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Should I stick with KDP?
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Isabel wrote: "Going on KDP select was the best decision I ever made. It gave me a wider distribution than Smashwords, BN and Kobo offered. I sold more on Amazon in a day than I sold on all other platforms combin..."My experience is the same as yours, Isabel. KDP Select works wonders for me, both as a reader and as a writer.
G.G. wrote: "I switched to KDP Select last fall and I don't regret it. Every time I have done a free day, I ended up selling more books the next day that I had in total with Smashwords and their distribution. F..."G.G.- do the free days work because you are giving away the 1st in a series to lure readers in? I just don't know what free days do otherwise for stand alone books. Would you think sales would still improve or would people just wait for the 'free' day in the month?
Sorry for all of the questions. I'm a new author trying to learn what I can.
John
John wrote: "G.G. wrote: "I switched to KDP Select last fall and I don't regret it. Every time I have done a free day, I ended up selling more books the next day that I had in total with Smashwords and their di..."I have the exact same question as G.G.
John wrote: "G.G. wrote: "I switched to KDP Select last fall and I don't regret it. Every time I have done a free day, I ended up selling more books the next day that I had in total with Smashwords and their di..."I did free days. I've never done countdown deals. As to make people buy my sequel? Even when both were free they took the first only so no, it didn't help my sequel any, but I'm hoping some who took the first will read it and maybe a part of those will be interested in reading more.
Since practically only my first got downloaded (1171 compared to a mere 131 for the sequel (also free on SAME DAY), and got sales only for the first, I'd say that it should work the same for a stand alone.
What it brings? I believe getting up in ranks, whether in free categories (Fate ended up #1 in two free sub categories), helps with the visibility of the book(s). If you have more than one book, people may check you out, especially if they read the d/l and loved it. NOW, don't take me wrong. I don't have much faith that people who took the opportunity to d/l the books while they were free will read them let alone review them but hey, even if half a dozen do, it would be better than none.
It's all about visibility (and word of mouth).
Now I have to disclose that the free day coincided with the last day of a giveaway I did on Goodreads. I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of takers were people who saw the giveaway (but not necessarily entered because I only had 628 takers (what might not have helped is that although the giveaway was for both books, I did it under my sequel).
Hope this info helps.
Andres wrote: "I am getting out of KDP select because they will not help me market my books (Tess Valkyrie series) because the cover shows a woman warrior after a battle with a little blood on her hands. I paid a..."Andres: Are you referring to Amazon's pay-per-click program? They do seem to be stringent there. We did not submit one of our books for a PPC ad for exactly that reason (the cover of that book is more "graphic" than your sounds). But the primary benefits of KDP Select are the free promos, the countdown deals, and of course KU, which has been huge for us.
The PPC ad we ran on Amazon garnered no results, but countdown deals have been very good for us, while the free days have been mixed. If those things aren't working for your books, pulling out is a good decision, but it does take time to see results. But in our experience, the benefit of KDP Select are far greater than the PPC ad program. (We write military sci-fi.)
BTW: You don't have you GR profile set up as an author yet? And yes, that is a nice cover!
John wrote: "Can someone explain how it works? Do you get paid 'by the page'? Because on Kindle now people can 'lend' for free so I'm not getting paid for any of that."Yes, you get paid by the pages read according KDP's normalized page count. There are some threads here that explain that in more detail and as well as the info on the KDP site. The payouts so far has been around 0.5 cents per page read. When a person borrows your book thru KU, you also get a benefit in your bestseller ranking.
Regarding people lending a book: Yes, if a person purchases a book, they can lend it, and we authors do not see any payment any more than we do if someone buys a print book and lends it. The owner can't read the book while it is loaned out (just like a print book). But a reader can't lend a book they borrowed thru KU (as far as I understand -- if I'm wrong there, someone correct me).
Regarding free days for standalone books: This is just our experience -- when we did a free promo when we had only one book out, we saw no benefit. For us, countdown deals have done much better than free promos. But some people do well with free promos, as G.G. did. (Well done, G.G.!)
So it all depends. But overall, market a single book is tough. Having several books out makes things easier.
I hope that info is of some help.
Owen wrote: "Andres wrote: "I am getting out of KDP select because they will not help me market my books (Tess Valkyrie series) because the cover shows a woman warrior after a battle with a little blood on her ..."Thanks for your comments, Owen.
Andres wrote: "Thanks for your comments, Owen"My pleasure.
I have always enrolled books in Kindle Select and I'm now in the process of removing my current book from the program. I've never tried Smashwords so I thought I'd give it a try. Amazon has refused to advertise one of my books due to the graphic cover, although there was much worse out there. With my latest book, I was advertising with the PPC program, and it showed 'billing error.' I went to my amazon page, made sure everything was correct, (it was), so I sent them a message. They told me they were looking into the problem. A week later, I sent them another e-mail and they responded by telling me that these things take time. Meanwhile, they've buried my book. Sigh
Just goes to show what works for some doesn't work for others. I've had my book on Select for 3 cycles and of that 270 odd days I've had reads registering for maybe 10 days total, otherwise a flatline on that graph. I have promoted KU specifically and ran ads which cost more than my book, but I rationalized the cost as exposure since those ads received a nice number of impressions.After a while I cancelled the ads, seeing those impressions add up but no increase in KENP reads. Later still I restarted the exact same ads. This second time around I got only a small fraction of the impressions (as in single digit impressions per week) and still no KENP reads.
So time for me to expand my horizons. But, I'm not fretting since I know amazon and Select are not going anywhere. It might be a pain to redo.
I've had some very positive interacts with support, the odd KENP flatline off and on for months straight, my rankings not moving even though there are sales, wrong info on my listings, categories not working right ... but who wants to contact support on a daily basis? Not me. I actually think that even if I don't see sales on other venues to make up for KU borrows, at least I would not have wasted so much time on amazon trying to figure out KU and spending money to advertise something that isn't working for me.
From my experience, KDP select has done nothing but help. I do receive less if someone reads the entire book than I would from a sale. On the other hand, those pages read help to boost my ranking on amazon which in turns increases visibility of my book. If you look at it from the readers perspective. They have subscribed to Amazon's kindle unlimited and are looking to read books from that list. Why buy a book when there are so many others you have already paid for. I don't think as indie authors we can afford to cut out an entire group of prospective readers. Amazon is definitely getting a good deal here, but that is another subject entirely.
I can't speak to the usefulness of the free book promotion having only done it once. I used the promotion for two days on my first book as I released the second. I did see a spike in sales, but have no way of knowing if it was from the the promotion or the release of the second.
I've had some good success recently using "#free for #kindleunlimited" on Twitter, and seeing a few readers' worth of pages per day show up on my chart. I'm not selling a ton, but KU is frankly worth more than a sale at this point, and every person reading could become a fan and look at the sequel too. I sometimes wonder if I'm missing out on those other markets, but considering the slowness of Amazon itself, I kind of doubt it. It's purely a judgment call, really.
Owen wrote: "But overall, market a single book is tough. Having several books out makes things easier. I hope that info is of some help.
Owen's advice is spot on. This is what I've consistently heard/read from many successful indie authors. The best marketing advice: write your next book.
None of my promos with Smashwords generated such a response, and I didn't have even half the sales I got in one day total. I may have had 2 or 3 sales total out there in more than a year. So why would I go back to global distribution?