Archives for KDP Select

The Two Dangers of Selling on Amazon

Cash-register

 

The honeymoon is over: at least for writers and publishers at Amazon. During the last couple of years, it got harder and harder not only due to the immense numbers of books on Amazon – but rather due to Amazon’s new policies.  Two of them are explained here – and what you can do. 

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#1 Problem = Third-party Sellers of Print Books

Journalist Douglas Preston explains: “Amazon quietly changed the way it sells books when allowing third-party sellers to trick Amazon’s customers by selling books as “new” that may not come straight from a publisher or its wholesaler. These third-party sellers are now featured atop the primary purchase button for new books. This was always the spot for Amazon’s own inventory, delivered directly from the publishers or indie authors.”

As an author who supplies Amazon with books, you assume that you deal only with Amazon as a seller. But no, not anymore…
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What You Can Do:
Sell your e-books and books on your own website too – an alternative to aggregators who reduce your revenues.
There are several IT companies who are running the sales and payment process for a small fee for you – no matter if e-books, audio-books or the print version. Just to mention a few of the many e-stores available: Shopify, EJunkie, Ganxy, Selz or Gumroad. How e-commerce works for you is explained in How to Set-up Your OWN Online Bookstore.

Diversify. Sell your books through distributors worldwide. A former article: Who is the best? Book Distributors compared lists most of the reliable distributors/aggregators in North America and Europe.  Draft2Digital is in my experience as a publisher for several authors one of the best distributors.  Another reason to use a distributor: If you are you living outside the USA, as an independent author and you don’t want to go through all the hassle with opening a US branch for your publishing business.  Barnes & Noble, for example, doesn’t deal with foreign authors, and they even require US-Bank accounts from their suppliers in order to pay out revenue for books sold.

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Using D2D’s universal link, available at their page http://books2read.com, you can provide potential readers worldwide with a link to your book at any retailer. The service allows you to create a custom URL — for example, books2read.com/u/3yZwzZ will lead you to our latest published book.

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#2 = Kindle Unlimited (KU)

Mark Coker, CEO at Smashwords wrote recently: “Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited (KU) which offered customers unlimited book reading from a catalog of titles sourced almost entirely from indie ebooks enrolled in KDP Select.  A key feature of KU is that the author’s list price is irrelevant.  Authors are compensated less than half a penny per page read.  Today, over one million indie ebooks are exclusive to Amazon via KDP-Select and KU.  Those books act like leeches to slowly drain other booksellers of their lifeblood. Readers of indie ebooks now have over one million reasons to never purchase another single-copy ebook again.  Authors who now derive 100% of their sales from Amazon are no longer indie authors. They’re dependent authors.”

“Can’t Indies say NO to dependence? It’s not too late for self-published authors to reclaim their independence, but time is running out. Authors could kill KDP Select tomorrow, along with its KU spawn, by simply refusing to participate. Kindle Unlimited would collapse overnight (or within three months) if all the e-books there disappeared.
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Signing up with KDP Select and commit to exclusivity has not paid out for authors – and the marketing method of giving free ebooks away was never a good idea…
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Two Marketing Systems: “Wide” or Exclusive – Or Both?
Bestselling author David Gaughran explains: “The more titles you have the easier it is to market and the easier it is for readers to discover you. So the more titles you have on Apple, or the more you have available to borrow in KU, the more likely that mode of distribution is going to work for you. But it won’t work at all without a marketing strategy to reach those readers – whether they are KU subscribers or owners of that fancy waterproof Kobo reader. How do you reach them?”

“Studying the two kinds of people that are successful “wide” and successful in KU, it’s clear that the marketing approaches are completely different. Authors who are going “wide” often aren’t doing as well – in relative terms – on Amazon anymore. Which makes sense when you consider the disadvantage they are at when trying to appeal to a KU subscriber who can essentially get a comparable book for free.
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What You Can Do:
My Advice for Multi-Book Authors: Place the first in a series or your latest book at their launch-time in Amazon’s KDP Select, and use the Amazon gimmicks, such as free days, KU, Countdown Deals etc. – but only for 3 – 6 months.  Then go “wide”, using distributors to reach Apple, Kobo, Scribd, Barnes&Noble, Indie bookstores, wholesale and libraries.
And market your books intensively – either giving a universal book link or post a list of worldwide links to all these retailers in blogs, newsletters and on your email signature or business card.
However, you can still have Giveaways on Amazon – even without being exclusive on KDP Select: Use their giveaways (ebooks or print) and market these events well on social media or through your newsletters.  Find more tips how to squeeze more out of your manuscript in a recent article.
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David Gaughran sums it up: “You need a different approach to reach your readers.
The reason why successful “wide” authors tend to have bigger mailing lists is that they have fewer tools to play with than KU writers.  Each tool at a “wide” author’s disposal must work that little bit harder.  Meaning their mailing list needs to shift more books.  Each email newsletter subscriber is worth more to a “wide” author.  It’s not just email, talking with retailers and getting on their radar is crucial too.”

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Another Option: Permanently Free
It’s one of the few proven, always available tools to get sales going when you are “wide”. There are fewer freebies at other retailers sites, so you can really work that angle hard. Perhaps you have a short story or novella that isn’t selling much on its own.  Use those opportunities for visibility at places like Kobo and Apple for those free first-in-a-series books.  When you are “wide”, you have one crucial advantage: time.  Your book isn’t free for five days, it’s free forever, so you can spend time optimizing your marketing.
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“The question people always ask themselves is: should I go “wide”, or be exclusive?  There isn’t one answer which works for everyone.  You need to experiment and find out what is best for you and your books.  Whatever you decide to do with your books, try and execute some plan to find readers on that platform.  And it’s time to start thinking about how you can woo those retailers.”
Find more details in David Gaughran’s article

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Mark the Words of Mark Coker!

