Such a simple question: Why would anyone limit their sales to only one bookstore?
Just recently, Amanda Hocking said, ”According to my 1099s, nearly 40% of the money I made in royalties came from Barnes & Noble…. To clarify: All my royalties from 2011 were from ebook sales. Roughly 38% for Nook, 59% Kindle. The rest were iBook & Kobo & Sony.” Hocking advised, “It’s important to remember that Amazon may be big but it’s not the only the book seller in town.”
Thank you, Amanda.
In my very informal survey of talking with people and having many of you give me your results from Kindle Select, the trend is 3 to 1 against, which means nothing I know. The ones who did have success seem to swear by it. The ones who did not see any difference are indifferent for the most part. No great emotions against it. There are so many thousands of factors as to why a book would work or not work (you know, like quality story-telling and a great cover and blurb), it’s foolish for me to even try to get results. But it was fun getting feedback on it and I want to thank you who did send your experiences. Very much appreciated.
My opinion still stands. And it is only my opinion.
Except in rare circumstances, I do not believe the return from limiting a market to one bookstore is worth the return value, both in the short run and the long run.
But in some instances, it might be worth the shot, but those circumstances are rare. Of the 240 titles WMG Publishing now has available, we finally found one that might be suited for Kindle Select. And we had to put that one together to even get that. If we try it, I will explain later in another post and give results, if there are any real ones.
If you have under ten titles up, why bother? My opinion is build your writing, not some foolish attempt to build an audience for work you have not yet produced. Sort of the horse ahead of the cart kind of thinking.
But that is all my opinion and except for Amanda Hocking’s facts and WMG Publishing facts, which almost mirror Hocking’s numbers in percentages, with Apple being slightly higher, I have nothing to base my opinion on.
“My opinion is build your writing, not some foolish attempt to build an audience for work you have not yet produced.”
Wow. A million times wow. I enjoy reading your blog and find the majority of the information and arguments to be logically sound and reasonable but this just really hit the nail on the head for me in a lot of ways. Really puts what I’m doing right now into perspective. I’m just starting my writing career; every word on a page is a success at this point. All I need to worry about is the next story. I know that you have said as much multiple times, but that one sentence drove it all home for me, somehow. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Brandon, you are more than welcome. Glad it made sense. Keep the focus on the writing.
I totally agree, Dean. I am having a bit of a challenge finding information on distributing to the Sony eReader. Is that through Smashwords or do they have their own uploading platform?
Thanks and I love your blog. Keep writing
~ Meg
Meg, goes through the premium channel at Smashwords. That’s the easiest, but you can go direct if your publishing company has enough titles. But Smashwords makes it easy.
Amazon is big, but this is the notable tidbit for me:
I started putting books up on January 6 via Smashwords and Kindle, and until this week, Smashwords (minus Kindle) was ahead of Kindle in direct sales, and this is well before distribution to the channels has slowly begun to kick in. This is despite the fact that my stuff is available on Kindle in a day and rests in the starting blocks for all other channels for a few weeks.
Obviously a tiny, insignificant sampling involving less than chicken feed at the margin, but gee whiz, it seems like leaving money on the table to go all in with one big player, no matter how big they are.
I decided to experiment with a few titles – one at a time over the next few months – to hopefully jumpstart sales – but only for a one-time three month period. The key for me was a comment that someone made on one of your previous blogs that a short three-month stint on Kindle Select would be like a story appearing in an anthology. Temporarily it would be exclusive to one location but at the end of the three months all rights are free again and it would be everywhere. I have no intention of limiting my bookstore accessibility, but I am willing to try Select as a shot-in-the-arm to boost sales.
I agree with your argument except when it comes to the short term.
If I’m going to have my ebook up forever, I fail to see the harm in doing Amazon-only for 3 months to *possibly* improve algorithms and have better sales there. Though I certainly would never limit a book to one site longterm unless there was some major incentive to do so (can’t fathom what that would be).
I’m moving one of my books to Kindle Select for one 90-day cycle, because 90% of its sales are on Amazon already. It has never sold outside of Amazon or B&N (where it sales poorly). So I might as well double down and see if it can go further.
My other novel sells decently at Sony, for some reason, and a little at B&N so I’ll be keeping it in wider distribution. If the other one is successful then it should help this title anyway.
If, and that’s a big if, I have success with Kindle Select I would have nothing against debuting each novel as Kindle only and then moving it to other platforms after the first three months. I’ll have 6 or 7 novels and a few short stories out by the end of the year. I don’t mind rotating things since it only takes a minute.
Three months just doesn’t seem like a big deal to me when I’m looking for a book to be earning for 10 years or more.
David, I agree with you on the time aspect, but you are missing the key point I am trying to make. It’s not worth losing the sales on all the other sites for what Amazon is offering. As Laura Resnick said, if they bumped the royalty rate and did such things as that in exchange for being exclusive, then that might sway my opinion a little. But they do not. They want you to be exclusive only so you can put your book up for free. Excuse me? That’s my point. Even for a short three months, it’s flat not worth it.
