Pros and cons of KDP Select

[Brian G Turner]

KDP Select offers:

1. The ability for readers to pick up your book in the Kindle Unlimited library
2. 70% royalties in the following countries: Mexico, India, Brazil, and Japan.

In theory, KDP Select offers an easy and accessible way for readers to pick up your book at no cost - a potentially useful way to get readers and reviews.

But my own experience, and from comments elsewhere here, it seems that a couple of months after the launch of a book, views via Kindle Unlimited become negligible, negating any benefits from KDP Select.

The 70% royalty for the countries selected is nice in theory, but those don't seem to be significant English-language reading regions, and have yet to see any sales to any of them.

Therefore it seems that KDP Select is designed to allow Amazon to have an exclusive launch period over other platforms, and that's where it might be most effective.

However, I'm now wondering whether even that is going to be of any actual value.

At the moment, I'm beginning to think that KDP Select's advantages are so limited for an author yet to establish themselves, that it's probably not worth bothering with in the first place.

And if I were an established author, I would expect that a presence on multiple ebook platforms would make far more financial and business sense than being exclusive to KDP Select anyway.

So in short - once my contracted period is up, I'll be withdrawing from the program, and don't plan to rejoin it again.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I left, sold nowt on the other platforms and went back.

It depends. If you are visible on Amazon you get more readthroughs than sales - and most novelists (especially those on the longer side of the average) make more for a readthrough.

But the key advantage is that once every 3 months you can run a 99p promo and retain your 70%. If you're using it like that kdp is very effective - because readthroughs also go up from promos.

I'm planning a big promo for IC in April to coincide with a Reddit AMA (and because after I want Waters and the Wild to come to more prominence for its launch) and the only way - that I've found- to make a promo week pay back is bring on kdp.

 

[Gareth Lewis]

It's been years since I tried KDP Select.

From my understanding, the increased exposure it offers over KDP vanilla books (one of its main selling points) has become overwhelmed by the sheer number of books now taking part in KDP Select.

I don't consider the royalty rate to be that important to me at the moment. I'm more interested in number of sales, with the hopes they'll stick around as a long-term readership.

The Kindle Unlimited library is interesting but on its own hasn't been enough to draw me back.

While my sales are minimal, Amazon has never really done that much better for me than other platforms, so I'm unlikely to try it again anytime soon.

 

[ratsy]

As Jo said, unless you are ranking high and getting a lot of pages read, there isnt a huge advantage, short of the Kindle Countdown. I recently removed Through the Wormhole, only because I needed something to give away for free with www.scifiexplorations.com newsletter. You can't give away and have in Select. I haven't put it wide yet, but do plan on testing how it does. I sure did notice how fast the rank went down on the book when I dropped out, even though i was still seeing consistent sales. If you are getting pages read, it really helps the rank.

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

I have just self-published another book on Kindle and am struggling to get a grasp of what influence these Kindle options have. One of my other titles is enrolled in the KDP Select, but does not seem to have gathered any reads.
When I first tried self-publishing in 2012 there was an idea around that one could publish any rubbish as a Kindle book and enough people would find it and click Buy to make the exercise worthwhile. Quite an erroneous notion as far as I can see.
IIRC, around 2012 Kindle would list the newly published titles at the top, giving each one a brief window of opportunity. Now, so far as I can see, they list them in order of popularity.
Am increasingly getting the impression that one's stuff won't sell on Kindle at all unless one has one's own publicity to drive traffic there. So far, the sales of my new title seem to be to people I pestered to pre-order.
There are increasing signs that Kindle want to ditch the mass of so-so e-books and concentrate on best-sellers.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

There has, for sure, been some sort of change to Amazon's market. Indies fell to 40% of the market from 50%. But some of that might be Amazon publishing's arm which is growing all the time. There is also an indie saturation in eg romance (with SFf not far behind) which may be waning.

 

[Gary Compton]

We had a book in 2016 that had 738,000 pages read in the month it launched. We received just over $3000 in KDP payment. If you divide the number of pages by the number in the book you get 2,460 books which if sold at the full price would have been $9840 income. There were also 1100 propper sales in that month as well.

So is it a good idea? I see big publishers tend not to subscribe to KDP! Would those people that borrowed, bought it if that was the only option?

The answer is I don't know, it's guesswork and trial and error mixed with a small bit of knowledge and alot of luck!

