KDP Select - To Free or Not To Free?

Now I have two novels published with Amazon and have enrolled both in the KDP Select Programme. By enrolling in the Select Programne you are not permitted to have your books for sale on any other site (Smashwords etc.) For this though you are given two priveleges:

1. The ability to give away your book for free for five days during the ninety day period of the enrollment.
2. The inclusion of your work in the Kindle Owners Lending Library accessible by Amazon Prime Members who are entitled to one 'borrow' per month. The author receives payment for the borrow based on certain variables. Depending on the purchase price of the book an author may get substantially more income from a borrowed copy than for a paid copy.

In this post, the issues surrounding giving away your work for free and 'lending' it, will be discussed, both in terms of my own experience and observations I have made on the process in general.

The first novel I put up for free was Tollesbury Time Forever. Sales for the initial two weeks were good (about 5 per day) and they then faltered a little so I jumped straight in with a Free Promo day. Watching the numbers rack up was very addictive. It was almost like playing an online slot machine with fake money though. Throughout the period I thought many times "ah, if they were actual sales, how good would that be?" Once the promotion had ended I saw no direct increase in paid sales but as time went on reviews began to come in and it was clear that the Free Promo day had put the book into the hands of Kindle owners who otherwise would never have heard of it. This led me to discover sites like Goodreads and the UK Kindle User Forum which have been invaluable in terms of support and shared knowledge.

I thus adjudged that first Free Promo day to have been a success. I must say however that subsequent giveaways proved fruitless in terms of stimulating increased sales both for Tollesbury Time Forever and my other novel, A Cleansing of Souls. As such, although I have re-enrolled in the KDP Select Programme I have no intention of using any ither Free Promo days. That situation may change when my third novel is released, but it is something I will consider in depth.

In terms of the Kindle Owner Lending Library, this is currently only accessible on Amazon.com. My novels were borrowed barely at all in January or February but in March my novels were borrowed 40 times. April saw (as well as a decrease in general sales) borrows revert to their January/February trickle.

Now to what I have observed with others who have used the Free Promo days.

There have most definitely examples of authors benefitting hugely from the Free Promo days. The success of these days seems to hinge on a variety of factors:

• engaging with various sites who publicise free ebooks
• co-ordinated posts by the author and others on Facebook and Twitter to announce the free promotion
• whether the days are used individually or consecutively 

The rule of thumb seems to be that if your book makes it into the top 100 Free List you have a good chance of achieving a sharp upturn in sales over subsequent days. Outside of the top 100, your work may not see much of a surge.

So a massive surge in sales following on from giving away thousands of copies - surely that's worth it? Well I'm not so sure. I have observed two factors that in some way make me glad that my Free Promo days did not break into the top 100. The first is that the surge oftentimes does not seem to last for more than a week or two before sales continue at their pre-promotion rate or, perhaps, reduce even from that. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Perhaps. But the second factor is a little more concerning. It seems that getting a book for free does not preclude some readers from leaving damning reviews. Novels that have previously had maybe twenty glowing five star reviews from people who have considered their purchase and downloaded it thinking it is something they will like can come to grief when that same novel is downloaded free on a whim and summarily disregarded with a one or two star review. Harsh but true.

I guess it's weighing up whether a temporary surge in sales is a reasonable price to pay for perhaps one or two permanent bad reviews. It is also worth noting that some Indie Authors (Cheryl Reid for example) have seen huge success without ever giving away their work for free - Rachel Abbott also; although her novel began to receive greatly varying reviews once it reached the top of the charts.

And so finally, on a wider point, is having the facility to give away ebooks for free a good or a bad thing?