Now I have said often that Kris is giving her new Retrieval Artist novels to Audio only for three months ahead of publication in paper and electronic. But Audio PAID HER a bunch of money for that right and she still gets her royalty rates on her sales at Audio.com. That makes an exclusive worthwhile.
You are right, three months is nothing in the scheme of things IF THEY WERE PAYING for the right. I see this as just another “writers not valuing their work” problem, but that’s my opinion.
I burst out laughing when I saw the title to this post. I didn’t know what it was about, but I could guess.
I considered writing a novella or something which would promote something I already have… but then I found out that they take exclusivity to such extremes that they don’t even allow you to have an excerpt or teaser on your blog.
And people think this will improve your “footprint”? Seriously?
As another point of data, I made 176 sales in total last year in nine months through Smashwords and all affiliates (of which 127 were Apple, 29 B&N). I don’t know exactly what I sold on Amazon in the same period, but based on what my average sales seem to be, I’d guess between four and five hundred (I don’t have a huge number of books up, and they’re priced quite high – I’m not at all worried about these numbers, I just need to get more books up). I also sell a couple of PDF ebooks through Lulu every month (Smashwords PDFs look abysmal). So say 30-35% of my ebook sales come from non-Amazon sources.
Considering as well that Smashwords offer a higher royalty rate (one that’s comparable with Kindle even when they’re through a third-party, and there’s none of this ‘only 35% for Australian sales’ nonsense) deliberately choosing to forgo 30%ish of my sales in return for the ‘opportunity’ to give my books away was not something I had to think about long and hard before turning it down.
Count me as another one: no strong emotion, just not impressed with Kindle Select.
I happened to be on the verge of posting more backlist titles when Amazon sent out the Kindle Select announcement, so I gave it a try with several of them for which I thought the program might be potentially beneficial. My exclusive 90-day period ends in about a month, and I won’t be renewing. I very much doubt I’ll launch any other e-editions via Kindle Select, and I definitely WOULD NOT take books off other sales at other vendors so that I could enroll them in Kindle Select.
I don’t “hate” the program. I don’t rend my garments and thinking, “Oh, no, no, no! I should NEVER have experiemented with it!” Etc.
I’m just not favorably impressed, and I seriously doubt that I’ll experiment with it anymore. The royalty rate on the “borrow” program is so low, I consider it an ANTI-inducement to participation. The =only= other “benefit” offered by this program is the ability to =easily= post free promos of each title for a few days; and any benefits I’ve seen from this so far are certainly not adequate compensation for having these titles available only in one sole format via one sole vendor.
My conclusion, having experiemented with Select, is that a program that demands exclusivity has got to offer me a LOT more benefits to make it a viable choice. I would suggest, for example: (1) a much higher royalty rate on the Select/Prime borrowing program; (2) a higher-than-normal royalty rate on regular sales of e-titles enrolled in Kindle Select (to compensate for being unable to sell them elsewhere); (3) a much more developed promo program, with more tools, to maximize free promos, price drops, one-day sales, 12-hour sales, 2-for-1 sales, etc.
But as the program currently is… Well, I’ve tried it, I’m not impressed, and I don’t intend to try it again unless it substantially improves and expands its benefits.
Thanks, Laura. Very much appreciated.
Being new at this — I have one novel and one short story available for sale, and a soon-to-be-published novella under review by my first reader — I still obsessively read bloggers who seem to be sane voices in the wilderness (like you, Dean).
Not sure my numbers would be of any use to anyone, except perhaps to encourage other noobs who are intimidated reading about indie writers who consider 100 units per month to be small change! (Yikes! Yes, I was intimidated!) But . . .
Across 8 weeks, I’ve sold:
5 novel units and 4 short story units at Amazon.
2 short story units at B&N.
4 novel units at Smashwords.
No figures yet for the sites to which Smashwords distributes.
But I certainly wouldn’t want to be without the Smashwords sales!
So, for now, I’m writing as hard as I can (usually only 1000 words per day) and publishing on all three sites. It’s an adventure, and I’m having a blast! (But I still worry about sales.)
Jaenii, in my opinion, your attitude is spot on the money. Keep writing and let the books and sales just build slowly. It’s getting in a hurry that causes so many issues with things like Kindle Select and other such ways of “boosting” whatever the writer wants boosted.
I would be insane to put any of my erotica into select…it sells far better on All Romance and B&N than it does on Amazon.
Aside from one thriller/suspense novella (which is my first one in that genre, the first under that pen name, so thus has no following whatsoever and doesn’t count for anything just yet), there’s only one of my books that sells more on Amazon than on other venues by any great percentage. And when I raise the price on that this weekend (it’s a romantic suspense novella, going from .99 cents to 2.49), I’m fairly certain sales for it will drop like a rock, and then equalize across all venues eventually, as that’s what happened when I raised prices on my novels.
I have no idea what I’d even consider for Select, since I know for a fact I have readers on all sorts of different platforms. Heck, I even sell a few copies here and there from my own storefront. Sure, it’s not a big reader base yet, but I’d hate to lose even one…especially since I have so few at this point.
Besides, it would look bad if I couldn’t make a book available on my own storefront right away. It’s the principle of the thing. I’m the publisher. I should be able to directly sell books I’m responsible for publishing, IMO.
