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Self-Publishing questions
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KDP select, what'cha think?
It's available to all Amazon authors/publishers, from what I can tell, Ken. I noticed it was online this morning and added my book, Towards Yesterday, to it.I know there are a lot of discussions on other boards about the long term exclusivity commitment that Amazon requires you to agree to, but I sell the majority of my books through Amazon anyway. Taking it off sale at B&N wasn't too big of a leap for me.
Let's hope it does us all some good.
I was kind of hoping they would stagger the offer, dividing up the program to say 20% clumps. That way, there aren't a jillion books for free at once.At least its good timing because lots of folks, like me for instance, love to give gifts that cost nothing and require no actual shopping or effort. I'm thoughtful that way.
Amusingly, B&N blocked my take down. I had to call and after an hour had to threaten a DMCA notice to have them take down sales. Don't know if it was coincidence or if they're trying to hinder efforts of people to try Amazon.Either way, B&N hasn't sold squat, so I'm trying the Select deal for at least 90 days.
I'm seeing the Free is for Amazon prime? I have the Amazon prime so it shows as free. Does it show that way for non-prime members or can they check it out from the Amazon lending library.
For non-prime members (such as myself) it shows as Prime Members read for free and then below that Kindle Purchase Price. A couple of lines below that is a large add touting Prime and its benefits.
So the promotion is more to sell Prime memberships then to promote the authors. I note I have till Sunday to cancel.My account at Amazon now has a column in the reports for 'borrows'.
Ken wrote: "So the promotion is more to sell Prime memberships then to promote the authors. I note I have till Sunday to cancel.My account at Amazon now has a column in the reports for 'borrows'."
That about sums it up, Ken.
So is everyone just signing up for KDP Select? I have reservations about it. I don't think Amazon should have exclusive rights to my work... that wasn't the deal when I originally published my Kindle version.
Natalie wrote: "So is everyone just signing up for KDP Select? I have reservations about it. I don't think Amazon should have exclusive rights to my work... that wasn't the deal when I originally published my Kind..."If, like you, have your books available from a number of vendors, then it might not make sense. I am in the process of consolidating my five volumes into two and will be putting them up on smashwords and their vendors so a delay of ninety days might not be a big deal. Some points to consider.
You give Amazon exclusive rights for ninety days but the book is available for free to Amazon prime members. I search in fiction and found about one per page available on this program. Supposedly there are some promotions available for five day increments but I don't see any detail on exactly what this is.
The Amazon prime customer gets, like receiving Netflix DVDs, one per month. My offering only retails at a buck with other volumes increasing in price. If I am going to 'borrow' a book, would I use up my month's freebie for a buck buck or a five dollar book? Perhaps I should raise the price to twenty bucks to attract the bargain hunter?
Note the KDP select program renews itself unless you OPT OUT.
This is the first go around for this. Who knows how many Prime members will use this? If there are half a million borrowers, then I would be making the equivalent of 100% royalty on my buck book plus the exposure and/or branding. If there are one and a half million borrowers then my 'cut' is the same as the 35% royalty plus exposure. I'm no worse off because I am currently exclusively kindle. If you have a five dollar e-book, then you need to weigh both the dollar return and the intangible return from Select against lost sales in the other venues.
Lastly, Kindle Fire looks like its taking off big so the audience is expanding. Amazon Prime is offered as a 30 day free trial and I expect lots of shoppers will enroll to score on the free shipping at the holidays though I doubt they will even know about the streaming movies or the KDP select during the trial term.
So, Natalie. You have your book in several venues. Are the sales from the others worth giving up for three months? What are the other venues as a percentage of sales and does one, say B&N, sell enough percentage to warrant rolling the dice for three months?
BTW, when you go to your author page and try to view your books at Amazon, the link gets a '404 not found.' Once you fix your links perhaps you could expand on your reservations.
I think my concern is more that Amazon is being allowed to completely dominate the ebook industry, with no competition from other companies, and I'm not sure that we should give them that much power.As for the links, I don't know why those don't work. I didn't enter in any data to begin with. They've never worked. Whole other problem.
