Updated KDP Select Checklist

Back when I first started using KDP Select, I used the Squidoo list by theinformationlady to promote my KDP Select promotion periods. I have had some pretty lousy results from Select recently, and I decided to revisit this post and try to ferret out the proper way to do this. Here is my current process for promoting KDP Select titles:

Step 1: Make sure you have reviews BEFORE you settle on your promotion dates

Shortly after I published The Goblin Rebellion, I scheduled a KDP Select 2-day promotion over a month later and informed all the major sites without having any reviews for the book in place. I didn't receive any emails back from ENT or POI, but I was in conversations with 2 book bloggers and had given away 50 copies at LibraryThing to try to garner some reviews. There were at least five people, counting the book bloggers, who told me they should be able to hit the promotion deadline.

None of them came through.

I sent an email to Greg at ENT and informed him that I would be extending the promotion for one day in case that would help him in promoting The Goblin Rebellion, which was the sequel to a book with 19 reviews and a 4 star average--figuring maybe he would assume the same quality had been put into the sequel. Greg informed me after the promotion was over that ENT is no longer featuring books with no reviews. Shortly afterward, two four star reviews popped up on The Goblin Rebellion, well after the promotion had ended. 700 downloads over 3 days and 0 sales after the promotion period later, I learned this lesson the hard way. Make sure you have reviews ready before you schedule a promotional period.

Step 2: Say hello to my little friends!

The list from Squidoo is obsolete. Most of the major book bloggers that redirect the most readers to your free promotions have changed their procedures. Here's an updated list of what you should be doing.

At least two to four weeks in advance if possible:

1. Ereader News Today (fill out form 2 weeks+ ahead)
Estimated free downloads: 800-1200, depending on genre, cover, blurb, etc. http://ereadernewstoday.com/ent-free-book-submissions/

2. Pixel of Ink (fill out form 4 weeks+ ahead)
Estimated free downloads: 800-2000, depending on genre, cover, blurb, etc. http://www.pixelofink.com/sfkb/

3. Books on the Knob (fill out form 2-4 weeks ahead)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHI3UVVZdTZkWUo3d2w3aDExbXk5MEE6MQ

4. Indie Books List (fill out form ~2 weeks ahead)
http://www.indiebookslist.com/kdp-select-submission-form/

5. Indies Unlimited (if book is free on a Friday)
Indies Unlimited runs a feature every Friday called "Freebie Friday." If your book is going to be free on a Friday, check out Indies Unlimited on Thursday for a post called "Freebie Friday Ramp-Up", and it will require four things: 1) Title, 2) Author, 3) one sentence blurb, and 4) link to where the book will be free the next day.

Think about the one sentence blurb before hand. For instance, with my book Lucifer's Odyssey, it might be "A civil war rages across the heavens between Lucifer and Jehovah, but it’s not the story you thought you knew..." I know, I know. Distilling your book into one catch phrase can be a headache, but you may be able to find help at the Writer's Cafe.

On the day of your free promotion:

On Twitter:
Send a twitter message to the following twitter handles (include @kindlenews for instance along with your Amazon book url), which will retweet your promotional books. Most if not all of these are automated systems that aggregate free lists of books.
Estimated free downloads: 200-400, depending on genre, cover, blurb, etc. @kindlenews
@DigitalBkToday
@kindleebooks
@Kindlestuff
@KindleEbooksUK
@KindleBookKing
@KindleFreeBook
@Freebookdude
@Kindlefinds
@Kindlebookreview
@free
@free_kindle
@FreeReadFeed
@4FreeKindleBook
@FreeKindleStuff
@KindleUpdates


On Facebook:

Ebooks Free Free
Authors on the Cheap: Read the guidelines for posting this. You need price/ratings/genre and a link to the Amazon page.

SUPER IMPORTANT NOTES (PLEASE READ)

1. Try to wait 4+ weeks before doing another KDP Select promo for the same book, regardless of the downward trend of paid sales afterwards. If you redo a promo period too quickly, you're very likely to hit the same readers who downloaded your book previously on ENT, POI, KND, etc. and even if they pick it up again, it won't be as good of a promo period on the 2nd attempt. Waiting a month seems to give you a much better chance of getting high downloads, which should help translate to better paid periods.

2. It will take 2-5 days for paid sales to start rolling in after a free period. Do NOT panic and redo your promo period for reasons outlined in #1.

3. The best genres for these things appear to be 1) Romance and 2) Thrillers. Both of these can sometimes generate 8-20k downloads in a 2 day stretch O_O. Cover, blurb, price before free, etc. can affect this. Other genres can sometimes hit this kind of number. I remember a science fiction book hitting 8k+ on KB. Reviews and awards can help give more credibility. Genre specific sites (like DearAuthor for Romance) will supercharge your free downloads, so contact them.

4. Read Step 1. Don't just skip to the sites and Twitter handles on this post. You need reviews to get picked up by ENT, POI, or KND nowadays.

5. You're aiming for as many downloads as you can over a 2 day period. Only extend to 3 days if you are within the top 100 free list. The more downloads you get, the more it will count toward the popularity lists which will result in more paid sales.

