Underdog Writing discussion

Anyone have any comments or reactions to KDP Select?

I want to try it. At least for one book to see how well it works. The way I see it, if it's not a huge success within the KDP select program, after 90 days you can still offer your work elsewhere. It would be great if someone who is using it now and can share their experience thus far.

I'm going to do it. 89% of my book's downloads have been from Amazon. No one has touched the B&N version in a week. I don't see what there is to lose.

I decided to give it a try as I have only had 2 downloads on BN. Nothing spectacular has happened yet but I will keep you posted. :)

Same here - it's been in the program for all of 10 hours now, but I did find that my book is ranked #46 in sci-fi within the lending library, so it seems like at least some visibility.

Thats awesome Martin!

Kelly wrote: "Thats awesome Martin!"

Yeah, it's a limited audience, but it still feels like I'm accomplishing something!

Congrats! Thats awesome. Does it give you a heads up on royalty calculations or how many people have "borrowed" it? Or does it just show a rank?

I'm not sure how the figures for borrowing appear - if they show up alongside the regular report in KDP, or if it only appears on the weekly summary. I found me at #46 by going to the Lending Library on my Kindle, choosing all sci-fi/fantasy ordered by best selling, and scrolled through till I found it. :-)

I'm joining the KDP select fray too. I don't completely understand it, but it looks fun to try something new.

Martin. I may have found something. I could easily be wrong but sign into your account and click reports. Next to copies sold is a borrowed column. Perhaps that's how we can see how our works are doing. Otherwise I'm lost.

Lol... Good find JP. I had been staring at it the whole time and didn't even notice it. Thanks!

How's it been going Martin? And how did you do the author tab on your books page? I can't figure it out.

Welll... so far I've had exactly one person borrow the book. Not a rousing success, but I figure that's actually pretty good considering I'm an unknown author. I don't know anyone personally who has a Prime account, which means it must have been someone I don't know - again, a success.

The author tab on Amazon or Goodreads? For Amazon, go to authorcentral.amazon.com and go through the sign up page.

Goodreads is more difficult. You have to get the ASIN or ISBN of one of your books and sumbit it to Goodreads for it to show up in their database. Then you have to claim it, which was painless. Go through this process: http://www.goodreads.com/author/program. It looks like Goodreads has at least one of your books in the database, so you just need to claim it. Just fill out the form and say, Hi, my name is jp yager, I wrote this book. That's pretty much what I said, and maybe a day later I was off and running!

Thanks Martin.

So my KDP Select experience so far-

I'm not sure it was the best idea for my current book. I mean if people only get one 'borrow' a month, they aren't going to use it on a .99 book. I thought of that the other day. Oops.

What I do like is the 5 promotion days they give you. It allows you to give it out for free. So whoever is also using this service, I'm thinking this weekend would be a great time to use it. People all over will be opening their new kindles and looking for the free books.

I thought about going free this weekend, but I also want to capitalize on all those brand new Kindles out there. So I'm torn about my plan of attack for the holiday rush.

As of today, I have exactly one copy borrowed, since enrolling on Dec. 10. It's not nothing, but I'll be curious to see what my 'share' of that 500,000 turns out to be. I'm hoping only 5 books have been borrowed this month.

Update: I went with two free promotion days of my five on the 24th and 25th had had over 1400 downloads in two days, and it peaked at #6 in Sci-Fi overall, #3 in Sci-Fi Action, and at #12 in Fiction-Action/Adventure. This pushed my overall popularity in my category to 6th place, and now today I'm hovering around #40 paid in my category.

while the free days don't count towards sales, they do boost the popularity ranking, which allows people to see the book without much looking, and I think that boosted me into the top 100 charts in terms of paid sales.

I also have received 5 borrows since yesterday when my book went back to paid.

Looking over this, I can't say it's entirely because of the free days. I was fortunate in that I had 10 or 11 reviews going into this past weekend, all of which are very strong, and that I think sealed the deal for all these people. I'm certainly not the only free book available this weekend, and I'm certainly not the only $.99 book right now. I'm by no means an expert now, but I believe reviews are the key to success, and having them in place before using the free promotion days is something I will try again in the future.

No kidding reviews help, but I've gotten one of those out of my promotions, so far. Paradox Equation, ten-novel series in one 'binding,' held #1 series for the two days it was on promo. Now it's pleasantly hovering in the top 50 paid and beginning to get borrows. It's $9.99 and has always been my best seller. I have several really big 'books,'$4-6.

Congrats Martin! It is a great book. I worked all day getting my review page up. I hope you like it and that it helps keep that thing up in the charts. There will be more traffic to the site since my ad campaign is working well and people are emailing me like crazy to review their work and going to the site to see it.

Now this is just the beta version of the page:
http://otterbored.com/Reviews.html

I'm still figuring out what the Archive page will be, but I got a whole month to work on it.

I think it's a good-looking page.

Last week I put several of my books up for free for one to five days.

When they came off free, all five placed fairly well in their perspective lists, spending some time in the top #100. One book came off free and remained in the top #100 for three days, and even though it's not there any more, it's still selling and borrowing well. I've got days left on all but one of my books and I'm thinking of how best to leverage those days.

All in all, once we figure out a strategy for how best to utilize the promo days, I think the KDP Select program is going to earn us all a lot more business.

MTG

Update: I am getting residual sales on all books. I'm going to do a bump with a promo of two books, each for a day, starting in about two hours. Next week I'm going to run a three-day promo in honor of Martin Luther King's birthday. I haven't decided precisely how yet, but the three books I've selected for it all have bigotry as a major plot element.

Just about to release a book with KDP and was wondering if anyone was interesting in reading it. Not looking for editing, just reviews and opinions. Its adult fiction, mystery/techno thriller with an espionage twist.