Publishing On Kindle: KDP Select Pros And Cons

My 90-day contract with KDP Select ends this month, which means that I'll have to decide whether I want to renew with this service. It's a pretty big decision, so here are some of the things that I've liked -- and haven't liked about my experience with KDP Select so far.

CON: KDP Select asks authors to grant them 90 days of exclusivity. This means that you can only sell your books on Amazon -- not on Smashwords, Lulu or even your own website. This greatly limits authors who want to diversify their products.

PRO: However, 90 days isn't a very long period. It's not like KDP Select is asking for five years of exclusivity. And out of all of the indie publishing platforms available, let's face it -- Amazon gets the most traffic.

PRO: KDP Select authors' books can be borrowed in Kindle's lending library. Amazon Prime members can borrow your work for free ... but you still make money from borrows. So far, I've made almost as much money from borrows as I have from sales, so I really like this feature.

PRO: KDP Select gives you five days during a 90-day period during which you can give your book away for free. The idea is to put your name out there and gain publicity. I've had mixed results with this, but my last run was successful. Sales went up for quite a while after the promotion and I got several more reviews on my Amazon and Goodreads pages.

CON: I don't plan to do another free giveaway because, well, I want to make money from my book -- even if it's just 99 cents a download. I'd rather promote my work in a way which will encourage people to actually buy BAND GEEK. And 99 cents is about as cheap as you can get outside of getting it for free. Besides, Smashwords allows authors to giveaway books whenever they want; there's no limit on days. But again, Smashwords' traffic isn't as high as Amazon's.

CON: I find it very difficult to get visibility and a higher ranking on Amazon. When my book has sold well, my visibility goes up... but when sales slow down, so does my ranking. It's a vicious cycle and a system that's designed to reward already-successful authors. I wish that Amazon had some promotional options for indie authors (other than free days) to put their names out there and get their books on the most visible pages.

PRO: As I've said a few times now, Amazon gets great traffic. I've heard mixed things about Smashwords and authors' success on that site. It reminds me a bit of how I tried to sell my jewelry on Etsy and ArtFire, but didn't sell a thing on the latter, simply because ArtFire doesn't get Etsy's traffic. Still, it would be nice to have some more options for my writing.

As of now, I'm leaning toward not renewing my KDP Select contract. I can still sell my work on regular Kindle/Amazon and at least try Smashwords and Lulu. It can't hurt to see what happens since both sites are free. And if I don't like those results, I can always re-sign with KDP Select. In the end, I just want to do what's best for my book and I'm glad that indie authors have a few choices.

Please read and review REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD, just 99 cents!

Marketing An Indie Book: What ISN'T Working For Me

When an author self publishes a book, one of the most challenging things that he or she will have to deal with is actually marketing that book. And you know what? This is something that many traditionally published authors now have to deal with, too. Publishing houses will put a lot of money into publicizing a well-known author, but many newbies still have to do the bulk of their advertising and marketing on their own.

Since I'm still very new to the indie author game -- BAND GEEK hasn't even been out for two months at this point -- I'm still experimenting with marketing techniques and am finding my way. The great thing about publishing an indie book is that I can always change course and try something new .. and don't have to worry about angering a publishing house. The only one who has something to lose or gain is me.

So far, I'd have to say that my most successful marketing technique has been signing up for KDP Select and then using the five free days. My last run was very successful and I saw a significant bump in sales (about 500 percent!!!) over the next couple of days. The bump was short-lived, though, so I'm looking at other avenues that have worked -- and haven't worked for me.

Social networking has been somewhat successful, as was my Virtual Book Tour. With the book tour, the days that I saw the most sales were the days where either a review of my book was posted or I wrote a guest blog post. I didn't see quite an increase on the days where a blog simply posted my book's summary or an excerpt.

Which leads me to report what HASN'T worked for me -- and that's static advertising. I've invested some money in a couple of sites where they simply post a photo of my cover, a blurb and a link to my Amazon purchase page. But that just doesn't seem to attract readers.