I’ll keep slogging along without Select, thanks. Yes, my Amazon rankings are worse now (and that change corresponded directly with Select coming into being, which is a bit annoying), but I deal with that by just not looking at them (not that I paid much attention before). As long as there are sales trickling in on my dashboards here and there, I’m content.
In my experience, the search functionality at e-book stores other than Amazon generally seems to suck. They’re fine if you’re looking for a specific book or author, but if you want to find new books you’ve never heard of they don’t seem to have the same capabilities as Amazon (recommendations, etc). So I’d guess that a writer who becomes popular through word of mouth is likely to sell more books on those sites because readers will look for them there.
That said, I seem to have made about 20% of my money from Smashwords and Apple’s book store so clearly some people are finding unknown e-books somehow; I don’t know how, because I couldn’t even manage to find my book on Amazon’s store myself.
I’m not planning to restrict any of mine, but I could see that Hocking could make sales on B&N more easily than a new writer who’s selling a few dozen copies a month on Amazon and then sees no disadvantage to becoming Amazon-exclusive.
Ever feel like you are spitting into the wind?
It does make you wonder what the heck people are thinking.
If Hocking made a million bucks last year (I am totally making that number up btw) and had decided to go all Amazon, she would have made 590k instead.
Now 590k would be fine by me, but there is something about pissing away 410k that makes me want to scream the word ‘stupid’ at the top of my lungs.
I think the best thing to think about when you read what Dean wrote is to look at what Hocking sells (% wise, looking at her numbers will just make you cry) and the realize she has a TON of items for sale. She isn’t pushing 1 book or 3 shorts. She is producing and selling everywhere and she is doing well.
So ask yourself, what if I do all that and I only do 5% of what she does??
Yeah, making 50k would SUUUUUCCCKKKK….
Maybe this will help?
… “build an audience for work you have not yet produced.”
This is a KEY statement, because it is the WORK that brings in the audience. We have 25+ titles and made most of them free via KDP Select to gather data. The price for this test was 3 months of exclusivity, a reasonable trade-off for a lifetime of copyright.
I’m now MUCH less of a free fan now that everyone can do it. It was a selective group before this feature roll out, not anymore.
Our results speak highly of what is happening in the Amazon jungle. The first time a title goes free, you’ll see a jump in sales after it comes off, in some cases, approx 4-6x what it was before going free (it was a 10x jump for us before using KDP Select). VERY few titles will crack the Top 500 (hit a home run) without an army of fans doing your promotional heavy lifting (word of mouth).
Here’s the crunch, the second time a title goes free, it’ll have almost ZERO effect, unless you have said giant audience willing to listen to your free event promotion. It will NOT be noticed as being free the second time in the Amazon catalog without **serious** outside influence. It is *HARD* to give away 250,000 copies of a book, making an “instant” cash cow bestseller.
Obscurity is an issue, but KDP Select isn’t an adequate tool to battle this. We learned a great deal from the data, confirming much of what Dean has been saying via his experience. Rock on Dean, you’re understanding is *solid*.
Cheers, -Steve
Thanks, Steve. And great points and data. Much appreciated.
I was skeptical myself, but I figured since I was only making 1% of my sales from non-Amazon sites, Select was worth a try. I don’t know the exact figures, but since going Amazon exclusive shortly before Christmas, my sales are up at least 6X what they were before. I don’t want to be exclusive forever, but right now I see it as a way to reach the most readers (and I understand how convoluted that sounds). Since I’ve limited my avenues for revenue by enrolling in Select, I’ve decided to explore print editions, since I’ve been ebook only up to this point.
I’ll share my experience. (I think it would probably be more valuable six months from now, but until those six months pass, this is all I’ve got.) I published my first book to Kindle Select on Dec. 9, because I thought the free days would be useful and didn’t think 90 days of exclusivity was an issue. My take was that it’s 90 days, not exactly a lifetime. I expect to publish to other venues when those days are up, but KDP’s not marriage. It’s just a fling.
Anyway, my expectations were based on your blog posts and on some reading of various self-publishing boards, so I figured 60 sales in the first six months would be pretty good. I gave away over 2000 copies on my first free day, and sold over 200 in my first month. I’ve used four of my free days now, and while I’m too lazy to figure out exact numbers, I can tell you that I’ve sold about 400 copies total. At the moment, I’m selling about 10 copies a day.
Does this matter? Nope. It’s not a living. But it’s a lot more than I expected to sell. Do I intend to limit myself to one bookstore forever? Nope. But do I think I’m off to a better start than I would have been without KDP? Well, yeah. You told me what to expect–five sales a month. I believed you. It isn’t what’s happened. I’m pretty sure KDP is the difference. Does it matter? Nope. Not yet, anyway. Maybe six months from now (when I expect to be in other venues and have another book available) I’ll have another opinion. But I do suspect that KDP is a really good starting place for a newbie author, or at least that’s what my experience would indicate.
How about building an audience for work which I HAVE produced?
I’ll give the same answer I gave the last time you asked:
Because it works. I value my work, thank you very much, and dragging out insults to support your position doesn’t convince me to change my mind.
