly be so many books in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library that the amount authors receive per loan will be tiny, perhaps negligible.

I already think 35 cents is too little to earn on most books. (I think 35% is a fair royalty but I don’t think 99 cents is a good price.)

What you are paid for a “loan” of your book will make 35 cents seem like a king’s ransom.

$500,000 sounds like a lot of money until you divide it by millions of loans.

My books have a value

My book has a value. I get to suggest that value by setting a price for my book and readers get to agree or disagree by choosing to buy or not buy it.

Because KDP Select works on a fixed pot of money determined by Amazon then divided by the number of loans of all books in the month, I’ll be getting a different amount every month for the same product. I have no control over what that amount will be because I have no control over:

  • The size of the pot
  • The number of books in KDP Select
  • The number of times those books are lent out
It doesn’t seem right to me that the more popular the Library, the less I get paid.

In making your books available for Amazon to “lend” to paying customers, you are making the Amazon Prime service more attractive. The more attractive it is, the more people will pay $79/year to join it. The more people who join it, the more “borrowing” there will be. The more borrowing there is, the less you get paid.

You are contributing to a mechanism to lower the price of your book.

That only changes if Amazon increases the size of the pot commensurate with the growth in Amazon Prime memberships and the number of the books being lent out. I don’t believe that will happen.

We are teaching readers that books should be free

There is pressure to keep dropping the price of books. That’s fine if you’re John Locke and sell a million books at 99 cents and your greatest cost is the risk of RSI from writing too much too quickly. It’s hard if you write in a niche or the costs of preparing your books are high.

When you fold books into a subscription model — Amazon Prime will not limit members to one book/month for long, I’ll warrant — all books start to look free to readers because they are not weighing the value of a particular title anymore, they just get what they want for a lump sum.

Should my short walking tours of Sydney really earn me the same as Sebastian Junger’s WAR, which is 10 times the length and required Junger to spend months in a war zone risking his life daily?

Exclusivity is a high price to pay

While you stand to gain exposure — how much is moot — by being in KDP Select, you pay for that opportunity.

To be in KDP Select your book has to be unavailable anywhere else for the 90 days it is available for “borrowing”. (And you renew for another 90 days by default unless you jump in to stop the renewal).

If your book has already earned ranking, ratings and reviews in another online bookstore, you will have to unpublish it and lose that juice in order to participate in KDP Select.

In addition by being part of KDP Select you are:

  • increasing the value of Amazon Prime by making your book exclusive to Amazon
  • restricting yourself in how and where you promote your book.
In return you deserve more respect and certainty than payment of an amount that Amazon can’t even tell you because it depends on how much money they alone decide to release that month and how many people borrow books. (Remember, we know how much it is the month we sign up but we don’t know about the next two months to which we are also committed because of the 90-day minimum.)

While the amount indeterminate, you can bet it will be tiny.

Are there many commercial arrangements you can think of where you let someone sell your product and they get to decide afterwards how much they will pay you?

This is not lending

This isn't lendingI don’t like the terminology of “lending”, “borrowing” and “library” that Amazon has adopted for this service.

What is happening with the Kindle Owners’ “Library” is not “borrowing”.

With KDP Select there is no physical item that passes from author/publisher to reader and back again. The author/publisher isn’t without the book while the reader is “borrowing” it so they don’t get anything back when the reader has finished with it. There is no reason, therefore, from the author’s point of view to let the reader have the book for less than the sale price.

There is nothing to lend again and ultimately make more money from lending than selling because the same item is being paid for repeatedly (cf. your local DVD rental place).

Sure, the reader doesn’t get to keep the book. So what? With most ebooks there is no meaningful distinction between borrowing and owning. I am reading a couple of wonderful books at the moment but I’ll never re-read them so I don’t care whether I “own” them or I’ve “borrowed” them.

I’m not getting materially less value from “borrowing” these books than buying them so I shouldn’t be able to pay a fraction of the cost for the main part of the transaction: getting to read the book.

“Borrowing” and “owning” are the same thing to me as a reader, if I don’t care about re-reading, but they are very different to you as an author because you are giving readers the same thing — the pleasure of reading your book — but making a small fraction because they are “only” borrowing it not buying it.

We are teaching readers the wrong language for a new model of publishing.

