Don't Do What I Did: Make the KDP Select Program Work for You

Self-publishing is about as democratic as anything else, in the sense that 1) anyone is free to try it and 2) it takes money to make money.

I have one self-published friend who recently admitted to spending over $15,000 to market her Indie novel. She's doing well and has more than tripled her investment. In addition, she has built a platform of readers who are now eagerly awaiting her next novel.

That story has a happy ending. But what if you don't have $15,000, or even $5,000, to spend on publicity? What if just getting your book published wipes out your savings, because you already had to cough up a few thousand for the cover, the design, the ISBN number and an editor, too? What do you do then?

That's the situation I was in when I published my novel Sleeping Tigers.

Fortunately, there is advice aplenty for authors on how to advertise cheaply. Check out web sites for Novel Publicity, Ereader News Today,World Literary Cafe, Digital Book World, TeleRead, and The Book Designer for useful tips. These all offer great advice on book marketing—and, yes, it's all free! Indie authors J.A. Konrath and John Locke also have helpful blogs.

Now, after three months of testing out book marketing strategies, I can honestly say that probably nothing can help you market your book more effectively than the KDP Select Program.

What is the KDP Select Program?

Read the fine print on the Kindle Direct Publishing web site, but here are the bare bones: if you agree to participate in the KDP Select Program, you sign up for a three-month exclusivity term. This means that you agree to sell your ebook only in the Kindle format, but you can continue selling your paperbacks however you wish.

In exchange for this exclusivity agreement, you are granted five free promotional days during your three-month term. Your book is also included in the lending library for Amazon Prime members; this means that people with Amazon credit cards can borrow your book for free—and Amazon will pay you a royalty for each borrow.

Many authors object to the KDP Select program. Indie authors are a crowd of wild Mustangs and we hate being reined in—that's why many of us self-publish. We object to some of Amazon's monopolistic business practices. Plus, why would anyone want to give a book away for free?

I was one of those resisters. On the other hand, despite my steady blogging and my shiny new Twitter account, I was selling very few books. The first month after publication, Sleeping Tigers sold just enough books for me to take my husband to a movie or dinner, but not both. My novel was a cross between literary fiction, chick lit, and romance—no zombies, vampires, serial killers, cowboy lovers, or psychic detectives. In other words, there wasn't the usual genre crowd to rely on for sales.

I wasn't trying to get rich on this novel—in fact, I didn't even imagine making back what I spent on publishing it. But I am a writer who longs to reach out to readers. I had tried everything but the KDP Select Program to market my novel, so I signed up for the three-month term and chose my first two promotional days. Then I sat back and waited.

Don't Make the Same Mistake I Did

That was my mistake: I sat back and did nothing.

While I did have more downloads during the first two days my book was free—the book ultimately reached a rank of #18 in Kindle's contemporary fiction and a rank of 185 in the free Kindle store—after the promotion I was still selling only one or two books per day.

“What did I do wrong?” I asked a friend who also happens to be my guru in the Indie publishing world.

“Did you advertise the fact that your book was free?” she asked.

Uh. No.

By the next month, my book was back down in the ranks, sliding as low as 70,000 or so. I was getting desperate; I had always sold my book at $2.99, but many Indie authors who make it into the Amazon stratosphere sell their ebooks for $.99. My next experiment was to try this strategy. I decided to lower the price to $.99 to see what would happen. (This is called a “price pulse” and you can find lots of authors discussing this strategy online.) I even did a mild book pimping run on Twitter and Facebook to see if I could garner interest in a week-long $.99 promotion.

The result? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. In fact, my book rank plummeted, languishing around 134,000 or so.

“You have to do another free promotion,” my friend urged. “But advertise it this time.”

Do This Instead

For my second KDP Select Promotion, I waited until I had that magical tenth positive review on Amazon, courtesy of a generous book blogger in England. Then I set my promotion for three days, choosing the end of tax season, April 15 to 17, as my dates, figuring people would finally be finished with nasty paperwork and be ready for a fun read.

A week ahead of time, I emailed some of the big e-reader sites that my book would be free on those days, like Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today. Then, to take the “layered marketing approach,” as the saying goes, I bought a (very cheap) ad on Digital Books Today to run right after the promotion.

As I waited for April 15, I began second-guessing all of my efforts. Was I making a mistake? April 15 wasn't just tax day, it was Patriot's Day, and the day of the Boston Marathon! Who the heck would want to download books if there was a holiday to enjoy? Why didn't I wait?