Sorry, JR, didn’t mean to hit your button. I just believe in letting people all over the world get to a writer’s work, and one thing I hated in the old traditional-only days was how some publishers just wouldn’t get books into certain stores or places or parts of the country. And most agents in those days had no way to get the work out to other countries. So any author’s work was very very limited. Now as authors, we now have a chance to sell our work all over the world. Apple is very strong in Australia, and Kobo is in more countries than I can count. Kindle is very limited around the world.
So my point is that I believe writers should believe in their work and get it out to all readers, if possible. That’s what I mean by valuing your work. Let the world have a chance to read it, instead of limiting the work to just a percentage of 19% electronic readers in this country and five other countries where electronic reading is less than a few percent of sales, and Kindle is a very, very small part of that few percent.
It is also why I shout at writers who only limit themselves to publishing electronically, even though paper books are 81% of the sales. In fact, that problem has bothered me so much, this fall we’re offering a couple workshops for writers on how to get books into print, how to design and do POD novels, and then what to do with them and how to get them easily into bookstores. And around the world.
So sorry, JR, didn’t mean to hit a button for you. No insult intended. It’s just a running battle for me to get writers to value their own work, from signing bad contracts, to listening to idiots in workshops tell them how to rewrite the life out of a story, to limiting their sales. It’s an ongoing theme for me and has been in almost every post on this blog for two plus years. And if it insults you, please stop reading this blog. There are lots of other blogs out there who don’t push writers into giving value to their own work.
Now that Nicholson, Konrath, Crouch ad nauseum, “give us a try” collection might be just the ticket for a freemium with some legs – because;
1) it can be priced higher, making free a better “value”
2) it is an awesome sampling tool, aka business card
3) it can have many “first in the series” titles in it
4) each title contains links to buy others like it
5) another chunk of shelf space created
and currently, #108 of all Kindle titles:
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Thriller-Box-Set-ebook/dp/B0073J0XVC
Not a bad chunk of change coming in for work that was already created! Packagers, aka publishers like this.
Yup, I agree, SL, and if I had had something that fit, I would have been with them. It was a great idea and something they put together for exactly what it’s doing.
I have no reason to believe “let the sales just build slowly” is for some mysterious reason better than building sales faster. Why is that a superior strategy? Give me a reason why fewer sales is BETTER than more sales.
More people buying my books (and it is a lot more) isn’t just more money, it is also a lot more people recommending my books. I’ll take it.
JR, oh, I agree with you, more sales faster is better, if you have a bunch of other books to back it up, so those who found your work can then find more of your work. That’s the key. Authors who only have a few titles up and do the Kindle Select are just hurting themselves because, as a reader, finding a good book leads to wanting to read more by the same author. And thus if the author has many more books, the Kindle Select on one book might be a great idea. But if the author has no other books, it’s just disappointing readers.
It’s why major traditional publishers often never pushed first books in series, but waited until book number three in the series to give it a shot. And why traditional publishers never used to like one-book contracts and still don’t. Just business, and knowning readers, nothing more.
That one-to-three ratio is about the same as the results I’ve seen posted in various forums—though it may be weighted too much in favor of the success stories, since those are more likely to be reported.
As one of the success stories, I do encourage people to experiment with their own titles to see what works for them.
I hope you try it, Dean, and report your results.
I will point out that Amazon does pay me extra money for KDP Select, because I get paid for borrows. It’s not as much as a sale, but it is a new income stream. And it doesn’t seem to be cannibalizing my sales (which are down from their Christmas peak, but still 10x what they were before joining the program).
My book has been in KDP Select for about two months, and the money I earned from the borrows is enough to pay for two months rent, and then some.
So that’s more than nothing.
But of course I’m an outlier (as is Hocking). People should try lots of things, keep what works, and drop what doesn’t.
David
Dear Dean,
I have said this before elsewhere but I will say it again. It all depends on how well the non-Amazon book stores are selling your books.
I have self-published, which means that I have limited my sales in physical bookstores. Now lots of people will argue that I should not forgo this possible place to sell books by self-publishing (despite the fact that for many who write genre books like mine bookstores didn’t sell their books very well), or that I should spend time and money to make sure my POD books are showing up in places like B&N, (despite the fact the number of sales and the profit I would make is too little to make that sensible for me.)
But it feels like you are making a similar argument about the decision to “limit” sales to Amazon for 3 months. For me, B&N’s and Apple’s failure to have a clear historical mystery category/plus the other ebookstore’s limited share of the market, has meant that 85-95% of my sales have been with Amazon. Since the books are the same, the cover and description are the same, and my marketing isn’t store specific, I can only conclude it is the stores that are failing in connecting my books to their potential buyers-which right now I can’t do anything about.
So, when I looked at my sales for the last 4 months of last year, and saw that I sold 100 a month to B&N and Smashwords, and 500 a month to Amazon, I knew that all I was risking was a total loss of 300 sales from non-amazon stores in exchange for the 3 month exclusive-and the benefits of Amazon’s KDP option (both free promotion/and lending library.)