We already have readers who think they should be able to lend a 99-cent ebook to all their friends. They haven’t grasped the difference between a physical book and a digital book when it comes to lending.

We need to help readers understand the difference between books and ebooks, not confuse them further into thinking physical books and ebooks can be treated the same.

“Lending”, “borrowing” and “library” are not the right paradigm here.

There is no public interest in this library

Libraries serve a public interest — making books available to people who can’t afford to buy them. I am all in favour of libraries. Amazon Prime and its Kindle Owners’ Library are for people who can afford a Kindle and a $79 annual membership. They are a privileged group so this isn’t about knowledge and education for all.

What I DON’T think about KDP Select

Amazon is evil

Amazon is a business. It is their job to make offers to their suppliers and customers. As a supplier, it’s your job to decide whether to accept.

I’m not impressed by KDP Select as it’s presented now but it’s just an offer, not something Amazon is forcing on us. (Which is interesting because historically they have forced things on those who choose the 70% royalty so it is telling that they haven’t done it with this.)

We wouldn’t be where we are as self-publishers without Amazon and I’m grateful to them. Their job is to keep innovating and finding new ways to get ebooks into the hands of readers and I love them for doing that. That I don’t agree with them on this doesn’t make them “bad”.

That you shouldn’t be in KDP Select

I’ve put a couple of my titles in the Kindle Owners’ Library because I’m all about experimenting. Whether it’s right for you depends entirely on you, your book, your promotion plan and so on. I’m certainly not suggesting you don’t do it. You have to make the right decision for your books.

Personally, I understand the argument about building an audience by giving your work away — it’s what I do with every blog post. I just wonder if the audience you’re building this way might be an audience of readers who expect all your books to be free.

I would love to know what you think. Please let me know in the comments and tweet, Facebook or Google Plus a link so we can see all sides of this discussion.

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$500,000 isn't enough for my book. What about yours?, 4.0 out of 5 based on 2 ratings

by in Amazon, Blog, Ebook marketing

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About Steven Lewis

Steven Lewis is a writer, ghostwriter, journalist and publisher. He also gives training in online marketing and social media.
  • http://twitter.com/ExtremelyAvg Brian D. Meeks

    I hadn’t reached any personal conclusions about lending.  I’ve had just over 100 sales of my book and it is thrilling that someone is reading it, but I would like to eventually make a little bit of money.  I’m not convinced that the lending is going to be helpful in that regard.  I was also pleased to see your point about Amazon NOT being evil.  I’m glad they and their Kindle exist, as it has allowed me to sell some copies.  As I work on the edits for my 2nd book in the series, I will think a bit more about this whole lending stuff.

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    • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

      As you can see I, too, am skeptical about lending leading to making money and feel the same way about the subscription model to which this is likely to lead.

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  • http://www.derekhaines.ch/vandal/ Derek Haines

    Well covered Steven. KDP Select is for some an opportunity and for others a wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

    However, there is one element of KDP Select that is not covered in your article that I believe is extremely worrisome. It is the ‘Free book Promotion’ that is offered when enrolling in this program. It offers the publisher/author the option to list and promote their books for free for 5 days out of each 90 day period. This is not free as in lend, but free as in ‘buy for free’.Even at Amazon’s current listing of 35,000 ebooks in the KDP program, my calculations tell me that this means that there could be as many as 350 free ebooks on offer on any given day. So imagine 150,000 ebooks in the program and there’s the potential for 1,500 free ebooks on offer each and every day.Should this be the case, why would a reader bother buying an ebook at all? I’m sure I could find something I would like to read from a choice like this.For some time now, I have had the suspicion that Amazon’s main game is in selling Kindles in its ever increasing number of models. The tablet market is the biggest tech growth sector, so it makes good business sense.To achieve this though, ebooks are being devalued to make content for these devices so cheap, readers can happily load up their devices with ultra cheap and even free content. I could even be lured to the idea that this was part of Amazon’s plans when they made self publishing so easy and simple in the first place. To create mountains of cheap content.

    One thing is sure though. The ebook market is extremely fluid, and I’m sure we have yet to see all the twists and turns that will occur before we sense any stability in the market.

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    • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

      Those who can work these things out estimate they’re selling the Kindle for below cost so they must be planning, if that’s true, to make money on selling product. My concern is that the product is going to be Amazon Prime membership, which, as you say, is going to mean Amazon has nothing to lose by filling the store with free books.