 

Future

Entrepreneurs small and large, don’t need a crystal ball to see some of the biggest shifts in business. Mark Coker has proven time and again that he has an eye for predicting how the self-publishing markets will change – or must change!  And that the future should be in the hands of every publisher and author and not in that of online retailers!
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KDP Select: Writer Beware!
Mark Coker: “December 8, 2011, was the day Amazon launched KDP Select and began stripping indies of their independence.  It was a brilliant strategy in retrospect: Convince indie authors to hand over exclusive distribution rights to Amazon for short 3-month (auto-renewing) increments.  And it encourages readers to get books for free with KU.  Readers of indie ebooks have over a million reasons to never purchase another single-copy ebook again.”
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THINK ABOUT IT
“Authors could kill KDP Select tomorrow, along with its KU spawn, by simply refusing to participate.  KU would collapse overnight (or within three months) if all the books disappeared.
Instead, authors and the industry complain about Amazon’s dominance while continuing to surrender more independence to Amazon every day.”

Or as a comment laid out:
They TELL authors:

  • where they can distribute their e-book,
  • when they get to put their e-book on sale,
  • remove a review if the author “knows” the fan on social media,
  • reduces your ranking if you advertise through a 3rd party instead of them,
  • pay you not even half a cent for each page read (while squeezing your pages to reduce page count) on your valuable/hard work, and whatever rule they choose to do next…

Just imagine what they would do if they had a monopoly on the book market!
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2018 Book Industry Predictions:
Mark Coker writes: “Are indie authors losing their Independence?  When I think about the future, I start by looking at the past and then I look for patterns and trends.
Authorship has always been a tough business.  Even before the rise of indie authorship, most traditionally published authors still had to maintain day jobs to make ends meet.  Ten years ago, publishers controlled your fate.  They decided which writers became published authors, and they rejected most who came knocking, pleading and begging at their door.  Publishers were the gatekeepers to the printing press, retail distribution, and readers.

Now, thanks to the tools of indie authorship, you’ve wrestled your fate away from publishers.  You decide how and when you publish your book.  You can reach readers without a publisher. Between 2008 and 2010, the e-book market grew exponentially as millions of readers transitioned their reading from paper to screens, and as retailers opened their virtual shelves to all indie ebooks.
2011 was another phenomenal year for e-book sales growth. Indies started hitting retailer and national bestseller lists with increased frequency.  Indie authors proved that it was possible to self-publish with pride, professionalism and commercial success.

The democratization of publishing was here and everyone was happy, right?  Wrong.  It now appears that we have traded one gatekeeper for another: Amazon!  It is a future where other e-book sellers have been decimated and have either gone out of business or become irrelevant.  It’s a future where no other ebook retailer can build a profitable business.
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December 8, 2011
It was the day Amazon launched “KDP Select” and began stripping indies of their independence.  The independence of indie authors wasn’t stolen from them.  Instead, indies were coaxed, prodded, browbeaten, extorted and tricked to gradually surrender it.  It was a brilliant strategy in retrospect.  Convince indie authors to hand over exclusive distribution rights to Amazon for short 3-month (auto-renewing) increments, making authors more dependent upon a single retailer.
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July 14, 2014
Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited (KU) which offered customers unlimited book reading from a catalog of titles sourced almost entirely from indie ebooks enrolled in KDP Select.  A key feature of KU is that the author’s list price is irrelevant.  Authors are compensated less than half a penny per page read.

Today, over one million indie ebooks are exclusive to Amazon via KDP-Select and KU.  Those books act like leeches to slowly drain other booksellers of their lifeblood.  Readers of indie ebooks now have over one million reasons to never purchase another single-copy ebook again.  Authors who now derive 100% of their sales from Amazon are no longer indie authors.  They’re dependent authors.
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Can’t Indies say NO to Dependence?
“It’s not too late for self-published authors to reclaim their independence, but time is running out.
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Authors could kill KDP Select tomorrow, along with its KU spawn, by simply refusing to participate.  Kindle Unlimited would collapse overnight (or within three months) if all the e-books there disappeared.”
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READ the “2018 Predictions”, a long article by Mark Coker including the comments – line-for-line and THINK about it.  And act: Leave KDP Select, sell your books everywhere, including your own website, and stay independent – not a slave of Amazon. 

http://blog.smashwords.com/2017/12/2018-book-industry-predictions.html

P.S. Writing not only means Book-Writing.
There are better-paid ways of using your
literary talent out there.
Check it out:  http://bit.ly/2ABF1tx

 

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Still Worth to be on Amazon’s KDP Select?

KDP-Select

Recently an author wrote in a forum: “I’m seriously debating whether or not I should opt out of the KDP Select program (after my three months are up). I’ve had very few borrows to make it pay, so it’s only really the promotion days that seem to be a plus. My last book did okay on free promo, but not a lot of sales to follow.”  Well, I have read similar posts during the last two or three years on a regular basis.

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Many authors doubt, as Amazon Kindle Free Days, CountDown Deals and Borrows are not that lucrative any more. KDP Select can be a viable marketing tool, but the biggest disadvantage is the “exclusivity” an author has to adhere too, which causes a lot of effort and planning on other retailers sites, and lost sales there – as you will have to pull your books from all other vendors, you cannot even leave them for free there.
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The KDP Select Program is Optional.
As an indie author, you are not required to agree to the program or use a program tied to KDP Select.  However, if you enrol in KDP Select, you are signing away your right to use your e-book for anything other than reaching the KindleUnlimited crowd, and to get the right to offer free uploads of your e-book (5 days), Countdown Deals, Kindle Giveaways, and to participate at KindleUnlimited.
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Kindle Free Days:
When you have that many downloads of your free book, you may climb to the top of your particular Kindle subject category – if scammers haven’t clogged the free book categories.  Just read David Gaughran’s article: KU Scammers Attack Amazon’s Free Ebook Charts.
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However, getting to the top of the “free” category doesn’t affect your paid ranking – after the free days end and your book starts costing money again.
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If you pay a large sum to certain promotion websites and newsletters, you are promised that hundred thousands of readers receive notification about your free book.  But this only working out for authors who