Well after my 2 day free promotion I sold 6800 books above my usual 500 sales on Amazon in January and had 1200+ “borrows.” So, I lost 300 sales in order to gain 6800 sales, plus borrows. Seems like a sensible trade off.
It means at the end of these 3 months (when I very well may go back to trying to figure out how to sell in Barnes and Noble) I will have made enough money to keep writing full time for the next year (and you are one of the ones who keep saying that writing is the first priority). My books also have more people who are looking for the next books (which I will be able to write because I don’t have to go back to teaching). In addition, it seems that you need a certain volume of sales to get reviews, and the free downloads and increased sales of the book I promoted have resulted in 18 new, mostly 5 star, reviews, which make my books more salable In contrast, while my first book, Maids of Misfortune, now has 55 reviews on Amazon, on B&N it had only 3-4-which of course didn’t help sell the book).
So, does this mean limiting your sales for a short amount of time through enrollment in KDP is a sensible solution for everyone? Of course not, just as deciding to self-publish a book and forgoing sales in brick and mortar stores may not be sensible for everyone. But certainly is a smart move for some, as it was for me.
M. Louisa, I want to correct one fact you have flat wrong, and not about Kindle Select. You said “I have self-published, which means that I have limited my sales in physical bookstores.”
Excuse me????? Why does being an indie publisher limit your sales in physical bookstores??? Did you make the decision to not do a physical copy? If so, fine, but being an indie publisher does not limit sales to physical bookstores. Sorry, you are just flat wrong on that one and I don’t want that to stand.
As for your electronic sales on Kindle Select, glad it worked for you. Clearly you wrote a great book. And I do hope the sales continue over months and months, but often such push promotion only lasts like a produce model in publishing. But on that I can be wrong as well. I hope I am, honestly.
I have you down as one of the enthusiastic success points in my informal survey.
I just started following Amanda’s blog and I find her to be very helpful in advice just like yours has been. I haven’t published anything yet but maybe this year we will give this self pub a try and see how it works.
Thanks for all your advice.
Dear DWS
I do have a print edition, and sell a respectable amount on Amazon, but I am sorry, I haven’t read any detailed report on how to get that pod edition into wide distribution in brick and mortar stores. You say that there is a way to get your books in bookstores all over the world, but I haven’t seen anyone blog about how to do it as an indie author, and I am looking forward to hearing about how to do so without spending even more time than I am spending marketing rather than writing.
I can go to individual stores and ask if they will carry a book, which I have, and people can order through stores like B&N, and I will get a small percentage of the net, but if as far as I have read, if I really wanted to sell a lot of books in brick and mortar stores I would need a traditional contract.
Looking forward to hearing about the secret to a large number of print sales in brick and mortar stores without being a publisher.
M. Louisa, no surprise there is no detailed blog anywhere on how to get your trade paper into wider distribution. Indie writers, for the most part, are only focused on electronic publishing because it’s easy. And is the push right now.
Of course, as you mentioned, but put down as light, your book is already getting wide distribution if you went through CreateSpace or LighteningSource and took their advanced program. It gets into Baker & Taylor and Ingrams distributors. And those are the same big two the traditional publishers use for much of their distribution to indie bookstores.
B&N and a few other major stores, plus box stores like Wallmart, have their own buyers and they buy directly from publishers. (Yes, you can get into those buyers as well, but it takes a bunch of books and more time and really isn’t worth the effort to be honest.) But all indie stores either order direct from the publisher (which they can do from you) or go through Ingrams and B&T. Just a year or so ago there was a resistance to ordering POD books by the stores from those two, and the code on the book would show it was a POD. However, since even traditional publishers are using POD services now, that resistance is fading quickly and is gone for most stores. Not all, but most.
So getting your book into the B&T and Ingrams channels also then gets it to the special orders desk in B&N and into other places as well. You have to know how to price your book to get a decent return on each sale. But when bookstores start buying, they buy in bulk, often ten or more of the same title at a time, which is great fun.
You, as a publisher, can also get into the ABA promotion programs as well for almost no money, and get lists of thousands of bookstores around the country. And have your new release on a list sent to all bookstores every week. The key is you can’t look like an author hawking your book. You have to look like a publisher, and there are tricks to that as well.
During Pulphouse, we had a core group of 270 bookstores who ordered directly from us. And that along with direct orders generated from $50,000 to $100,000 gross income per month. In 1990 dollars. At WMG Publishing we are going to build a list of bookstore who order from us directly that I hope is larger than that. And that won’t count one penny from electronic publishing.
Again, there is a ton to this, far more than I could bore people with in a series of blog posts. But we are doing a workshop this fall on how to do print books for indie publishers which will not only include all the sales and such, but also hands-on experience in how to format books, how to do it all quickly, how to do back covers and spines and every other detail. Including how to do limited editions if you want to do that. It’s going to be a really fun workshop and I will announce it in March for the fall.
But put it this way. There is a ton more money to be made by doing paper books than by doing electronic books. Why? 81% of all book buyers are still paper buyers. And of the 19% who do buy electronic and own devices, they often still buy paper as well.
