KDP Select Attempt #5001

All right, I admit, I haven’t tried KDP Select 5000 times already. I have been trying it off and on since it was conceived back in late 2011 though. I had good luck the first time around. Not great luck, but good luck. So I tried it again and it was kind of flat.

But wait, that’s only two data points. So I tried it again. Doh! More bad results. And again. And again. There might even be another again in there up until early this year. I figured what the heck, why not give it another go round – it’s not like the non Amazon retailers are doing crap for me sales-wise this year (more on that in a minute).

So my Vitalis books hit the KDP Select spotlight and WOW!, they didn’t do jack. To be fair I didn’t really advertise or promote them. Up until this past weekend, that is. I raised as much awareness as I could (admittedly, probably not very much) for my Vitalis Omnibus (this contains the first 7 novellas in the series). Over the course of five days as a freebie I gave away 2195 copies of the book in the US and UK (only 185 in the UK). Not exactly a jaw dropping number. Today was the first day it came off of being a freebie, so the question is, how is it doing now?

I sold one copy so far today in the US and 1 in the UK. Yep, 1 in each. Kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it? Prior to the freebie-fest I was averaging 3.6 copies a day between US andUK. What about books 2 (Vitalis: Resurrection) and 3 (Vitalis: Provenance) in the series? Those did better, selling about a total of 8 or 9 copies between both (in both countries). Pre-promo I averaged a little over 4 sales a day (between both books and both countries).

And now I’m locked into KDP Select on Vitalis book #1 for the next 80 days or so. Such is the price of science. Or in this case, science fiction. Because it’s a science fiction book, you see. What I did there was…sigh. Never mind, I’ll stop.

Anyhow, KDP Select for people who aren’t Joe Konrath seems to suck. Bookbub won’t pick me up when I contact them to advertise and my experience with other promo / advertising agencies has really sucked the big toe. All in all, I’m a huge proponent of free books – I just wish I had done it in a smarter way instead of enrolling in KDP Select.

UPDATE: Two days later I checked again and I actually moved some more product (books 1, 2, and 3). Will it maintain these bloated sales figures (low double digits on each book by now)? I don’t know. I hope it does or gets better, but I doubt it. I’ll update as time passes.

I dropped a teaser earlier about non-Amazon retailers. I reckon if you’ve made it this far you deserve to know what I was talking about. Well here it is, they aren’t doing a damn thing for me. Or for other writers I know. You see I have sales data for not only my books, but several other writers and books that go through NCP Publishing. No, I will not disclose anybody’s data but my own, but I will say 2013 has not been a good year for Barnes and Noble or Kobo as far as I’m concerned. Sales are down through Smashwords too (and iTunes / Sony / etc.), but I won’t know any specifics until Smashwords releases their Q1 sales reports (which should be any day now).

So there you have it, Amazon is winning as far as the numbers I see can tell. And why not? Hate them or not, they’re doing everything right. They offer authors the best numbers in the business, real time reporting, great royalty schedules, and they cater to customers too. Anyone can set up affiliate accounts and they have Amazon Prime, which is a service I keep fighting the urge to sign up for. There really are no downsides to it, near as I can tell, I just haven’t bought enough via Amazon that wasn’t digital that I could justify it.

Yes, I sound like an Amazon fanboy because, well, they’re doing it right and they’re doing me right. I hate putting all my eggs in one basket, I really do, but as a writer that receives less than 4% of my writing income from the non-Amazon retailers, I practically don’t have a choice. KDP Select isn’t the choice I want to make for my books, but it’s not like opting out of it benefits me all that much either.

So, my fellow writers, I’d love to hear more experiences with KDP Select. So far the stories I’ve read are the outliers. How about sharing what the average writer gets out of a run with KDP Select?

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com .