Now that I think about it, I almost never click on ads that appear on blogs or other pages that I use, like Facebook. I mostly ignore them -- and I imagine that this is true of many other readers, too. But when you post something ACTIVE -- like a blog entry or interview or review -- it gives viewers something more than just your book's cover. It lets them know about you, the author, and gives them a reason to invest in your book.

From now on, I'm going to stick with active marketing; I have another blog tour coming up in the new year, and this time, it's going to be all reviews of BAND GEEK. Hopefully, these reviews will be positive ones and will get the attention of even more readers. That would be a nice way to kick of 2013!

Please read and review REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD.

KDP Select Free Days Success Story!

Yesterday, I used my fifth and final KDP Select Free Day promotion -- and I'm finally seeing some significant results ... so far.

To backtrack for those of you who aren't aware of Kindle Direct Publishing Select's program, if you sign with them, you sign a 90-day exclusivity contract. During that time, you can only sell your work on Amazon/Kindle; you can't sell on Smashwords or Lulu, or even on your own site. However, during the 90-day period, you get five days during which you can offer your book for free. You can string all five days together or do one or two or three at a time. It's very flexible.

If you put some effort into planning your promotion, you can potentially have thousands of new readers download your book. Your work then ends up on the "customers also bought" lists, you get added exposure and you can see a bump in sales following the promotion.

But the trick is in PLANNING for your free days. The first time I tried the promotion, I did two days in a row. I didn't advertise much, other than on this blog and on Twitter. I got about 500 downloads and a slight bump in sales. Moreover, I made a few foreign sales afterward.

My third and fourth giveaways didn't go so well. One I stupidly scheduled for the United States' Election Day. Since most of my readers are American, I just didn't get traffic. I tried to advertise on more outlets, like various Facebook pages for free ebooks, but I only got about 100 downloads. The same thing happened for Attempt No. 4. I was disappointed and began to wonder if giving my book away was even worth it.

I then put more effort into publicizing and marketing my book. I set up an author page on Goodreads and tried to engage with more people on Facebook and Twitter ... and I saw a slight increase in sales, even without doing the promotion. Meanwhile, I had one free day left, which I'd scheduled for November 26 -- which just happened to be on Cyber monday. While I'd done my other promotions basically on a whim, I took the time to plan for this one. I submitted my book in advance to dozens of Free Ebook Promotional Sites so that it would be advertised on the day of my giveaway. Meanwhile, my sales continued to do resonably well.

Know what? Submitting to those sites AHEAD OF TIME worked! Yesterday, my book had over 2200 downloads -- a nice, big jump from that paltry 100 I had a few weeks back! It made it to No. 2 on the list for Free Books Teen Romance and was No. 107 overall in the Free Kindle Store. While downloading, 10 people "Liked" my Amazon page, giving me some more street cred.

I'm now seeing a significant bump in sales, at least for today. I'm not sure how long it will last, but the promotion is helping, at least for the short term.

So here's what I think helped: 1) My book was starting to get more sales, anyway, so it was moving up in rank. Therefore, when I did the promo, it went to the top of the list pretty quickly. 2) As I said before, I planned ahead. Twitter and Facebook can only help so much, but sites like Pixel Of Ink will really get the word out about your book.

My advice then is this: before doing a free day for your book, put some effort into marketing your work. If your rank is 800,000, a free day probably won't help your sales that much. Also, don't choose to do a free promotion on a whim like I did. Pick a day about a month ahead of time. This way, you have plenty of time to submit to advertising sites. Many want you to submit at least a couple of weeks in advance; the earlier you give your book's listing, the more of a chance that it will actually be listed.

Like I said, I still have to see how the longterm results of my latest giveaway pan out. But I definitely think that it's worth it for authors to at least try KDP Select.

Please read and review REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD.