Over time I had removed all of my books from Amazon KDP Select. That means that those books can't participate in:
- Kindle Countdown Deal
- Kindle Free Promotion
- Prime Lending Library
I'd read a lot of articles going over the pros and cons of KDP Select, most of which end up by saying
Enroll in KDP Select for the awesomeness
Here we have some cons:
- Exclusivity to Amazon
- Countdown Deal and Free Promotion cannot be done in same enrollment cycle
- Countdown Deal and Free Promotion according to strict days per cycle
The teaser of Countdown Deal is probably the most lucrative. Supposedly Amazon puts your book on a list of all the other 3,451 books currently on the Countdown Deal to push your book and market it for you. For many books this might be the only marketing it ever receives.
The Free Promotion of course is purely to generate some interest and stats so you can wave a flag and say
My book was #43,329 in Kindle Books for an hour and a half!
For most books that is probably as high as it will ever get. Sorry to burst bubbles out there.
And then we have the exclusivity issue. Aside from some rather small and meaningless dinky little publishing outlets, there are:
- Apple iBooks
- Google Play
- Barnes and Noble
I spent a lot of time piddling around with the annoying Apple author/publisher signup process. Finally I was informed that short of spending several thousand dollars on a new computer or paying someone several hundred dollars to publish it for me, I wasn't able to be featured there. Alas ... There used to be a loophole for uploaded PDF and EPUB but they apparently closed it. And lest you try to mention some mass aggregators that will push your book to everyone, at this point I feel like even $100 to have them do it won't work for me, based on all the numbers I've been able to run.
Google Play had an almost as annoying signup process, and a very complicated and twitchy manuscript approval process. After figuring it all out, I finally got a handful of test books published. Oddly one of my books there is outselling the Amazon counterpart. I'm intrigued by that and planning some marketing tests to find out how to springboard that to even higher profit.
Barnes and Noble Nook Publishing has evolved over the time I've had books there. The signup process was almost as easy as Amazon. I have to qualify that though by saying that I've had an Amazon account for over 10 years, so it was pretty simple to add publishing to my account. I truly believe that without Microsoft buying up chunks of B&N on a regular basis, and Walmart selling Nooks, they'd totally be down the toilet by now. I have absolutely no confidence in Nook at this point. Take that however you wish, and assume whatever you like.
So with the possible exception of Apple (assuming you bought the trendy PC option and are willing to go through the horrendously rigorous signup process, or believe your own marketing hype enough to pay to play) and Google, there doesn't seem to be much reason to worry about the exclusivity clause in the KDP Select agreement.
My Free Promotion Test for Weight Training Secret Manual Vol 1
I have done the Free Promotion a few other times, and generally been dissatisfied with the results, much like most of the bloggers who mentioned having done it. Some of the "Guru" types suggested this that and the other thing for how to "do it right" so I decided to try it. Besides, Amazon won't let me do a Countdown Deal for at least 6 weeks after publishing a book. Sadly, now that I have run a Free Promotion, I can't use a Countdown Deal for at least another 3 months. That is if I re-enroll in KDP Select when it expires on this book.
My latest book "Weight Training Secret Manual: 8 Hacks to Beat the Plateau" [CLICK HERE] would be a perfect opportunity to test the system for marketing a Free Promotion. I set up the promotion for a Friday-Saturday, 2 days. I would be able to run 3 more days in this 3 month period if I choose, which up front I had no intention of doing. Also 2 days allows for a little urgency in marketing "Only 36 hours left!" and all that.
I marketed it quite heavily on Facebook, Twitter, G+ and Linkedin (the new Facebook) for four days prior to the Free Promotion to give people lots of time to get used to it. I started slow and got more "frantic" as the deadline approached. It took off with a bang and I ended up giving away more copies of this one book in 48 hours than all sales of all other books in the previous year. Think about that for a minute. Maybe a few minutes.
In return for that I was in the top 5 for two straight days for two categories that Amazon chose for me in spite of my own keywords I used when I published it. I managed to stay number one (#1) for both categories for about a half day, and I was higher ranked than #3,000 for all Kindle eBooks for a day. Those are awesome stats all the way around, and gives me a lot to think about.
For one thing it proves my market is a lot bigger than I have been able to fully utilize. I apparently am not marketing my books correctly, or I would have that level of sales for all of them. Yes, I realize that a direct correlation between giving away and charging $4.99 per book is very tough to make. But it is something to consider.
If you want to get your own free copy while it's still enrolled in KDP Select you can get it free in the Prime Lending Library. Otherwise it's also free on Kindle Matchbook which has nothing to do with KDP Select. If you buy the paperback they'll let you have the Kindle eBook for free. I get paid for the first, but not for the second.
I got a phone call from a book marketing service promising to get me on radio and TV and after looking at their childish 1995 website I declined. I told them up front they had nothing I wanted to spend $10,000 on. I suppose if I had a series of action/adventure/vampire/romance fiction books to push it might have some value. They probably even have people on the staff to give me 200 reviews on release day. Besides, an appeal to pure ego gratification won't work on me as a sales pitch. I have been around that block a time or two...
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