Expanding ebooks to non-Amazon retailers

In the past, I've sung the praises
of Amazon's KDP Select Program.  Sure, they require you to only
sell books on Amazon, but by enrolling in the program, you get access to
five free days per three-month period, which is an astonishingly
effective marketing tool.  So why did I just yank two books out of
the program?



Amazon has a handy new reporting feature known as Sales Dashboard (shown above), which
allows you to visualize day-by-day sales for each of your titles
individually.  By browsing back through my stats, I realized that
only some of my free periods were giving me a boost.  Specifically,
free periods for books that have a potential to appeal to a very broad
audience (and which thus tend to hit the top 100 free on Amazon) boost both the
title itself and related titles after the free period ends.  On the
other hand, niche books generally move fewer than 1,000 copies
during a two-day free period, and the promotion doesn't seem to give me
any benefit at all.



With those niche books, I next took a look at borrows through the Kindle
Owner's Lending Library,
another way that KDP Select members get an
extra boost.  Some of my niche titles are averaging about 9 borrows
per month, which equates to about $18 revenue --- probably
worth keeping the book in the KDP program for that reason alone. 
But since Amazon sales equal about 50% of total ebook sales across the
board, titles that see only a couple of
borrows per month might be better off distributed to a wider
marketplace.



That's why you'll soon see Microbusiness Independence and can already
see Low-Cost Sunroom for sale at most ebook sellers.  (You can download Low-Cost Sunroom for 99 cents on Smashwords and on Barnes and Noble,
and the title should soon show up on Apple, Kobo, Sony, and in other
stores.)  I chose to use Smashwords to distribute my ebooks to
non-Amazon sources partly through laziness (it often takes a couple of
hours to format a book for each store, especially the first time around
as you learn their particular quirks) and partly because of the
excellent advice here. 
The short version is --- Smashwords takes a little cut of the action,
but does the format conversion and listings for you.



Will the expanded
distribution route be worth it?  I suspect that my best option will
be to keep my best-sellers in Amazon's KDP Select program, then to put
lower-ranking books on Smashwords and on other sites.  Only time
will tell, but I'll definitely keep you posted.