  • already have a significant following, or
  • are selling a series and offer the first book as a free download

Theoretically, if readers get hooked, they might eventually purchase the rest of the author’s works.  But for authors with little to no name recognition and just one or two books published, it’s more difficult to see how using free days can significantly increase their sales.
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Kindle Countdown Deals:
Kindle allows you to cut the price of your book down to 99 cents.  However, this feature is largely useless in isolation if you’re an unknown author. There’s no point in slicing the price of your work to just under one dollar if only a few (if any) readers will ever note it.  Quite a few online promoters offer to boost your countdown deal—often for a hefty fee.  But it is important that you have enough reviews, and an online presence, perhaps also some blogger interviews.
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Kindle Giveaways:
Amazon’s latest feature allows Kindle authors to offer a number of their books as a giveaway prize, similar to those at Goodreads. If an author has a significant Twitter, Google+ or Amazon following, Giveaways can prove a useful feature.  You can even earn royalties from the books your participants “win” – since you pay for them.
Giveaways do not only improve the numbers of followers, it could potentially increase the number of reviews within the following months.  Giveaways do not necessarily translate into high rank-jumping at Amazon in the long run.
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Kindle Unlimited:
Rather than to pay for individual copies of books, those who’ve signed up for the program can read all they want.  Authors receive a certain amount of royalties per page read, which amounts to less than half a cent per page. The question is, if people who download them, like they download a Netflix video, will they become your dedicated future readers and book buyers.
KDP offers a lot of promotional tools, to let readers download or borrow your books, which results usually in higher visibility for a short time.  Since last year, participating authors are only paid by pages read, instead of by the number of books downloaded.  However, none of these measures will build you a huge audience right away.  It can perhaps improve sales for a short time, but none will make your book a bestseller.

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Exclusivity with KDP has its Downsides Too.
While you are exclusive with Amazon, you can’t receive e-book income from any other online stores, but you can still have audio-books in iTunes and your paperbacks at Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other retailers, or sell them from your website.  Being exclusive with Amazon means relying wholly on one vendor for the income as a writer.  Many authors aren’t so sure of its benefit, due to the restrictions Amazon imposes, only 23 percent of all e-books are in KDP Select.
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Unfair for Self-Publishers:
There is also some unfairness towards self-publishing authors: Amazon’s traditionally published books of legacy publishing houses have no exclusivity requirements – and can be sold wherever the publisher wishes.
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Read more about this topic:
https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/2016/05/24/amazon-kdp-kindle-unlimited/
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/kindle-unlimiteds-two-tier-system-makes-some-authors-second-class-citizens/
http://jakonrath.blogspot.ca/2015/08/konrath-kindle-unlimited-numbers.html
https://anitalovett.com/2015/02/18/is-kindle-unlimited-bad-for-authors/
https://kdp.amazon.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=626663

 

 

Less Revenue for Authors from Amazon?

Amazon Revenue

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Did you read Amazon’s Newsletter last week?  One of the sentences in the text was: “Starting with the November fund, we will work to take these marketplace differences into account and payouts per country will differ based on local country factors.”
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Sounds rather unassuming, doesn’t it? However it might mean LESS MONEY FOR AUTHORS…who are signed up with KDP Select.  In India for example Kindle Unlimited subscription service is much lower priced: $3 only per month.  So a revenue pay-out per book on KU will also be much lower than for those in the USA, where customers pay more than three times for monthly subscriptions.
But Amazon might also reduce the subscription prices for other countries in order to eliminate competition… Or am I too suspicious?
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Making KindleUnlimited available in India also taps into a market with a lot of growth potential.  According to Digital Book World, e-books currently account for just two percent of the country’s $2- billion-market, but that amount is expected to grow as more people get their hands on inexpensive smartphones and tablets, and the biggest competitor Flipkart is outnumbered by Amazon (maybe).
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What Bloggers Say:
Mark Cocker wrote: “None of this should come as a surprise, yet thousands of authors will be surprised once they realize the slippery slope that is KDP Select.  It’s an inevitable outcome when authors surrender full pricing and compensation control via their KDP Select enrolment to a company whose entire business model is predicated upon commoditizing and devaluing products by stripping suppliers (authors) of pricing control.  Amazon does this in the name of offering customers the lowest possible prices.”

And Nate Hoffelder blogged a while ago:
Following the launch of KindleUnlimited, the payout from KDP Select declined by 25%, and it continued to decline ever since.  The payment hit a new low in October, dipping to $1.33, and according to the latest KDP newsletter it increased slightly in November, 2014 to $1.39.  Authors are wondering whether KDP Select in particular, and Amazon’s subscription e-book service in general, are such a great idea.”

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What are the Pro’s and Con’s of KDP Select?
In exchange for giving Amazon exclusivity for your e-book for 90 days, you receive five days to make your digital content available for free or in a Kindle Countdown Deal, and you also get paid during these 90 KDP Select days for any of your e-books that are lent through the Amazon Prime library or through KindleUnlimited. Since June 2015 only the pages that were read will be paid by Amazon.  Also, you will earn 70% revenue for sales to customers in Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico.
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Pro’s

  • If you are a new author with only one book, then building an audience on Amazon before branching out to other venues might be an good choice.  Often new authors are receiving higher numbers of lends while more established authors are getting less.
  • If you sell exclusively through Amazon, you only have to manage one site and one set of changes.
  • Multiple-book authors might rotate content through KDP Select if they are getting a significant number of paid lends and new readers from the program. Or use KDP Select to launch a new project, getting reviews and feedback on Amazon before distributing the title elsewhere. If your free days land you on the Top 10 or 20 (first page) of the free bestseller list, that exposure might! Increase sales for the days following a free promotion due to the exposure and higher ranking.
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But consider this: you don’t need to be on KDP Select to offer your book for free.  A great option are “Pay-with-a-Tweet” or to have one of your books permanently free on Amazon!