 

[apocalypsegal]

The benefit I see in KU is the boost a "borrow" gets you. For a new author, or one with a small advertising budget, this can be enough to get you noticed by readers, because you'll show up higher in searches. Yes, you might -- probably will -- cannibalize some sales, but it might be a worthy trade off until you can build your list, your back matter, and your ad budget.

The thing is, you have to be writing stuff people will want to read, but that should go without saying. Novels (or longish novellas) do better than shorts or even collections (which are a hard sell any way you do it). If you can get into a multi-author box set, that can boost sales to your other books, as well as help build your email list.

It's a delicate balance between being exclusive, and thus delaying building a wider presence, and taking advantage of a program to boost your books. One method might be to enroll for 90 days, then go wide, pushing the marketing to other retailers.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

I think KDPS is a tool which trains readers to expect books for free, and the attitude you see amongst reviews left by KU readers seems to match this. There's a whole lot of "1-star: Glad I got this for free in KU!" reviews out there on books which are, IMHO, actually good.

Realistically the goal of KU is to keep customers in the Amazon ecosystem, and if I turned up to a job where my employer told me 15 days after month end what they felt like paying me for my 80-hour weeks I'd tell them where to shove it.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Well, after 4 months I'm getting nothing but crickets from Kobo and Nook. I think Amazon is the only serious player.

So I'm beginning to think the following strategy may make more sense:

1. Establish yourself on Amazon first by building up strong sales and following
2. Only once demand is proven, then consider branching out into other areas.

While KDP may not offer direct advantages when no one borrows, if a book being a part of KDP positively affects rankings on Amazon then it potentially offers an indirect benefit by improving visibility.

I'm not sure how that would play out with existing books, but for debuts IMO it's definitely got to be a consideration for helping retain visibility and sales strength.

Maybe there's an argument to open outside of Amazon after an initial 3 month KDP exclusive period - but at the moment I'm cynical of the benefits of doing so, until a strong sales record has been established on Amazon itself.

Just my thinking for the moment.

 

[Nick B]

From my experience Brian, you are right. Liberator has only ever been KDP select and has always seen KU pages being read, except the odd dry spell, the longest of which was a couple of weeks. It is still being read on KU now, almost a year after release.

Most telling is Primordial, which is totaly free and available on all e-book retail avenues and all platforms. To date, it has seen a total combined sales across Kobo, Nook, Apple etc of just 14 since release.
Due to Amazon price matching taking roughly ages, it was a month later to be free on Kindle.
The last 90 days have seen 170 sales. The previous 90 would have easily been a fair bit higher but I don't have the figures.
So even if it matched the last 90 that would be 340 kindle sales compared to 14 on everything else combined.

I won't be releasing any of my books via the other channels. I would rather give free copies to anyone who doesnt have a kindle, as I'd lose so much from KU and gain almost nothing in return.

I'm against corporate monopolies, but not at the cost of a huge number of readers for me.

 

[apocalypsegal]

Well, after 4 months I'm getting nothing but crickets from Kobo and Nook.

Have you been running promos? Because you have to get readers to those sites yourself. They won't easily find you otherwise. Even Amazon has tweaked things so that it's harder to get noticed, even with KU, unless you drop some cash into AMS.

And it's going to take time to build an audience wide. It just is. None of the other sites make it easy for readers to find titles, so between ads and being patient, you're likely looking at a minimum of six to nine months, possible longer.

The only thing that really matters is, what's best for your business? Amazon is getting kind of hard for just getting noticed anymore, and their ad system is being over run by people with loads of money to spend (like Facebook, which can get hideously expensive). If being in KU gets you money and you're comfortable with not knowing how things are going down from month to month, then stick with it. If you'd rather spend the time and money building up on other retailers, then do that. Or do a combination. No one way is right for everyone, and it's not a problem which way you go, so long as you're satisfied.

 

[Dave Barsby]

I am poised about to use KDP Select for the first time. From the above comments it doesn't sound too promising but with zero advertising budget I think the idea of going onto Select then quitting and going wide when the contract ends currently sounds like the best option. I guess it's just a case of trying it and seeing what, if anything, happens.

It's just a shame that these days the industry seems more focused on salesmanship and marketing than the actual ability to write decent prose, and a salesman I am not.

 

[Cathbad]

Welcome to the club, @Dave Barsby .

