Tag: KDP Select

Is “Free” Over?

Before the rise of Amazon’s KDP Select, I had serious reservations about the merits of giving books away for free as a means to build readership.

Then the Select program came and shook things up in a big way. For what was likely the first time, indie authors were shooting up the charts on a par with authors who are household names. Numerous early adopters of the program reported post-free sales surges and sales in their back lists. Amazon had figured out a way to make “free” work.

Then they began changing it. The first thing to go was the impact of free downloads on the ranking algorithm. The freebies no longer shot up the charts, gaining and sustaining the visibility they once had.

The next bubble to burst was that downloads did not appear to equate to readership. People seem content to fill their Kindles with free books they never get around to reading, let alone reviewing. Continue reading “Is “Free” Over?”

How I Run My KDP Select Free Promotions

Now that the whole world knows that the wizard is actually a fifty-seven-year old man with a strobe light, a box of old T-Rex records, and a strong Venezuelan accent, I’ll let you in on a little secret-Free Still Works. Sometimes. And, it’s more of a lottery than it ever was. It can still be lucrative, but now, when it works, instead of paying down the mortgage, you’re financing the next month or three of writing. There are exceptions of course, and we all want to be those exceptions. Joe Konrath claims to have made 100K in six weeks following a very successful recent free promotion. Others talk of varying amounts and the numbers they bandy about all have a “k” after them. I want more “k’s”. I want to have double digit “k’s” each month. I’ve done it. More than once actually, and I’d very much like to do it again. That’s why I keep trying and I run a KDP Select free promotion every few months with one of my books. Oh, and that’s another thing, now it only seems to work if you have multiple books. Bob Mayer is right. “Content is king and promotion is queen”. You have to have more than one book out there to really take a run at this thing. Continue reading “How I Run My KDP Select Free Promotions”

Indie News Beat: Special Report

Is Amazon about to create a used e-book market?

If you enjoyed giving your books away on free days in KDP Select, then you’re going to love Amazon’s next idea: to allow copies of “used” e-books to be bought and sold second hand, as with physical books. Continue reading “Indie News Beat: Special Report”

My Take-Away on Tardif

When I picked up this book (on a KDP Select free day), I was sure I was going to hate it. I figured it would be another rehash of all the information that’s available on the web for free to any indie author with the brains to parse a Google search.

But then I read the first couple of chapters, and realized that maybe Tardif knew what she was talking about. Like many of us, she got burned by a vanity publisher; she got burned again by a badly-managed small press; she spent years schlepping her paperbacks from one personal appearance to another; and then she found KDP Select. Lucky for her, she hit Select in January 2012, when it was in its glory days; the $42,000 month she refers to in her title is March 2012, before Amazon instituted the big algorithm change that made KDP Select much less of a cash cow for indies. Continue reading “My Take-Away on Tardif”