Any authors in the KDP Select Program? Showing 451-500 of 1,505

[Tracey]

Hi Dianan, Here is the e-book link http://amzn.com/B005DAY01W The print and Kindle for this book don't link on Amazon for some reason and it isn't listed on Goodreads either, again not sure why. I just went in and this is what it states, "Please note that cancelling automatic renewal does not affect the book's enrollment in KDP Select for the current term."

[[deleted user]]

OK, it's as I thought. The warning pertains only to the current 90 day period that you have already signed up for. They can't force you to remain in KDP select indefinitely; only for the period you have committed to.

Once you enroll for 90 days you can't withdraw. I unpublished a book for corrections and got the message that it was still in KDP for the balance of the 90 days. (But I deal with contracts all the time and had read this one up, down and sideways and knew that already).

That's odd about your book's listing. It sounds very interesting and useful.

[Tracey]

Another great promotional tool....for only the cost of a review book copy is blogcritics....they just posted a review of my book :-)
http://blogcritics.org/books/article/...
did a review of the The Sustainable Table: Take Back Your Plate

[Larissa]

Update: So after about 600+ downloads I sold two books following the Free Promo. While still glad that the book reached so many people, coupled with keeping a positive attitude, the residual effects are clearly going to take a little longer than originally anticipated. With that being said, I'm ready to expand my horizons. Any feedback on Smashwords vs BookBaby? Any other e-distributors that I should consider?

Larissa wrote: "Hello All,

Like many of you, I'm a new author. I published my first book The Lotus Files in late June 2012. I enrolled in KDP Select because I figured 90 days wasn't an eternity so what did I hav..."

[Tracey]

Interested in Smashwords and BookBaby comments too.

[M.L.]

After reading this thread, I decided to try and schedule 2 free promo days this week-end - Fri/Sat (9/14 - 15) for Raft People.

I am unknown, except to online and offline friends. I plan to spend some time this week putting the word out on blogs and sites that promote free promo days, plus doing some social networking. I will follow up in a week to let everybody know how it goes I guess.

[Tracey]

Thank you Marilyn...it is interesting to hear experiences.
Building a Passive Solar House - My Experience Shared

[[deleted user]]

Marilyn wrote: "After reading this thread, I decided to try and schedule 2 free promo days this week-end - Fri/Sat (9/14 - 15) for Raft People.

I am unknown, except to online and offline friends. I plan to spend..."

Good luck! The promo is crucial. Let us know how it goes!

[Rebecca]

Marilyn wrote: "After reading this thread, I decided to try and schedule 2 free promo days this week-end - Fri/Sat (9/14 - 15) for Raft People.

I am unknown, except to online and offline friends. I plan to spend..."

Hi Marilyn. I will take advantage of the free promo and I will review your book when I can. I review debut authors on my blog: rebeccavance.com. I do have quite a queue now and the review might be a couple of months down the road, but I do give honest and unbiased reviews and try to also review all of my GR friends on here as well. Please send me a reminder either on here or on my email at: becky@rebeccavance.com this weekend so I don't miss the promo. Thank you. :)

[Shavaun]

Tracey wrote: "Interested in Smashwords and BookBaby comments too."
Oh, Smashwords...how I want you to succeed.
My book is on there, with 30 preview downloads, but no full. The word 'Sexy' is included in my title, which may be confusing to all those folks who help the endless amount of porn on Smashwords make it to the top of the heap. I was briefly able to get past the 'Meatgrinder' with my manuscript, but a correction to the manuscript knocked me back down to 'unapproved' status. Frankly, I can't be bothered to fix it, I don't see the point. I'm not on KDP Select, I don't care for the results I see others getting, and I haven't explored BookBaby yet. As far as I can tell at the moment, KDP giveaways work if you have more than one book, give away one to catch a dime on another.

[M.L.]

Rebecca - Thanks, I will remind you!

Thanks!

[M.L.]

I only have an e-book edition on KDP now. Do you experienced authors thinks that it would help to try to use create space to get a printable book up too? I know that many people prefer actual books still. Plus, a lot of people do not realize they can download the Kindle app on their PC or phone.

[Tracey]

Hi Marilyn, I have both createspace and kindle....found with the Building a Passive Solar House - My Experience Sharedmore print than kindle sold while with The Sustainable Table - Take Back Your Platemore Kindle than print sold...that said I use createspace to order print copies for reviewers and for our local bookstore who have sold a ton of my books so far.

Kindle needs to do more education on using the PC etc.

[[deleted user]]

Marilyn wrote: "I only have an e-book edition on KDP now. Do you experienced authors thinks that it would help to try to use create space to get a printable book up too? I know that many people prefer actual books..."

