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Any authors in the KDP Select Program?
This is the report I promised for my two-day promotion of The Writers' Conference on Nov. 15 &16. To my amazement there were almost 2700 downloads. But the downloads resulted in the sale of only 16 books. That's giving away a lot of books for a really small number of sales.My novel, The Last Season, The Story of a Marriage, is free today and tomorrow (Nov. 18 & 19). It should have a much broader appeal than The Writers' Conference, but I don't have high expectations. Also, I tried to change categories for the novel, and someone at Amazon messed it up and has it listed as nonfiction, which will hurt. I sent Amazon an email asking them to correct it, but it takes forever for them to respond.
Wow that's a really good response Marian. I'm on day three hand have had about 300 downloads only. I really don't know how you manage to get thousands? What is the secret? I tried listing on all the sites. Is it because I don't have many reviews?
The free promotion is only useful if it is part of a larger strategy. You really need to be savvy with all the social medias. I started with a facebook event page, so I could have a base to run things from. DOWNLOAD MY BOOK FREE THIS WEEKEND. I invited all my facebook friends (which I have a ton), and I posted the link to every facebook group page I could find that is dedicated to free books days. There are dozens. Helps to send this a private message asking if you can post. Many of them will. I used the post as a way to get people to go to the event page. And over 3-4 days before launch, I managed to get over 3000 people on the page. There were a lot of late nights involved sending messages to these pages. On the actual free days, I sent tweets to every twitter feed that is dedicated to free days. There are hundreds and many of them will re-tweet for you. In a single weekend I managed to get retweeted a few hundred times. This required many hours of time for me to accomplish, but I drove a ton of traffic to my Amazon listing, and put me into the top 100 free books for nearly a full day. I then took screenshots of my book as it rose and posted those images on the facebook event, and again, back to tweeting the image, trying to get repostings... And I got a lot of good result.
Before the promotion, my book was lingering in the low millions on the kindle list. Today, two weeks later, it is listed around 17,000 overall and still rising. I have since transitioned the free giveaway facebook page to platform to stay in touch with people who said they had downloaded the book, and ask for reviews. I believe getting reviews is really the big goal of the a free days. It seems to help raise a books ranking, and also helps when you try to get review sites interested.
The bottom line is that a free day isn't going to do much unless you find every means possible to exploit it. If you are not a social medla guru, selling books online is not going to be easy.
"selling books online is not going to be easy"No Kidding Neo!!
Thanks for the tips. I think I'm going to have to get more organised and go after it with some sort of strategy like you have used.
What's your opinion on paid advertising?
Neo wrote: "The free promotion is only useful if it is part of a larger strategy. You really need to be savvy with all the social medias. I started with a facebook event page, so I could have a base to run thi..."Neo, terrific info, thanks! So many authors believe that lots of free downloads lead to a huge pick up in sales. (One author was thrilled to report that 700 downloads were counted on his freebie. His comment: "Now I'll sit back and watch the money come rolling in.". And we all know how happily that story ended...not!) Reminds me of the old Napster days...get as much downloaded as you can for free while it lasts.
Ardin wrote: "What's your opinion on paid advertising?"I am not against it, but I have yet to find a website that I'm willing to invest in. I always goggle search websites I'm considering and see what others are saying. From my experience, the general feedback usually sways me away. I would love to hear some great recommendations from those who have been successful in this realm, but for now my approach is social media. I don't think there is one sure fire solution that will work for everybody, so planning and research is the only way this is going to work. Still trying to figure this all out myself, so please keep in mind that these are just my personal experiences.
Ardin wrote: "Wow that's a really good response Marian. I'm on day three hand have had about 300 downloads only. I really don't know how you manage to get thousands? What is the secret? I tried listing on all t..."
I wish I knew the secret. I put the novel on all the free promotions, but they didn't all list it in their promos, which was disappointing. It could be that I had 6 good reviews. It could also be the subject matter of the novel. The Writers' Conference is about writers, and although it's an entertainment--it's intricately plotted and has some larger-then-life characters--it touches on subjects that writers and aspiring writers are interested in. It has agents, editors, successful published writers, professional critics, etc. that people in the field of writing want to know about.
