A question for KDP Select authors

I have a question for all of the indie authors out there who have released more than one book and have used the KDP Select program for at least one of them: did it result in an overall increase in the rate of paid sales?

For anyone unaware, Amazon offers its eBook publishers the opportunity to sign up for a program where they can offer their eBook to Amazon prime library users and in turn receive a percentage of a monthly”money pot” put aside just for that purpose. This part of the program is something I don’t hear a lot about. I’d love to hear an author say, “Well, I didn’t make more sales, my part of the KDP Select fund more than made up for any losses I had for pulling out of all other distribution methods. That would be cool. But wait…

Did you say that I had to pull out of all my other distribution methods? Yup. That means no Kobo, no Smashwords, no Sony ebook store, no iStore, no nook store, and you can’t even sell it on your own website. That might not be the complete end of the world, since the Kindle app is available for all mobile devices. But what about people who own a dedicated non-Kindle ereader? Or maybe, they’re like me and love the scrolling text features of moonreader+? Would you be completely alienating those potential readers?

There is another benefit to the KDP Select program though: you can offer your eBook for free for five days out of every 90. I’ve heard of these free books getting downloaded thousands of times over these periods, sometimes hitting the bestseller lists (but I have to clarify that these are just Kindle categories, not the New York Times list or Digital Book World list. A lot of authors have used this as a marketing angle, making themselves on all their social media lists as bestselling authors. Truth be told, unless someone has the New York Times qualifier on their claim,I pay it no attention. If you offer your two-year-old’s random typing for free with a great cover and then market the hell out of it, then they,too, could be a “bestselling author” having written nothing more than ‘fsergbjitfddfgvfffghbn’.

So, back to my original question. Have you used Kindle Select? Do you think that the extra exposure of offering your book for free boosted your long term sales? Did you get any complaints from non-Kindle users? Do you think you could have made the price changes on all your methods of distribution to make your book free for a week and had the same results? Let me know what you think in comments below.