I have print books available. It costs you nothing to put them up. You don't even have to purchase a proof now (though I recommend it). If I like a book, I want a good 'real' copy to keep. So I make mine available, as well.

[Grant]

Last month I did a 3 day promo for my book, Deacon Leeds and the Pyramid of Symbols. I reached nearly 7,000 downloads. Over the next week I sold 85 Kindle books at $4.99 and had 80 borrows. To date, it's been my most successful promo!

The key to a good promo is getting the word out ahead of time. I submitted my promo info to these sites:

http://www.pixelofink.com/
http://www.theereadercafe.com/
http://ereadernewstoday.com/
http://thefrugalereader.com/

Good luck!!

[Eve]

Grant wrote: "Last month I did a 3 day promo for my book, Deacon Leeds and the Pyramid of Symbols. I reached nearly 7,000 downloads. Over the next week I sold 85 Kindle books at $4.99 and had 80 borrows. To date..."

7000! Wow Grant, that is fantastic!
That's one of the highest so far. well done!

[M.L.]

This is a classic thread. :)

[Rebecca]

Another great promo site is World Literary Cafe. I just signed up there, and it looks promising. Check it out!

[Don]

I have a paperback copy available through createspace as well but I have purchased more copies of my books myself than I've sold on Amazon. The kindle versions continue to do nicely though, thankfully.

Oh and thanks for the link sites for the promo sites. Gonna go check some out now.

[Joanne]

I'm new to this group, but I thought I'd share my own free Kindle promo experience from July: I put my novel Can't Live Without free for 2 days and had over 10,000 downloads. I listed it in all the places mentioned above, and tweeted/blogged about it etc. The book got to #1 in the free Kindle chart overall by the end of the first day and stayed there until the promo ended.

After the promotion, my novel stayed in the top 100 paid bestsellers chart for almost two weeks, making the movers and shakers list, and sitting below only the 50 Shades trilogy in women's fiction (bah!). Anyway, my point is that if properly pushed, the free promo tool of KDP Select can give sales a massive boost. I sold 3,000 copies on the back of this promo simply because the book became 'discoverable' by readers.

Now, of course, it's dropped off the charts, but it is in quite a few customers also bought lists so I do still get sales even when I'm not actively promoting. There's loads more about this on my blog, including a step-by-step of what I did. (Am I allowed to mention that here?) It's www.joannephillips.co.uk anyway :)

[Eve]

Joanne wrote: "I'm new to this group, but I thought I'd share my own free Kindle promo experience from July: I put my novel Can't Live Without free for 2 days and had over 10,000 downloads. I listed it in all the..."

10 000 Wow! That's amazing!

[Joanne]

Hi Eve,
I was amazed too - I'd done a lot of research and expected around 3,000. I didn't even plan it ahead of time, only decided on the Thursday to set it up to begin on Friday. But I think it shows that you have to work at it really hard - I hardly left my computer on the first day. Plus I think a good cover, and having lots of 5 star reviews, helps too :)

[[deleted user]]

Joanne wrote: "Plus I think a good cover, and having lots of 5 star reviews, helps too :)..."

Congratulations on a great giveaway! But I have one question: you have a lot of ratings on GR, but three o Amazon. Did you find a way to link your GR page to your Amazon giveaway? How did you do it?

I'm hosting a giveaway this weekend and have advertised it (and so forth) but wouldn't mind finding a way to get more links out there.

[Katja]

I think a free promotion's success depends on so many factors that it's very hard to find the ideal mix. The best thing to do is a variety of different combinations for YOUR book. Here's my take so far on some of the factors.

1. Genre: crime and romance/ chick lit seem to have highest downloads. I'm not sure what genre "Can't Live Without" is but from the (very appealing) cover it looks like a mass market book - a good thing.

I had about 3000 downloads on Shepherd's Prayer, and you'll see from my cover, it looks like a "darker" read, which it is. And I won't change it as it gives readers an idea of what to expect - which also helps prevent bad reviews from people reading a book they wouldn't normally choose to read.

2. Promoting the free promo everywhere - it makes a lot of sense to do that. However, my second free promo didn't reach a fraction of the downloads of the first one - and I had promoted it all over the place!!

3. Timing: time of the month and week. My first promo was mid-month, the second one was month end. I scheduled both promos for mid-week as I've read that weekends are overloaded with free promos. The first did great, the month end one bombed out.

4. Ratings: the more high ratings the better. But as Diana pointed out, Joanna's book "only" had three Amazon reviews, and did fantastically.

5. Pricing: some writers increase their price before the promo to appear to be offering a better deal. I tried that for my second promo... didn't work!

