KDP Select - What do you think? Showing 401-450 of 1,056

[Rosen]

I have now written to them twice. Hopefully we'll get some answers soon.

[Stuart]

We always have hope!

[David]

Same for me, guys... download numbers are much lower today than I was expecting, but my position in all the rankings remains unchanged. So presumably the figures are being recorded somewhere, we're just not being told what they are!

Thanks for pursuing, Rosen - be interested if you get a response. From what I've heard, Amazon aren't too communicative!

[Rosen]

They usually get back to me eventually, (most often asking a question using a no-reply email address!)

[Katie]

I just got a 'we will answer your email eventually' email. I had three books free on Feb 1st, but even though one of them made #1 in Free children's fantasy, they're saying I only gave away 24 books. Considering the same book only got to #11 in the same category last month with 830 downloads, I think they may be a little off in their reporting!

[David]

Damn them! Don't they know how needy writers are?! :-)

[M.A.]

I had the same response, Katie.

Rosen last year Lady Gaga released her new album and the pre-order DLs were phenomenal. The system crashed and a lot of writers didn't get recompensed for their lost sales as the Zon denied all responsibility!

It's why I was against select and wary of putting my eggs all in one basket and I've been proved right again! Luckily, I haven't put all my titles in select as my thrillers are doing very well on the other platforms!

I'm going to be thinking long and hard about select over the next few weeks!

I still think the Zon favours the writers they were signing up left right and centre last year, all American writers!!!

[Rosen]

Mel (Lorne's creator, Pete's murderer) wrote: "last year Lady Gaga released her new album and the pre-order DLs were phenomenal. The system crashed and a lot of writers didn't get recompensed for their lost sales..."

That's appalling. Amazon are already getting twice as much profit as I do on my books, without needed to grab a day's sales too.

[Nell]

My sales (much better since the free promotion ended) have suddenly crashed too. There's definitely something going on. Hope they get back to you soon, Rosen.

[Rosen]

Isn't this utterly frustrating? I usually monitor my sales regularly, to try and predict trends, inform a budget, test different blurbs etc. I had been planning on putting another title on promotion this week, but I can't risk it now.
Not having access to detailed sales reports is really debilitating.

[Stuart]

Very frustrating but it has allowed me to get on with writing my next book which I guess is a bonus!!

[Shaun]

Patti (Yes! We STILL have no bananas!) wrote: "Shaun has amazing open lines. Then he goes on to surpass the opening with story.

Just. Wow. "

Thanks, Patti. That's a lovely comment to come home to :)

[Stuart]

So is everything back to normal yet Rosen and Nell?

[D.M. Andrews (author)]

What is going on with KDP? Sales not reporting yesterday, forums on a go slow, support auto-responses coming through 24 hours after being contacted, sales rank disappearing from the .com site (can still access sales rank via Author Central), and lots of people on the forums reporting issues with uploads...

[Nell]

Stuart wrote: "So is everything back to normal yet Rosen and Nell?"

Solitary Pleasures is only one up from this morning, so it's not actually frozen, it's just suffering from frostbite, the others are in hibernation :)

Perhaps it simply slipped out of sight on the lists after the free promotion, although that doesn't explain why others are having similar problems.

[Rosen]

Stuart wrote: "So is everything back to normal yet Rosen and Nell?"

Today's sales have been coming in, but I don't think I've been credited for yesterday's. No response from customer support yet.

[Stuart]

I'm hoping that's the case!

[P.A.]

I think everything's back to normal now ... there was a freak burst of actual sales coming in on a seemingly daily basis, but normality has reasserted itself.

Stupid normality.

[Nell]

Paul (not that Paul, the other one ... yes, him) wrote: "I think everything's back to normal now ... there was a freak burst of actual sales coming in on a seemingly daily basis, but normality has reasserted itself.

Stupid normality."

Ditto...

[David]

Yes things seem normal, but no sign of my lost figures from Wednesday...

[Rosen]

I'm not convinced that my month to date figures have made up for Wednesday either, and no word from Amazon, yet...

[M.A.]