So hope that helps. Paper books are a huge way for indie publishers to make a ton of money. It might not be much at first, but the number grows. For example, in 2011, WMG had up 9 books POD. They were put in scattered fashion over the year and not pushed at all. The total income for January 2012 on the POD was higher than all the income we made in 2011. And we only have ten books up. That number will change dramatically as the spring goes on and by the fall I suspect WMG Publishing will have almost 80 books in the POD title list and our catalog. And I suspect the income will change as well. (grin)
It really is fantastic that we writers now have options and can discuss and debate the best business strategies with one another, compare notes of what works and doesn’t. So much better than the old way of doing business.
Sorry, just had a moment of wow the future is arriving and I like it.
Got that right also, David. It is cool that writers have gained the control to do what they want. My opinions may be wrong for many people and that’s cool. We have the freedom now to play and try different ways. We are in a good future, one I honestly never expected to happen. It just never occurred to me that traditional publishers would be so stupid as to lose control of their lock on the distribution system. Typically stupid for them, wonderful for us.
You may be right, Dean. And it wouldn’t surprise me. That’s why I’m just experimenting with the book that doesn’t sell well outside of Amazon. I really don’t understand why that it is. Perhaps because it’s YA? If I like the success, I’d be good with each book starting that way. Big if, of course, depending on sales, royalties which I know will be lower than what I normally get.
Of course, my biggest strategy is continuing to write my tail off. That’s always the best strategy.
David, got that right. Writing hard and as often as possible is the best way to become a better storyteller and get more product out at the same time. And, oh yeah, it’s fun. (grin)
I know your post is about Kindle Select, but I thought I would relate my little tale. I had a bad money crunch coming in February, and writing was the only way I could hope to help myself.
So, in November I used Amazon’s price-matching ability to get the first book in my series put to free (this was before the Select program announcement). The results were amazing, with 7000 downloads the first 24 hours. As I hoped, it jumped the sales of the full priced sequel books in the series in a way that was far more than I originally hoped for.
I knew about Amazon’s price-matching ability since first becoming an Indie, but I did not use it. What was the point with only a few items up for sale? I wanted to sell other items WHILE something was up for free. I don’t mind loss-leaders, but they need to have some business plan or logic behind them. By November I had 18 items up for sale including multiple books in the same series.
Also note that by doing it this way (and yes, I know about the contract issue, but this was the way KDP support was telling authors to do this at the time) I was able to keep the book in all the other sale avenues.
I learned several things doing this:
1. For boosting a series, this is great. The sales on the other books of the series response was immediate and drastic.
2. It did boost sales of my other non-connected works, particularly novels. It boosted like-genre the best.
3. The other sales avenues also saw a small boost in the sales of the series sequels, but not so much in other backlist titles. All except on Smashwords. On Smashwords I saw no promotional boost at all. I found both of these responses rather interesting.
4. The halo effect does fade. For me it was 2 1/2 months, with the drop-off starting at about the 35-40 day mark and slanting downwards at a gentle rate. A nice halo, to be sure, but it does fade.
5. The books have settled to a new level of monthly sales, but honestly, they are not a huge amount over before.
Oh, and reviews? Pardon me while I laugh.
People who download a lot of freebies are also typically the same people who are the hardest to please. Beware the one and two star reviews from people who should have never picked up the book in the first place! It’s not enough that they picked up something to read outside of the genres they don’t like, but they also have to shout out about it. Sheesh. I was expecting it, and I wasn’t disappointed in the phenomenon. Fortunately, I had enough good reviews both before and after the promotion to limit the effects of this. (A lot of readers I’ve talked to don’t make their decisions on reviews alone, but enough have told me that it can make a difference if they were wavering. Eh, it is what it is)
The plusses were that I have new fans, some who were kind enough to send me fan mail, and that my money-crunch was more than solved by the sales.
Now, would I do it by going exclusive? Not with an ebook already out in all the sales channels. Not with the way the program is right now. If they want exclusive, then I want to be paid for it or compensated in some other manner. 5 free days to use is not enough, nor is the small amount announce per borrow for December.
The way I did it worked really well and I learned a lot without ticking off the people who have other ereaders. Oh, and those people? Some of them wrote to me, too, thanking me for making my work available in other avenues.
P.S. The people talking about the percentage of people who are on other ereaders not mattering as much reminds me of the old adage: “A happy customer tells a friend; an unhappy customer tells the world.” While this can be ignored by some, or used as a selling base for others, I prefer to avoid it myself. I have too many international readers not to pay attention to them. To me, they do matter, even if for some books Amazon sells more.
Sure, it’s a business decision that each of us has to make, but to cut out that much of the world? For short term gain? The halo effect does fade, for some slower than others with only a few hitting the sales lottery. Some readers have announced they are keeping a list of names of the authors who’s books they went looking for only to find them exclusive (although how long they’ll stick to that list is another point of argument).
I think the length of the halo effect is getting forgotten by a lot of people. December is when Select started. If my timeline is anything to go by, then a lot of those who participated are still in that halo effect or just reaching the point where it will start to fade. The real results will come 6 months to a year later.
