Why I’m moving to Amazon KDP Select
As some of my readers may know, I made the monumental decision a month or so ago to move all of my ebook titles to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Select program (Amazon KDP Select). Of course this meant that I had to make all of my titles exclusive to Amazon, and therefore, remove all of my ebooks from retailers such as Apple, B&N, Kobo, Google Play and Smashwords.
For years I have fought the idea of exclusivity, as I believed that it was better to make my ebooks available to readers on all platforms. Perhaps there was an element of idealism as well, and by granting exclusivity, it undermined my determination to be truly independent, or Indie.
But reality said that around 80-85% of my ebook sales had for years, always come from Amazon, and that if my move to KDP Select could increase Kindle sales by the 15% I would lose from all the other retailers, well, perhaps it wasn’t a bad idea to try, and to see what transpired. After all, I could always pull out of the exclusivity arrangement after 90 days. So it wasn’t a forever agreement.
I had also neglected my ebook promotion for the last year or more, so moving to Amazon gave me a kick up the bum, and renewed motivation to get my ebook sales moving again.
Well? I suppose you would like to know what happened. This!
This is my Kindle sales chart for the last 90 days. My point of entry into KDPS is pretty clear. Ok, I did a couple of free ebook days, but not much else.
While it is clear that I haven’t sold enough ebooks this month to afford a new Ferrari (damn!), it is very hard to argue that my move to Amazon KDP Select has not been worthwhile. If this is the result, with very little effort on my part, I am ready to get very, very motivated now and really put my shoulder to the wheel to build upon this promising start.
Then, all I have to do is decide what colour Ferrari I want!
Hey, Derek!
I was just reading an interview by Joe Konrath that talked about the design pitfalls of KDP books, and after reading that you used to distribute your work through “Apple, B&N, Kobo, Google Play and Smashwords,” what would you do to format your books? How has this changed your ebook making process? Can you still make your books “fancy,” or does it interest you at all to do so?
Best of luck on your sales!
Cristina E.
Thanks for your question, Cristina. I haven’t read the interview, but I can say is that I am very happy with what I can do as far as formatting goes with KDP. Smashwords only accept Word .doc files, and is very restrictive on font sizes. 18pt maximum. But with KDP I can use .docx, which is in fact .xml, so is much more suited to ebooks and there is no font size restriction. With KDP, I can also add internal promotional links, which is not allowed via Smashwords.
Perhaps Joe’s point was with regard to ebooks in general, which don’t allow font selection, and are a bit clumsy when it comes to images. I wrote a post recently about enhanced ebooks, and why they have not worked so well. Maybe in the end, readers only want text.