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Is KDP Select Worth it?
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So, that's the unhelpful answer - it can work for some, but probably won't work for everyone.
It's different for every author/book, so you won't know until you try.My experience:
Over the past 3 years, I opted out of Select twice, for 6 months and 4 months at a time, to try other platforms. During those times, I sold very few copies--all other platforms combined produced less revenue in 6 months than I currently receive from 1 week of borrows in Select.
Besides, my Amazon sales dropped when I was out of Select (in addition to losing all my revenue from borrows). I am now back in Select and will stay there for a while.
I think if you already have a following, it pays to go with other platforms even though you may lose some revenue in the short term. For unknowns like myself, nothing beats the discoverability tools that Amazon offers, and it's worth paying the price of exclusivity.
Hi John. First of all, just want to let you know that I moved your post to the Marketing and Promo Questions folder. This question has come up a few times and as Dwayne says, it's one that depends on many factors. Exclusivity is not for everyone, but for some it can be beneficial.
For me, it has more to do with research that I did initially on publishing. There are some companies that I will not deal with due to my own personal ethics. Others did not have a very good relationship with indie authors and required some kind of third party distributor to even get a book onto their site. I happen to also find some of these distributors to be predatory. Only Amazon had a model that I felt was both fair and very simple for any and everyone to use.
Now, everything above was based on my own personal research and ethical beliefs, but I will say that as someone who previously published through a more traditional means, chosing to stay exclusive to Amazon for my ebook distribution was a wise economical choice for me as well.
But again, that is just me. You may find that your core audience doesn't use the kindle. The only thing you can do is try each model. KDP Select exclusivity is just ninety days. If you don't see a benefit, you can always change your mind. You'll see this posted a lot on marketing questions, but it hold true: your milage may vary.
I find the promotion tools to be EXTREMELY effective at spreading my work and building a base. I tried other platforms and they were not getting me nearly as much as I could with using Amazon's promotional tools. And the market-share is just so much bigger with Amazon. If the other competitors had something to woo me over, I would, but right now, Amazon is the big player in town and their benefits are very useful.
I sold very few books through non-amazon distributers. I now sell exclusively through amazon. When amazon started paying per page, my kindle library borrows earned more than my sales... per book and per month!
I'm Amazon KDP Select all the way. I make 80% of my publishing income from Kindle Unlimited. There's no way I would voluntarily leave Select.My paperback, however, I will distribute widely through CreateSpace.
One thing I did notice with Amazon: for one of my eBooks, I have 4 reviews--they mention I have 4 but only published 3 of them.
Hi Steve. I think that's a recent issue they're having. I had one book say it had a new review, but it didn't show me anything for nearly a month and then one day a review showed up listed as 'posted one month ago by...'
Ah, thank you Christina for the clarification.
Ken wrote: "It's different for every author/book, so you won't know until you try.My experience:
Over the past 3 years, I opted out of Select twice, for 6 months and 4 months at a time, to try other platfo..."
Great answer, thank you Ken. I wondered the same thing. Unknowns may benefit from letting Amazon boost their books in the massive marketplace they already have, whereas people with a following don't need to rely as much on one bookseller for everything.
Anthony wrote: "I sold very few books through non-amazon distributers. I now sell exclusively through amazon. When amazon started paying per page, my kindle library borrows earned more than my sales... per book ..."question for you, and the group: How many of you get sales via Smashwords?
I'm new to the KDP select site. However, I found if I post a promo on Kindle, as in a count down deal or a short term sale on one of my books, then I get pages read, and paid more on the KDP select site. I will keep monitoring, but I'd say the KDP select site might work well for author's who have multiple works out there.
Sam wrote: "Anthony wrote: "I sold very few books through non-amazon distributers. I now sell exclusively through amazon. When amazon started paying per page, my kindle library borrows earned more than my sa..."I've been with Smashwords 1 year with two books and the sales are very low. I am thinking of returning to KDP exclusive.
I'm with KDP Select all the way! I love it! However, to increase one's exposure to new markets, it seems like it would be a good idea to have the bulk of your work in KDP Select (higher profit margins!), but keep a couple representative titles out of KDP Select so that you can list them with the other retailers simply to increase your exposure. I only have one title at the moment, so that strategy won't work for me yet, but eventually I'll have more. I'm working on three new titles now.
Claire wrote: "Sam wrote: "Anthony wrote: "I sold very few books through non-amazon distributers. I now sell exclusively through amazon. When amazon started paying per page, my kindle library borrows earned mor..."When you return to KDP Select, don't you have to remove your books from the other retailers first. You become exclusive to KDP select again. What's the best way to remove your other books from SW, KOBO, B&N etc.?