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Con’s

  • As an indie author, you should not be dependent on any single income stream. In business it is never good to work only with one customer or one supplier – nor is it smart to have only one product / one book to sell. Consider only during the initial period exclusivity, in order to earn your tiny share of the KDP Select Global Fund amount when your book purchasers read more than 10% of your book from KindleUnlimited, or to borrow your e-book from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL).  Enrolling in KDP Select means your books are automatically included in both programs.
  • As writers have to remove their books on all other platforms to be exclusive for KDP Select campaigns, the timing of price changes for sales is a real hassle.  You never know if scheduling a price change on Kobo, Barnes & Noble and iBooks works smooth and timely – nor will it always work perfect on Amazon.  After the campaign you have to change back everything on all platform, which can really be a pain.  And even if you use any aggregator services, errors can and will happen.
  • Global growth of digital markets: Apple iBook and Kobo sell in 58 countries.  Amazon may be the biggest player in the USA, but there are more online retail stores and devices that are dominating in other countries.  Sales in Canada for example are coming primarily from Kobo.  And don’t under-estimate the future massive Asian markets…
  • Selling on more platforms – on- and off-line – allows readers all over the world to buy your work in any way they want. Don’t limit the amount of money you might make.
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Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith mentioned in one of his blogs: “In regular publishing, if your book is all over the world in every store and not limited, your sales potential has no ceiling. Think J.K Rowling book sales numbers.”
“In KindleUnlimited, you only have the amount in the prize pool that Amazon sort of sets after the fact and decides to give you – considering pages read… Being exclusive to one bookstore is for sure a mistake.”

 

Best-Ranking Keywords in Amazon Categories

 

Keywords

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Many trade publishers and author-publishers don’t understand Amazon’s categories and fail to use the system to their advantage.  They either don’t use all categories available to them or, without drilling down further, they choose something generic like Fiction, which is useless as a category unless being at the very top of the Amazon rankings.  When you are picking a category you don’t want one with a broad, busy market, you want a category that’s narrow.  Why?  Because Amazon’s algorithm is ignited when a book hits the top of a category.

Amazon offers BISAC subject headings, which are industry standard – not always reflecting the actual categories in the Kindle Store.  David Gaughran wrote in one of his blogs: “While the system attempts to map your BISAC choice to a Kindle Store category, it doesn’t always work. This leads to the situation where you have:

  • Categories that appear only in Books (i.e. the print book listings and not in the Kindle Store itself)
  • International-only categories (for example, Medical Thriller was a category in the UK Kindle Store, but not in the US until Amazon recently added it)
  • Unique Kindle Store categories that are not selectable when uploading
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This inexact mapping between the BISAC-inspired choices in the KDP interface and the actual categories in the Kindle Store creates both a problem and an opportunity.  Amazon recently added new granular sub-categories in some genres, but others were completely untouched.”
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Solutions for Authors and Publishers

They can’t add *additional* categories, but they can assign one of your two to the category you want. There’s actually two ways of doing this you can try:

1) Take the category name and add it as a keyword for that title in KDP. This works some of the time, but not always and indeed it may only work for the new categories, and even then not always. Amazon has an in-built keyword search or long-tail keyword phrase finder in their search field.
Use Amazon’s help page: Selecting Browse Categories.

Here an Example:
If you wrote a non-fiction book in the Business and Money category, Amazon advices: “In order for a title to appear in the Business & Money sub-categories below, the title’s search keywords must include at least one of the keywords or phrases listed next to the sub-category.”  Scroll down the page and select your genre. Using the nominated keywords, your book will appear in a number of sub-categories.  Keyword choices are listed for all major genres, however not the same categories in each country.
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Experimenting with keywords inside the KDP brings up lots of possibilities.  They used to show up as ‘tags’, but as you have noticed, Amazon has stopped readers from being able to view and use tags on its main website.  When using these methods, you do not need to spend a cent on software or e-books promising magical sales results.  All you need to do is carefully select your seven precious keywords, and then have your ebook perfectly positioned for buyers to find. You will see, your book will show up in more than two categories now.

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2) Choose “Non-Classifiable” as one of your categories, and then email KDP with the *full exact path* of the category you’re aiming for. You may get pushback, saying that you aren’t allowed to choose that. The customer service teams are incorrect when they say this, and you need to stay firm and keep insisting. If the category exists in the Kindle Store, and isn’t a restricted one like Kindle Singles or Kindle Serials, you *can* get your book there – it just might require a little persistence.

Authors of Historical Fiction for example, don’t get many category choices at Amazon, contrary to B&N – Barnes&Noble – where twenty different sub-categories are offered.