      Previously they’ve imposed the 99 cent minimum so they could at least make 65 cents on the sale of a book rather than turn their infrastructure over to promoting authors who believe free books are the best form of marketing. (As I was saying to another author today, you don’t see the Big 6 handing out free copies of books on the streets for a day to build readership and I think they’ve been right not to.)

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  • http://www.terryodell.com Terry Odell

    I’m not ready to diss those who have Nooks and have bought my books from B&N. Or Sonys, or any other readers. For the ‘small fish authors’, I don’t think the cut of the pot will outweigh sales from other vendors. If I decide to try it, it would be with a brand new release so I wouldn’t have to deal with all the headaches of unpublishing it, revising my website, and who knows what else. I think the rich will get richer. Publishing seems to be another business where a small percentage of the work force (the authors) make a huge percentage of the profits.

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    • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

      I’m not even sure the rich will get richer with the size of the pot on offer. 10,000 “borrows” of your book at a couple of cents a borrow is still a pittance. I believe the only thing that will get Amazon to increase the size of the pot is enough people declining to include their books because it’s not enough. Given how many authors are happy for their books to be read even if they get nothing for them, that might not happen.

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  • http://twitter.com/SinistreProse KG Garyson

    Excellent post. You make some valid points about building an audience. While I agree that building an audience by selling your novel for pennies (or even free) can be effective to get known, that audience will tend to label you as a “bargain seller” and you will attract “bargain buyers.” Authors like John Locke may look good selling a million copies, but at 99 cents, he is alienating himself as a cheap writer. If he ever decides to raise his prices to the $2.99 – $3.99 range (which is where I think the sweet spot is), he will lose those bargain shoppers who made him what he is today. I think the KDP model is going to have the same effect. Once you’ve built an audience of bargain shoppers and decide to start selling at a higher price, people will be reluctant to pay full price for your book when they can “borrow” all they want for $79/yr.

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    • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

      I couldn’t agree with you more.

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      • Anonymous

        I know this is an old post, but I just arrived here from a link on Engadget.  I approach the issue as, primarily, a reader and not a writer.  As a reader I don’t gauge authors by the price I pay for the book, rather for the content they provide.  It’s my opinion, founded or unfounded, that the cheaper novels are simply so because the author is attempting to sell their product outside of the standard publishing system.  (Most of the books below $10 are either self-published or published by independent publishing houses.)

        While I haven’t used the KLL much, yet, I have found that purchasing the cheap novels has allowed me to enjoy authors I may not have otherwise discovered.  I have had little interest in the “big names” in genres I like, such as King, Koontz, Bear, and others, since the price of entry is so high.  Having read past works, like Under the Dome from King, I’m less than impressed with how he compares to other, cheaper authors I’ve read on my Kindle.  (I just finished one called “Dweller” for $5 that I felt was easily on par, and full of fewer cliches, than any of the King novels I’ve read.)

        In the end, I think that Amazon’s move towards lower prices doesn’t necessarily cheapen the worth of an author, but rather makes it easier for people that aren’t bibliophiles to find authors that sync with both their interests and their pocketbook.  I know that as an author you fret about finding a happy medium, but if tools like the KLL allow more people to discover your work, I think the risk will outweigh the benefit.

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        • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

          Thanks for a thoughtful contribution, @fh0wzer:disqus . 

          I hope you’re right. I’ve no doubt I’m reaching more readers, the question will be whether they’re prepared to pay for future work having enjoyed the cheap stuff. At 99 cents an Amazon author makes 35 cents. At $2.99 they make $2, which mean you have to sell six times as many books to make the same amount. Authors should be able to make a living and 35 cents/copy only works for books that are quick and easy to write.

          Funny you should say that about King. I’m reading “11/22/63″ and not enjoying it at all. He’s far too pleased with all his research. I won’t be buying any more of his.

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  • Tina

    There is a limit to one book a month to “borrow”. If I had Prime I would borrow the most expensive books. I think in the future Amazon may make it unlimited to borrow for Prime members, in which case it would pay as an author to have a lot of short 99c books (or articles) available. I can’t believe Amazon is giving the same amount from the pot to 99c book authors as to $9.99 book authors. Something just doesn’t seem fair.