By the way, I was wondering how many “but, but, but” responses you would get to this post, and the comments didn’t disappoint. You are right. Those for whom Select work are shouting it out as loud as they can. For those for whom it didn’t, or only worked a little, the response I’ve seen is “meh.” We hear a lot more of the shouts than the “meh’s” and so sometimes it appears lopsided.
Thanks, JA for the comment. Doing price-matching is still a non-Select way to get a book to go free, but it’s tougher and requires help from friends. But it still does work if that is the goal. Just a little harder to do since Kindle Select came along. And exact timing is not possible.
Thanks again.
So far my (modest) Amazon sales far outstrip my Barnes & Noble sales. That said, it would be foolish not to be up there. Using Smashwords is easy and gets your book into so many venues, I’m not sure why anyone wouldn’t do it.
A question about Fictionwise: has anyone tried it? How good are the sales there? They charge to put your books up so I’m hesitating.
Sean, Fictionwise is an old site, with a horrid front page and hard to navigate. They were in ahead of many of the other sites and for a time were the only way to go, but they have faded away and I would avoid. In fact, Kris had forty-plus things up through Fictionwise and pulled them all and we put them back up on Kindle and Smashwords and B&N. My opinion: Avoid. Unless they have radically changed in the last few years. And I mean radically.
I put one short story up on Kindle Select just to give it a try, and added a sample chapter of a novel (available everywhere) at the end.
After one free day sales for the short story continue to do well, and also saw an increase in sales for the novel.
The really bizarre thing is that people are “borrowing” my 99 cent short story… I would have thought people who get to borrow one item per month would grab something more expensive. In this case, I got $1.70 for each borrow. I did the math and the royalty rate is 171 percent. (Too bad that doesn’t apply to everything.)
What I might try is taking the first short story out of the program when the 90 days are up and then adding another in its place with a sample chapter of a novel. I don’t think keeping one short story out of the mainstream for three months is that big of a deal.
I was already against it, firmly on the grounds of it being exclusive, whether that be for three months or a eternity. Now I’m sold against it fully. The only way I’d try it is if I’ve totally failed everywhere else.
I have some totally unsubstantiated theories regarding the benefits of going free (which seems to be the main selling point of Select).
People are reporting that subsequent free periods with the same book are resulting in fewer downloads. People are also reporting wildly different numbers of downloads when their books are free. I’ve heard anything from under a hundred to tens of thousands.
Now, my theory is that putting your book up for free, taps in to the market of people looking at that time who would potentially have bought your book at some point. Maybe not now, maybe not until they read a good review or were in the right mood, or had finished that other series they’re reading by another author – but they might have paid for your book.
Yes, people download books that aren’t quite their usual style. I do that myself – but it’s rare that I then decide to buy more books by an author whose work I didn’t expect would be my thing. On the one occasion when I have done so, it was because the cover gave the wrong impression about the type of book it was & the book actually WAS the type of book I like. I’ve seen several readers posting that, because there are so many free ebooks available, they only download the ones they would have bought anyway.
If a book has the potential to appeal to a lot of potential buyers, then it will get a lot of free downloads (a number of whom would have considered paying for it at some point) and will have increased visibility, leading to more people ‘discovering’ it when it comes off free.
If the book captures people’s imaginations enough to build on that momentum and continue to sell well, then that’s wonderful – but rare. More likely is that people see a bunch of sales at once in the following few weeks that would have come in gradually over time – much like an advance.
After that, it slows down and subsequent attempts to do the same thing have less effect because your book has already been up in front of the majority of avid book buyers/freebie downloaders who check regularly for the latest bargains.
So, on the plus side, you’ve got your book NOW for free in the hands of people who might have bought it at some point and who might tell others about it or buy other works you’ve written (presuming that you haven’t also put all of those up for free as well – which some people do.) The temporary visibility also bring forward a large number of potential sales and you get an injection of cash all at once (which can be handy for some people depending on their circumstances.)
On the minus side, you’ve given away multiple copies to readers when an unknown percentage of those would have paid for them at some point.
That may be a trade-off that people are willing to accept, especially if they need money now. The market will never have been completely exhausted because there will always be new readers or occasional readers who weren’t looking when your book was free.
Because it’s a trade-off that can work for some people, I would never say that people shouldn’t do it. However, it doesn’t appeal to me because I’m happy to wait for those buyers to get around to finding and considering my work (once it’s published!) Also, because I get twitchy at the idea of exclusivity. You’re one system glitch away from zero income if you rely on only one vendor!
In my opinion, this issue isn’t even about money. I mean, money is nice. But who seriously becomes a writer for the money? I want to publish books to reach readers. I want to tell stories to reader. So why on earth would I intentionally prevent a huge portion of readers from finding my books? If all you really care about is your nice Amazon paycheck, then more power to you. But if you care about people reading your stories, then Select is just stupid.
I put up four of my stories (two were autobiographical) on KDP as an experiment. The 90 days will expire in early March, so I will be taking all of them out. Although I did the free giveaway, it only helped with sales afterwards in the four and did not translate to my other works. I did the giveaway over Christmas mainly for my friends who have the same disease and do not have much extra money.
The reason I am taking them out is that Barnes and Noble has been about 35 percent of my sales last year. That is a significant amount considering that I am a new published author.
