Last week I shared my results from direct marketing to Kindle readers through advertising and KDP Select.
I came down against the program overall based on my experience, but in today’s guest post, Jeff Bennington shows us the opposite point of view and shares some brilliant results.
We are all experimenting in this new world of publishing. There are no rules and what works for one book, won’t work for another, so it’s important to listen to all sides before trying something yourself.
It’s no secret that Amazon’s KDP Select offers free promotion to authors who enlist in the program. But what many authors don’t realize is how effective this promotion can be.
Some of you may not agree with Amazon’s monopolistic tactics, and that’s okay. Some of you, however, have jumped in with both feet. As an independent author, I’m in favor of KDP Select. My first promotion brought me into Amazon’s Top 100 (#55 Paid) and completely transformed the sales of all my books.
Before I signed on with KDP Select, I was selling 97 percent of my titles in the Kindle Store, so the switch was a no-brainer. I had been working on a few marketing strategies, and quickly I recognized that KDP was the spark I needed to start a fire.
Now that I’ve had a chance to play with this program, I think KDP Select is the best marketing opportunity for authors, hands down. Here’s why:
The KDP Select program doesn’t care if you’re traditionally published or self-published.
Enrolling your book gives you a chance to show the world what you can do, no prejudices, no preconceived notions. This is American Idol for writers at its best. You place your book on the stage, and if the cover is great and you’ve earned a few quality reviews, you’ll move to the next level of judging. There isn’t really a system of pass or fail, but if readers find your book attractive, it’ll sell in the Free Store. And I’m not talking about hundreds of readers—I’m talking about thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Where else can you jump-start the promotion of your book like that?
It takes a lot of gears to move a book up Amazon’s ranking system.
Gears can be anything such as great reviews, multiple titles by the same author, a strong author platform, previous bestseller, number of copies sold, etc. All of these gears can influence a book’s rate of acceleration through Amazon’s ranking system. The more gears you have, the higher you are likely to climb. Unattractive covers, poor reviews, and badly written book samples can throw a wrench in the cogs.
The good news is, KDP Select can add gears to a book—again, as long as it is attractive at first glance. This, among other reasons, is why I strongly encourage authors to pay for a quality cover. Your cover is your first impression. Get it right.
NOTE: After your free promotion is over, your book will now appear on hundreds, if not thousands, of book pages, thanks to Amazon’s “Customers who bought this, also bought …” element of their sales pages. This translates into thousands of tiny billboards that you didn’t have before your KDP promotion.
Layered marketing can enhance your KDP experience.
In the past, it took weeks before a book was listed as free. Now, if you plan properly, you can schedule up to a five-day promotion that has the potential to spin your book straight to the top. Believe it or not, this promotion can build enough momentum for your book to move up the ranks when it hits the paid store. This is possible because of the quick turnaround from free to paid. Amber Scott, from The Indie Book Collective, calls this type of momentum “traction.”
HINT: You can increase the traction, or torque, in your gears by scheduling a sponsorship with Kindle Nation Daily (or other book marketing site) on the exact day your book returns to regular price.
Amazon’s Top 100 Free and Paid lists are the equivalent of a billboard in Times Square.
Making it into either list will not only give you thousands of readers in a matter of days but will translate into more reviews and more sales. In my opinion, an author should plan her KDP promotion with pinpoint accuracy, throwing everything she has into that two- or three-day promo, because the more gears you link to your book, the higher you’ll go. And if you can gear your book into the Top 100, it will be worth every penny!
Authors are reaching the top faster than ever before.
The ability to schedule a promotion of this magnitude is absolutely unprecedented. Amazon has already leveled the playing field between self-published and traditionally published authors. KDP Select has given indies more exposure because publishers aren’t as willing to restrict their titles to Amazon alone, thereby giving us a bigger piece of the promotional pie. Although there is no doubt that the market is saturated with free and 99 cent books.
From my personal experience, and by helping other authors hit the Top 100, I believe that Amazon has created the greatest marketing system available to authors in the history of publishing. If an author’s book has nailed the important elements like a good cover, tight plot, good reviews, and professional editing and formatting, she can promote her book on an international scale like never before, all on a shoestring budget. Several factors will determine how long you stay at the top, but getting there can change everything.
Here are the facts regarding my royalties since I joined KDP Select.
Now you be the judge if this program isn’t a revolutionary program…
Month Royalties
September = $442
October 2011 = $133
November 2011 = $478
December 2011 = $10,156 (KDP Select opens)
January 2012 = $2,387
These are only U.S royalties and include my royalties from the Amazon Prime rentals. Obviously December will always be higher because of the Christmas rush. Currently, February is on par to match January but if $2,300 is my new “normal” than I’d say that’s pretty revolutionary.
