UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion
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KDP Select - What do you think?
The last promotion I did was 3 hours delayed, but it was 3 hours late in finishing, so I got my 48 hours. I think it's quite typical. Hope you enjoyed the blog and it was of use!
Thanks for the interest in my book! ;)
It certainly was! And you're welcome. :-) I do move indie books (purchased or sampled) near the top of my TBR pile, so I hope to get to it soon....;)
Morning folks and Happy Easter!I've posted to this thread quite a few times and may well have said this before. I'm a fan of KDP purely in terms of it being a quick way of getting your book out there. The free promo days guarantee you hundreds if not thouands of downloads which hopefully then translate into a percentage of new readers who might review your work and/or buy other things you've written.
Certainly I usually see a small sales spike just after I do a giveaway. Plus for people like me who don't do vast amounts of self-promo it's an easy way to get people to see your work, albeit without money changing hands.
Word of warning, Amazon can get pretty upset if they spot your work elsewhere. I foolishly forgot I'd published one of my books via Smashwords before Amazon and they jumped all over it. The trouble was that Smashwords had distributed to a number of other channels which is taking time to sort out.
Morning all, and Happy Easter!Thanks for the advice and information, Jamie. Our promo finished on time (grr, so we lost 8 hours) and we're hoping (fingers tightly crossed) that we will see a sales spike.
Like you, the key was getting our book in front of readers without paying for marketing! Hopefully our new readers will be so enthusiastic about the series that they'll leave good reviews and spread the word generally.
I appreciate the warning about other sales channels, and am sure others will too.
D.M. Andrews (GoodReads author) wrote: "I use Sigil and Calibre too, actually I don't know of any other proper way to prepare Kindle mobi"Me too. Can't see how you can defeat KDP formatting without it.
Rosen wrote: "It's true that the less reviews a book has, the more impact each one might potentially have on sales. However, as authors, we never stop appreciating reviews. Feedback is always welcome.New revie..."
My UK reviews are stuck at 5, and sales are slugish. My US reviews hit 10 and are more mixed bag and it is selling better.
As well as the number, I think you want a range of reviews. Five 5 star reviews smells fishy to some people.
Has anyone got experience of using price matching to effectively do a free promo on Amazon without being in the Select program? i.e. publish through Smashwords, drop the price and hope Amazon price matches.I intend to leave Select after the first 90 days, even though it has been very good for me, because I see it as diminishing returns when I have the one book. If I had multiple books, I'd use Select to bump new ones in a series by offering the first free on promo.
Yes and it worked extremely well, indeed it may be the reason why Select didn't. You have to have your book cheaper on Kobo for .co.uk and Barnes & Noble for .com.Cheers
MTM
Would you like a 3* review Paul? I can always change it! I must give you another plug somewhere.
Ignite wrote: "Would you like a 3* review Paul? I can always change it! I must give you another plug somewhere."Oh, I'm sure someone else will be good enough to give me a lower review score :) I wouldn't want to be accused of colluding to get low reviews!
Now I've started reviewing in my own little way, I'll keep on at it. I jumped in on a review thread on Amazon (not the kindle forum, you'll be pleased to know). It's quite interesting what they were saying.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/forum/fiction...
But not knowing what the numbers are for everyone, I would have thought that the best strategy would to keep one book in there as the "loss leader" and the rest as paid for, rather than chucking everything in there.
I've been thinking along those lines, Joo. Perhaps keeping Book 1 there. After starting that thread about how to get noticed in the US, I was amazed at the results of my first freebie. US downloads outweighed UK by 20:1.
Joo, I've just run into you on that one! I agree about the loss leader on KDP but you need to change it regularly or they definitely do get download fatigue.Cheers
MTM
I haven't had much luck with Kindle Select so far. I do end up giving away a lot of my work and then nobody bothers to buy it. It's when I joined Goodreads that I noticed a difference in my sales.
David, you mentioned that your sales picked up after you joined Goodreads, that's interesting, what do you think the effect was? I'm quite interested.I have signed my books up to KDP select and I noticed a spike in sales but I noticed the last time I did it the downloads were really down.
I'm wondering if the market has become saturated with freebies now.