Yes, you'd have to remove your books from the other retailers first as you must offer your e-books on Amazon's site only. But I've never done that, so I can't help with the how-to part of it.Keep in mind you can still list your paperbacks on those other sites. My understanding is that paperback exclusivity is not required for KDP Select - that only applies to e-books.
John I wrote: "Claire wrote: "Sam wrote: "Anthony wrote: "I sold very few books through non-amazon distributers. I now sell exclusively through amazon. When amazon started paying per page, my kindle library bor..."Yes, you do have to remove the book from other sites. For me it was easy. I was on other sites only through SW so I started by opting out of the distribution first. I waited and checked regularly to see if the book was still posted on B&N, Kobo and ITunes. (B&N was the slowest to remove it.) Once they were all out, I unpublished on SW.
I know I could have gone directly with the unpublished but I had heard people saying it took time, up to three months sometimes. I figured it wouldn't hurt to keep it on SW until I was ready. Worked well for me. It only took about a week or so.
been with select for a year and i still dont move a lot of copies. i guess everyone is waiting on sequels? lolz so im getting some new books ready... maybe i will get out of the slump
Kindle Select hasn't been all that great for me but I'm still sticking to it because of the advertising opportunities Kindle Select allows, not only promos but Kindle Unlimited and Lending Library.For KU, I think a lot has to do with the readers who enroll in the program and which genres are represented. As genres in the KU grow, some of us may see better results from being in Kindle Select later. I am hopeful.
Kindle Select permits free giveaways (up to five days) once every 90 days. This would seem to be a valuable way to generate Amazon customer reviews. I wonder if such a review would qualify as a 'verified purchase'?
Michael wrote: "Kindle Select permits free giveaways (up to five days) once every 90 days. This would seem to be a valuable way to generate Amazon customer reviews. I wonder if such a review would qualify as a 've..."It's actually five days per 90 day period. You don't have to use them all at once, though Countdowns do work that way.
And yes, a free book is a verified purchase.
I love it. I have what averages out to several books per day read through ku. That means people are actually reading it, and that's amazing. I'm getting exposure and that's more important to me than the difference in royalties. Maybe when i have more titles, that will change. I don't know. But for a debut novel, that exposure is critical.
Is it 5 free days per 90days including the countdown deals if you do one or is it one or the other?
G.G., it's one or the other during the same 90-day period.
G.G., I think it's one or the other. You have to choose. I ran a Countdown Deal and got a lot of additional purchases, but the decrease in royalties made it a wash.
And you have to be enrolled in kdp select for 30 days, with no price changes for 30 days to have a countdown deal.
Tks Ellison and April. :)And Tks Wendi.
I am considering the Select program to take advantage to the free book days. Can anyone tell me how this worked for them? I am wondering how many "free" books might be downloaded on a free book day.Thanks!
Nancy
Hi Nancy. I've had as few as three and as many as three thousand in a single day with no outside advertising. It all depends on the day and the whim of the buying public.
Wow! That's crazy. Thanks for letting me know. More on this would be helpful.
Mod
I haven't had near the number Christina has. I'm fortunate to see even fifty go out when I have it free. But, I'm still happy with the results. Why? Because almost every time I offer something for free, I see a short burst in sales for a couple of days.
It seems to work differently for everyone. Some people are happy with their results, some are not.
I used a free promo for two days with no advertising other than on my local Facebook pages, and I had about 460 downloads. I did it only 2 days after I published, though, so I have no idea if the sales afterward were a result of that or if they were from the "newly published" promotion (if any) I got through Amazon. I decided not to do another one and wait for my next KDP enrollment period so I can do a countdown deal.
I'm in Dwayne's camp - about 50 per day and each day yields different results. My experience is weekends are the worse days starting with Friday.
As to opting out of select, I removed one of my books from select and listed it with Nook. To my surprise, the only way to locate my book through Nook was by typing in the title. It could not be found in a search, even though I listed it properly. My email to support went unanswered. I gave them two weeks to respond and then pulled my book from Nook. I went back to select. Just my two cents.
It's also hard to find your own book with iTunes. I had mine in my 'favorite' so I could copy paste the address when advertising. Else, forget about that.
G.G. wrote: "It's also hard to find your own book with iTunes. I had mine in my 'favorite' so I could copy paste the address when advertising. Else, forget about that."I hate iTunes for looking up books. I tried when I first listed books there and was unable to find anything interesting (let alone my own works) other than what they were pushing as top sellers.