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    • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

      I suppose from Amazon’s point of view it would be hard to have a mechanism that rewarded $9.99 authors more than 99 cent authors because, when this becomes a subscription service, we’d all raise out prices to $9.99!

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  • Linda Chaousis

    I’m only beginning the Kindle writing journey, with lots to learn, but my initial thoughts about KDP are that it has potential to label you as a ‘bargain basement (desperate??) author. Although it is labelled as ‘borrowing’ it seems the sub text is ‘authors, use this to get your name out there’. I agree that giving away some of your work is good practice, but via blogs, videos, tweets and free downloads you have more control. There is a balance between building a genuine community (slower process) and getting out to the mass market. We need to do both,but strategically and always demonstrating we value our work.  I think it is a ‘watch this space’ issue.  I receive a small stipend for books I’ve written for publishers, to compensate for loss of sales by books in libraries. A set fee seems more reasonable. Steve, thanks for keeping us so up to date with emerging practices, issues and challenges with Kindle publishing. 2012 will be my year of ‘doing it’. Have three books in the pipeline already.

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  • Andrea

    Great blog post Steven. Thanks for your insight. I am able to make a much informed decision about it when I do publish my memoir.

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  • http://ditelbat.com Dee for D.I. Telbat

    Hi Steven,

    Thanks for covering this subject. We had already decided not to take part in this offer. And now with your list of facts, we feel that we’ve made the right decision for our Christian fiction novels. Thanks again!

    Dee 

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  • http://timecorps.livejournal.com/ Henry Hallan

    Interesting analysis.  My own analysis was much shorter than that.  There are 60,000 books in this programme, and they are sharing $500,000: the average take will be about $8.30 each.  If my title is going to take more than that, I’m selling anyway, and I don’t need the programme.  If it’s going to take less than that, the programme has nothing to offer me.

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    • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

      Hi Henry and thanks for the comment.

      You certainly have me on brevity but I don’t think your analysis holds up. 

      We can’t know how many times books will be borrowed. If it does turn out that there are 60,000 books in the library for the month, it would be entirely random if (a) they were each borrowed once or (b) the total number of loans added up to 60,000. For each loan to earn $8.30 one of those scenarios would have to happen. 

      Given that my own titles in the program have both been borrowed more than once and I’m nothing if not in a niche, it seems extremely unlikely that the number of borrows won’t be greater than 60,000 by an order of magnitude. I can only imagine how many times John Locke or JA Konrath are being borrowed.

      There is no doubt in my mind that the payment per loan will be measured in cents, not dollars. If I thought I could get $8.30 per loan I’d be in KDP Select boots and all!

      You are right, therefore, that you won’t get as much per loan as per sale but we have no way of calculating by how much on the data we have.

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      • http://timecorps.livejournal.com/ Henry Hallan

        I guess I wasn’t clear.  That $8.30 assumes that borrowing is distributed randomly across the 60,000 titles (it won’t be, as you point out, especially if Locke, Konrath or Hocking are involved) and is the total for all the loans in that time period.

        If I can beat the random distribution, I don’t need the programme — and if I can’t, I won’t even make $8.30.

        The way I calculate it is that $8.30 a bit less than the royalty on five sales at $2.99 — or a bit more than three at $3.51.  Possibly being in the lending programme might generate five extra sales — but I’d much more believe it for the Kindle Book Lending feature, since word-of-mouth is such a powerful force.

        I’d even believe that a full-on pirate version would be a better bet that this Amazon programme: there’s some interesting anecdotal evidence about piracy-as-promotion out there.  But “to DRM or not to DRM” is a whole new discussion.

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  • Hello!

    Steven, I REALLY enjoyed this informative post so much. I agree with you 100%. Also, Derek Haines, I feel the same way about Amazon using cheap and free ebooks to peddle their devices (make their devices seem more attractive).

    The reason I say that is because I’ve read so many comments from Kindle owners in which they use the term “return on investment” in regards to their Kindles, along with “It pays for itself”. There were many more comments pressuring self published authors to stay at 99 cents and I figured out that Amazon has somehow been promising potential Kindle owners free ebooks if they buy the devices.

    Why else would people expect to get free and 99 cent stuff unless it’s somehow been promised to them?

