KDP Select is a relatively new promotional tool offered by Amazon to their Kindle authors who sign up to a 3 month exclusivity deal when you publish your ebook. You must agree to only publish your ebook on the Amazon Kindle platform to the exclusion of all other e-readers during the 3 month period. In return you get 5 days when you can offer your hard written book for free, and get the benefit of Amazon’s Kindle lending library.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?
You might be thinking? If your book is only available on the Kindle, what about all the lost sales from the other reading devices, The Nook, Sony or I-Pads that you probably service though your Smashwords account? Well, those sales will be lost, but how many sales were you really getting from those sources anyway?
I had 2 books selling via Smashwords and Kindle before I joined KDP Select. THE A-Z OF GLOBAL WARMING (UK) and TIPPING POINT (UK). Combined sales for both on Smashwords were about 10 a month. Sales via Kindle were a combined 30-40 a month. No big deal, but still sales. So, I decided to go exclusively with Amazon’s KDP Select programme and started by giving away Tipping Point for free for two days during the last weekend of January 2012.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Well, I was amazed to say the least. By Sunday evening, 4,500 copies of TIPPING POINT (USA) had been downloaded. Around 2500 in the UK and 2000 in the USA, not forgetting about 75 in Germany! So what’s the benefit of that You might ask? Well, 4,500 readers – hopefully they read and enjoyed the book – are now aware of me and my other two books, THE A-Z OF GLOBAL WARMING (USA) and recently released Robert Spire thriller number 2 – IMPACT POINT. (UK)
Since then I’ve used all my 5 free giveaway days on both TIPPING POINT and IMPACT POINT (USA). I’ve a few left for the A-Z OF GLOBAL WARMING and I admit the subsequent giveaways weren’t downloaded at anywhere close to the level of the first 2 day giveaway of TIPPING POINT, but still a few hundred readers downloaded my books each time.
EFFECT ON GENERAL SALES
After the first free promotion ended, actual paid for sales of TIPPING POINT continued and I sold around 80 by the Monday morning and sales reached 360 for all 3 books in the month of February. That’s up from 30 sales for 2 books the month before joining KDP Select.
Since then sales have remained constant at the post KDP levels
This translates to a quadrupling of sales following the free downloads after signing up for KDP Select.
AMAZON PRIME
Amazon Prime provides a free Kindle book lending service to Amazon customers. For an annual fee, Prime members receive free delivery of all Amazon products and can borrow one book a month from the lending library – you the author get paid however from money set aside by Amazon. The payment varies depending upon how many people have borrowed your books and how many other authors have lent theirs out. This month Amazon set aside $600,000. “Every time a customer borrowed an independently-published book in March, the author earned $2.18. That’s more than many authors earn when their books are sold,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content.
CONCLUSION
KDP Select increases your sales simply because the free downloads increase the visibility of your book both on Amazon’s rankings as the free books are downloaded and via the “Customers who bought this item also bought,” promotion. This has the overall effect of helping with your book sales as more and more readers become aware of it and the important part – hopefully enjoy reading it!
Well done Amazon!
SimonRosserAuthor Blog 