In my self-publishing journey, Catherine Ryan Howard’s Self-Printed has been my total bible – from setting up your US Tax number so you don’t lose 30% of your vast royalty fortune, to designing a colour coordinated website. But there’s one thing I’m straying away from her advice over: KDP Select.
CRH’s advice is not to enroll in KDP Select as it means you can’t sell your eBooks anywhere else. At the moment I only have them on Amazon, so figure it’s worth a 90-day punt. The reason I want to do it, is to take advantage of the 5 days you can set your book for free, and a count down promotion.
Sales are currently 2-3 daily, which is according to CRH means my book is (almost) selling, but #Forfeit isn’t getting as much love as I’d like. Reviews are all 5* on Amazon and that’s not my mum – she hasn’t figured out how to leave a review yet… sigh. I’ve no idea if KDP Select will increase my sales, but I’ll keep you posted on what does happen.
Has KDP Select worked for you?
It’s also a great day to buy #Forfeit in the UK. The Kindle Price is just 77p until Aug 31st and the paperback (one copy left in stock! lol) is just £6.05 – that’s almost £3 off the list price.
ps. I’ve linked to CRH’s blog, not her book on Amazon, as she’s about to release the 3rd Edition of Self-Printed. So don’t buy the 2nd Edition now – wait a week or two!
Caroline Batten 
Hi Caroline,
I would also strongly advise against using KDP to give away free copies of your novel. For a start, it no longer improves your ranking in the Amazon charts. Your book will drop down to its original position very rapidly. There is a whole army of people out there who just sit and wait for the next eBook freebie to come along. They don’t buy other novels by the same author and rarely leave a review.
What I would recommend, however, is that you try a 99 cent countdown promotion. If you have got ten reviews on amazon.com you can enter your book into an ENT (Ereader news today) promo at the same time. If you haven’t got ten .com reviews get creative and acquire some. To be honest, the ENT promo works better than the kindle countdown but they are better together. If you advertise the book plenty while it is down at 99 cents then you could make quite a few sales. Because you are on a countdown promo you will get 70% royalties for this instead of the usual 30% and you may sell a couple of hundred which could raise your ranking and kick-start your sales when you put the book back up to its normal price.
Please contact me if you want to know more.
Best wishes
Karen Charlton
http://www.karencharlton.com
Author of
The Heiress of Linn Hagh
Catching the Eagle
Seeking the Eagle
The Mystery of the Skelton Diamonds
Hi Karen! Thanks so much for the awesome advice. I shall most certainly try the 99c countdown and ENT promo – I’m sure I can get a few people to do the reviews. I have 5 already. 🙂
I must admit that I will try the freebie one, just because it did help Nat’s sales (though that just could be because Together Apart is awesome).
Shall totes come and pick your brain again.
Cx
I say go for it, it was well worth it for me 🙂
I’ve bounced back and forth with two of my books. I didn’t sell enough on other sites to make going into Select a hard decision. Back in the day (2012), giving your book away for free meant something. Now, you have to give away a ton (and have other books available) to see any effect at all. That being said, the Kindle Countdown has its advantages and certain genres definitely do better than others. I’d be thrilled at 2-3 a day. I’m lucky if someone picks up a copy of my permafree book once a day. Real sales? Ha! hoping that’ll change with my upcoming release, but not holding my breath… just working on the next book. Good luck!