The First time I did the KDP it was hand as it got my book noticed, and people began to buy it.The second time around the downloads were lower and there doesn't seem to have been much of an impact on sales. Perhaps as L.K says the market is saturated with freebies.
Or perhaps second timers for the free promotion don't get as much visibility as KDP first timers. I think I'll probably leave the KDP now until my next book is out.
I think from various threads here and on Amazon there is an element of reader fatigue as far as the KDP select freebies are concerned.
I agree with that, it was a novelty at first, but there are only so many books you can download before you wonder if you'll ever get to read them all.
I agree too. I'm quite happy now, having gained confidence in my books (thanks largely to the fine folks here at Goodreads) to just keep them up for sale and see what happens. I won't be using the Free Promo thing again but I think the Borrow option is quite handy so will be staying in KDP Select for that reason only.
I've enrolled my latest in Select. Dark Seduction. Although I don't like it, giving away free books results in more sales after that weren't there before :/
You could consider writing a short story and making it available for free.I have three short books up for free and plan on keeping it that way. On my author profile I have suggested a particular book as a starting point for anyone interested in reading my work.
Whether this has any impact on sales is impossible to say.
I am a bit weird though; I have torrented all my books and posted the links in various torrent forums, and even have links to the torrents on my blog.
Some genres do better on Kindle than others. My crime novel is doing quite well, thanks to the free promos on select.
My other 2 novels, one is a family saga, the other is about young opera singers, are making no progress. I'm selling a few, but, oddly, the one with the best reviews has the least sales.
My other 2 novels, one is a family saga, the other is about young opera singers, are making no progress. I'm selling a few, but, oddly, the one with the best reviews has the least sales.
I know what you mean Joanna! I seem to be cursed to write in the literary fiction genre!
Stuart wrote: "I know what you mean Joanna! I seem to be cursed to write in the literary fiction genre!"And we're blessed to read it! (You're not complaining are you?) ;)
Not at all ma'am!! Just waiting for 5pm so I can get cracking with the book!
Hey Stuart, it's not much cop for fantasy either!
Indeed and then we shall be all powerful Mwahh ha ha ha haargh!Chees
MTM
That's not the revolution where the writers have their backs to the wall and the readers all have guns, is it? only I think it started some time ago in Another Place!
I am on my last nine days of the mandatory ninety and it has been tough deciding whether or not to renew. The initial effect was pretty good, but almost three months after giving away over 10,000 copies in one day and then selling a couple hundred the following week and getting a few dozen borrows, there just hasn't been much in the way of real benefits since then so I'm opting out and getting my book back on Smashwords, Apple, Sony and Barnes and Noble. Kobo I'm not touching again. I reduced the price back to the intro level for the last days on Select. After that it's back to wider distribution and a reasonable price.I'm not too far away from having the next book ready so I'll probably have to ponder whether that one should go the Select route when the time comes.
After my last free run with Dead World I had around 500 paid sales within a week or so. This time with Dark Seduction I've had less than a handful :/
Things definitely seem to be tailing off. Even my borrows this month are WAY down. Less and less reasons to stay in Select considering I don't intend to employ the free option. But then it's always nice to have the choice! Decisions, decisions!
I think anyone who has had a kindle for a while is feeling very swamped with freebies now.Having said that, perhaps things will pick up again now the touch has been released in the UK.
I really feel strongly that books which have no reviews will get minimal uptake when made free as they just get lost in the lists.
Day of the week is important too, I think. No idea about borrows, really, but I'd wager they rely heavily on word of mouth.
What do you authors reckon?
I think any significant action for a book is dependent on word of mouth. Doesn't matter how many freebies you've distributed or even how many "aftershock" sales you gotten after a promotion period, if the folks who actually read the book(s)--and we all know that an extremely small percentage of the giveaways ever get read--aren't excited enough about the experience to take the time to spread the word your book is never going to achieve steady sales.And that is the other key, readers who will literally take the time. So many people who have read and really enjoyed a book don't do anything to get the word out. I've had conversations with lots of friends and coworkers about what they are reading or have just read and very very few of them have even considered talking up a book they have truly enjoyed. Just never occurred to them. No Facebook post, no Amazon review (which I think are of minimal value compared to true person to person recommendations), and hardly ever "Hey, you've got to check out this book I just finished" conversations with friends.
