I think I had some reservations at the beginning, like a lot of authors, when KDP Select started. That exclusivity thing seems kind of limiting. But I had this neat advantage that a lot of normal e-book authors don’t: A fairly large back catalog. As many folks know, I write quiz e-books. No fine narrative crafting, I just have to come up with a hundred or five interesting questions to put out an e-book. It isn’t the largest market segment at the moment; in fact, if I was limited to print, I probably wouldn’t even be typing this. But it was perfect for a test of the KDP Select system, since I could still have a bunch of books in other distribution channels.

Last year, before KDP Select started, I sold a grand total of 525 books between Amazon and Smashwords’ premium channels (and a grand total of NONE through Smashwords itself).

This year’s sales so far (up to August, 2012) total 517 books between Amazon and Smashwords (including one direct sale finally from the site itself; thank you, Phil!). Beyond that, there are 128 borrows to factor in, which at an average of a tad more than $2 a pop, adds up to around $250 for no sales. In the business, I believe that is called “$Ka-ching$!”

I’ve also used the free promotional days offered with KDP fairly liberally; usually one a month. I’ve given away 6,239 books this year. So technically, my sales are about five times what they were last year.

Granted that since KDP has come out, I have published or republished ten books, so I have about 27 volumes of stuff floating around out there.

Here’s what I’ve found to be the advantages to KDP:

1. Free promotional days, or as I like to call it, “Advertising Without a Budget.” I have no funds for advertising. None. Zippo. Zilch. The Big Oh (and not the good kind). I’ve got a couple hundred followers between Facebook and Twitter. But with the free days offered by KDP Select, I’ve gotten my book, work and name in the hands of nearly 7,000 new people.

Oh, and I think if I need to, I might be able to deduct the list price of each book from my taxes as a business expense. Not that I make enough right now to worry about that too much, but it is something that I, and other KDP Select users, may want to look into with a professional.

2. Increased sales through higher rankings on Amazon. This aspect of KDP is seemingly being tweaked by Amazon on a daily basis. How much longer this will be an actual advantage is anyone’s guess, but at the moment, I can usually depend on having at least 5-10 ancillary sales during or immediately after a free promotion, and a good thirty days of more sales through the better visibility of the one free book in the Amazon rankings.

3. The Borrows through Amazon Prime are another nice bit of the program. I’m pretty sure that the fee that an author gets for having his book borrowed hasn’t been below $1.75 all year. That’s more than many of our royalties are on a lot of our sales. And if the person wants to keep it longer, they have to buy the book outright. That seriously works for me. Even though Prime members can only borrow one book a month, every little bit helps.

4. There are no restrictions on content or promotional content within your e-books. With a back-catalog, I like to include a full list of links to my books on the Net in each of my books. I had absolutely no problem doing that on Amazon. However, if you put your book up on Smashwords, you are only allowed to put in links to your book on Smashwords. They give you some malarkey about their “partners” not wanting to see that sort of thing in your books. But no matter how you look at it, it’s a form of editorial censorship. Given the general inability of Smashwords’ Meatgrinder software to handle my books (I use a lot of page breaks, and it doesn’t like them for some reason), I’ve stopped uploading new books there. If I ever leave KDP Select, I’ll deal with the “premium channels” on their own merits and through their own websites, and remove a needless middleman from the equation.

The final tally is this: Last year, I sold an average of 30 books a month. I’m at nearly 76 books a month so far this year. In the very small market niche that I currently write for, I consider that a success.