THE Group for Authors! discussion
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Any authors in the KDP Select Program?
After 13,000 people have downloaded your book during your free giveaway period, the same people will download someone else’s free giveaway during the next period; after that, they will download another free book in the next giveaway period, etc., etc. Why should anyone actually pay for a book?
Sorry if I sound pessimistic, but something, somewhere, is wrong…
..."
i think, not sure, the idea is getting some name recognition, and then people will pay for subsequent books if they really enjoyed the free book. my guess anyway. i'm clearly no expert on kdp. i might have sold two whole books.
Sorry if I sound pessimistic, but something, somewhere, is wrong…
..."
i think, not sure, the idea is getting some name recognition, and then people will pay for subsequent books if they really enjoyed the free book. my guess anyway. i'm clearly no expert on kdp. i might have sold two whole books.
Another effect of the free book promo is the spill-over. After the 3 free days, my book sold 132 more at full price last month. It sold another 25 this month, and 14 borrows. I plan to do it again when the next book is done.KDP has improved their reporting, also. I can see it all on the "Previous Month" report.
Another advantage of listing the price free is that a listing of books that were "also bought" appears within about a week. Your book gets listed, as well, and that creates an opportunity for other people to see your book. Visibility is a definite pro.
My new book, Christian nonfiction, will be free March 29 & 30 - see it at http://www.prayingthegospels.com/books/I've seen a lot of fiction writers' responses so I'm interested to see how nonfiction does in this program.
For those who did the 90 days and then opted out, have your sales in the other distribution channels improved or come close to your results in Amazon?
Are the people who join in the KDP program indie authors? I am, and I'm not certain how I would be able to put free Kindle apps on Amazon. Do I just call my publisher or what? How does this work? Thanks Joyce Shaughnessy
Joyce, I believe publishers (not self-publishers) have a different relationship with Amazon and are allowed to place books of varying prices on Amazon, including free. Self-publishers enroll in KDP Select to receive the five free days (in a 90-day period). By "indie" author are you referring to a self-published author or do you mean you signed with an independent publisher? If you are signed with a publisher, they will handle getting your books on Amazon.
I'm an Indie and I'm not enrolled in the KDP Program - nor do I want to and would rather sell my books elsewhere than get ripped off by Amazon
I just signed my first book, HOLIDAY CHICK, up for KDP Select. I learned about the program and almost signed up for it in January, but I decided to wait a couple of months to see if I could make some more progress on sales with Smashwords and NOOK. I've been less than delighted with the book's performance on Smashwords, and the royalties that B&N pays is so laughable I decided I might as well be giving the book away for free. Henceforth, KDP! Thanks to everyone on here for sharing their experiences thus far - I'm excited to see what happens!
After being on KDP Select for 90 days, I let the enrollment lapse and placed my e-books back up on other sales channels.My new strategy will be to place new releases with KDP Select for 90 days, then make them available through all sales channels. I don't like having all my eggs in one basket.
Yes, Jaq. Offering a book free has given my books exposure and increased saes once the books went back to being paid. Not everyone as ad that experience. I have over ten books available, so I believe it also leads to sales of other books. I have three trilogies and have found that the free promo works best with them. The "also bought" feature also helps and that doesn't kick in until you've had a lot of downloads.
saeshas had
Sorry. Using my iPad and hate typing on glass.
I signed up for my 90 days with KDP Select after unpublishing on Smashwords. Almost immediately, I received an email from KDP Select to say that my book was still for sale on B&N, Kobo and Sony. They gave me 30 days. Otherwise, I will be taken off KDP Select. I have communicated with Smashwords but it seems my hands are tied. They told me that it takes 3 weeks for the 'unpublish' to filter through. So far it is still available on Kobo and Sony. I don't give myself much hope. I think I will be eliminated from KDP Select.
Kobo and Sony seem to take longer than the other sales channels to unpublish a book. I hope it works out for you, Jill.You may be able to re-enroll your books in Select once you are certain they have been unpublished.
After 13,000 people have downloaded your book during your free giveaway period, the same people will download someone else’s free giveaway during the next period; after that, they will download another free book in the next giveaway period, etc., etc. Why should anyone actually pay for a book?>>>>>If you're an unknown author with a first book, getting anyone who isn't family or close friends (and even that is a big MAYBE) to read your book is a chore.
So for most folks the choice is no to few sales or rolling the dice and seeing what happens, and getting some sales as a reward.
A book with 13,000 downloads in a few days is also going way, way up the charts on Amazon's sales rank system, which means it gets exposure during that period the book would not get otherwise.
A friend is selling 2,500 books a month, so she doesn't need to roll the dice.
