Amazon's KDP Select: Update

I wrote a post about Amazon's new KDP Select program a bit earlier, and am here to report my initial results.

I initially decided to put and SEASON OF THE HARVEST into the program because their sales had really fallen off, and I wanted to see if KDP Select would perk them up a bit. Just to recap, KDP Select gives authors the chance to both offer Kindle books enrolled in the program free on Amazon (for promotion), and also pays them a share of a fund for titles that are borrowed through the Kindle Owners Lending Library. The upside for folks who own Kindle devices and are Amazon Prime members is that you can borrow these books free.

The catch is that books in KDP Select are exclusive to Amazon for the Kindle, so for the 90 days (which can be extended) that the book is enrolled, folks who have Nooks, Sony readers, etc., won't be able to buy them.

Now, let me explain my strategy, then we'll look at the results.

The first part is to use the 5 "free" giveaway days (out of 90) that I can use to offer the books free. While some folks have questioned my sanity for giving out freebies at all, one of the best things I've been able to do is offer free copies of EMPIRE to entice readers to buy my other books.

The question is, would this work in a surgical manner on Amazon by having them on sale for just a day or three at a time?

My hope in offering them as freebies would be to create a "draft effect" for when the book(s) went back to paid status, helping to push the title up in the paid rankings. I didn't expect a lot in terms of hang time, but where HARVEST was, in the 20,000 range, anything would be better than nothing.

IN HER NAME: FIRST CONTACT

This book was floating around 9,000 or so in the Kindle paid rankings, and I put it on "free" from 14 through 16 December. I just chose those dates at random. Here's a look at what happened:

Week Ending 10 December:

Paid copies sold: 46

Week ending 17 December:

Days free: 14-16 December

Free copies sold: 1,096

Paid copies sold: 60

Week Ending 24 December:

Paid copies sold: 169

Week Ending 31 December:

Paid copies sold: 130

So, not bad. Sales volume roughly tripled for at least the two weeks after the freebie days, pushing FIRST CONTACT up into the 2,000s in the paid rankings. On top of that, it's had around 50 Amazon Prime borrows, which we authors now get paid for.

SEASON OF THE HARVEST

Not to put too fine a point on it, SEASON OF THE HARVEST completely fell off the apple cart after its meteoric rise from its release in February through amazing sales through summer. But starting in September, sales went…poof. It went from a ranking of around 300-400 overall in the Kindle store through summer to kerplunking to the mid-20,000 rankings most of the time from September onward. Nothing I did – focusing more on promotion, dropping and raising the price, etc. – seemed to have much effect. And sales in the other channels (B&N, Sony, etc.) didn't amount to much, either.

So let's see what happened with this little KDP Select experiment:

Week ending 17 December:

Paid copies sold: 24

Week Ending 24 December:

Days free: 21-23 December

Free copies sold: 15,577

Paid copies sold: 163

Week Ending 31 December:

Paid copies sold: 1,433

My first comment when I saw the numbers was, "Holy crap!" HARVEST went as high as the 20s in the free category, and jumped into the top 100 in the paid category when it went out of freebie status. And even now, a week after it returned to paid status, it's still at 1,200 overall in the store. Again, not tons of hang time at the top, but certainly better than being down in the tens of thousands. On top of the direct sales, there were also around 600 Amazon Prime borrows, which ain't bad at all!

IN HER NAME (Omnibus edition)

After that, I took a gander at the and decided to put it into KDP Select, as well. Like HARVEST, it had really fallen off the apple cart, although not quite as far. This book had been almost rock solid at 400 in the Kindle store through the entire summer. Then, like SEASON OF THE HARVEST, it went kerplunk.

For the first free round, I chose to give it away on 30 and 31 December, right before New Year's. Let's look at the results:

Week ending 17 December:

Paid copies sold: 116

Week Ending 24 December:

Paid copies sold: 94

Week Ending 31 December:

Days free: 30-31 December

Free copies sold: 10,465

Paid copies sold: 460

At this point, I don't know how well IN HER NAME will do, how much of a push it will get in the sales rankings, although it's sold 107 copies in the first 10 hours of 2011. I suspect sales today – 1 January – may be slow because half the world is comatose from New Year's celebrations, but we'll see. On the other hand, even if the main benefit was the 460 copies sold for the week ending 31 December, that's still four times the previous weekly sales rates. Can't complain about that.

What Does It All Mean?

First, your mileage is going to vary. I used a lot of social media "push" to get the word out about the freebies, especially for HARVEST and IN HER NAME (Omnibus), which I think was key to getting those books moving up the free charts.