I don't do any of the social media. I'd be lost there. So I have to be patient and trust that readers will find my books and give me reviews. The promotion for The Last Season, The Story of a Marriage, that is free today and tomorrow has had 600 downloads. I let friends know, who let other friends know, which I'm sure helped. But I don't have 600 friends! Again, it could be that I had 3 good reviews. Also, the quote on the cover might be helping:
I asked Avery what his intentions were.
"I intend to marry your wife," he said.
I don't know the answer. I'm astonished by the good response and hope it translates into sales, but from what I've been reading on the Kindle forum, that isn't happening. So we'll see...
KDP is a great program the problem is there is no way to try and promote your book on amazon at all. It is really a Play and Pray system. That being said I actually enjoy it when people borrow my book I get paid. Not as much as if they buy it but I still make something. The Promotions like Free days are great to but you need to promote that your book is free. The down side is that it makes them the only place to get my book for 90 days. My fans who don't have Kindles and use other readers and formats have to wait 90 days before i can upload it to Smashwords or Kobo.
I'll check out your books Marian and leave a review or two when I've read them. Thanks for the great info.
Ardin wrote: "I'll check out your books Marian and leave a review or two when I've read them. Thanks for the great info."Thank you, Ardin!
There is a thread on here, called Register Here and other authors are reviewing each other's books. It is a round robin type and A reviews B and C reviews A..etc., so it isn't reciprocal, the one you review won't be reviewing you, another author will. They post all their reviews here on Goodreads, on Amazon and Amazon.uk, so it is great exposure if you are interested.
As a former kdp select user I am now having my books reformatted for other platforms such as KOBO, Nook and Smashwords--I realized after my second giveaway that people just wait around for free books--it didn't seem to help my SALES...I'm glad to have the books read but I would also enjoy at least a little revenue after putting my heart and soul into writing them!(not to mention a lot of money) also, as Rebecca mentioned, there are many other ways to get reviews--I prefer holding a two for one or some kind of deal on my website or blog or even changing the price of the kindle version on Amazon to .99 for a day or two and promoting it that way...
The 4 day promo for my wife's book ended this morning. There were about 950 downloads, and no sales yet. Since it's a fitness book, it might take a little longer before any reviews start showing up. For this genre, KDP was the best way to get any reviews. That might be a moot point thought, since most of the sites that promote the free books are either starting to charge, or require 4 or more reviews. In my opinion, if you have the reviews, then you don't really benefit too much from the KDP program. It is good if you know your book is good, but need to get many people looking at it in a short period of time, hoping they'll spread the word.
As an Aussie writer I was in KDP select for ages and have since slowly withdrawn my titles all bar 1; I now use KDP as a promo tool for smaller pieces. The exclusivity clause is my reason and now I spread the titles around in places like Smashwords & CS as I slowly convert them to print, pulling them from the KDP select program tho they remain current at Amazon. With sales, I found the free days spiked downloads which affected rankings, but it is a temp. thing, I also found if you rely on KDP for reviews... it is a waste of time. That is my experience. It seems reviews come in time if you arent prepared to pay or negotiate for them which seems to me to be a kind of deception. I am crap at that and have now decided to let it happen when it does.It seems to me KDP Select doesnt have many advantages where as Amazon listing in ebooks currently is my primary earner.
I'm in KDP Select. I started the first of my free promotional days today, and so far there have been about 400 downloads. The promotion will go through tomorrow. I will report if there seems to any increase in sales after that. Fingers crossed...
I added an author video to my Amazon.com page and that is definitely helping sales For Easy Gluten-free Lunches and Snacks: Simple Cookbook http://youtu.be/9eysdI2xeKs Note this book isn't available on amazon.ca yet so can't be listed in Goodreads yet either.Cheers,
Tracey AllenTracey Allen
Hi All,I put my book in KDP select, I've got one borrow for every 25 sales. For that I'm locked in to Amazon only for 90 days, meaning I can't go to Apple or Nook or any other electronic formats. I'm still sore from where I am kicking myself. So, on day 91 you can find me at my computer porting myself onto all the other platforms.
Well, my KDP promo ended three days ago. I had about 700 downloads and since the promo ended 3 sales. 1 sale per day. Which is about what i was getting prior to the promo. So not much of a sales spike at all really. Oh well :(
Ardin, i am getting to the point where I don't think doing a promo on a book that is selling already is such a good idea UNLESS you can get a big heap of downloads which will push you up in the ranks.
I will do one more KDP section on Amazon and then I'm dropping out of KDP. Also, who among you is doing well with the lending program?
