KDP Select: A Personal Experience

A couple of weeks ago I did a post on my blog about my experience with the KDP Select program. And I wanted to share that experience with all of you as well. I’m trying to see if my encounter with the program was typical. I know authors who swear by it and others like me who have given it a try and said, “No, thanks.”

How do you weigh in?

In May, I decided to give the KDP Select program a trial run. Sales of my self-published titles had hit a slump, so I decided to give KDP a try. And the first month I was actually very encouraged. I was paid every time someone on KU downloaded my book, which worked well for me. However, the next month was the moment KDP decided to shift their payment from when someone downloaded my to when someone read my book and how many pages they read.

So now I’m being paid by the page, and only .06 of a cent for each page read. Which meant that if you downloaded and read the book cover to cover, then I’d get paid for my work. And my self-published words are shorter novellas. Only one of them, if read cover to cover, would give me the same amount as the royalty I’d get for the book if it was downloaded and paid for.

The next month my royalties from Amazon were significantly lower and I had no exact number of people who had downloaded my books, only the number of pages read. So I waited until the end of August, when my 90 days in the program were up, and I took the books off the program. I haven’t gotten a ton of sales since then, although there was a flurry of sales at Smashwords right after the works were available again. But when I do sell a book, it pays as much as if I was having 35 copies of the book sold and read. Which wasn’t happening on KU.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else had tried it and liked it or disliked it? Inquiring minds always want to know! :)

 

 

Filed under: Jenna Jaxon, Marketing