Plus, even by April 14, I still couldn't bring myself to blog, tweet or Facebook about the promotion. Authors who spend their time sending out book pimping messages make my teeth hurt. Yes, everything these days is “soft” marketing, but I prefer content with my advertising. I didn't want to inflict sales spam on people I'd come to know through social media channels.

I nearly pulled out of the second free promotion for another reason as well: I was having a crisis in confidence as a writer. How many readers are left in the world? In my most pessimistic moments, I imagine everyone sitting around in sports bars or lying on the couch watching American Idol or YouTube videos. Maybe everyone who would be interested in reading my book had already downloaded it.

On April 15, I could barely bring myself to check the downloads, but bam! There they were, and they were coming fast! In the very first day of the second promotion, I had as many downloads as the first two days combined! By the last day of the promotion, my book had hit #1 in contemporary fiction and #3 among all free Kindle downloads—with twenty times as many downloads as during my first promotion.

What's more, sales have declined but have remained steady. Thanks to the KDP Select Program, I may actually make a small profit from Sleeping Tigers. More importantly, I am creating an audience of readers and book bloggers who I hope will be interested in the next novel I publish.

What the heck happened to make this possible?

The answer is easy: I took full advantage of KDP Select Program's free promotional days. You can do it, too. Here's how:

1. Before joining the KDP Select Program, check your book sales. Are you selling more on Smashwords or Kindle? If the answer is Kindle, then you have nothing to lose by going with the KDP Select Program—you can opt out again after three months.
   
   
2. There are two schools of thought when it comes to deciding when to go with KDP Select: one is that you should wait until you have at least ten positive Amazon reviews (4 or 5 stars). The other is to do it right away, when you launch your book. That will give your book a higher ranking from the start. However, sites like Pixel of Ink are less likely to pick up books without customer reviews, because so many authors contact them, and of course it's in their interest to publicize the best free books possible. I'd advise contacting reviewers early, before your book is out, and waiting until you have the reviews posted on Amazon before advertising your free promotion.
   
   
3. Remove your book from Smashwords and other sites at least two weeks in advance. I ran into a slight snafu, because I thought that removing the book from Smashwords meant I'd successfully made my book exclusive to Kindle; however, Smashwords distributes to a number of other sites, like Barnes & Noble, and it can take 2-3 weeks for them to remove the book.
   
   
4. Once you sign up for KDP Select, make use of all five free promotional days, but don't do them one at a time—spread them out between a two-day and a three-day promotion. That gives readers time to see your book and download it.
   
   
5. Follow up your free promotion with some modest paid advertising.

And that, my friends, is it. Simple as can be. Will I sign up again for KDP Select? I already have. I'll let you know how the next round goes. I'd love to hear your experiences, too. What has worked for you?

How Much Is a Book Worth?

Recently, I was nosing around a local bookstore in search of a perfect Christmas read for my father-in-law. He's a history buff; last year I gave him the stellar book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. He's still raving about it. What can I possibly give him this year to top that?

As I shopped, I was distracted by prices. I'm still trying to claw my way out of debt incurred over the past few years through a tricky combo of college tuition bills and my husband's various layoffs. I often save money by borrowing books from the library. I frequent used bookstores and treasure hunt through the lonely remaindered books at Barnes & Noble. If a book isn't free, it's rare for me to pay more than $5 for it.

Except, that is, when I love a certain author—then I go hog wild and get the hardcover—or when I feel guilty. My guilt is brought on by the fact that I am a writer who sells words for a living. Over the past few years, I have been the book doctor or ghost writer for several celebrity memoirs. I have also published a memoir of my own through a division of Random House. I would love to have people buy the books I write, so that I can keep doing what I love. Therefore, I feel compelled to buy books by other writers.

But which books are worth buying? And how much should you pay for them?
These are increasingly complex questions in this Wild West of self-publishing and ebooks. The Kindle and Nook are arm-wrestling for our attention. Without editors acting as gatekeepers for many books, and with the demise of book review sections in our newspapers—hell, what newspapers?--it's hard to know what's worth our precious time, never mind our money.

When my husband gave me a Kindle for my birthday, I immediately went for the deals. For instance, I paid $2.99 for Toby Neal's Blood Orchids, which I read on the train to New York, along with various other books by authors I hadn't tried before, simply because they bore that ever-popular promotional price tag of $.99. Heck, I can't even purchase a pack of gum for that money!

Several of my editor friends feel strongly that the self-publishing wave is one more example of civilization marching over a cliff. Lemming-like readers, they say, can't anticipate the plunge into bad writing, so they end up in the choppy, cruel waters of mean metaphors and sharp-toothed punctuation gaffes.