6. Length of time: the general consensus does seem to be that the longer, the better.

Bottom line as far as I'm concerned? Don't give up, and keep trying different permutations. This ain't a science, it's an art!!

[Joanne]

Hi Katja and Diana,

Just to clear up the reviews thing - Can't Live Without has 28 reviews on Amazon, 26 of them 5 star. At the time of the free promo it had 15 x 5 star reviews :)

Mine was also mid month, and for two days. I think a second free promo of the same title will never be as good - many of the people you'll reach will have already downloaded it last time. I didn't mess around with the price either, but I've also read that tip. I agree, Katja, that you have to find out what will work for your book, and it's definitely not a science. It's like most things: 99% effort and a little bit of luck :)

Diana - I posted a message about the giveaway on the Goodreads forum that is set up for authors to promote their freebies, along with posting about it in as many places as I could think of. When I did my promo I had hardly any ratings/reviews on Goodreads - many of these have come after, and lots of them by people who read it after downloading it free, which is great.

[[deleted user]]

Joanne wrote: "Hi Katja and Diana,

Just to clear up the reviews thing - Can't Live Without has 28 reviews on Amazon, 26 of them 5 star..."

Things are clear now. Your book has three reviews on Amazon US, two of them from mid-August and one from Chick Lit Central's blog (nice review) datedJune.

Amazon UK has all the reviews. The ratings are tracked differently, too. I wonder if that affected the number of downloads... How many did you get in the US? (Incidentally, the book looks VERY enjoyable!)

I see the Kindle book is available in the US now. You may wish to contact Amazon UK and tell them they need to change the notation on your kindle listing on their site, which says:

Can't Live Without by Joanne Phillips (Kindle Edition - 15 May 2012) - Kindle eBook
This title is available to UK customers only.

It is available in Amazon US now.

A freebie is posted to all venues, but unless someone knows to look for it in other venues and check the reviews there, they won't see the UK reviews.

I do wish there were a way to have the reviews 'bleed over', but that may come in time with all the changes they're making.

[Katja]

Joanne, I'm interested to hear what you say about second promotions for the same title not doing as well. Have others had a similar experience?

If yes, then that would also support the idea of using all the KDP free days in one go and enjoying being "top of the charts" for as long as possible.

Does anyone else have comments on second (or third) KDP freebie promos?

[Katja]

I've just started a new thread specifically about FOLLOW UP free promotions on KDP - if you have any experience in this, please would you share it with us under the thread "KDP promotions no 2 & 3"

[M.L.]

Katja, I'll be looking for that thread early next week after my first free promo on the 14th and 15th.


Raft People

[Walter]

No, your ebook would not be deleted if you chose not to continue participating in the KDP Select program.

[Joanne]

Hi Diana,

Ah yes, that explains it. I always tend to defer to the UK site as most of my readers are in the UK. I'll look into the availability thing - I'm still getting sales in the US so it must be available there.

During my promotion I had 2,500 downloads from the US site, the rest in the UK. Glad you like the look of it - hope your promo goes well, if you connect with me on Twitter I'll help with retweets etc.

Jo

[Katja]

Joanne, I suspect the UK site only appears to limit access to your book, when it's actually just limiting access to UK users i.e when a non-UK resident goes onto the site, it will say it's not available to UK them.

I live in France and altho I buy from three amazon sites, I can only buy Kindle books from Amazon.com site.

If that makes sense?

[[deleted user]]

Joanne wrote: "Hi Diana..."

Actually, it's available in the US on Kindle. I'll be reading it

[Brittney]

Hello Kenya!

I am in the early stages of the KDP Select program with my book, Bandit. I have noticed a few borrows, but as I stated, I am in the early stages. However, I do like KDP Select.

[M.L.]

Joann,Katja - my argument against using all your free promo days at once - especially if this is your first time - is that I don't think you can really understand how to make the best use of this tool the first time.

I am an experienced online writer / publisher but new to Kindle publishing. It is the same but different. I did some things right, but I wish I would have done things differently to really optimize my free days.

For example, I wish I had gone ahead and done the hard copy version or had another book to promote too. I did have my website / social stuff set up in advice which was good.

I did outline more of my thoughts on this though I am just in my 2nd promo days. I always know how to "fail fast" and learn from mistakes. For next time:

http://publishmyself.net/early-mistak...

Raft People

[Laura]

I am new to this group. Hi there! I have just published my first novel and have enrolled in KDP Select, too. After reading lots of blogs (one I found really helpful was Catherine, Caffinated: http://catherineryanhoward.com/) -- a lovely English blogger whose experience helped me a lot. I intend to blog about my experience, too.