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Many authors and even trade publishers often don’t care about category, sometimes even don’t register or place the title only in one category.  Of all the work you do placing your book on Amazon, this might be the most important key piece of marketing.  Make sure you put the book in the most narrow category you can.  Switch your categories from time to time.  The good thing about Amazon is that they don’t limit you to the number of changes you can make.
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Read More:

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2EZES9JAJ6H02
http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2015/02/how-to-choose-kindle-keywords/
http://www.lindsayburoker.com/tips-and-tricks/book-more-categories-amazon-with-keywords/
http://business.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-choose-keywords-and-categories-for-your-kindle-ebook–fsw-39335

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If you would like to get a mentor and our support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day!  Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting / Book Marketing for your success: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

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http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE

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11 Tips How to Organize a Book Sales Campaign

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Book-Launch

Launch, Photo Credit: NASA

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I have seen it too often, that authors decide one morning to have a book sale from the next day on and expect it to be a successful one.  Or they hurry editing, formatting and slap a cover image together, in order to get the book on Amazon’s sales pages before Christmas.  The minimum you can do to make it a success:

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1. Start EARLY !!!
You have about three months to promote a new print book (paper back or hardcover) before the bookstores clear their shelves for the next bestseller.  But if you can rack up enough pre-orders BEFORE the pub date, then you can kickstart your book launch.  Once it hits the New York Times or other lists, then a couple of weeks on those lists become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Again: the more time you give your book to be listed on Amazon and other online retailers BEFORE your publication date, the better.
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2. Write Several Blogs About Your Campaign / Book Launch Including Images.
Tell potential readers the benefits, e.g.:

  • Low price or even free
  • Send as inexpensive gifts
  • Give them a great incentive for a review
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3. Write a FREE short e-Book About Your Book.
Include all the sales links and an author biography in your prequel, and if you will participate in Amazon’s “Matchbox”, bundles of print and e-book.  Explain your potential readers the benefit of ordering a “bundle“.
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4. Campaign Announcement:
Cross promote your campaign: Always post and promote your event on your own website, blog and through email as well, so that non-Facebook/Twitter/Google+ users can learn about it and share your book sales campaign event without having to use these social media sites.  What’s more: Use Twitter to generate buzz and use LinkedIn to leverage business communities and post the event to LinkedIn.

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5. Google+ Posts
Add your blogs about your book launch or your book sales campaign – not only on your own Google+ timeline and your author / book page, but also at the dozens of Google+ reader communities where you are (hopefully) a member.

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6. Tweets
At least one tweet per hour, each one in a variety of text and accompanied by a cover image photo of your book or photographs from book scenes or areas where it takes place.  Sign up to several Twitter accounts.  You can establish up to five accounts.  But don’t post the same tweets everywhere!  And schedule well in advance, using Hootsuite or any other free scheduling service to find the best times to post on Twitter.

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7. Create a Re-tweet Button in a Free eBook.
Give away the first chapter of your book as an immediately accessible PDF on your web page or on Amazon. Include a re-tweet button in several strategic locations in the chapter. This allows people who love what they read, to easily share with friends on Twitter.  When someone clicks on this re-tweet button, it shows a pre-crafted tweet that says: “I’m reading @……. new book: … Get the first chapter free here too: http://………”
You get the idea?
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8. Announce the Campaign in Your Newsletter
It’s one of the reasons you ask your blog readers or website visitors to sign up for your newsletter: to inform them about specials and sales campaigns or book launches – besides providing regularly useful and entertaining content.
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9. Most Important: Have Your Event/Campaign on Google+
Google+ offers a great tool to invite people to your upcoming event. Are you still thinking about joining? Or are you one of the more than 300 Million users of Google+ yet?
Announce the event or book sales campaign on Google+ and also on Goodreads at least three weeks before the date. They both offer a free event function. A site that is very easy and fast to set up. Promote this event (can be real life or virtual) heavily on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, your blog and to your email list. And if your local newspaper, neighborhood paper etc. has an event page, or if they have an online version, get your event in! Search the internet for events/websites in your area and announce it there too.
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10. Create a photo contest
It can be a fun and friendly competition to get people excited about your book. And there’s no better platform than Social Media sites to do just that. You can call it the “Know my Book?” photo contest. All participants need to do, is to take a creative photo with the words “Know my Book?” or “Help Me Launch.” The three best images might receive the book or you can offer an additional first prize for a Kindle or a digital camera.

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11. Create Your Campaign Well in Advance
Give your event promotion enough time to spare, this also gives you time to notify / invite the people who you know are most likely to attend. With so many book sales to choose from, the key is to know your potential customers. Create your invitations, posts and tweets so as to reach as many individuals as possible with your marketing message.
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A Lot of Work You Say?
No matter if you are organizing a book launch for your latest work (or your first book), planning your Goodreads Giveaway or if you prepare to have your book on sale, or for free for a couple of days:  these campaigns need to be well organized and promoted – and all that well in advance.

Yes, sure, if you see it as WORK. But you like to write about your book, to tell people about it, to help your readers to find inexpensive copies of your book and to sell more books and get more reviews.  No one said that having a publishing business means “laughing all the way to the bank”.

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If you would like to get a mentor and our support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day!  Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting / Book Marketing for your success: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing, please read also
“Book Marketing on a Shoestring”
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE

Our email newsletters with free insider tips are sent out once a month. To sign up, just go to the form on the right site of each blog post.

Checklist for Successful Book Sales Campaigns

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No matter if you are organizing a book launch for your latest work (or your first book), planning your Goodreads Giveaway or if you prepare to have your book on sale, or for free for a couple of days:  these campaigns need to be well organized and promoted – and all that well in advance.

I have seen it too many times, that authors decide on Monday morning to have a book sale from Tuesday on and expect it to be a successful one. Or they hurry editing, formatting and slap a cover image together, in order to get the book on Amazon’s sales pages before Christmas.

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Start EARLY !!!
You have about three months to promote a new print book (paper back or hardcover) before the bookstores clear their shelves for the next bestseller. But if you can rack up enough pre-orders BEFORE the pub date, then you can kickstart your book launch. Once it hits the New York Times or other lists, then a couple of weeks on those lists become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Again: the more time you give your book to be listed on Amazon and other online retailers BEFORE your publication date, the better.
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The Minimum You Can Do To Make it a Success:

1. Write Several Blogs About Your Campaign Including Images
Tell potential readers the benefits, e.g.:

  • Low price or even free
  • Send as inexpensive gifts
  • Give them a great incentive for a review
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2. Write a FREE short e-Book About Your Book : )
Include all the sales links and an author biography, and if you will participate in Amazon’s “Matchbox”, bundles of print and e-book, explain your potential readers their benefit of ordering a “bundle“.
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3. Campaign Announcement
Cross promote your campaign: Always post and promote your event on your own website, blog and through email as well, so that non-Facebook/Twitter/Google+ users can learn about it and share your book sales campaign event without having to use these social media sites. What’s more: Use Twitter to generate buzz and use LinkedIn to leverage business communities and post the event to LinkedIn.