    Also, I don’t have a Kindle but I hear they have ads now in one of the models. I don’t like that too much. Are they sharing any of those spoils with the authors who produce the free and cheap content for these devices?

    I’m not interested in the “lending program” and I’m kind of tired of discussing pennies and chump change, 35 cents here & there, and this god awful 99 cents. Why does Amazon keep devauing content when it needs content to sell these devices? Why don’t they charge 99 cents for one of their own devices for a day (“and get more readers, make more money”, as self pubbed authors love to chant).

    I think that’s a good question: why don’t they give their devices away for free for one day or sell them for 99 cents like they did Lady Gaga’s album before??? But they don’t do it. Hmm, they must know something the majority of self published don’t.

    Also, the Game Developer’s Association warned video game developers to steer clear of Amazon’s game app store because of the very thing you mention, Steve: Amazon gets to set the price of their game, and developers cannot charge less for their games at another platform without giving Amazon the lowest price.

    Even if another platform has a sudden promotion and marks a game 70% off, the developer has to give Amazon that 70% off price point forever. The Association said it feared Amazon is trying to use developer’s work to bear out rivals by using games as a weapon. And in the contract developers must sign to sell on Amazon, Amazon says it will offer their games for free in the “App of the day” program yet pay the developers a regular royalty.

    Then in private Amazon contacts the designers and says it will not be able to pay them when offering their free app to the public. There is documentation online everywhere about this.

    What the Game Dev Association warned developers away from amazon about is the same thing that Amazon has offered SP authors, yet SP authors are taking the bait. There are some minor differences but still similar. Why are SP authors always so desperate??? Why do they feel that giving their work away is the only way to build a readership??

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    • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

      Thanks for a great and thoughtful comment. I really believe we’ll see in the future that not enough readers who meet you for free will stick as readers in the long term. And it’s seen as a panacea when many of us don’t have multiple titles in one genre so it doesn’t work for a big chunk of authors.

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    • txlcav

      They are desperate because they want their books read and no one is finding them.  You can be a wonderful author but have no clue how to get people to find the book you worked so hard on.
      http://www.txlcav.com

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    • Creativitink

       Very well said.  What Amazon is doing seems ominous to me as an author/self publisher.  I’m now researching ereader sales trends.  I’m curious to see if ‘other’ ereading machines can gain marketshare against Kindle.

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    • Creativitink

       Very well said.  What Amazon is doing seems ominous to me as an author/self publisher.  I’m now researching ereader sales trends.  I’m curious to see if ‘other’ ereading machines can gain marketshare against Kindle.

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  • Taylor Andrews

     This discussion on this issue I’ve found
    in the past three weeks to be rather convoluted and very confusing to say the least, since I too received my e-mail offer to
    participate in Kindle Select.

    My view as an author/screenwriter, on the obvious, publicity is easily
    found there, yes you will gain exposure no doubt, but to what end?

    On the other hand, common sense says that there are only two things on
    this planet that do not lie…death and math, they are both exact and
    succinct in their outcome right?

    Therefore, the math may serve well for those launching as I am
    presently, yes it may transform into some level of following or
    readership.
     However the inevitable math strikes back in it’s
    eventuality, this free or lend thing, smells like death to any savvy
    economist. Yes promotion and exposure work in any authors favor, but once market saturation is
    achieved, we by doing so and participating in this, may very well kill
    the market we all strive to write good product for an ever changing market.

    Taylor Andrews.

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  • Anonymous

    I read the first few screens of this and hope you will amend your copy based on a few facts recently revealed. I am no fan of what Amazon is doing to the book-lending world (see “The End of Libraries” at http://alltogethernow.org/showtag.php?currid=85), but you need to understand the program better than you do and present it as it is, and not as you fear it. For one thing, KOLL in December paid authors for lending books for the first time in history, and at the very respectable rate of $1.70 per loan. And then they bumped the January pot to $700,000, probably to try to maintain that per-loan rate as the program grows.

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    • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

      Hi  @Dale_Copps:disqus and thank you for taking the time to comment.
      I don’t think it would be appropriate to re-write the post now. Would you have all authors go back and re-write their material when the future doesn’t come to pass exactly as they predicted? I believe also that the general point stands. It turned out indeed that December was great for authors ($1.70) but it could well be far, far less in the future as more authors put in their books. Your last sentence is pure supposition. If Amazon wished to maintain a rate it would surely be easier to offer a rate rather than a post hoc calculation.