I'm getting an average of one loan per four sales. That's better than I was getting in sales away from Amazon.
Thanks Paul. I'm also wondering if the number of downloads drop off after the first one or two Freebies.
Marilyn wrote: "Ardin, i am getting to the point where I don't think doing a promo on a book that is selling already is such a good idea UNLESS you can get a big heap of downloads which will push you up in the ranks."I think you're right Marilyn. When my book came off the 4 day promo it's sales rank was it's lowest ever. It was about 60,000 before the promo, during the promo it went to 800 in the free rankings, but when the promo ended it's sales rank was about 340,000. I guess because it hadn't made a real sale in four days! so much for jumping the ranks!
I did notice I was doing ok in my genre categories after the promo, it reached #2 Free for western and men's adventure, and was listed about 140 in the paid lists after the promo, but probably if I check now it won't be anywhere in those lists.
Out of my 800 free downloads, I'm not even confident anyone will even read the book. If reviews come in I'll be pleased but I'm not holding my breath.
There's too many freebies out there now. I can't read all I've downloaded and I've stopped downloading. Many must be in the same boat. And the numbers just keep on growing.
June is correct, there are way too many free downloads. So much so that many of the sites which used to promote these books for free now charge, or will only list books with 4 or 5 good reviews.
This prolification of freebies is good for Amazon and the other freebie sites but I no longer believe it is good for writers. Where will it end? I barely meet an individual these days who is not writing 'their story.' So it will continue to increase. Amazon holds too much of a monopoly. Maybe I should switch my genre to 'How To Sell - Not Give Away' books. I just learned that Bowker has released a new report showing that the number of self-published titles leapt by 287%, almost tripling to more than 235,000 print and ebooks per year.
Omar"...many of the sites which used to promote these books for free now charge..."The freebie download sites were making money from Amazon through affiliate sales - on the free books too (speculation) given Amazon's actions with them. Within November Amazon went to those sites and either yanked the affiliate codes or told them to narrow their scope or they would yank them. Without the big cash register the free sites changed to author-pay sites and don't list as many books.
Ardin wrote: "Marilyn wrote: "Ardin, i am getting to the point where I don't think doing a promo on a book that is selling already is such a good idea UNLESS you can get a big heap of downloads which will push y..."Amazon ranks on average sales and they have changed their algorithm to wipe out any of the averaging effects from a free promotion. So the day after being free you'll sit at "750,000" or wherever the bottom is until people actually make a purchase to push the title back up to the "60,000" going rate you had prior to the free run. That seems to be the math. The free day does get you visibility on the lists so actual buyers can choose it during its run.
I'm grateful to Amazon for opening up their platform to independent authors. It's really great. Every time I make a sale I think, Thank You Amazon! But the amount of free books is a bit over-whelming. They cannibalizing everyone's sales. And with their price-matching, some books are always free. When I check out how I'm doing on a genre list, I always see the same free books ahead of me on the chart. They've been free for weeks and there's no way I'll ever get ahead of them.
I think it would be better if Amazon scaled back on the freebies.
We all like the exposure they offer, but afterwards, we're all stuck competing with each and free is the wrong price to be doing it at. The only winner is Amazon and it's sale of Kindle readers.
Even after all that complaining though, I made two sales today, worth a few bucks, and I wouldn't have ever been able to reach those readers without Amazon.
So I think I'm going to stick with KDP, even though the freebies are bad for business.
Ardin wrote: "I'm grateful to Amazon for opening up their platform to independent authors. It's really great. Every time I make a sale I think, Thank You Amazon! But the amount of free books is a bit over-whel..."
I tend to agree with you about the free books being bad for business. I know that I have so many freebies downloaded too, and wonder how I will get around to them. If all I had to do is read 24/7, it would still take me months, if not years, to get through all of them. I am also working on my debut novel, so I am very interested in this topic. It seems to me that the only profit in the free days promotion is if you have a couple of short stories already uploaded and then right before launching your novel, put them for free and let them be your advertisement for the upcoming novel. I've seen this work for others, but I would be interested in seeing other opinions on this.
Rebecca wrote: "It seems to me that the only profit in the free days promotion is if you have a couple of short stories already uploaded and then right before launching your novel, put them for free and let them be your advertisement for the upcoming novel."It's a good strategy, and would probably help a little. But then, how often do you read a freebie and then check out what else that author has published? And actually become a fan of that author. I know it could happen if you really impress a reader, but with so many free books sitting on their kindle, will they have time to research other books by the authors they enjoy?