Results of KDP Select (Lucifer's Odyssey)

Intro

For those who aren't familiar with KDP Select, it is a program on Amazon that trades exclusive distribution of an eBook for three months for 1) 5 days worth of free promotion (e.g., your book goes free for 5 days), 2) enrollment in the KDP borrowing program which rewards each borrow with a percentage of the 500k-700k pot of money for all enrolled in the KDP Select program, and 3) possibility of better exposure with the Amazon algorithms (unverified).

I removed my novel from distribution sites like Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and all other vendors earlier in January and patiently waited to be eligible to enroll my book and try out the service. We're two days out of my free promotion. Let's find out what we learned.

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The Free Promotion

The Free Promotion got off the a bad start. The KDP console wouldn't let me edit or delete the first promotion I did, and I wanted to reduce it from 5 days to 3 days, so I could have 2 days of free promotion before the release of Goblin Rebellion in late February/early March. The promotion was scheduled to go from January 26th to January 30th, and I contacted KDP 3-5 times asking them to please help me remove it before it started so I could get it going correctly.

When January 26th came around, the promotion failed. It registered as in progress, but it never went free. At about 3-4 p.m. the system finally allowed me to cancel the promotion. Even though it never went free, I was charged for a full day of promotion. I'm down to 4 days. I decide to use 3 of them (27th through the 29th) and leave the 4th for the release of the Goblin Rebellion. You know what they say about a plan, right?

I contact Kindle Nation Daily and Ereader News Today and inform them that Lucifer's Odyssey has 13 reviews and is going free the 27th until the 30th. KND runs with it, but ENT is busy and says they can't post it until the 30th. "Great, thanks!" and then it hits me. If they post the ad on the 30th, the free promotion will be over. So, I bite the bullet and schedule another promotion on the 30th, my final day. It's all or nothing.

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The Results

From January 27th to the 29th, Lucifer's Odyssey was within the top 700 on the free list and top 10 in Epic Fantasy. I was hanging out with Derek Prior's "The Nameless Dwarf" and David Dalglish's "Night of Wolves". On the night of the 29th, it started falling, and I went to bed going, "OK, I guess that's it."

The ENT ad went up sometime on the 30th and when I checked it, I was in the top 200 free list and had almost doubled my downloads for the promotion.

Total downloads: 2820

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After the Storm




Lucifer's Odyssey went from a 140k-300k average rank to hovering within the 9k to 30k ranking. In the first two days since the promotion, I've had 5 sales and 3 borrows. That's very good news for my book launch. Even if 60% of the people that downloaded Lucifer's Odyssey do not read it, that means that I now have well over 1,000 potential readers for the 2nd book in the series, and I'm very happy about that.

Even more interesting is what the promotion did for my "Customers Also Bought" list. This list is available on all books and serves as a recommendation engine for other books to purchase in the genre or that your book-buying habits mirror. All those downloads gave the Amazon engine more information on how to categorize and target the book to other readers, and it's working. That's why more people are purchasing and borrowing the book. After four months of luke warm sales, the book feels like it's actually gaining traction, much more so than the KND ad I took out in December which came nowhere near making the money back. I had ~30 sales of 0.99, because they recommend it, and it didn't pick up. Nothing happened during the Christmas rush.

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Overall KDP Select Experience: Very positive (A-)
Room for Improvement: They really need to fix their console to allow removing the promotion before it goes live. I could have used that extra day that got lost in the system to do more experiments.

KDP Select (Exclusivity or Anonymity?)

When Amazon announced KDP Select a month or two ago, it caused the kind of sensation and intrigue that only Amazon can have in the book world right now. For those of you unfamiliar with the program, let me lay out the pros and cons, with the cons being first:

Pros:

1. Increased exposure through promotional efforts by Amazon
2. Increased exposure through borrows adding "purchases" to move your book up the ranks
3. Borrows are converted to dollars at the end of the month depending on your share of the number of borrows through the KDP Prime/Select programs

Cons:

1. 90 day minimum exclusivity with Amazon for eBooks

1 con? Well, yes, but it's a pretty big one if you believe that a free market is important. If you want to support your readers being able to purchase your eBooks from wherever they want, then this is a big deal. Similarly, if we don't want Amazon to monopolize the book market and dictate how books are handled, then exclusivity clauses are the worst way to approach that because it will do just the opposite.

But, from an author perspective, this is a godsend. Lucifer's Odyssey took almost a month of prep work to distribute to all of those markets due to issues with the Smashwords distribution system and the Meatgrinder conversion process. Uploading to Amazon was done the first night. They use a much more standardized and easier-to-prepare HTML-based document, and the conversion was flawless for the table of contents. B&N's process was similarly smooth, and this decision would affect them as well, but the Smashwords process was a real pain. Exclusivity will make this process more streamlined because I'm only preparing one document upload.

The second, and most important aspect, is the exposure. In December and January, KDP Select books are tearing up the charts and reaping thousands of dollars in earnings for authors who use the system. My tally from all vendors of eBooks? Maybe a dozen dollars for December, one of the supposedly best months for book selling was a complete and total dud for me. Despite dozens of good reviews on Amazon and other places readers go, there's no traction for me, and from my point of view, my options are severely limited.

Authors like David Dalglish or others making thousands of dollars on Barnes and Noble, Apple, etc. have a tough decision to make. Losing thousands where their books already have prominence is counterproductive, but for me? The decision seems like a no-brainer. Exclusivity or anonymity? Despite my reservations about monopolies in markets, I think I'll take the former.