      As for my needing to understand the program better: what is it you feel I could understand better? And are you sure your understanding of my understanding is complete given that it’s not based on the whole post?

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  • Anonymous

    While I agree with the rest of your article, I couldn’t disagree more with your justification that, “libraries serve a public interest — making books available to people who can’t afford to buy them.” Public libraries serve primarily as centers of research and education. It has nothing to do with charity, otherwise the Library of Congress would look like a discount bin at the local thrift shop — full of ratty novels that nobody wants and little else. It is like saying, “museums are for people too poor to afford their own art.”  Museums do not preclude artists from making a living any more than libraries preclude authors from making a living.  In fact, quite the opposite as both artists and authors continually draw upon such facilities for inspiration and insight in their own work. As an author yourself, you should know better than to use such a poorly-informed justification, when it only detracts from your very valid point that there is no public interest in Amazon’s version of “library”, but merely Amazon’s interest.

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    • http://www.taleist.com Steven Lewis

      Thanks for taking the time to comment, @coldnebo:disqus .

      Your comment has turned this more political than I intended. I certainly didn’t meant to imply that libraries were established for charity anymore than I think state schools are established for charity. 

      You make a further leap by lumping the majority of public libraries in with the Library of Congress. I don’t know about you but my local suburban library has as much in common with the Library of Congress as my local council chamber has with the Palace of Westminster.

      You say libraries are primarily for “research and education”, I say they’re at least as much for recreation and entertainment (the “ratty novels” you don’t approve of). I can’t think either of us is drawing on anything more substantial than our impressions of libraries to make our justifications.

      Rather than fall down a rabbit hole arguing the similarities and differences between unique works of art and mass-produced books, surely we can agree that libraries serve a public interest whether that is research, education or entertainment? And, as you say, what Amazon is calling a library doesn’t.

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      • Anonymous

        Fair enough. I understood what you wanted to say, but I wasn’t fond of the way you made the point. We already risk losing funding for public libraries, how much faster will we lose them if they are commonly viewed as charitable entertainment for the poor?

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  • http://twitter.com/HopeWelsh Hope Welsh

    With KDP Select, it gives the new author a chance at getting their book in the hands of readers that otherwise might not find them. 

    The free promo days on my title, LINKED, for instance had 2k downloads in that 2 day period. Not a lot by most people’s standard, I suppose.  My thought is that if only 10% of those people review my book on Amazon, my clout as an author goes up.

    My main issue with publishing on Amazon in general is that it’s very difficult to make the top-selling lists when they don’t do a very good job letting authors select the areas where the title should showcase–especially so for YA authors like my daughter.

    My title didn’t show at all in the sub-genre lists where it should have shown–and it wasn’t because the lists were full–they weren’t.

    The jury is still out as far as I’m concerned. At this point, I’m looking for new readers–not necessarily a ton of money.

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  • txlcav

    I think if you have a series of books, it would be a great idea.  Get a reader hooked on KDP Select and then hope they enjoyed one book so much they will buy the others in the series.   As the author of a single book, I don’t see it helping you much.  Most people do NOT go back and review the books they read on Amazon, or at least that is my perception.  I think authors would be much happier with this program if Amazon required the borrowers to write a review of each ebook they borrow, but I don’t see them doing that any time soon.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/authorjames.w.lewis Author James W. Lewis

    KDP Select is definitely not for everyone. I’m using it for my shorter works. I have two in the program now, but so far, I’ve done a free two-day promotion for only one of them. For that particular book, I had a significant bump in sales. I was averaging one sale per month (with very little promotion and advertising) to 100 copies in March. So far, I’ve sold 6 this month, so it appears the after effects of KDP Select is still working, although sales have dropped (still more sales than previous months).

    I agree KDP Select is good for a series and “hooking” new fans to your work. Next month, I plan to have 5 works in the program and I’m curious to see how having them all at the same time will affect sales of my novels, too.

    You can read about my experience with KDP Select here: http://tinyurl.com/77evwad

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  • paleojay

    Excellent article!  I WAS considering putting my new eBook into KDP select- now I know it is a bad fit for me!  Thanks for your perceptive analysis.

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