Just entered my the first novel in my Demon Hunter series to the KDP program, now to wait and see what happens.
Ardin wrote: "Rebecca wrote: "It seems to me that the only profit in the free days promotion is if you have a couple of short stories already uploaded and then right before launching your novel, put them for fre..."Yeah, that strategy is not as effective as it used to be. I think the only big winners are those who can command many thousands of free downloads - either because of the genre or their platform. They can move up enough in the ranks to give them some lift later.
I had close to 2700 downloads of my novel "The Writers' Conference" and it resulted in unimpressive sales. I don't think there are big winners in giving free downloads anymore. I agree with the others who have said that writers are killing sales by giving away books. People have gotten the mindset that they don't have to buy books because there are so many given away free. I'll be getting out of KDP Select in a few weeks without using all of my promotion days. I'll have a promotion running on Sunday and Monday (Nov.25 & 26) for my novel "Realities" and that will be it. I'm grateful to Amazon for the opportunity to give this novel a new life (it was originally published by St. Martin's Press). Still, there has to be a better way than the free books route.
Marian wrote: "there has to be a better way than the free books route"There must be a better way. The question is, What is it?
Any ideas?
By the way Marian, I enjoyed The Last Season. Was happy to leave a review on Amazon. :) By the way, should I copy and paste the same review here on Goodreads or is that not recommended?
In my opinion the Freebies or giveaways should really be a one or two time thing. It is not good for authors because if i'm selling my book for $4 and someone has a book similar to mine and they are giving it away, well guess which one gets bought. The fact that you can have 5 free days every 90 days is not a good idea. However in my experience on my first book I was able to set up 1 free day that went on for 5 days, and still had 4 free days promotions left to use. I immediately was able to set up another free day that ran for a week as well. I am not sure if it was a glitch but I was able to do it. I actually wish that I was able to do more than just give it away for free. I would rather be able to offer it at a discounted price once in a while or give away a chapter of another book I have out there or one that I am working on.
I would love more control of promotions. Just offering free is one thing. But it would be great to be able to offer discounts, so instead of dropping the price from 1.99 to 99 cents, which you can do now, you could keep the price at 1.99 but offer 50% off! I know it's the same price at the end but it's a method of enticing customers.
I would also love to be able to offer, buy this book, get my other book free, or half off, or whatever.
I wish Amazon had a suggestion box for KDP.
They do have a contact us link I think we should send them these suggestions.
I have heard whispers that Amazon was considering adding some type of advertising to the free downloads - maybe so authors could get paid a bit for free downloads. I know a lot of people HATE the thought of adding ads to books - but listen - Amazon benefits from those free days more than we do - because people visit the site - perhaps they download something and/or buy something else. We SPEND money on promos. I think it would be fair to pay us .10 a free download or something at least.That way if you had an amazing free run you could - at least - recoup some of your expenses.
If readers expect to download our blood, sweat, and tears for free - they could probably put up with one or two ads - maybe at the beginning and end.Lots of paperbacks, today, come with some ads for other books.
Rebecca wrote: "It seems to me that the only profit in the free days promotion is if you have a couple of short stories already uploaded and then right before launching your novel, put them for free and let them be your advertisement for the upcoming novel. I've seen this work for others, but I would be interested in seeing other opinions on this. "I think that using freebies as part of a sales strategy, e.g. giving away a short story to generate interest in a novel, is something to consider. When somebody downloads your book, that puts them on an Amazon list of people who have downloaded your book so that other books of yours will show up on their "You might like" (or whatever it is called) emails, lists, etc. It also shows up on the pages of other similar books that people have purchased.
Now, I don't know how well this strategy will work, but it's one I'm trying. My short story is permanently set to free (on all the standard websites) as a promotiona tool, but I won't know the results until I release my novel next summer.
Elle wrote: "Marian wrote: "Lynn wrote: "Marian wrote: "Marian wrote: "Lynn wrote: "Marian wrote: "Lynn wrote: "I used two free KDP Select days to promote my latest book. It resulted in 156 downloads, no review..." That's good to hear because my books aren't selling any better than they were before the promotion. There are a lot of freebies out there but I still download those which look interesting. And I will review them too.