 

[sknox]

@Dave Barsby, the industry was always focused on marketing and money. It's just that for indies, we have to do the industry side ourselves. As others have pointed out, even in traditional publishing this is becoming the case.

For myself, I don't view it as salesmanship. I view it as connecting with readers (I hope I have readers!). It's not just a Facebook post or a tweet or a blog post, it's a chance to talk with people who have read my work. Why would I resist that?

Other parts are less fun. Formatting the book for multiple platforms is just labor. Doing research on whether or not to buy ISBNs is just dull research, about as exciting and with as unclear answers as shopping for a car. I console myself by remembering that some of these tasks are one time only. The burdens on the newbie are greater than on the experienced.

 

[Dave Barsby]

@Dave Barsby,
...
For myself, I don't view it as salesmanship. I view it as connecting with readers (I hope I have readers!). It's not just a Facebook post or a tweet or a blog post, it's a chance to talk with people who have read my work. Why would I resist that?.

I don't disagree and don't have a problem with that, but that's when you're a bit more established. I connect with my readers because they're friends already. How I get new readers I don't yet know to buy the book - that's the bit I struggle with and requires good marketing knowledge

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I don't disagree and don't have a problem with that, but that's when you're a bit more established. I connect with my readers because they're friends already. How I get new readers I don't yet know to buy the book - that's the bit I struggle with and requires good marketing knowledge

That's the bit that's hard

 

[Overread]

I think KDPS is a tool which trains readers to expect books for free, and the attitude you see amongst reviews left by KU readers seems to match this. There's a whole lot of "1-star: Glad I got this for free in KU!" reviews out there on books which are, IMHO, actually good.

You also see higher star reviews start with "gave it 4 stars because it was free".
You also have to consider that free means you get a lot of people who are not your target audience picking up the book. That means you run a higher potential of getting negative reviews from people who would otherwise never be intended nor expected to pick the book up if it had been at a cost (even a very small cost).

I would say that as a result you've got to combine going free with marketing and that being free itself is never going to work if its the only marketing you're focusing on.




As an aside in the photography market (totally different I know) there is a huge stigma against giving photos away for free as promotions or even into competitions at times (when said competition keeps royalty free use of the submitted photo for life). Photography has felt the massive sting of going cheap/free and its hurt it hard for the working photographer. Micro-stock was a great idea for those running the stock company and those buying; but for the producers it took a viable market and killed it. What you have today are a minority who can turn a profit with a vast library and a notable style/name and the majority making pennies.

Amazon is going to push for cheaper and cheaper because customers always ask for cheaper; but it can backfire very hard and seriously harm the market. Continual devaluing of products, in the long run, causes more harm than good. Now granted you could say books had it with libraries making things totally free; however digital VS physical goods is a big difference. People like to own and hold and keep physical goods whilst digital goods are identical and non-personal. A great book loaned from a library might turn into a sale; a digital book that's free is much less likely to turn into someone then paying for the same digital book.

I see the "cheap cheap" training of customers very readily in Steam - computer game sales - where a loud segment of the playerbase is so well trained in sales and cheap prices that any game which dares price itself at a "serious" rate can get a lot of hate about it. Even optional and expansion downloadable content gets a lot of hate from players. Now granted there are cases where it is being abused; but in general its not; but you quickly see people demanding and expecting far more than ever before for almost pennies. Mass sales can somewhat make up for it, but I don't think books have enough advertising nor market power to really make vast sales for the average author.

 

[Anthony Pero]

I think KDPS is a tool which trains readers to expect books for free, and the attitude you see amongst reviews left by KU readers seems to match this. There's a whole lot of "1-star: Glad I got this for free in KU!" reviews out there on books which are, IMHO, actually good.

Realistically the goal of KU is to keep customers in the Amazon ecosystem, and if I turned up to a job where my employer told me 15 days after month end what they felt like paying me for my 80-hour weeks I'd tell them where to shove it.

There are plenty of jobs like that. You get paid on commission. Frequently, the amount of your commission is dependent on the amount of total sales the company has. Ku is a little more opaque than that, of course, but ultimately Amazon can't tell you how much you will make per page read until they know how many pages are read. Now, the pot should be announced ahead of time, rather than after the month is over. But you still wouldn't know how much page reads are worth until people actually read that month.

 

[Cathbad]

Most months I get like a thousand or so pages read (not a lot, but it's something). Last month, and so far this month, nada. Can't complain, though. Sales are up.