Following my initial enthusiasm I am more and more inclined to think that short-term gain is a high price to pay in terms of the long-term future. What seems certain is that the KDP Select Programme with its vast array of free books and borrows is a wonderful thing for readers - it certainly seems true also that they are a major factor in the increasing sales of Kindles. So do free books sell Kindles or are they the key to literary stardom for the author. Being something of a cynic I am of the view that the KDP Select Programme is a wonderful piece of marketing by Amazon. All us Indie Authors with our hopes and dreams are lured into the trap of giving away our work in the hope that we will catch a magic wave and before we know it we are giving up the day job. I have personally come to the view that the Free Promo function could lead to a saturated market where books become entirely devalued and readers will look for price first and quality second, baulking at spending more than a pound or a dollar on an 80,000 word novel. I have even begun to feel some antipathy towards the sites, threads and people that highlight and spread the word about Free Books - but that's just the communist in me railing against the capitaist machine. And anyway, with me, forgiveness always prevails!

On a positive personal note, Tollesbury Time Forever currently has more 5 star reviews (51) than any other Literary Fiction eBook. So how do I get more sales? Put it up for free for a couple of days? Reduce the price? Increase the price? Change the cover? Change the description? Aaaaaghhhhh!!!!

I think I'll just have some wine...

Tollesbury Time Forever Update - APRIL!

Well I hope everone is doing fine in their worlds!

In keeping with  the initial motivation for this blog - monitoring the journey of Tollesbury Time Forever from last Summer's frustrations onwards - here are the latest figures...

January 2012

US sales -      28
UK sales -     272
Other sales - 1

Total sales - 301

February 2012

US sales -    31
UK sales -   135

Total sales - 166

March 2012

US sales -      187
UK sales -     118
Other sales -  1

Total Sales -  306

Total Combined Sales

US sales -     246
UK sales -    525
Other sales - 2

Total - 773

Of obvious note is the huge increase in US sales in March. I have no idea how this came about but it is wonderfully welcome. The sales gave me the final push I needed to start the process of acquiring my US tax number which I hope to get through in the next few months! UK sales are gradually reducing and 'Other sales' are remaining steady at....well....1 every six weeks. But that 1 still means as much to me as any other. When I started out in January 2012 I hoped maybe to sell 100 overall - so I really am still getting my head around these figures.

Of note to those in a similar boat to myself - getting used to the old eBook KDP Select ocean - I have kept the price at £1.53 now for a good few weeks and intend to do so. Yes there has been a drop off of UK sales but I don't think this is price related. It's still very early days in the life of Tollesbury Time Forever so we shall see what we shall see. I also don't plan to offer the book free anymore using the KDP Select Free Promotion days. I've seen recently books that have been offered free and it seems to have had, as well as a welcome up turn in sales, the less than welcome spread of unpleasant reviews. I think I would rather keep things as they are. At least if I get a rubbish review I would have got a pound or a dollar out of it!

My days of checking every few minutes for sales are well over too, having received some fine advice which I will now share...

"Just because you press that F5 button all the time it won't make people any more likely to buy the book - all it does is stop you finishing the ceiling downstairs and stops me checking Ebay." -

Rebecca Ayris (wife) - March 2012.

Tollesbury Time Forever has been top of the Literary Fiction Average Review Rankings (UK) for the last seven weeks with a total of 59 reviews (5 five star) which is so pleasing. The actual sales rankings are up and down as you might expect but I guess that's the nature of the fluid model that Amazon employs.

So all this gives me great impetus to finish The Bird That Nobody Sees. I've written the first 45,000 words concentrating very much on the plot and dialogue. I'll add in descriptions, made-up words, ramblings and nonsense when I go back over it then hopefully I can release it by the end of August 2012 at the very latest.

Well take care good people. Please leave comments here if you like!

My KDP experience so far...Blog 2

Blog Post 2
The Sales Reports
The KDP Community Forum
KDP Customer Service
Summary

The Sales Reports
Ah! The blessing and the curse that is the sales report! Can you imagine? Every time someone downloads your book the numbers change in front of you! It might not seem much but it quickly becomes more addictive, frustrating, doom-laden and ecstacy inducing than most things this side of the law. But you have to press that F5 key to see any changes. Believe me, you are soon hanging on every hour without a sale thinking - "that's it - nobody else is going to buy my book" before BLAM another one is downloaded! And you can't help but hope it is the start of something big and magical. When you realise it's not it smacks you right the other way. Then you begin to suspect that there is a problem with the reporting mechanisms, urged on by others in the desperation forum threads. You email KDP (more of that later!) and before you know it another sale comes in. But did it come in because they fixed something or was there really just that massive gap between sales. It's an absolute mind-f**k my friends! But once you have access to these figures, imagine not having access?? Then you realise that actually, despite the frustration and the downtimes that thrill of watching those little numbers increase is worth all the standing on the bedroom window ledge...

