World, Writing, Wealth discussion
All Things Writing & Publishing
>
To Kindle Select or Not?
date
newest »
newest »
As long as you are getting a decent number of pages read in Select, I think it is worth it to stay. I did not get very many book borrows for the first few months (maybe 10 borrows a month on Kindle Unlimited) but as I began to understand and pursue marketing, my page reads went up. For the month of September, my books have been averaging 30 borrows per day, which works out to about $150/week in royalties. If I pulled out of Select, I would have to get 75 more sales a week to make up for royalties lost. Even though there are over 200 borrows a week, my opinion (based on research and other author experiences) is that the readers who borrowed my books on Kindle Unlimited are unlikely to buy the book at full price. So these readers would probably be lost altogether. Could I sell 75 books a week on the other platforms combined? I don't know yet, haha.
Kindle Unlimited book borrows also prop up your ranks even when you are not getting sales. Higher ranks mean more visibility leading to more sales and pages read, and so on.
If I got less than 10 borrows a month (less than 1500 KENP/month), I might consider pulling out of Select and listing on the other digital platforms. The page reads always go up after a promotion and I get a steady stream of borrows when I promote on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #KindleUnlimited.
I only get 1/3 the royalty from a book borrow that I would get from a sale. But at this time, I am more concerned with my ranks looking good and seeing that my books are being read every day than I am getting the full sales royalty off every book.
I should mention that it probably makes a big difference that my books are in a series and my readers (bless their hearts) tend to read through all of the books.
The cons are that your books cannot reach the platforms responsible for 26% of ebook sales. I have also heard that you cannot be a USA Today Best Seller if you are only on Amazon, because they require your sales to be spread out over the other platforms.
According to Bookbub submission guidelines, they are less likely to accept a book for promotion that is not available on more than 1 digital platform.
I personally will stay in Select for the foreseeable future and I will enroll my future books in Select because I understand Amazon now. For the other platforms, I will have to develop entirely new marketing strategies and learn their individual algorithms. I'd rather just stick with what I know for now while I build a fan base.
The best part - you can try Select and other platforms and see what works better for you. There are authors that report bigger sales on other platforms (J.J. On Smash, I think) others on Apple. After all, everything is reversible, so why not to try? The thing is that sales/borrows on whatever platform still require marketing/promotional effort
Thanks for the extensive replies.Cheers Graeme
Yeah, Apple is still my biggest market and for some reason, they like to pay more...
Do you mind saying your genre and target audience?I get the feeling that younger people (in general) are on Smash, but I have no idea the readership of Apple and Nook.
Marie wrote,I did not get very many book borrows for the first few months (maybe 10 borrows a month on Kindle Unlimited) but as I began to understand and pursue marketing, my page reads went up....This is my experience - bar the "understand and pursue marketing."
I want to avoid random shotgunning as a marketing technique. I'm getting more sales than Kindle unlimited reads. But I have no marketing. I think that the right move will be to pursue the kindle unlimited market for a solid 3 months and see what happens.
Marie wrote,I personally will stay in Select for the foreseeable future and I will enroll my future books in Select because I understand Amazon now. For the other platforms, I will have to develop entirely new marketing strategies and learn their individual algorithms. I'd rather just stick with what I know for now while I build a fan base...This is another key point.
Master one platform at at time - do not split resources. Focus on a single market and go deep. Once established there - then build breadth.
I write Science fiction, but I don't specifically target outside of that. My title character in Dione's War was 16 (but you have to do the math to figure it out) while my MC in the Freedom Reigns series was around 40. I thought of USS Krakowski as very 'murica underneath, but I chose to make my MC in Freedom Reigns a French-"Candian" (thinly-veiled "Canadian"), while my current WIP Are There Heroes In Hell? features Canadians as villains.I know series sell and people like to read more and more about a universe they get invested in, but I tend to write differently. Freedom Reigns was honestly a painful experience as I got tired writing the same characters after six books. Even though Dione's War was just as long as that series word and page-wise, and it took me just as long to write, there was just something easier about it because it was one work instead of six. ATHIH is a follow-up to USS Krakowski, but it's so different, I think it will be hardly recognizable as a sequel/prequel.
At this point, I feel like I've pretty much broken all the advice given to indies for what works.
J.J. wrote: "Yeah, Apple is still my biggest market and for some reason, they like to pay more..."Apple users are used to paying more for everything haha. Well, I've got an ipad and iphone and I've paid for a lot of apps and music that people with other devices seem to get for free. And let's not get started on the non-mini-usb charging ports... :)
What do non-fiction authors think? I'm thinking of ending Select when the 90 days is up soon, my book is about 120 Kindle pages so I get far less for page reads. What's your experience with the other distributors?
Hi there, I published with D2D because it was a very easy process. They communicated consistently with me up until it was published, but since then I have found them very hard to get hold of. I'm in Australia so I use email to communicate. I'm now thinking, especially since now I have an epub, of swapping to Kindle. It seems everyone is there I fell like I'm missing out on something!
You can just add kindle, James, unless D2D requires exclusivity. Only "Select" feature precludes sales on other platforms..
I've started joining book groups on facebook. I'm joining slowly - say 4 or 5 a day.
I haven't posted anything yet, I figure that it would be best to do the lot as a campaign to get as many eyeballs on view at the same time.
Does that make sense, or am I at risk of being seen as spam by FB algos?
It depends on the Group's rules.There are large groups on Facebook designed specifically as the place to promote books there. Many authors post their promos regularly there. And there are goups that ban and delete self-promotions...
Welcome, Graeme.Facebook works very well for Marie, for example, and she shares her experience here - worth to have a look and try
Thanks Nik, D2D don't require exclusivity so it looks like I will join kindle also (not select) as you have mentioned.
I decided to put my most recent book in Kindle Select for 90 days, run a Countdown deal to goose the numbers, and then remove it so I could put the ebook on other platforms. (I'm just doing that now.) I have another book on Kindle select that was on auto-renew and I'm going to do the same thing. KDP helps to get some awareness of the book, but after a point I'd like to get the ebook in other venues.
Hi Anne,That sounds like a reasonable strategy.
Graeme wrote: "Hi Anne,That sounds like a reasonable strategy."
it's good to try different things.
Here's Joanna Penn and Liliana Hart's take:
http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2015/0...
Interesting stuff, Alex. I read the page then followed the links to her other articles too. According to those, I've been doing everything wrong...ah well. Not everybody gets there the same way, I suppose. She makes some great points and I would really like to get on the audible bandwagon if I can figure out how to.
Starting out as an author, I make just as much from Kindle Pages Read (the biggest benefit of Select) as I do from selling books. Also, my book sales go up. So for a beginning author, there really is no loss.I'll let you know my thoughts in a couple years when I'm not so naive ;)
Marie wrote: "Interesting stuff, Alex. I read the page then followed the links to her other articles too. According to those, I've been doing everything wrong...ah well. Not everybody gets there the same way, I suppose. She makes some great points and I would really like to get on the audible bandwagon if I can figure out how to."that's right. as always, YMMV.
I'll start another thread on audible. Tara has quite a bit of experience with audible.
Being in Kindle Select gives exclusive rights to Amazon to distribute electronic versions of your book and you get to access the Kindle Unlimited readership library and you get better royalties in some markets.
What are the pros an cons of continuing with Kindle Select as opposed to dropping out and adding (for example) smashwords to cover off sales and distribution for other electronic formats?