Natalie,I was glad to see you have the same concern I do. I appreciate a lot of what Amazon has done, but the select program seems like a bold attempt to monopolize eBook distribution by not allowing eBooks to be distributed by anyone else such as Apple, etc. I don't think a monopoly ever works out well and in this case writers and readers will eventually suffer.
"I don't think a monopoly ever works out well and in this case writers and readers will eventually suffer..."Could I be so bold as to include the NBA at this juncture?
I've been tempted to join, but I also have reservations. It seems to me that it will be a good deal for those who sign up IF there aren't many writers who do sign up. The more who do, the more the benefits will be diluted, and writers seem to be signing up in droves.I don't know. I could be losing out on a good thing here, but I don't think I'll do it.
I enrolled my novella in KDP because it was already exclusive on Kindle anyway but honestly I haven't gotten many sales from it before KDP so i don't know if it would improve afterwards. I wonder if I'm doing it a disservice by not putting it up on Smashwords and Goodreads instead of relying on this but I figure anything is worth a shot. But as for my other book, I get lots of sales from Expanded Distribution and putting it on Smashwords has boosted some sales so I don't think I will put it up for KDP.
So my strategy of discouragement is working. The fewer authors sign up, the fewer to share the kitty.I did it but haven't seen any difference in sales or borrows. Seems all my sales are on the weekends anyway so I'll reserve judgment. I'm in till March anyway.
Not seeing much difference either. No borrows, same sales.
I haven't investigated KDP thoroughly, but unless there is some equivalent to Smashwords' free coupons, it could make it much harder to get book bloggers to review one's book.
Karen wrote: "I haven't investigated KDP thoroughly, but unless there is some equivalent to Smashwords' free coupons, it could make it much harder to get book bloggers to review one's book."On the amazon.com site (on the sales pages) there's a button to gift Kindle books to other people. I think that's a common offering for reviewers but can't say myself as I'm at amazon.co.uk
In any case, I'll normally email the Kindle format book (a .prc or .mobi) directly to the reviewer if requested.
I've assumed that to "gift" a book, you have to pay for it, even if you're the author. An author on Smashwords can set up a coupon code for any level of discount, without paying a penny.Tim wrote: "Karen wrote: "I haven't investigated KDP thoroughly, but unless there is some equivalent to Smashwords' free coupons, it could make it much harder to get book bloggers to review one's book."
On th..."
Other authors I correspond with are having some success and it seems to be working for them. In our little network everything is 'going through the roof' at least on the freebie side. I've watched the numbers on a couple and they have gone from the 60K ranking to the 2500 ranking and in the top ten in their genre.As far as the author 'paying' for it, they are indeed forgoing royalties but the name of the game here is exposure. If you have one book and it appears on the front page of the genre as a freebie, it would certainly carry along any other books by the same author. If an author has 1000 downloads of a free book, those that like it are going to see what else is available to buy, right?
I'm going to sign up but I'm doing some editing and compiling and tune up of the author's page prior to the promo period. IOW, I'm wanting to put out the best china, polish the silver, and get the gravy stains out of the tablecloth before company comes.
I think this Prime deal could be a winner and I'm sure Amazon has a marketing team better than all of us here who will continue to tweak this.
I signed up for KDP Select 2 weeks ago (for all three of my books) and am seeing 21 borrows. My sales have also increased by a few sales a day. I think it's a great new exposure tool. We'll see if the monetary payoff is as great on the 16 of January when reports are posted.
Not seeing the borrows myself, but the sales skyrocketed. So far so good.
Suzie wrote: "I signed up for KDP Select 2 weeks ago (for all three of my books) and am seeing 21 borrows. My sales have also increased by a few sales a day. I think it's a great new exposure tool. We'll see if ..."Did you do a promotion or just get borrows from out of the blue? Do you think, if you had signed up one book, would you have done better with satisfied readers wanting more and then paying for the other two?
And Jim, why do you think you have sales and no borrows? Did you use any of the five days?
I used one of the freebie days and saw great sales even after it ended. No idea on the lack of borrows.
Well, that shoots down my theory about value borrowers. I figured those who borrow would select a pricier book than a 99 cent one. Yours is priced at the magic $2.99 and you had sales and no borrows.Another friend of mine had over 2000 borrows and increased sales of his 99 cent book on a two day promo.