Bill
Yes, that is a pain. And I wonder how long it takes to get back in again? I waited weeks on end for the Smashwords premium catalogue status to kick in. I had to contact Smashwords about Sony in the end as it was still up way after 3 weeks.
D.M, that's interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I just finished my first two-day giveaway of a non-fiction prayerbook in a pretty specific genre. I had 790 downloads and I'm very pleased with those numbers. It drove higher numbers to my blog as well. With only one book, I don't expect great things with after-giveaway sales, but I'm working on two more books to release this year. This number of downloads drove it to #1 free in Lutheranism, #1 free in Protestantism, #5 free in Christianity, #10 free in Religion & Spirituality, #63 free in Non-fiction. Next time, I'll follow D.M.'s advice and take time to get listed by the free sites.I'm still trying to figure out how to get download totals from separate countries - any suggestions?
Downloads are broken down by Amazon site from your Reports, though the .com site services a few countries other than the US I believe.
Yes, D.M., but the breakdown only gets reported on the previous month's report, and that doesn't come out until the 15th of the current month. At least in my experience.
You have to click through on the reports to view the other site information. It defaults to U.S. If you click on te dropdown menu you'll find the UK and other sites and the numbers will be listed in pretty close to real time.
I found it - thanks! England - 45, Germany - 1.
Merri wrote: "Kobo and Sony seem to take longer than the other sales channels to unpublish a book. I hope it works out for you, Jill.You may be able to re-enroll your books in Select once you are certain they ..."
Thanks Merri. Yes, I'm monitoring Kobo and Sony. Still no action so will probably have to re-enroll in Select later.
My KDP experience:I had a few Afrikaans ‘kindle’ books listed and even had a fair number of sales before Amazon pulled the plug as they no longer support Afrikaans as a publishing language. The strange thing however is that the same books are still available in paper from Amazon’s UK site.
Not only that, I also translated some of the books from Afrikaans into English and those are still available for download from Amazon.
Generally reaction is good and as others have mentioned, the 5-day ‘free’ promotion do generate some interest with my best result a thousand plus downloads of Emails from Ireland, a book that I never intended to publish but that is another story and not for this forum.
I did my first promo this week and only had 93 free downloads, which I don't think I need to mention did 0 for my sales. From reading some of the other posts here and on people's blogs I can see that I apparently need to stand on my head and juggle lemons with my feet to get more exposure. Well, that's what it will feel like anyway. :)
Thanks for all of the useful links and information. Hopefully the next one will go better.
Step one: Changing categories. Done. You made a very good point. I went from having it in two categories with 50k plus books each, to being in a total pool of less than 2 thousand.
Getting picked up by Pixel of Ink (POI) or Ereader News Today (ENT) can make a huge difference. Accepted wisdom is you need a good cover and at least five reviews to get picked. Opinion varies on how far in advance you need to inform them.
Rebecca wrote: "I do think ENT and POI will advertise your free promo though at no cost to you: check out their sites. I think you only need to give them about a week's notice for that."Yup. This can dramatically affect your free promo.
Good to know. Thanks so much for all the advice. :)
I'm a good writer but I suck at marketing. Probably because I don't like it. So KDP Select has been great for me. I've got two series of three novels each on Kindle. I signed up for KDP in late Dec. Offered the first two books of each series free on a Wed.-Thu. in Jan. and sales of the other books tripled.
That increase has continued - I think people download a bunch of freebies and it takes them a while to actually read them and decide to continue reading any particular series.
I've been very happy with KDP Select.
I literally just signed up. Three of my childrns book today, with plana to add ny novel nezt week. Even with a solid marketing backgrund, marketing is so incredibly time-consming... I know I wil need to contnue my efforts, but I'm excited to see what Kindle lending can do...I will keep you updated.
I'm currently in the program, and had a 3 day weekend (my birthday) of free downloads, of which there were around 700. Not one ebook has sold since. I think it's possibly a good plan for genre books, but my book, The Church of Tango: a Memoir, is not a genre or series, and I feel the "free downloads" did nothing but hurt me. I had been following this forum to get an idea of what to do, and just went for it. But it wasn't right for my book.
And only one of the free downloads resulted in a review on Amazon.
So when my time is up, I'm out.
I wish everyone good luck with Kindle Select or however they decide to market their book. It's not easy, once you've written and published it, to sell it.
Hi Cherie,So sorry to hear that the Select program wasn't successful! Do you mind if I ask what the payout was per lend while you were in the program? Do you still get paid per lend during the free download portion of the time?
I truly believe that writing is the easiest part of publishing. Marketing ourselves is the hardest. Now I know why having a patron of the arts was so necessary in the middle ages!