Positives:

• you get exact sales figures daily and royalty figures weekly and monthly

• you can work out some form of correlation between promotion and sales

Negatives

• you get exact sales figures daily and royalty figures weekly and monthly
• you can lose sight of the fact that this is a long game, not a quick win game
• you will need a new F5 key at some stage

The KDP Community Forum
Being new to all this I naturally assumed that forums would be full of helpful, like-minded individuals all enamoured with this wonderful Indie Publishing revolution. The Amazon Forums (or the Zoo as many refer to them) soon made me realise differently. Within a few days of publication I happened to mention that I had got some nice reviews. I was instantly accused of paying for them, having members of my family write them who hadn't read the book and basically scamming the system. I responded in a sadly typical sarcastic fashion and had my post deleted by Amazon along with a warning. Wow, I thought. Nobody told me about this. And I haven't been back there since. So when I saw KDP had there own forum I was very pleased. Again, naively perhaps, I thought this would be new, excited authors all in this together, a new era, a bright new thing. Now generally the comments are not as nasty or as malicious as some of those at The Zoo but you still have to be careful. It's a bit like an old pub where you get your regulars, your crotchety old codgers in the corner, your groups of happy-go-lucky chaps and one or two people that shouldn't be allowed out of their own houses. But overall there is some very good advice given. So be polite, don't brag, don't promote and try and be as helpful to others as possible. Just make sure you wear a heavy coat and don't spill anybody's pint!

Positives:

• KDP Forum offers excellent advice for the beginner and the experienced
• you don't feel quite so alone when things aren't going too well
• more or less any query you have has already been answered on one of the threads
• far better than the Amazon forums 

Negatives:

• finding the helpful threads amongst the arguments can be a little difficult at first
• easy to isolate yourself if you're not careful

KDP Customer Service 
Let me start by saying I think Amazon completely underestimated the uptake for KDP. That may be one of the reasons why their customer service is so, well, varied in its response. I have used them maybe four times, the first three times I got a standard email of acknowledgement stating the problem would be resolved within two days. And it was. Excellent. At the beginning of March though I had an issue whereby 3 sales were placed in the Free Price Match column (indicating that my book was free on another site and Amazon had made my book free in response and 3 people had downloaded it.) This clearly was wrong as my book has never been available anywhere else. I queried this immediately and the matter is still to be resolved. I have had six emails stating they are working on it, two that it has been resolved and one stating it is being looked at right now. So, to be honest, the jury is still out. They have an incredibly complex job and 3 misplaced sales is perhaps not top of their agenda. Still, they offer a service and should therefore be able to provide it.

Positives:

• good initial response to queries
• seems to be manned by real people
• they have a vested interested in making the system work

Negatives:

• variable response times
• passed from one department to the other
• don't always get back to you within the time-frame they set

Summary
KDP is a wonderful invention which provides a fantastic opportunity to authors to get their work out to a paying audience. There are no quality controls to speak of and maybe that's for the best. To my mind to share your words with another is a basic human right that has been eroded over the years by agents and publishers who value money above all else. I'd be wrong therefore to claim foul when I see some of the things that are published via KDP.

I can see KDP changing over the next year or so, particularly in regard to the Free Promotions which so clearly propel some books into the charts which may not otherwise have been there - coupled with the indifferent financial figures released by Amazon recently. 

For me the positives outweigh the negatives in all areas.

Now where has that pesky F5 key run off to again...    


So thank you for reading my early experiences of KDP. And guess what? You now have the chance to have a direct impact on any future updates! Yes, just by clicking on the link below! (of course it's a link to my novel - you've got to try haven't you?!)

Tolllesbury Time Forever - Amazon UK
Tollesbury Time Forever - Amazon US

Cheers fine people!!