Ardin wrote: "By the way Marian, I enjoyed The Last Season. Was happy to leave a review on Amazon. :) By the way, should I copy and paste the same review here on Goodreads or is that not recommended?"Ardin, thank you for your review! I'd really appreciate it if you'd copy and paste the same review on Goodreads.
I put my book on KDP a few days ago. I let the free days go for three days. I got over 200 free downloads in those 3 days. (no reviews from the free downloads). The average sales per day remained statistically nearly the same though truly the per day sales since the give away is ever so slightly better.I'm planning on staying with KDP for a while figuring that everyone that's looking for books at b&n will be looking at amazon too. I don't read a whole lot of people are that happy with their book there either.
Hello all - new to the forum here. I've done some writing and editing for other pubs but had this idea to post-up a Twilight Zone-inspired sci-fi short for kids once a month for 99-cents using KDP each time as a side project. This is my fifth month putting a short up. I only do social media style promotion - there's a bit of promotion that gets picked up off of my circles but nothing all too huge. I always launch a book as free for three days or so and try to co-launch some past books for free as well. So far only one book crawled over 1000 free downloads, the only I published last month, and the other books seemed to level out at around 5 or 6-hundred downloads or so. They all pick up a bit more on subsequent free releases. I should say that there is virtually no carry over to paid downloads. I think total between the four books that I pushed I've had around 50 paid downloads over four months and two borrows. And these are 99-cent downloads.
It doesn't really matter that much to me, honestly, my plan is to do this for a year and then see if I can get someone to publish the collection or KickStart the collection so I'm really just looking for steady readers but if I were to do this as a money-making venture...not sure, honestly. Probably not. I'd probably try and cast a wider net.
Jason wrote: "Hello all - new to the forum here. I've done some writing and editing for other pubs but had this idea to post-up a Twilight Zone-inspired sci-fi short for kids once a month for 99-cents using KDP ..."Thanks for this post--it supports my new path regarding book promo--I'm now going to hoof it around town hoping for consignment as well as my efforts on social media. As I mentioned earlier, I think the free thing doesn't connect to more sales in the long run...and from what I'm hearing, the .99 cents thing is not as good as it once was...so onward and upward...
Nikki wrote: "Jason wrote: "Hello all - new to the forum here. I've done some writing and editing for other pubs but had this idea to post-up a Twilight Zone-inspired sci-fi short for kids once a month for 99-ce..."A little more on this...
I think it really depends on your goals, tho. If you're just slow-burning towards a larger release, KDP could be wonderful. My background is in comic books so I'm following more of a comic book model. If I could make the mini-releases free forever I'd do it. I'm just trying to build a steady readership and then I'll collect it all in a bigger book, add some new stories and spot illos, and try to shop it around or just release it myself and sell it alongside my graphic novels and comics at cons as a little something extra.
The ecosystem Amazon provides is pretty enticing for those purposes but, yeah, if you're pushing a one-off I don't see the benefit in not putting it everywhere. Especially since there's a ton of bloat in Amazon's bookstores.
So, different strategies for different books. I teach a publishing class, tho, and I used to encourage folks to self-distribute via Amazon KDP but that's before I started using it. I don't think it'll be a one-size-fits-all recommendation anymore, tho.
I have to make an adjustment to some of my earlier comments. I can now say that I have noticed a (small) benefit from my kdp days. I had a day over the weekend with 5 sales. I probably had about 10 paid ($2.99) sales the week after my 4 day promo. That's definitely a boost from about 5 per week. It does look like I'm back at around my average 5 per week sales figure. But the small boost over the weekend was exciting. I'm actually really happy with KDP. Getting 5 sales per week, sometimes 10 after a promo, counts as a big success for me right now.
:) So thumbs up for the giveaway I guess!
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I'm on day two of my 4 day give away and so far less than 200 downloads. I listed it with tons of websites listed here, although probably the big ones like pixel of ink didn't list it because it only has two reviews.
Anyway, what I wanted to ask, is what are people's opinions about the categories you can list your book in.
I had mine in Western and Short Stories and I could easily get to the top 20 in either of them when I have a giveaway.
I recently changed short story to Coming of Age and it doesn't even seem to have a top 100 list.
What are other people's experiences. Do these contribute a lot. Are there some categories that don't have top 100 lists?
Is it easy to get to top 20 for major genres like action/adventure and the like?
Thanks.