I don't think Dear Readers are trying not to help, I just think it doesn't enter into their heads at all. The only cure I know for that is to write something they can't help but want to talk about. Now there's a challenge, eh?
That's such a good point Alan.An interesting thing that I've noticed is that many of my facebook friends are now posting about books they've enjoyed, since I've started doing it.
We're even having long discussions abut them.
I'm much more likely to read a book that as been personally recommended to me, as I've said many times.
I do recommend books, 3 out of 5 people have bought a book this week after my recommendation. I do also try to review books and will go for a book that doesn't have one over one that does. This is only since reading author posts tho and finding out what i can do to help, i do appreciate that most people don't even consider that there are things We should do as readers
Same for me Desley, I was rather ignorant of all that before I came on here and saw a bit of the light
I completely agree with Alan - word of mouth remains the most effective communications tool in our digital age. There's something reassuring about that, as it means that the biggest success doesn't automatically go to the company with the biggest marketing budget. But as he says, it does mean that we have to give them something they feel strongly enough about to want to tell others. A challenge indeed!
Stuart wrote: "I know what you mean Joanna! I seem to be cursed to write in the literary fiction genre!"
I think it's a lot to do with the Kindle Forums. They seem to think that 5 star reviews are fake. None of mine are, but I think it's suffering because of the assumption.
But everyone can (1) Read the sample. (2) Get their money back if they download it, but don't like it.
http://www.amazon.com/Vissi-darte-ebo...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vissi-darte-e...
I think it's a lot to do with the Kindle Forums. They seem to think that 5 star reviews are fake. None of mine are, but I think it's suffering because of the assumption.
But everyone can (1) Read the sample. (2) Get their money back if they download it, but don't like it.
http://www.amazon.com/Vissi-darte-ebo...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vissi-darte-e...
I know what you mean about the five star thing Joanna. My book has 52 five star reviews in its first three months - all of which are genuine and none solicited. Yet sales are modest. Oh well it's a long old game I guess and, in truth, quite a fun one!!
I had a chat with a manuscript reader for one of the top ten publishers the other day. If I had been 
I'm keeping Death in Spigg's Wood in Select, but I have not yet enrolled Death in Flitbury Marshes and at the moment have no intention of doing so. This may change. After all, I had no intention of putting DISW into Select and offering it for free, but I did and I'm glad I did.But the market has changed even though that was only a couple of months ago. Already we are seeing that books offered for free don't necessarily do well afterwards - and sometimes they do worse! Already we're seeing lower uptake of freebies.
In the end I think what we need are a number of quality products and an awful lot of luck.
Simon (Highwayman) wrote: "Age is a terrible thing..."As the father of a twenty-five year old son and seventeen year old daughter, I've got to say that being young has its own set of challenges. And they can seem quite overwhelming.
According to Bernard Shaw – youth is wasted on the young . . . :-o)
I spent most of my youth drinking, womanising and driving fast cars, the rest of the time I just mucked about.
Simon (Highwayman) wrote: "I spent most of my youth drinking, womanising and driving fast cars, the rest of the time I just mucked about."No longer though. I've seen your car...
I re-enrolled two of my books in Select this month and my give-away in early April was the best yet - beyond my highest expectations. Sales have not been huge though. In fact, without the sales in Britain that I can only presume this group have helped (thank you), I'd be pretty disappointed. The borrows have been relatively good this month though. I don't think I'll do another give-away, but I never say never. I'm just playing it by ear.
Simon (Highwayman) wrote: "I spent most of my youth drinking, womanising and driving fast cars, the rest of the time I just mucked about."That's what youth is for. Well done! I wasted mine staying indoors writing stuff. What a nerd.
UK Amazon Kindle Forum
Books mentioned in this topic
The Mutilation Machination (other topics)Dark Seduction (other topics)
Revolution Earth (other topics)
The Hunter Inside (other topics)
Dark Seduction (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Harrison Davies (other topics)Michael Wallace (other topics)
We're on day 3 now (although Amazon didn't set our prices to free until 08:30 PST on day 1!) and downloads have mostly stalled (*sob!*) So we'll see how it all goes. :-)
I've downloaded a sample of The Serpent in the Glass and am 99% sure I will purchase soon :-)