If you have a long list of books that are selling in multiple outlets, you can always try one of your books to see how it fares for the 90-day commitment. If you are a new author, there is no better way to reach a large audience when you are starting from ground zero. But if you’re a new author and your quest for readers is coming up dry, I highly recommend the KDP Select program—it’s God’s gift to you.
Jeff Bennington is the author of The Indie Author’s Guide to the Universe, Reunion, Creepy, and Twisted Vengeance. He is the founder of The Kindle Book Review, NexGate Press, and blogs weekly at The Writing Bomb.
The Indie Author’s Guide to the Universe offers 229 pages of motivation, encouragement, insight into indie publishing, Jeff’s marketing and selling strategies, and advice from over 20 bestselling independent authors.
Image: Flickr CC John Catral
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Thanks for a really useful article. I’m coming to the end of my first novel and am looking at self-publishing routes, so this is both informative and helps squash my fears!
Fingers crossed – I’ll be following your site for more tips.
Hi Joanna,
Just checking in with you. To date, my Feb, Mar, April and May royalties are still exceeding $2K per month versus the <$400 a month this time last year. June will probably be a little lower, but after the Memorial Day, Father's Day and Mother's Day holidays I anticipate those numbers bouncing back.
Currently, I see a clear drop in the KDP "FREEBIE" effectiveness already. Scott Nicholson and I both anticipated a 6 to 9 month life span for this program (assuming author saturation) and the program is definitely having that effect already. But overall I think the program still works for new books or when authors allow a larger gap of time between promotions.
It does seem to me that readers are figuring out that they can "buy" really good free books. Still, I plan to ride this wave until it breaks, and keep my eyes open for the next swell. Again, I really appreciate the opportunity to share my experience.
I have not had a very positive response with the KDP Select program, so I am wondering if I did something wrong. I ran an initial two day promo on my book, Cora Flash and the Diamond of Madagascar (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0075NS12Y), and had around 600 free downloads and managed to get to the top of my category. I thought I would stay in the top 500 for paid in my category, but no dice. I quickly fell back down to the ‘before’ rank. After using my remaining three days, the same thing happened – I returned to ‘before’ levels with no noticeable spike in sales at all. My 90 days expires tomorrow, and I am currently languishing in the charts. I am debating if I should renew the KDP select program or upload to Smashwords and see how I fare over there. Has anyone weighed the KDP Select vs. Smashwords argument?
Tommy,
I looked at your book and found a couple things that would effect your KDP efforts.
~ Your book is a 3 color children’s book (at least that’s what it appears to be), therefore, it has a “self-pubbed” look. It looks more like an adult murder mystery, only with a young girl on the cover which indicated a young reader would be interested.
~ The other books in the “Customers who bought this also bought” section are all children’s books. This is another indication that it is a children’s book. All of the covers shown are very colorful… this is your audience and your cover is not even close to the same look/appeal.
~ Children’s books are not one of the top selling ebook genres.
~ I’m wondering how much promotion you did to get readers to find your “free Book”. I list several ways to do this in my book and on my blog.
~ I’ve brought other authors out of the trenchens who were selling in the #500,000 ranking in the paid store, and brought them into the top 100 paid store.
Sorry, just replied outside of this thread, apologies. Please see my response below.
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the comments.
Yes, my cover design looks more like an adult murder mystery, but that was not my first cover. My first cover was very colourful but based on the “customers who bought…” results, I deemed it too juvenile. My audience is the 9-12 Middle Grade fiction audience, and I did not seem to be getting into those hands. I revised the cover to look a little more stylized to appeal to my demographic. (I discuss my cover issue in greater detail in my blog: http://tommydavey.blogspot.ca/2012/03/tale-of-two-covers.html) Future volumes in the series will be a similar design but with a different main colour to create a visually branded series.
I feel a bit stuck right now as my referrals are all for books that are way younger than my demographic, and I am regretting the use of the KDP promo days as I feel it has affected my algorithm in a very negative way.
I realize children’s books are not one of the top selling genres, but I was hoping to at least make an appearance in the top 20 of my sub-category.
I’m curious to receive input from others… please help me decide with the poll I am taking on my blog:
http://tommydavey.blogspot.ca/2012/05/its-time-for-survey-which-cover-do-you.html
Thank you to everyone who particpated in my survey (and to Jeff, your comments were valuable), it helped me decide an update was indeed necessary and I now have a great cover that I think will serve me well:
http://tommydavey.blogspot.ca/2012/06/cora-gets-update.html
I put my book in KDP select and did the free promo for 2 days and got over 5000 downloads it is truely a humbling experience to see your book go from the hundreds of thousands to #87 in the top 100 free and #9 in contemporary fiction. I think I had my gears right now let’s see if I can get traction and grow in the paid sales. FINGERS CROSSED!