I'm going to have a few CreateSpace copies printed, that's what everyone is getting for Christmas this year!

[Tracey]

Christmas gifts...great idea Laura....me too.

[Paul]

I just completed two days of KDP giveaways - Wed/Thurs. I listed with the ones Grant detailed above and at least six others. Actually, several months ago I listed with the same ones and got fairly poor results - 300 downloads. I think the reason was because not many of those sites chose to list my book. They do have lots of books submitted. And my book only had three reviews, two 5-stars and one 1-star for an average of 3.6.
This time, same book, when listed with another 5-star, bringing it to 4 reviews with 4.0 average, some of the sites must have listed it - I had about 700 downloads after forty hours. It's a Christian, nonfiction, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00835VPN0 so I didn't expect the same numbers as the more popular genres.
Then the magic hit - ENT listed it about 4 p.m. By the end of the evening I had 4,500 downloads. The next day 35 people paid full price for the book. On the weekend, only 3 bought it and I expect there won't be more than a trickle now. Yet, word of mouth can begin while I write more and hold another giveaway in a month.
The key for me has been - more than three reviews averaging 4 or higher, and getting listed on ENT.
Also, at this time the giveaway hasn't had any effect on my Createspace orders.

[Rebecca]

I am working on my debut novel now. I understand that I will most likely have to pay a fair amount for a cover. I am thinking about uploading a couple of short stories first to the KDP. I have absolutely no budget right now. Does anyone know how I could come up with a cover for short stories that would be fairly inexpensive? I do not know how to digitize or I would get a free pic and do that. I have heard that the covers were vital for sales. Do you agree? Thanks for your help. :)

[Tracey]

Yes Covers are important. I've done my own but if I had the money I would pay someone. Try a local community college that has an art department they may have a student willing to do it for credit. And if you are working in MSWord there is a feature that lets you create a cover while createspace also has a cover creator built in. I usually start in createspace and then use that cover to a degree in the Kindle version so you will notice a difference between e-book and print versions.

Here are my covers:
Building a Passive Solar House - My Experience Shared
The Sustainable Table: Take Back Your Plate
Do It Yourself Press Releases

[Rebecca]

Thank you for your quick response. I do have Word 2010. Where would I go there for the book covers? Also, is Createspace expensive? I don't want to sound so cheap, but I am on disability, so I really have no extra money.

[Tracey]

Createspace is free unless you order books(you can do your proof online without ordering a copy)....and $25 only if you would like them to add your book to distribution i.e Amazon and other online stores.

If you search add cover in under your help in MSWord it should give you instructions.
Best,
Tracey

[[deleted user]]

Tracey--just a small correction. If you use Createspace, there is no charge for distribution to Amazon in the U.S. or European markets, and of course the Createspace store is free as well. Expanded distribution will get your book into many other markets including Barnes & Noble and Books A Million. The only problem so far that I've experienced with Expanded Distribution is that it can take up to 8 weeks for it to appear. I recently wanted to make a small change to the back cover of my book Watermark, and found out afterwards that it has to be resubmitted to the extra markets; hence, the wait.

[Tracey]

Right.

[[deleted user]]

Rebecca wrote: "Does anyone know how I could come up with a cover for short stories that would be fairly inexpensive?..."

Are you on Facebook? A number of cover artists have pre-made covers for $25 to $50. This is standard practice, but several post on Indie Marketplace:

https://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn...

[Rebecca]

Thanks Tracy and Diana! Yes, I am on Facebook. Thank you for the information. My Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rebecc....

[Grant]

I'm gearing up for another free promo for my book, Deacon Leeds. I'm crossing my fingers it'll be as successful as the last one!

Does anyone have any other good sites to submit free promos to? So far these seem to be the best:

http://www.pixelofink.com/
http://www.theereadercafe.com/
http://ereadernewstoday.com/
http://thefrugalereader.com/
http://www.worldliterarycafe.com/

If anyone can add to the list it would be appreciated!

[Walter]

If anyone can add to the list it would be appreciated!

Here's one: http://www.authormarketingclub.com/

[Laura]

Grant wrote: "I'm gearing up for another free promo for my book, Deacon Leeds. I'm crossing my fingers it'll be as successful as the last one!

Does anyone have any other good sites to submit free promos to? So ..."

I stumbled on this sight, Author Marketing Club, but I haven't tried it yet. He seems to have consolidated more than one promo site. I want to try this maybe next weekend and see how it goes.

http://authormarketingclub.com/members/

[Walter]

I stumbled on this sight, Author Marketing Club . . .

Great minds think alike. :)