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4. Google+ Posts
Add your blogs about your book launch or your book sales campaign – not only on your own Google+ timeline and your author / book page, but also at the dozens of Google+ reader communities where you are (hopefully) a member.

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5. Tweets
At least one tweet per hour, each one in a variety of text and accompanied by a cover image photo of your book or photographs from book scenes or areas where it takes place. Sign up to several Twitter accounts. You can have up to five accounts. But don’t post the same tweets everywhere! And schedule well in advance, using Hootsuite or any other free scheduling service to find the best times to post on Twitter.

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6. Create a Re-tweet Button in a Free eBook
Give away the first chapter of your book as an immediately accessible PDF on your web page or on Amazon. Include a re-tweet button in several strategic locations in the chapter. This allows people who love what they read, to easily share with friends on Twitter.  When someone clicks on this re-tweet button, it shows a pre-crafted tweet that says: “I’m reading @……. new book: … Get the first chapter free here too: http://………” You get the idea?
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7. Announce the Campaign in Your Newsletter
It’s one of the reasons you ask your blog readers or website visitors to sign up for your newsletter: to inform them about specials and sales campaigns or book launches – beside giving them regularely useful and entertaining content.
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8. Most Important is to Have Your Event/Campaign on Google+
Google+ offers a great tool to invite people to your upcoming event. Are you still thinking about joining? Or are you one of the more than 300 Million users of Google+ yet?
Announce the event or book sales campaign on Google+ and also on Goodreads at least three weeks before the date. They both offer a free event function. A site that is very easy and fast to set up. Promote this event (can be real life or virtual) heavily on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, your blog and to your email list. And if your local newspaper, neighborhood paper etc. has an event page, or if they have an online version, get your event in! Search the internet for events/websites in your area and announce it there too.
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9. Create a photo contest
It can be a fun and friendly competition to get people excited about your book. And there’s no better platform than Social Media sites to do just that. You can call it the “Know my Book?” photo contest. All participants need to do, is to take a creative photo with the words “Know my Book?” or “Help Me Launch.” The three best images might receive the book or you can offer an additional first prize for a Kindle or a digital camera.

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Create Your Campaign Well in Advance
Give your event promotion enough time to spare, this also gives you time to notify / invite the people who you know are most likely to attend. With so many book sales to choose from, the key is to know your potential customers. Create your invitations, posts and tweets so as to reach as many individuals as possible with your marketing message.
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A Lot of Work You Say?
Yes, sure, if you see it as WORK. But you like to write about your book, to tell people about it, to help your readers to find inexpensive copies of your book and to sell more books and get more reviews.  No one said that having a business involves only laughing all the way to the bank.

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $159 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
Or visit http://www.e-book-pr.com/book-promo/
to advertise your new book, specials, your KDP Select Free Days or the new Kindle Countdown Deals.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 980 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.
Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://www.111publishing.com

http://www.e-Book-PR.com/

http://www.international-ebooks.com/

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Tagged: author-publishing, Bargain eBook Hunter, Book Launch Party, Ebook Deal of the Day, Goodreads giveaway, how to organize a book launch, KDP Select, Kindle Prime Members

Got an Unfair Book Review after Your FREE KDP Days?

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Then you are not alone. I heard this from many authors, and don’t even want to call them reviews – as these people totally ignore the rules how to write a book review – rather bashing authors and their work. Some people are hoarding free books, without checking them before, they don’t even read the “Look Inside” part on Amazon’s page and then, when it is not the right genre or a book in a series, or when it is too long or too short, they write harsh complaints, instead of writing a fair and professional review. 

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Just one example:
A great novel with 91 customer reviews, almost all in the 5-star range, received these negative “reviews”, after having the book up for two days on Amazon’s KDP Select.

1-Star Review
“I really can’t complain about this since it was a free book, but it…
By the end of the book, I didn’t like any of the characters….”

3-Star Review
“This was a “borrowed” book that I was able to get for being an Amazon Prime member. In a nutshell, this book entertained me for a few days, but I would not recommend it to a friend.”

90% of this books negative reviewers had not bought the book, one reviewer borrowed it through Prime Membership, the rest got it for free at Amazon’s KDP days, obviously without even reading the books description, nor the title headline (where the series was mentioned).  These reviewers just took their frustration out via an Amazon “review”, bashing the free book they had received on their Kindle.

Another example:
A #1 bestseller book in its category, with almost 5,000 !!! reviews. From the 281 “reviewers”, who gave 1-Star, only three of them had actually bought the book! It really seems to be a pattern that people, who download the book for free are very often writing negative reviews.

5 star: (2,802)
4 star: (1,023)
3 star: (554)
2 star: (278)
1 star: (281)
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Let your readers and friends decide if these negative reviews are helpful
Rating the existing book #reviews as “helpful” or “unhelpful” makes a significant impact! Voting for the most helpful reviews, your friends have the power to move them to the head of the line…

Amazon has this rarely used function: “Help other customers find the most helpful reviews” and “Was this review helpful to you? Yes / No”  

There is also another way to boost your book, in order to get more readers and reviews, which we explained in a former blog: “HIGHLIGHTS” in your book: A great tool in Amazon’s algorithm list for book popularity.

Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon wrote: “Unless such a review is a spiteful slap-down written to gratify the un-examined resentments of the worst sort of reader, how welcome (let alone “useful”) can it really be?”  And think about it: “…it seems the more success you have, the harder some people are on you…”

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Funny, negative reviews
Bestseller author Rayne Hall just blogged about negative, but funny reviews she received, some are really hilarious. Have a look at her article, sampling some of the stupidities for her highly popular novel Storm Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel):

“This book is too long. I had to spend many hours reading it. I’m busy and have other things to do.”

“The character of Queen Matilda is not believable”.    There’s no Queen Matilda in the book.

Read more here: http://venturegalleries.com/blog/have-you-ever-received-any-negative-reviews-that-were-really-funny-most-authors-have/#sthash.F0yMmfCb.dpuf

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book heavily promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only a “token” of $1 / day for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/  Once you are on this website, click on Seminar to register.

Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are 785 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing
http://pinterest.com/111publishing/
http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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How to Prepare for and Announce Your Free KDP Select Days

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In the last blog post “Free Days on KDP Select – is it for you?” the pro’s and con’s of joining Amazon’s KDP Select program have been shown.  Today let’s look at how to prepare and advertise the free days for your Kindle e-book.
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A month before your free days:

  • Make sure you have at least a handful of book reviews on Amazon
  • Update the books file and add some promotional links
  • Check that your book is in the right categories
  • Set up the best days for your “free” promotion
  • Write to all the free book websites and ask to announce your free days
  • Write an article about your books free days on your own blog
  • Raise the price for your book
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Twitter
A week before the big day, prepare a list with at least two dozen tweets (to post them at least every half hour), so you have them handy to schedule in Twuffer, Futuretweets, Hootsuite or whatever Twitter scheduler you use. Incorporate these hashtags into your messages: #FreeKindleBook, #freekindle, #freebook, #free, #kindlepromo, #freeE-books or #freeKindledays, just to name a few.
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Google+, Pinterest and News Release to blogs
Prepare lots of photos of you book cover, at least in 600 x 800 pixel (not the small one from your Amazon site).
Write a short description about your book and it’s free days with exact Amazon links for each country! and offer it to other bloggers, including your books photo. Do this at least a week before the free days, to give bloggers time to incorporate your article into their blogging schedule. A couple of them will post it, especially if you wrote guest posts for them before and you offer them a reciprocal.
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On your free days post your books cover and description several times on your Google+ site, with a variation of text and headline. Same with Pinterest, Chime.in and Facebook. Ask your friends on all these sites to submit it for you to their friends as well.
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Goodreads
Ask a couple of your peers at Goodreads to send out a book recommendation with a note of the free days to all of their friends (you cannot recommend your own books on Goodreads). Choose those with the most friends to reach a maximum audience.
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FREE Event ads
Both, Goodreads and Google+ have a free tool to advertise this event.
Just type “event” into the search function on Goodreads, and on Google+ you can see the event planner on the right hand side of your timeline. Set it up a couple of days in advance and send out an email, to all your peers, write about it on FB, tweet it several times before the free days begin and don’t forget to announce it on Pinterest with a nice cover photo of your book.
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Double-Check everything!
Make sure your dates at the free book lists are correct! Most of these posts are scheduled in advance so if your book is not free, you could be blacklisted. Double-check your Amazon ASIN number if the link is correct when you submit to sites (copy and paste from Amazon rather than type it in). You certainly can shorten your Amazon link, e.g. Amazon.com/dp/B008Y15YYO.  However, do not use any of these commercial link shorteners (bit.ly, wp etc. or Amazon affiliate links) for submission to promotional free book websites, they will not accept them.
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Announce your FREE Book on KDP Select days here too:  Google+  Community “Author Marketing Club”     bit.ly/1a827Xv 

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Here are ten sites where you can advertise your free days – often for free – t
here are certainly many more. 

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Twitter accounts that re-tweet your free books 

@DigitalBkToday
@kindleebooks
@Kindlestuff
@KindleEbooksUK
@KindleBookKing
@KindleFreeBook
@free_kindle
@FreeReadFeed
@freebookdude
@4FreeKindleBook
@FreeKindleStuff

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Amazon has an abundance of lists, such as Top Rated lists, Bestsellers List, Hot New Release list, Gift Idea lists, Top-100 lists for each category, “If you like this you may …” lists, “So you want to” lists and Top Rated Author Lists. When someone downloads your book (for free or paid), it moves up the charts. A lot more people will see it then, compared to before your free days.  Being more visible when the book is reverted back to a paid download, means more people can find it, and will results in more sales.  When people download your book, it starts appearing in the “People who bought this book also bought..” and “Recommended for you” sections, even more increasing visibility.

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Once the free days are over, start to promote heavily lending/borrowing of your e-book, in order to get Amazons Prime members to borrow your book.

Possible Tweets could be:

  • Did you know? Amazon Prime Membership allows you to borrow …..
  • Amazon Prime Members can borrow …. for free
  • The benefit of Amazons Prime Membership is: you can borrow ….
  • Amazon Prime Members in the UK and Ireland:
  • Amazon Prime Members in Canada: you can….
  • Amazon Prime Members in Germany:
  • Amazon Prime Members in Spain:

You get the idea…. Use the remaining weeks and months to further promote your books for lending. You will be paid for that!

Good luck for your KDP Select promotion and let us know if you have more ideas how to publicize your book during this time.

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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 600 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email?
Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Follow on Twitter: @111publishing

And don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks, Doris

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Free Days on Amazon KDP Select – is it for you?

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FREE_ADVERTISING

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In Part 1 of this Amazon KDP Select article, lets look at pro’s and con’s of using free days and participating in the Prime Member Lending Library. Part 2, the next blog post will show you how to organize your free days and will give you lots of links for free advertising, plus marketing tips for your free days and beyond.

