For the last three days of August, my travel memoir, Americashire: A Field Guide to a Marriage, was made available for free as a Kindle download under Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program. I wanted to take the opportunity to explain more about the program and my personal experience with it to help you decide if it’s worth pursuing for your own book. (Spoiler alert: I think it is!)
KDP Select is a program that KDP authors and publishers can enroll in for 90 days at a time. You can read all the details on Amazon’s FAQ page here, but, in summary, it has two main benefits:
The main drawback of participating in the program is that you make your book exclusive to Kindle during the 90-day enrollment period. Given that Amazon is responsible for the majority of ebook sales in the US and UK, this is perhaps not so much of an issue, especially for newbie authors.
A Side Note: My participation in KDP Select was managed through my publisher, She Writes Press, which was a KDP publisher up until August 31st of this year. Starting in September, She Writes Press will be distributed through Ingram (more on that here) which means that it no longer has the ability to directly control special pricing for its catalog of books through KDP Select. There are, however, countless other benefits of switching to Ingram for distribution for current and future She Writes Press authors, including the possibility of national bricks and mortar retail distribution.
As a first-time author who has published non-traditionally, my biggest challenge is getting visibility for my book. Having a free promotion gave me a great reason to talk about Americashire anew on social media, especially four months after my publication date, when I felt like I had already relentlessly jabbered on about it. It also gave a reason for tens of other outlets, from traditional and online media to specialty sites and newsletters focused entirely on free and discounted books, to publicize my book. Of course neither of these happened automatically, and I’ll post part 2 of this blog next week to share tips on getting the word out about your free promo.
And now I’ll cut to the chase. Here’s what my promo results looked like by the numbers:
On balance, the most important number for me is the 38,013 books I gave away. Having birthed this book, my goal is to get it in the hands of as many readers as possible: to garner reviews, to establish a reader base, and to build my platform and skills for future books. I don’t know of another way to accomplish this at the same scale that's possible via KDP Select.
Next week I’ll be back with the second half of this post on how to make your KDP Select promo work. Until then, have any of you offered your books for free via KDP Select? What was your experience? I'd love to hear about it!
JENNIFER RICHARDSON is the author of Americashire: A Field Guide to a Marriage, the 2013 IndieReader Discovery Award winner for travel writing. The book chronicles her decision to give up city life for the bucolic pleasures of the British countryside while pondering whether or not to pursue parenthood. You can find Jennifer online at:
www.americashire.com
www.facebook.com/americashire
www.twitter.com/baronessbarren
www.goodreads.com/book/show/17691662-americashire
www.pinterest.com/baronessbarren
Karen, if you haven't done so already, I would also heartily recommend creating a giveaway for the hard copies of your book on Goodreads. It can be a good way to get people to add your book to their "to read" lists there.
My book may be a terrific candidate for this giveaway option through Amazon. Will try it very soon. Since I am connected with Goodreads already, I will be able to quickly launch my online publicity project.
I have also bought 25 of my books at a steep discount from my publisher, both the sell and to trade with friends who have published books of their own, of for CD's or t-shirts they have made. ~:0)
Thanks for your good wishes, all. Let me know if there are any specific questions I can try to address in next week's post alongside my tips for promoting your free promo.
I've always wondered how KDP worked IRL. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Looking forward to next week's installment.
Thanks Jennifer, for sharing your experience. This is valuable info. It's great that your work received so much attention. May your success, and collection of impressive screenshots, continue to build.
Thank you, Jennifer. This was very informative. it sounds like you are well on your way to establishing a reader base.
Congratulations Jennifer. That is a large number of downloads! It is exciting to watch your book rise on Amazon.
As I work with authors, I have found that the key is to maintaining the momentum and continuing your marketing (social media, blog posts etc) beyond the KDP Giveaway so that it translates into sales. This then raises your rankings in the paid categories.
Best wishes and keep going.
Congrats on the successful KDP giveaway, Jennifer! Here's hoping for well-deserved positive reviews and a bump in sales. Your experience is quite similar to mine. We'll wait and see what the next wave brings.
Thanks, Brooke!
This is really interesting and a helpful breakdown for other new and self-pubbed authors. Thanks, Jennifer, and congrats on the huge number of downloads. It's really impressive!