"All In" with KDP Select, or My Life Without Smashwords

Self-publishing is nothing if not a giant experiment, and I think that's what makes it exciting and appealing. If one method of selling isn't working for you, then by golly, you can just try something else without having to answer to some higher power. You're in charge of your own destiny! Nothing is over until WE decide it is!



FRRREEEEEEDOMMM!!!!



Ahem. Sorry about that.



So, as you probably read in one of my more recent posts, I told Smashwords to eat a giant bag of phalluses (phalli? phallae?), which left me with a choice to make in terms of how I was going to distribute my work. I could have either uploaded my library manually to Barnes & Noble and Kobo, or I could push all my chips to the middle of the Amazon table and go full KDP Select. There were a lot of pros and cons associated with either of these decisions, but what ultimately won me over was laziness. Sure, the free days and the possibility for extra earnings through borrowers on Amazon Prime were also a factor, but the thought of uploading all seventeen of my books on two separate websites, where they would likely not sell a single copy for months, just filled me with an overwhelming dose of meh.



After making my decision, I decided to have a big freebie day extravaganza on New Year's Day. In the course of that single day, I gave away over 6300 books. After that, I went on to have my best sales month ever. Triple digit sales and double digit borrows. I made in January what it took me six months to make last year. I also picked up about eight or nine new reviews. Things slowed down a little toward the end of the month, but overall, things remained steady. So I figured I might as well try the same thing for February.



I gave away about 3500 books on February 2nd, and since then, I've been back on a similar sales track that I was at the beginning of January. I should also note that on both freebie days, I managed to land over half my titles in the Top 100 (and in the Top 10) on the sales rankings.



A couple things I think make a big difference, and I think why some people might be having mixed to negative results with their trial experiences in Select. It isn't enough to just have one title in the program, and it isn't enough to have one title free for a day. I think the algorithms seem to favor the full saturation approach. If you have more than one title in Select, they should all go free on the same day. Maybe one day a month, two max. Flood the system with your work, dominate the charts. You'll get a ton of downloads and subsequent sales will benefit accordingly.



This is also why it comes in handy to have a large library, period. One hand washes the other. Or five or ten or a dozen or two dozen. If you aspire to self publish, don't just release one book. Don't release just two or three. You aren't going to build an audience with a single book. Audiences thrive on repeat performers, and they aren't going to commit to someone who doesn't seem committed. Stockpile about five or six stories, then produce them and release them in quick succession. It'll pay off.



Anyway, am I saying it's worth joining KDP Select, giving up your ability to distribute to other sellers, shutting out other platforms, and basically making yourself an exclusive slave to Amazon? Not necessarily. But has this particular approach worked for me and produced record sales after months of dregs? Absolutely. I can't say it will continue to work month after month, but it's working for now. The beauty is, if it quits working, I can find another strategy that will. That's the beauty of self-publishing: flexibility.





Or something...