Authors are divided in praising or damning Amazon’s KDP Select Program. This book marketing opportunity may or may not work for your book. It can put your novel or non-fiction work in front of thousands of readers so, at the very least, it’s a great way to grow a readership.
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The Upside: Pro’s of KDP Select
You are allowed to select five “free” promotional days within the 90-day KDP Select period into the Lending Library, where the value of each borrow is currently $1.70. Each counts as a “unit sold” and helps your paid sales rankings. You might gain more reviews. Books with a greater number of reviews have a higher probability of being featured in book blogs.

Readers who are eager to download free books choose those that have more reviews because a higher number of reviews “validates” the book and indicates it is worthy of a download. They also suggest that in the readers’ eyes, this metric is more important than the ranking (number of stars) the book has because readers understand that some people may not like a good book and leave a negative review.
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Readership Explosion: With KDP Select, a new author can grow a following at an enormous rate, and will garner far more reviews than with sales that trickle in under normal circumstances through sheer visibility in the free KDP Select store.  After getting downloaded thousands of times, chances are you’ll reach more readers who will love your book and recognize your name as an author.

Amazon rewards sales with visibility. They treat free downloads the same as sales – according to their number of downloads, placing the author’s book cover in places such as “customers who bought this also bought” section, below other books purchased by those who downloaded the free book, and often in the same genre. KDP Select gives you indirectly promotion not only for the free book but also for the other books written by you listed on your Amazon Author page.

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Possible Downside: Con’s of KDP Select
You must commit exclusivity with Amazon for 90 days, which means that you must remove your e-book (NOT the print version!) from all other retailers and give up your e-book royalties from Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple iBook store and Sony’s Nook eBook store or wherever else you sell it. If you are earning more than 80 or 90% of your royalties from Amazon, then the decision to go exclusively with them for 90 days to enter the KDP Select program including Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is an easy one. An Amazon KDP Select Press Release explains that on average, by joining KDP Select, you can earn an additional 26% in royalties from the KDP Select fund, on top of royalties from your paid sales.

Leaving those other platforms, you are also giving up your current sales rankings on them. It could be very difficult to scale those bestselling lists again and reclaim your previous royalties from non-Amazon sources. If your royalty stream from Amazon is less than 70%, think twice if you really want to go with KDP select as you will loose significant royalties on other platforms.

You might also garner a number of negative reviews from people who would not normally buy your type of book, yet download it on free days. When they find out it is not to their taste or not what they expected, some of them seem to enjoy telling everyone why they did not like it.

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What to consider?
How well are you selling on your platforms? The more you are selling, the more likely you are to be on best-selling lists at Amazon, which greatly increases your discoverability and usually translates into higher lends and “free” giveaways – and therefore greater post-“free” sales.

On the other hand, you also might be well-positioned at your other online retailers. Which weighs more heavily? Being well ranked on Amazon or non-Amazon platforms?

Your ranking on Amazon is weighted more than any other platform, as Amazon represents the lion’s share of the e-book market. If you are already on a Top 100 Amazon Bestselling list in a genre, what would the increase get you? Would this increase bounce you into the Top 50 or even Top 10? On average, increasing your best-selling Amazon ranking will increase your royalties by about 7% for each page (Top 80, 60, 40, 20). If you sell well, you will lend well, and you will “give away” well. If you are not selling well, you will not lend well, or even “give away” well.

Most successful seem to be authors with multiple books or a series of books out – they use promo days to give away the first book in a series, hoping that customers will come back and buy the other books from that series. There is no guarantee with this strategy, but if your sales at the other e-book online retailers have been stale, then taking a 90-day-gamble on KDP Select might be an interesting experiment. If you have six to ten book titles it’s easier for readers to find you. An author with so many books has probably grown his or her platform over the years anyway. But when you only have one or two titles, KDP Select is the only program which can accelerate the long, draining process of finding readers for your book.
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Goodreads has Giveaway Contests too:

Amazon’s KDP Select is not the only game in town: Goodreads has ‘Giveaway’ contests which is a great way to raise awareness for your books as well as generating sales and reviews. On average, at Goodreads 45% of giveaway winners will review your book – and getting good reviews is one of the best ways to improve your book’s chance of long-term success. Goodreads website offers plenty of advice on getting the most out of your giveaway contest.

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Plan your free days well ahead – at least one month!

  1. Get as many reviews as possible, free book listings often promote only books with a certain amount of reviews. And readers also check out the amount of reviews (not necessarily the stars), to find out if your book is worthwhile to download.
  2. As Amazon Prime Members tend to borrow rather $5.99 – $9.99 e-books, raise the price of you book short before you join KDP Select. To give away a $0.99 e-book for free or to offer it to borrow is a bit of a joke.
  3. Check out if your book is really in the right category. Compare with bestsellers in your genre.
  4. Updated your e-book file and include a page within the first part of the book, asking readers to leave a review for you on Amazon; include a direct link to your books’ page. Add a link to your homepage and add all of your other books as well
  5. Don’t use your promotional days on the weekend (especially Saturday) because people are typically away from their computers and spending time with their families on the weekend, especially holiday weekends. Weekdays are generally better and if you can have at least two days back-to-back you will have more time to build momentum for your promotion.
  6. Inform the free book listing sites a month in advance to have your book listed – mostly for free. Make sure you list PixelofInk, EReaderNewsToday and Digital Book Today. Read their submission rules carefully.
  7. Write an article in your blog about your free days, and ping / share a link to this blog post on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc. several times a day in a variety of headlines.

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More promotional tips and dozens of links for free e-book promotions in Part 2 of this series.
See also a great blog article “The Secret Anatomy of KDP” by James Calbraith, where he explains “The algorithm shows your book to millions of readers; there is no ad that reaches more people, no social network campaign. However…”

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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 600 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Follow on Twitter: @111publishing

And don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks, Doris

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