Um, was that a mixed metaphor?

It's true that there are a lot of bad (and badly edited) books out there. It's also true that publishers have helped bring this on themselves by giving million-dollar (or more) advances to certain writers or celebrities, and spending their advertising budgets to back up those advances, then acting surprised when the books don't earn out.

It's no news flash that traditional publishers, which once gave writers time to build their reputations, now expect a writer to earn back an advance immediately, if not sooner. If that doesn't happen, the writer is kicked right out of the stable, off to find another publishing home—or to roam the Wild West with the other raggedy Mustangs.

One writer friend of mine, who has been nominated for the National Book Award and has earned a flotilla of other literary prizes, has published seven books. Despite the high praise consistently coming her way from every literary quarter, and despite modest advances, she has earned royalties on only one novel. She works full-time as a university professor to support herself and her three children, grabbing what writing hours she can on weekends, summers, and, if she has the energy, at night.

Another writer friend, who has authored parenting books and popular chick lit titles under two different names for the past twenty years, told me recently that she used to hate seeing that quarterly royalties statement from her publisher in the mailbox.

“You know the one I mean,” she said, “that piece of paper that shows how many books you've sold, and then gives you that negative number under your advance, because you still owe the publisher money?”

I do, indeed, know all about that awful reckoning, having received my own royalty statements for my memoir, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter. That book was considered a success by many at Random House, in the sense that the book earned positive reviews and was even showcased in several magazines, including the issue of People magazine with Michael Jackson on the cover soon after his death. I earned a modest advance for that book, but I have yet to see a royalty check two years later.

My friend had to change her name because her third novel did so badly. The publisher wanted to give her a fresh start as a debut novelist. The gamble paid off: recently, she got a statement for her last novel, a fun romantic read that was picked up by a major book club. “I opened the envelope at the mailbox, thinking I'd toss it into the recycling bin before I even got into the kitchen,” she said. “But then a check for $11,000 fell out!”

She had to lie down. So did I, when she told me that story, if only out of envy.

There are, of course, a handful of writers who must be living quite comfortably on royalties and movie deals. I'm sure you can name them as well as I can. But, for most writers, earning a living is a scramble. A fun scramble, but still. Making that next mortgage payment can be a challenge if there's no benefactor or spouse whose job includes health benefits.

In the end, I've decided to canter through the tumbleweeds into the sunset. My first novel, Sleeping Tigers, will be available just before Christmas. (Yes, this blog post is shameless self-promotion.) I'm self-publishing it—a novel vetted by my agent and several writer friends—and I think it's a good book. But how much is my novel worth?

I have to decide, since I'm the one in charge here, and it's tough. I earned an MFA in creative writing and I've been working as a writer for over twenty years. My previous book earned great reviews. I've won awards for my short stories. But does any of that really matter, when you're suffering the stigma of the self-published?

I have to charge a certain amount—a bit over $10—for the paperback to make back production costs plus a dollar for me, since it's print-on-demand. But what about the ebook? Should I go for that whopping price of $2.99, like Toby Neal?

Or would it be better, as my son urges, “to just charge $.99 for your ebook, Mom, because anybody will spend that much money. And you don't care if they read it. You just want people to buy your book.”

Well, as a matter of fact, I do care if people read my book. Does $2.99 say that I'm worth reading? Or am I still better off charging less than a dollar and letting people find that out for themselves? What does any of that matter, anyway, since I obviously don't write novels to pay the mortgage?

Meanwhile, back to Christmas shopping. If I buy my father-in-law a hardcover, it'll cost upwards of $20 even with my friendly independent bookstore discount. If I go online and read book reviews, I'll end up surfing various book blogger sites and reading Amazon customer reviews, checking out all of the writers vying for attention with book trailers and giveaways and Twitter feeds and blogs of their own, crying, “Look at me! Look what I can do! How much is my book worth?”

Which, when you're a writer with a writer's ego (this I know, being one myself), translates into: “How much am I worth? Do you love me? Please love me!”

My own memoir, for the record, has been out in paperback for a year. You can order it through your local bookstore for $14 (a price set by the publisher) or buy it for your Kindle for $9.99 (a price also set by the publisher). Now come on. Who would do that, with so many books out there for $.99?

But wait! On Amazon, you can also buy my book in paperback, new, for just $.94 plus shipping—or used for $.01! Now that's what I call a bargain basement read!

So tell me. How much is any book worth?

And what does the price of a book say about the author who wrote it?

Upstairs, Downstairs: Torn Between My Books and My Kindle

My husband gave me a Kindle for my birthday. (Forgive him, O Indie booksellers. He is an engineer who knows not what he does.)