I'm going to do a promo but looking for feedback so I can figure out exactly what my approach should be. One thing for sure, I'm raising the price.
I've done well with it.My five free days ended 10 days ago. Daily UK sales are steady in the 20 range, US sales have slowed to 2 to 5 a day.
K. A. wrote: "I've done well with it.My five free days ended 10 days ago. Daily UK sales are steady in the 20 range, US sales have slowed to 2 to 5 a day."
OK, I started this thread to brain pick/storm. My sales have been mostly on weekends so I was planning the promos for weekends. did you go five days straight and do you think maybe a 2-2-1 or 2-1-2 might have better built momentum?
I went all 5 days. Treated it like a book launch, toss the kid in the water - so to speak. The book was 18 months on the market and no sales for 3 months. I had nothing to lose. It hadn't been discovered as a dollar dreadful, so I knew there wasn't much else I COULD do.
The US market didn't pay off - the UK market did.
I'm still on the UK Bestseller's list after 10 days.
#17 in Books > Fiction > Erotica > Adult Fiction
#31 in Kindle Store > Books > Fiction > Romance > Romantic Suspense
#33 in Books > Fiction > Romance > Thrillers & Suspense
Coolmain Press is using KDP Select to launch 'LeMans' and 'Myersco Helix.' They started out with 2 days - 12/25 and 12/26.
I'm not sure how their's went. "Myersco" looks okay to me, at #25k, "LeMans" is #300k.
Ken wrote: "Suzie wrote: "I signed up for KDP Select 2 weeks ago (for all three of my books) and am seeing 21 borrows. My sales have also increased by a few sales a day. I think it's a great new exposure tool...."I promoted it on twitter to let followers know that they can read my books for free in the library. I got lots of retweets on those, so I'm thinking this had something to do with it. Seeing as they can only borrow one book a month, I'm hoping what will happen is they will enjoy the book they borrowed so much, they will want to buy the other 2.
I haven't had many borrows. The book's not that expensive, in the UK people are buying.I'm SO happy with my results.
Um, I just published my first book yesterday and sighed up for KDP Select,. I'm now getting the word out that kindle owners can borrow it. Being new this this, I kind of thought... it can only help. Well I guess we'll see.
K. A. wrote: "I went all 5 days. Treated it like a book launch, toss the kid in the water - so to speak. The book was 18 months on the market and no sales for 3 months. I had nothing to lose. It hadn't been ..."
Congratulations on your sales!
Thank you! The run of sales lasted 17 days. When the big boys (Konrath, Crouch and Eisler) came on board my sales stopped.
I think I'll wait until their rush is over before I try this again.
As has been discovered by some folks who enaabled Select and then heard from Amazon, the exclusivity agreement means you have to watch what you do to continue to promote. Some have found that they had excerpts scattered about the net and needed to request blog posts be removed.
Amazon actually told me just the opposite. They said to market all I want and give out as many promo copies as I want. I have it in writing. :)
The rumors of Amazon's tyrantical ways are prevalent and false.
K. A. wrote: "The rumors of Amazon's tyrantical ways are prevalent and false."I haven't had any bad experiences with Amazon other than some shipping issues on product. They have always responded and made things right.
It's not to Amazon's or the author's advantage for KDP Select to limit exposure to the book in blogs, excerpts, interviews, etc. The idea is to get the reader in those venues to a SINGLE point of sale. That said, if Amazon is successful in quashing competition then their attitude might change.
I read the terms and said to myself, "Oh *&^% no." While I like the idea of extra $, I want my book to be as widely available as possible.
I was reading a blog by a fairly successful author (print and digital). Actually, it was the author's wife who runs the business side. IIRC, he sold about 5400 books in December, 2011. 5200 of them were from Amazon and Createspace. This was w/o KDP Select. That's about 95% of sales. Consider Amazon is selling Kindles and Kindle Fire at about the rate of a million a month it seems Amazon is the venue distributing as wide as possible. Today B&N is offering the Nook (BetaMax) at $50 off if you subscribe to Kindle.
Also keep in mind your commitment is 90 days. As for me, I'm signed up through 3-6 but I'm not using my promo days yet without doing some prep first.