But how high they'll go depends on a lot of things, most of which are out of the author's control. And how much of a push a book will get when it goes back to paid status is hard to tell. These three books did well on this round, but that's not a guarantee that they'll perform the same way next time. I've heard other authors who said they got no leverage at all from the freebies, and some who got a lot. I think the key thing is the promo push to get the word out to as many people as possible before and during the time a book's in freebie status. Like everything else, no one can get your book, even if it's free, if they don't know about it.

Second, it seems (not surprisingly, I suppose) that the best giveaway periods will likely coincide with major shopping days or holiday events. While it's comparing apples to oranges to an extent, HARVEST and IN HER NAME (Omnibus), which were both put in free status in good "shopping windows", did much better than FIRST CONTACT, which I just made free at a randomly chosen time.

The bottom line for me, though, is that KDP Select had a very positive effect on my Amazon sales over what I suspect will be a three week (give or take) window: the first week will be the initial peak after the freebie period, followed by two successive weeks of elevated but declining sales until the book reaches its previous equilibrium zone.

Were I to do this all over again, here's how I'd structure it:

- Map out good potential shopping days in the 90 day enrollment period.

- Divide up your 5 free days into 2, 2, and 1 freebie sales periods. I decided that 3 days was probably too long: the free rankings will tend to fade after the second day, and you want to spread these freebie "pulses" out over the three months your book is in the program.

- PUSH HARD (but politely!) on social media with teasers a day or so before the freebie dates, and then during the free sales. Don't be obnoxious about it, but focus like a laser and politely ask for RTs from your tweeps.

- Get the word out about Amazon Prime and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. You'll get paid for every book a reader borrows, and it's free for them. Everybody wins on this one!

The Business Case for KDP Select

Authors who are considering KDP Select have to carefully weigh the pros and cons of offering titles exclusively through Amazon for 90 days (or more, if you extend), because you'll be cutting off readers who use other electronic media (Nook, Sony, etc.) during that time. Remember, though, that other media – print, audiobooks, etc. – aren't affected.

I've heard some folks say that KDP Select is "bad" because you're limiting your exposure, cutting off potential readers, etc. That's all true…to an extent. But what it really comes down to is making a business decision, and every author is going to be in a different situation, juggling different variables. So don't let anyone tell you that KDP Select is bad, good, or otherwise. Determine that for yourself.

In my case, Amazon Kindle sales account for over 90% of my royalties. Looking at KDP Select, there was a very clear business case to run a trial with two titles that were on the wane. Based on the results, particularly with SEASON OF THE HARVEST, there was a very clear business case to enroll IN HER NAME (Omnibus) in the program to try and boost its paid sales in similar fashion. Not to put too fine a point on it, the royalties from HARVEST in the week after it was free is more than I would expect to make from all other sales channels combined for a period of five months.

Considering the exposure aspect, over 25,000 freebies made their way into the hands of thousands of new readers, many of whom will go on to buy my other books. And that's just in the period of a few days in a single month. Again, your mileage will vary, and not every author, or every book by a given author, is going to have spectacular results.

To give you a comparison, ALL sales through other retail channels (ebooks only) for 2011 came to just over 7,000 copies (about 5,000 of which were through Barnes & Noble for Nook), most of which were free copies of EMPIRE. Hmmm.

Now, I have no intention of giving up on sales to non-Kindle users, because I don't like to have all my eggs in one basket, and my sales on B&N and other channels have been slowly growing. So my big-picture strategy at this point is this:

- Consider books that are suffering lackluster sales for KDP Select to kick them in the butt.

- For my IN HER NAME series, I plan to alternate books in the program so that readers can still get the whole story on other platforms. For example, right now I have the omnibus in KDP Select, but the standalone novels it contains – EMPIRE, CONFEDERATION, and FINAL BATTLE – are all still available for other platforms. FIRST CONTACT is in KDP Select, but THE LAST WAR (FIRST CONTACT, LEGEND OF THE SWORD, and DEAD SOUL) is available for other platforms. So I'm able to take advantage of KDP Select, but am not cutting anybody who doesn't have a Kindle out of the series.

- Rotate titles in and out of KDP Select in such a way as to try and capture the best shopping periods of the year. So, while SEASON OF THE HARVEST isn't currently available for anything but Kindle, it will be again in mid-March.

- Emphasize the Kindle Owners' Lending Library (Amazon Prime + Kindle device) aspect! Remember, authors get paid now for borrows, and these books are free for readers. WIN!

So, that's the scoop so far on my experience with KDP Select. Now go have a Happy New Year!

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