At first I protested. As a writer, avid reader, and patron of indie bookstores with cats curled on floral armchairs, what did I want with this devilish contraption?
“Give it a try,” my husband suggested. “A lot of the books are free.”

Did he say free? As the daughter of a Do-It-Yourself-Or-Die-Trying gerbil farmer, “free” is my middle name, whether I'm surfing for curbside antiques or checking out sample cheeses at Market Basket. How could I resist?

Of course, like any addiction, that first hit lures you down the slippery slope of, “Oh, hell, just one more can't hurt.” Soon I was downloading books by the dozen, bemused and freaked by the fact that the Magic Hand of Amazon could find me even in bed. It could even find me in the White Mountains or riding the subway in New York City. Need a book? Press a button!

The thing is, I started to love my Kindle. But I couldn't give up my obsessive fondling and purchasing of books. I also worried that my books—waiting so patiently in their pretty bright book cover dresses on my bookshelf, or climbing over each other on my nightstand in their zeal to be read—might be hurt by my disloyalty. Alternatively, I worried that my smart-mouthed, quick-on-the-draw Kindle would know I was cheating on her with her plumper, more beautiful cousins.

I agonized for weeks over which was better: digital books or “real.” At first, reading the Kindle was downright confusing. For one thing, what to do with that free hand flapping around while you hold such a slim rectangle and touch buttons to flip pages? (And why didn't I have a Kindle while I was breastfeeding my kids?)

How do you pretend not to notice an annoying neighbor if you can't hide your face behind an actual book? How do you loan your books to friends on a Kindle? What do you put on your bookshelves if you stop buying books? (Either wine glasses or my son's Lego collection, in our case.) And how do you stop ordering books on Amazon once you've seen how easy it is to get a fix?

Gradually, though, things smoothed out. My house has become like that popular British TV series, Upstairs, Downstairs: my supposedly more refined (though not necessarily more entertaining or informative) books reside upstairs, on the table next to my bed, where I contentedly read for an hour or so every night before I go to sleep. My Kindle stays downstairs with the dogs.

At the moment, my upstairs book is Island, a collection of lilting, atmospheric stories by the brilliant Canadian Alistair MacLeod. Reading his textured, elegant, emotional prose, it is impossible not to imagine that Cape Breton's misty cliffs loom just outside your window.

For instance, MacLeod's description of rain in the title story goes like this: “Sometimes it slanted against her window with a pinging sound, which meant it was close to hail, and then it was visible as tiny pellets for a moment on the pane before the pellets vanished and rolled quietly down the glass, each drop leaving its own delicate trickle. At other times it fell straight down, hardly touching the window at all, but still there beyond the glass, like a delicate, beaded curtain at the entrance to another room.”

Downstairs, meanwhile, my Kindle seems best suited to books by comics or mystery writers, as well as indie authors like Darcie Chan, whose books were never published by traditional publishers because they weren't deemed “good enough.” (Many of those authors, like Chan, have gone on to sell thousands of copies. Go figure.)

Digital books accompany me throughout the day, because they are so easily stowed in my purse or coat pocket. My Kindle does its work during doctors' visits, in the car while waiting for kids to leave sports practices, or on business trips that would otherwise require an extra piece of luggage for my paperbacks.

On my Kindle, at the moment I'm reading Holidays in Hell by the conservative but consistently hilarious P.J. O'Rourke—somebody whose books I never wanted to pay full price for because of his politics. Check out his description of General Omar Torrijos of Panama: “Torrijos was a half-baked socialist and a blow-hard, but he was lovable and good-looking...He had genuine feeling for the poor, started some only moderately useless social programs and maintained a modest style of life, keeping no more than two or three mistresses on the side.”

I once read that Hemingway used to write his dialogue on a typewriter because it sounded more like people talking, but chose to write his descriptions in longhand. As a writer, I also go to different places and use different tools, depending on what I'm trying to work on. I often write in a journal when I'm collecting ideas, flesh them out at my laptop, and then edit on paper, standing up in the kitchen with a cup of tea at my elbow, I suppose because then it seems like my work is by a different writer and I can be more objective about revisions. For me, reading has become like that: I choose a book's delivery mode based on what kind of reading experience I anticipate.

So my books reside upstairs and my Kindle is downstairs. Different rhythms, different lives, different sensibilities lead me to choose whether I read fiction or nonfiction, short stories or poetry, ebooks or paper. The important thing is that, for every mood and moment, there is a story to treasure, no matter where I am—or in what form I read it.