As an additional note...B&N has said they may sell off Nook. In other words, its value just dropped.Right now my sales are 700 times greater on Amazon than B&N, so the Select thing has a certain appeal.
KDP select is good for a few instances like for rolling out a new title. Sign it up for select and use your 5 free promo days; the promo will hopefully drag your other titles along with it. There are few other gotchas with Select. You need to remove any excerpts you have hanging out there as they are the sole distributor of that novel's content. Once your 90 days are up, move the title to the other platforms. Some have pulled their stuff to go with Select, but I think that is a minority position. I've not jumped on it yet for my one title as I'm waiting for a few blog interviews to post and run before I ask that the content be removed. I'm going to run some free days on April 5-8 to coincide with the 150th Anniversary of the battle of Shiloh (civil war novel).
The need to pull reviews/excerpts doesn't jive with what Amazon has said (as noted earlier). I keep hearing that statement from people, but Amazon has debunked that repeatedly.
Jim: "Amazon actually told me just the opposite. They said to market all I want and give out as many promo copies as I want. I have it in writing. :) "Promo copies of ...
you can gift the Kindle version as much as you like and give away the print version. But some have already been told that they are in violation of the agreement for having excerpts posted on their websites, etc. Giving away a promo copy isn't the same as a distribution method if you have DRM, the person can't do anything else with the copy but read it on their device. I personally think it absurd but Amazon already offers the sample chapters on their site, so I think this is to have 0 competition in content while in the program.
Jim wrote: "The need to pull reviews/excerpts doesn't jive with what Amazon has said (as noted earlier). I keep hearing that statement from people, but Amazon has debunked that repeatedly."I agree, I don't get why pulling reviews would be needed. That seems more counterproductive. And amazon still has the look inside feature for KDP Select books. As long as the whole book isn't available then I don't see how excerpts are a problem.
I can't speak from direct experience, only from others who have dealt with Amazon on this very fact. It's discussed ad-nausea on Kindleboards, so I suppose consider the source.
KindleBoards...where they ban people for mentioning their book in the "advertise here" group, or for answering questions from readers.Not my favorite place, if you hadn't guessed. They seem to be a hotbed of knee-jerk reactions. :)
I mostly mine it for tips and #samplesunday
As I'm about to start KDP Select I sent them an inquiry regarding this issue of excerpts to clarify and it was a form response that didn't really seem to answer me directly.There's been scuttlebutt going around that the exclusivity clause prevents excerpts from being posted on not only your own blog but on others as well that might be part of an interview or other post.
I understand the electronic distribution part of this clause but the wording suggests distribution of the whole eBook in another format, either free as in a downloadable .pdf or epub or from another eBook distribution system like Smashwords, etc.
Does select prevent my having an excerpt from a chapter, regardless of how much of the chapter, in whole or in part, on a personal or other website? I've just had a guest post on another blog with excerpt published and this is giving me pause before putting my one title into select.
Here is their response:
Hello Phillip,
When you choose KDP Select for a book, you’re committing to make the digital format of that book available exclusively through KDP.
During the period of your book’s enrollment in KDP Select, you cannot distribute your book digitally anywhere else, including on your website, blogs, etc. However, you can continue to distribute your book in physical format, or in any format other than digital.
Similarly, you cannot offer a sample or teaser on any platforms. With this in mind, you may certainly link to your Amazon detail page from other websites; a sample of your book will be available there.
I was hoping for some clarification on what they considered an excerpt or detail on why you can't have something up for marketing purposes but this does seem to be in line with what I've heard from others.
As I read the "Similarly,..." paragraph, they are prohibiting excerpts posted as part of a promotion on a book blogger site. This seems awfully short-sighted....
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My book is serialized so I put the first ninety-nine cent segment into the KDP select program.
I was preparing to go with Smashwords soon but the KDP Select rules give Amazon a 90 day exclusive. I can wait and see how this works.
I won't explain all of the ins and outs because I kind of skimmed through before I signed on to a legal agreement I hadn't read thoroughly. That may have been rash because I didn't look to see if this restricts me from providing review copies, excerpts to blogs, etc.
anyone else in, curious, or have comment?