Rosen, I've just heard back from them.
Here it is.
We recently experienced some technical difficulties because of which there was a latency in the sales report being updated. However, a fix is in progress and this should be resolved soon. I am sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

The Amazon Bestsellers Rank shows how items in our catalog are selling in relation to one another. Because the Bestsellers Rank is relative, it will change even when there are no sales of your book, or fail to change when there have been sales. If your book sells a copy and the rest of the books in the catalog happen to be selling more often than normal, your Bestsellers Rank may not change.

A sales rank of "34" means your book is the 34th bestselling item in the Kindle Store at the moment. If your book is listed in browse categories, it may also be ranked within those categories. You can find your book’s browse categories in the "Look for Similar Items by Category" section at the bottom of your book’s sales page.

Category rankings will only appear in the Product Details section of a book's sales page if the book is among the Top 100 selling books in its category. This feature cannot be manually updated or added to a book’s detail page.

In the Kindle Store, the Bestsellers Rank is divided into Free and Paid lists. The calculation is based on Amazon sales and is updated hourly to reflect newer and historical sales of every item sold on our website, with recent sales being weighted more heavily.

I hope this helps. Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

[P.A.]

Interesting, thanks for that ... I'd been wondering how they calculated the rankings, and what "at the moment" meant.

[Stuart]

Thank you Mel! That's really helpful. So am I right in thinking that any sales recorded up to now don't include Wednesday?

[Katie]

Stuart - the book that went to #1 for Children's fantasy for me as a freebie on Feb 1st is still only showing 39 books, so no, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of catching up to do.

[Stuart]

Okey dokey! Thank you Katie!

[Rosen]

Thanks Mel. That's certainly good news about the sales and thanks for posting it.

As for the bestsellers ranking system, it's useful to see what they have to say, but I think it confounds the issue.

I don't believe that a top ranking book could have held its place in the top 100 for a day with no sales, unless similarly ranked authors also had no sales. Are we to believe that no books in the top 100 had any sales in eight hours? No.

[David]

"...a latency in the sales report being updated." Got to love corporate English! "The sales reports were broken" just doesn't have as much class...! :-)

It does seem that sales were continuing to happen, it's just the reporting that stopped working. That's great news, as it means somewhere sales figures were being recorded, and may soon (hopefully) become available. We may suddenly find our numbers leap upwards!

[Rachel]

Hi everybody - I would be really grateful if somebody could explain something to me (as I am clearly slightly dense).

I understand about KDP Select - and I have a theory about its long term impact on indie authors. But before I start writing something that might prove to be a heap of nonsense, can somebody please explain how (or if) people downloading free books know that they are usually books that are paid for? My Kindle is registered in the UK and I've never seen any marketing of this sort - so I'm not sure if things are different in the US?

I read a lot about people marketing their "free" days like mad - and I have also just read that customers wait for books to have free days - but how does anybody know? What is the mechanism for promoting these days?

My theory, for what it's worth, is based on customers' buying patterns - and without this little nugget of information - ie how do the customers KNOW about these usually paid for books becoming free - my theory won't make sense. It might not anyway - but I would be grateful for any comments.

For the record, I have no intention of using KDP Select. That might be naive of me, but I do have my reasons - which I hope to blog about when I have the final piece of the puzzle!

[M.A.]

http://phoenixsullivan.blogspot.com/2...

Phoenix Sullivan has just written a fantastic post about KDP select. A group of us gave her all our info and experience to use for the post. ;-)

[Patti (baconater)]

Very interesting blog post, Mel. Thank you for sharing it.

[M.A.]

Can you guys check your weekly statements please.

I know we get 35% for books sold outside the US and the other stores but I've just noticed a horrendous discrepancy on my statement.

I had 260 sales for a $2.99 book and received $65.10 it's not even 35%. What the heck is that all about?

I've written to them that's only 25 cent per book! Please check your own sales and get in touch with them if you have to.

[D.M. Andrews (author)]

Mine is correct.

[Katie]

Mel, my six week statement is complete and utter rubbish (eg 28 books @ 35% x $2.99 = 35c) . I'm already waiting for an answer as to what happened to the reporting for my free giveaway on Feb 1st, so I'm not keen to send another one about this. I'm just hoping that by the time they write the February report it will be accurate.