It's one of the worst online shopping systems I've seen. Apple's supposed to be so awesome when it comes to user interface, but in this case, they're one enormous FAIL.
As for all the love posted here, let me play devil's advocate: I've had absolutely no luck with KDP Select at all. I had my first two books on there for quite a while and even after the KU came around, I saw no traffic whatsoever on either book. Countdown deals did nothing.And I don't see any correlation between offering free books and direct sales (or page reads).
I don't get many sales at the other retailers either, but right now it seems better for me to have books available in as many places as possible than to go exclusive.
I'm not sure at this point if I'll put my new works on Select.
I'm going through the publishing process with CreateSpace for my first novel and will also use KDP Select. I regularly call the team at CreateSpace that is working on my book, and if anyone has a question about CS or Select I'll pass it along to see what they say.
The title of my book may bee somewhat misleading as it is certainly not just about Brooklyn. This might mean that those out of the country might find the title misleading and uninteresting to them, even though there are worldwide events in the book. Besides plenty of human, business, there are plenty of sales lessons. In any case just a fair reaction on KDP Select.
To answer the original question about KDP Select, just as any other tools, it won't do the job for you. If you sit back and do nothing (like I tend to do :P) you won't get any results. But that's true for any route you take anyway. So go with what works best for you.
Has anyone with drawn from smash words to go back to KDP? I'm with drawing my books from there to give KDP another go and wondering how long it takes for your books to be 'unpublished' in anyones experience?
i did. I first opted out of the distribution, and once I didn't find the book on the major websites, I unpublished it on SM, which is virtually instant. The whole process took less than a week.
Claire wrote: "Has anyone with drawn from smash words to go back to KDP? I'm with drawing my books from there to give KDP another go and wondering how long it takes for your books to be 'unpublished' in anyones e..."As long as you're not enrolled in Flipkart, you should be okay. They can take months; the other major SW distribution channels are usually done in a few days. However, some have sub-distributors that can take longer.
If you're not sure, just contact KDP Support and ask them to verify that your book is not available elsewhere. They're generally very helpful, especially if you're going back into Select.
Hi, my apologies. I see that I dropped into the conversation and didn't return to answer questions directed to me. Though others have answered for me.Sam wrote: "Anthony wrote: "I sold very few books through non-amazon distributers"...
question for you, and the group: How many of you get sales via Smashwords? "
I took 3 months out and published on Smashwords, I sold 2 ebooks! Yes, only two, through Smashwords.
"When you return to KDP Select, don't you have to remove your books from the other retailers first. You become exclusive to KDP select again. What's the best way to remove your other books from SW, KOBO, B&N etc.?"
I simply unpublished them, and once the were no longer available, I signed up for select.
I don't like the Amazon only exclusivity, but it pays better and sells better.
I like that you can see how many pages they read. It is so great to see them read the whole book in a two days. I haven't made a lot of money off of it but it keeps me motivated. My sales have been slow but steady so I am not giving up on KDP yet :)
Ana wrote: "I like that you can see how many pages they read. It is so great to see them read the whole book in a two days. I haven't made a lot of money off of it but it keeps me motivated. My sales have been..."Ana, you can't tell if someone read the whole book or not. We only see how many pages were read. We don't see how many people downloaded the book and started reading. For example, if you see 100 pages read, you don't know if one person read 100 pages, or four people read 25 pages, or ten people read 10 pages, or one person read 99 pages and one person read 1 page, etc... We don't see that level of detail, although I do wish we could see how many books were downloaded via KU.
Liliana Hart (an indie author who has sold over 3 million books) makes a very good argument for why "established" indie authors need to distribute their books widely. She says KDPS is great for new authors just getting started, but to get serious eventually, they have to go wide. Here's her interview with JoAnna Penn, which is well worth listening to.http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2015/0...
April, I think most of us would agree with that advice. The challenge is getting from "new author" to "established". And really, to make money going wide, you pretty much have to be selling thousands of books per month.I can only hope I get there some day :)
As Indie authors know, KDP select offers some avenues for selling that many outlets don't. For instance, they have KOLL which no one else has. For entry in KDP select, they require that you give your ebook exclusively to them. In doing that, you must ignore Smashwords, Kobo, B&N and several others. What experiences have other authors had. Is it worth it to forego KDP select, just have your ebook in the regular KDP store and have access to all the other outlets? Thoughts, please?