I'm very tempted to sign in, but would hate to sacrifice the iPad and Nook editions of
Apart from Love, which is required to participate in the program. I think that the current price of $2.99 is affordable. The problem, I think, is not the price but the invisibility.
Uvi, when I originally signed up, I removed my books from all other sales channels. Now that the 90 days are up, I have them all back up on those channels and did not re-enroll for Select. In hindsight, I would not have pulled those books. My current plan is to sign new titles up for Select for 90 days, then publish them through other sales channels. That way I don't have to remove titles.
Fortunately, the reviews for my books were intact once I made them available again. I thought I'd lose them. I was very thankful to see that B&N had them all still listed.
Stacy, KOLL (Kindle Owners Lending Library) borrows have been consistently between $1.60 (December) and $2.18 (March). It varies each month. Even when a title is available free, if someone in the Prime program borrows it, you receive a royalty.
I tried the Kds program with a short story collection in the horror genre with very poor results. My publisher has used the KDS program for a couple of their other books and one of the two has been unbelievably successful. The other one wasn't as successful but the genre is less popular. As a result of their experience, we have agreed to offer one of my novels from them as a free promotion beginning tomorrow. We will see if I have results like my first attempt or results like they have had. Let's hope for the latter.
My horror short story collection that was unsuccessful is called Death Alarm. The successful Rhemalda book last week is Monarch by Michelle Davidson Argyle. My book that is free starting today is Tamed. I think it has a wider appeal than my horror stories but we will see. It is about owning werewolves as pets and gives a unique take to the genre like True Blood did for vampires in the first season. Other than that, I don't know what was more or less appealing about any of the books. If you take a look at them and have any ideas, I'd love to hear. I personally think all of Rhemalda's books are appealing but I might be a bit biased.
Thanks for your info. I have never heard that about dark covers. Out of curiosity, what would your thoughts be on my fantasy book, just from the cover and write-up? It's called The Light of Epertase. A quick note on Tamed. The issue of werewolves being human half of the time is addressed by the company selling them. (Hint: They can't turn into human anymore.) They are sold as docile cousins to the wolf like dogs. Humongous dogs but dogs just the same. There are several concepts to any unique story that has to be explained in a believable way during the course of the book(and not able to be done in a cover copy) and that is just one of them. Thanks again for your take.
Merri wrote: "Uvi, when I originally signed up, I removed my books from all other sales channels. Now that the 90 days are up, I have them all back up on those channels and did not re-enroll for Select. In hinds..."It's a good thing the reviews were kept for your books. It's as if your books went to sleep for a few month and then resurrected... Was all this worthwhile, you think? Would you have done it again?
Douglas wrote: "Thanks for your info. I have never heard that about dark covers. Out of curiosity, what would your thoughts be on my fantasy book, just from the cover and write-up? It's called The Light of Epertas..."The problem with dark covers starts even earlier than reaching the readers. It starts at the printing stage.
Being new to the printing process of book covers, I've now learned that it can be a challenge to get graphics with the contrast and vibrancy you would expect. Here is an excellent article about it...
To read more, click the link:
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/01/ne...
Uvi wrote: "Was all this worthwhile, you think? Would you have done it again?"No. If I knew then what I know now, I would have only enrolled new titles in Select for 90 days and then offered them elsewhere (as well as through Amazon KDP) when the 90 days were up. I think I missed out on a lot of sales over Christmas through B&N, Sony, Apple and a few through Kobo. December was one of my slowest sales months, which really surprised me. I put almost all my titles in Select early in December. Other folks may have a different story, of course. That was only my experience.
Merri wrote: "Uvi wrote: "Was all this worthwhile, you think? Would you have done it again?"No. If I knew then what I know now, I would have only enrolled new titles in Select for 90 days and then offered them..."
This is highly useful to know. Thank you so much!
I might have to reevaluate my earlier comment that the KDP program isn't a good idea. I don't know if it will help sales when my 5 day free promotion is over but in the first day Tamed has been downloaded 10,000 times. It is #17 in the free kindle store. Since my goal has always been to get my books into as many hands as possible, I'd say it has already been successful. If it leads to sales after the promotion, then that is icing on the cake. I will let you all know how it goes after Sun.
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Congratulations, 13,000 free downloads is impressive. But I don’t understand why you think consequential low book sales is strange. After 13,000 people have downloaded your book during your free giveaway period, the same people will download someone else’s free giveaway during the next period; after that, they will download another free book in the next giveaway period, etc., etc. Why should anyone actually pay for a book?
Sorry if I sound pessimistic, but something, somewhere, is wrong…
James