Thanks for the tips. I’m currently doing a little research before I launch my first novel, Hindsight as an ebook this summer. This has been a huge help, especially the mention of promotion sites like Kindle Nation Daily. I’ll be checking that out riiiight…. now.
I am new to Amazon publishing. I started with a short story and will be publishing a horror novel very shortly. However I am curious where the numbers are to show how many downloads you get when you put them on the KDP promotions for free? I can only find the reports showing royalties. Can anyone help me out with that? Smashwords has a dashboard showing how many downloads and how many people actually clicked on my book. Is there some where on Amazon that shows the same amount?
Thanks for your help!
Jenn
Hi Jenn,
When you publish a book through KDP Select you can see all of your sales including rentals, free, and paid sales. Simply log into your KDP account, go to your “Reports” tab (near top of page), click on the “Month to Date” button. You will then be able to see your titles, units sold, units refunded (returned), net units sold, units borrowed, free-units promo, and free-units price matched (if applicable).
There is also a drop down menu to see reports in all applicable languages. You’ll see , but as you scroll through that menu you’ll see .DE, IT, ES, UK, etc.
I see this. Thank you for a such a speedy response. I have been working on uploading my novel(getting formatting write for all kindle platforms is kinda taxing.) I do the reports now. Thank you for assisting me. I have my novel in publishing status and hopefully it will show up tomorrow. I have enrolled in in KDP and will see where this ride takes me.
On another note, I have read both of your books and they were great. Thank you for writing entertaining material.
Thanks
Jenn
You can visit me at my site: https://sites.google.com/site/jenniferjcarr/
No one seems to be mentioning the fact that the bestselling books that are in Amazon’s select program are not exclusive, like, for example, the Harry Potter books. Those are for sale at Barnes and Nobles Nook store. It seems that there are two sets of rules. Only the indie authors have to give up their rights to sell elsewhere. This way Amazon gets to brag ‘exclusive’ books, while undercutting the other stores with free popular books. And those free bestsellers are getting all the funds in the pot. This whole promotion is about putting everyone else out of business. Has no one else noticed this?
The KDP borrowing scheme seems worth a try. I have a couple of questions that I hope someone can answer however. I published my two long short stories, The Podesta’s Brooch and The Gray Stag and the White Lady, on both Smashwords and Kindle singles. Now, if I’ve understood correctly, I’d need to cancel the Smashwords entries to comply with the Amazon rules. Right? Since Smashwords distributes to Barnes and Noble and others, would canceling at Smashwords automatically cancel all the other distributors? Or would I have to cancel each one separately. Help appreciated!
Yes, if you cancel at Smashwords, it cancels everywhere else, but it can take a few weeks, so make sure you don’t opt into KDP Select until you’ve done that.
Consider whether you really want to do this as well, as it essentially cancels out all your history at those other stores. So if you have sales there, I would think twice.
I published “Sailing Through Spilt Milk” through CreateSpace almost 3 months ago. It is a humorous reminiscence of my adventures over a 70 year span; covers charter stories, youthful hijinx, dealing with cancer and keeping the love alive with an “admiral type” lady. It’s not an easy genre to push forward. My initial sales were great with excellent reviews. Now I see a lull. My KDP Select is almost up and I still have not used my 5 free days. I’m going to try it for 2 days and see how it goes. Then should I sign up again with KDP or head out to Smashword? ‘Tis a dilemma!
Thankyou for this article. I intend to do KDP this week – to compliment my 3 other books and within the 90 day KDP program launch 3 more.
Can you tell us more about the 5 day promotion? What is it? ect….I am a newb…
Appreciate everyones comments – I am willing to report back on our success…
Warm Regards
Eric Chief Instructor
Hi Eric, you can read all about KDP Select at Amazon’s page https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/KDPSelect – that tells you all about the free promotion.
Hi Joanna, congratulations for the exponential leap!
May I know, after your listing at Top 100 Free ends, how long it takes Amazon to put your book to the Top 100 Paid for Amazon kindle? Does this happen instantly, within hours?
Looking forward to hear from you. :
Thank you.
Hi Craig, the algorithms have changed since this article was posted and most people don’t get much bump in sales at all. You are unlikely to end up in the Top 100 Paid even if you make Top 100 Free. Free is mainly to get readers to your work.
Hi Joanna, my memoir Miss Williams is free today on kindle 4/18/2013 and my other 3 works are all at ($0.99) because I want folks to read them. I agree with the fact that Kindle select is the best thing that ever happened to people who love to write and write what they love.
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