[M.A.]

Thanks Katie, please drop them a line again if the answer isn't satisfactory!

What with all the hassles with regard to the tax this year and the fact that the Zon won't pay non-US residents by EFT, I'm getting mighty peed off! ;-(

[D.M. Andrews (author)]

It's probably because I joined. Every time I join something it goes down the tubes :(

I'll check my monthly when it comes through around Feb 15th

[M.T.]

No DM, it's becasue I joined. ;-) or maybe it's our combined effect. I have another freebie day tomorrow for my short story - NB short story everyone not a novella. No lends and precious few purchases. BUT it's not a full length novel so it may not be representative of the KDP Select vibe.

I'll see what happens...!

Cheers

MTM

[Rachel]

Thanks for the info on KDP Mel - I've had no internet access, so I'm a bit slow to respond.

The article you pointed me to was very interesting - thank you. I was particularly intrigued with the popularity ratings. I know my best seller status, and Only the Innocent reached number 24 today in the UK Thriller list. I was delighted. But when I looked at the list by popularity, it was way down (which didn't make any sense until now). Fortunately, when sorted by average review - which is what I always use - it was number two.

I need to think about this. It's all very intriguing.

By the way, my royalties are correct, but thanks for mentioning it. I never thing to check - assuming that they are bound to be right!

[Stuart]

I may be being a little dim here, but how do you 'sort' the lists by popularity, average review etc?

[Rachel]

If you just go to the normal Kindle books and choose a category from the left hand side, they are automatically shown by popularity (which - according to the article that Mel identified - is skewed by Amazon to favour those in Select). On the top right there is a drop down box that allows you to choose by a number of different criteria - one of which is rating.
Hope that helps, but if not - give me a shout!

[Stuart]

Thank you Rachel!

[Stuart]

Number 5 in Literary Fiction for Average Customer Review!

[Kath]

Stuart wrote: "Number 5 in Literary Fiction for Average Customer Review!"

What about better than average customers? Fnar fnar!

[Stuart]

Number One for that - obviously!

[Nell]

Thanks for posting the Amazon email and blog link, Mel, this sort of stuff is perplexing...

[Rachel]

Well done Stuart! I've been sitting at number 4 in British Detectives for a while now, but when I look by popularity, I'm just one point lower.

BUT when you look at suspense, it's another matter. My ranking in suspense (best seller charts) is currently #20. But most people don't go to the charts - they go to the genre, and then search on popularity (the default). I am #57 in popularity, because 37 of the titles above me are in the Select programme.

They are not higher in the charts, they are not selling more (and therefore - in my view - not more popular) but they are higher because of this. Personally, I think that is appalling and very misleading.

I suspect those in the Select programme may think that this is fair enough - but I really don't, and I wouldn't if I decided to go into Select either.

What does anybody else think?

From a very cross Rachel A

[Rachel]

Well - I'm not sure that's right Karl. My overall chart position this morning was #140 - dropped to about #167 during the day (I always sell more at night) - and the one two places ABOVE me in popularity is at position 22,793 - so I struggle to see if that would make him more popular.

[Rachel]

I agree about ratings and sales - absolutely.

I have no argument about my sales at all. They're great. Amazon does the whole 'visibility' thing really well - and the massive increase in sales as I have moved up the rankings (and therefore the visibility) has amazed (and delighted) me.

But the blog post I mentioned states clearly that Amazon prioritises Select members in the popularity ratings, and obviously that further increases visibility.

It would be interesting to find out the facts, and maybe I'll just ask them the question!

I checked yours out, but the way. Great cover! And you are doing well in popularity - and I am absolutely sure you deserve it.

[Stuart]

Is anyone else experiencing anomolies in their sales report/rankings today?

My rankings on US Amazon and UK Amazon have increased significantly, but I have no recorded sales on the sales report. More gliches?

[Rosen]

Oh no, not again. I haven't noticed any problems with mine but I'm distressed to hear that there have been further glitches. At least however, our books are still getting sold.