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.

First draft complete on Goblin Rebellion

It's been a rough past four months for writing fiction. I had my dissertation defense back in December, and dozens of conference paper deadlines, presentations, job interviews, and dissertation proposal and defense writing projects spread across the past few months, and the deadlines coming up are even tighter and more frequent. This month alone, I have three papers due in the middle of the month.

Despite the pressure (or maybe because of it), I've managed to finish the first draft of the Goblin Rebellion. Today, while on flights back from California, I wrote the final two chapters, and I'm feeling pretty good about them. Total word count is just shy of 80,000, and it's likely to grow slightly over the next two weeks as I fill in setting and expand character interactions slightly.

I've talked to my editor, and everything should be set for a late February or early March release. Stay tuned!

Sneak Peak at the Primal Patterns Series

Lucifer's Odyssey

The release of the first novel of the Primal Patterns series is coming up on September 1st, and reviewers are already taking a look at the advanced review copies and posting sneak peaks. For readers curious about the setting of this series, check out the breakdown at my Reader Blog.

As a result of the review on eBookworm.us, I plan on adding the following Author's Note to the book to prepare the reader for the first book. What are your thoughts? Will this help shape reader expectations better?

Author’s Note
This book is about a war between angels and demons but with a different premise and origin story. Angels were once demons, and Jehovah has created a truly unique universe for humanity and his other creations to thrive in and ultimately be reborn into, instead of being placed permanently into heaven- or hell-based eternities. As a reflection of some of our current Earthly religions, this god prefers his creations to those in the rest of the multiverse. And so the saga begins …

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Introducing The Goblin Rebellion

The follow up to Lucifer's Odyssey should be released in February of 2012. I've commissioned Christopher Steininger for the cover art, and he has delivered once again! Then again, I may be a tad biased here. What are your thoughts?