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Why aren't you in KDP Select?
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This is after the fact analysis that points to the same realization for big five and indie: without word of mouth blowing on the embers of your efforts there is no flame.
The downside to KDP Select seems to be that the minimum price available for your book is $2.99. Sure, there are countdown deals, but they only last 7 days.My current KDP select term is finishing in 2 1/2 weeks. I'm curious to see if marketing a $0.99 book will result in more readers than a $2.99 book.
Kent wrote: "The downside to KDP Select seems to be that the minimum price available for your book is $2.99. Sure, there are countdown deals, but they only last 7 days.My current KDP select term is finishing ..."
I love the freedom of selling my books on my own site.
Definitely. Or on Kobo (for us Canadians).The one other thing that annoys me about KDP Select is that you only get KENP data. You never find out how many people actually downloaded your book or read the preview. Amazon has this data, but they don't seem interested in giving it up.
Good find, Alex. Thanks :). As far as their next "mega best seller", I'm over here like, pick me, pick me!! Just a side note, I saw a Harry Potter book on Kindle Unlimited. I think it was the first one.
So basically Kindle Unlimited is the Spotify of books about to replace iTunes? Streaming really is the future.
Kent, you can have your book at 99 cents on Kindle Select, it just means that you cannot have the 70% royalty rate.
With IngramSpark offering this kind of wide distribution, I'm wondering if KDP Select is actually a big (yuge!) mistake for indie authors:Print: http://www.ingramspark.com/how-it-wor...
Digital: http://www.ingramspark.com/plan-your-...
I don't have anything published at Amazon digital, so I can let IngramSpark distribute there as well. Yeah, it's a lower initial percentage, but any discounts come out of their pocket instead of mine.
To me, going with IngramSpark seems like the no-brainer.
Cool, Tom! A contrarian opinion. I was looking at ingramspark a few weeks ago. It seems like they are a distributor rather than a publisher; whereas KDP select does offer marketing tools. You could also use createspace as your hardcopy distributor in conjunction w/Amazon and they CS distributes thru Ingramspark, correct?I also did see metadata features, but perhaps you would enlighten me as to how much control you have vs. the native Amazon UI. Thx!
I haven't gone through the entire process with IngramSpark yet, so I can't speak to their metadata features. They are the largest distributor on the planet, so I suspect their system is at least professional grade. I'll let you know how it goes!
I was crunching the numbers last week and found that 2/3 of my readers are Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
My KDP is about to be up and I am not sure if I am going to renew it. Might see how I do on regular Amazon and B&N for a bit. We'll see. Right now, I am playing with pricing to see what works.
Melonie wrote: "My KDP is about to be up and I am not sure if I am going to renew it. Might see how I do on regular Amazon and B&N for a bit. We'll see. Right now, I am playing with pricing to see what works."in addition to Friedman's article that I linked to in the OP, you should also read the authorearnings.com report (if you haven't already). search for "KU" to read the relevant commentary.
http://authorearnings.com/report/octo...
although it's referenced in the aforementioned URL, this article is quite important. in a nutshell, amazon had to make a 2% correction (increase) to KU authors b/c of a pages-read algorithm error.
https://teleread.org/2016/10/08/amazo...
EDIT: nevermind about the 2% correction. if you're in KDP select, you already know.
Marie wrote: "Kent, you can have your book at 99 cents on Kindle Select, it just means that you cannot have the 70% royalty rate."Oh, wow. I just noticed that. Thanks!
Re: your calculations, which assumptions did you use to convert KENP into readers?
Alex G wrote: "in a nutshell, amazon had to make a 2% correction (increase) to KU authors b/c of a pages-read algorithm error. ..."I think this info needs testing. Glitches, mistakes - all can happen, but this is authors' royalties. I suggest we test it. We need a KDP select author or a few, who doesn't have page reads to see whether some of us read a few pages and he/she sees them reported. Anyone game? I can offer my own stuff for testing too.
Kent wrote: "Re: your calculations, which assumptions did you use to convert KENP into readers?There is a graph on the KDP dashboard that shows how many page reads each book is getting. I divide that by the approx number of KENP in each book. It will not be an exact number because of other factors like people not finishing your book or reading it over multiple days, but you can still do some decent guessing imo :).
Marie wrote: "Kent wrote: "Re: your calculations, which assumptions did you use to convert KENP into readers?There is a graph on the KDP dashboard that shows how many page reads each book is getting. I divide ..."
Makes sense. :) I guess you could also factor in your sales rank because I think borrows are treated similar to sales. If you see your sales rank going up and you don't have any sales, you could calculate how many borrows you had.
More news: the big 5 in retreat.
Friedman's publishing industry status report on 22 September 2016:
https://janefriedman.com/publishing-i...
An aside: Friedman is an intellectual powerhouse and you could spend weeks on her website. When anyone references Pinker's The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language in an incisive manner, you need to consider their opinions and analyses.