I have been taking your advice, Dean, and have been putting up a lot of my short stories that are in the 99 cent area. In the next two weeks I am putting those stories together in one collection. Also on the burner is one novel that needs a read-through before it goes to my reader and am working on two other novels.
When I need a break, I go to a website and edit (or at least read and suggest deletion) of other writers’ articles. I do get paid, but it is very little. And, looking at other writers’ works has really changed my idea of my own writing. Since I came out of the English Literature program with the idea that I was a GREAT writer, reading work from beginning writers have humbled me. Some of them really need to work on grammar, but many of them can tell a story. There are a lot of people out there who know the story structure.
Anyway, Dean – I really appreciate your thoughts and I do agree with your KDP assessment. Also, my mother worked in advertising for most of her adult life. She would agree that if you don’t use all available outlets for your product, then you are shooting yourself in the foot.
Yours, Cyn
Interesting.
I’d like to try Select, but which story? That’s the big question. As a guy who has a lot on Amazon, I could benefit from it, but which book would be my sacrificial lamb? That is the question that vexes me and you are lucky to have one that you can use.
In regards to stores, I make the same on both Sony and B&N, Apple comes in second to last, and, yes, I do sell on Kobo so-so. Amazon US is my highest income earner with Amazon UK being about 25% less than that store’s income per month. It might look like:
S: 15%
BN: 15%
AM U: 35%
AM UK: 20%
AP: 10%
KO: 5%
(^45/55^)
(I have 355 titles, enough to make Amazon’s KDP (etc) a pain to find books on, and make about 5% of what you made in December with an 11% increase in income per week [scarily its almost exactly the same percentage increase each time.)
I don't count other store because AM EU and so on aren't going to pay out any time within the next 2-3 years.
By the way, I like this sneaky quote: "My opinion is build your writing..." Above all else there can be no greater truth than great writing sells (especially when it cannot be rejected - in most cases - by the distribution system.)
Craft plus Business equals success (and that's the message that you and Kris are trying to get through here, in my opinion.)
As an equation it might look like this:
(C+B=Success)
Remove either part and you are going up the creek without a paddle. However, in this world, you can get lucky and not need one or the other at times, but I suggest that - long term - the truth is that both are necessary (of course, with the JA K. [L], which is ‘luck’ at times.) Hehe… We all know that though, right?
Lol, on top of what I just said about, where would I find the time to actually go searching for a book to put into the KDP Select system? Yawn… To bed I go.
Only wanted to add a small thing…JA mentioned the short-term thinking of some of this, and it reminded me of something else. You never know when you’re going to have a bit of a “pop” on another sales channel. Most people I have spoken to about the KDP Select thing who left other sales channels often did so because “they weren’t selling anything” on this or that channel. Well, I didn’t sell anything on B&N most of the first 8-9 months I was published there. I mean really nothing (not 200 books a month nothing, sorry, but I had to laugh at that – jeez louise). I was making less than $20 a month nothing…it was nada, zilch. Then, all of a sudden, in November of last year, that changed. Not radically-radically, but significantly…and it keeps rising. I actually asked around a few other writer’s lists and this change wasn’t universal across writers or books, so I couldn’t have anticipated it. It’s possible it was because the 4th book of a series went up, it could have been affected by the bump in Nook sales prior to the holidays…or, as another writer said, it could be pure book-buying voodoo (chicken bones and feathers, I think she said). Either way, if I’d been deciding based on my previous sales on that channel, I would have never waited long enough to experience that. So sometimes it’s not helpful to look at one or two or even (in my case) 9 months of a sales record and decide a particular sales channel is worthless. Just another experience.
JC, thank you. A great point and one that makes no sense in normal sales, but happens all the time in publishing. What makes a book sell one place and not another is just wild guessing. For example, a very small part of Kris’s The Freelancer’s Survival Guide was up as a stand-alone. (The huge book is also selling in 9 different parts as stand-alone sections.) The parts sell from 5-10 each across all sites each month. Nice when you consider the big book also sells much better. Suddenly through Smashwords through Apple iBooks, one section sold hundreds and hundreds of copies in Australia, and is still selling like crazy there after six months. One section. No where else in the world. Just weird. So thanks, JC. Great point.
Could you post more about price-matching?
When my novella is released in March (thus giving me 1 novel and 1 novella for sale), I thought I might experiment with having my short story free on Smashwords for a week to see if the short might draw attention to the 2 longer works. From your post about “needing friends,” it sounds like it’s more complicated than that!
So . . . enlighten my ignorance?
Excellent post.
A funny thing happened in the wake of the Kindle Select program, which I declined to join because of the exclusivity requirement. My Amazon sales fell by half, but my Barnes & Noble sales have quadrupled. Now, my B&N sales are outselling Amazon.com four-to-one.
I made no changes in marketing or price and to be honest, have no clue why my ebook is suddenly doing better on B&N than Amazon, but I’m not going to complain.
The prevailing wisdom of Amazon being the biggest seller would not have predicted that my B&N sales would jump. To me, that’s evidence of the benefit of sales channel diversity.
Exclusivity is rarely a good thing.
Perhaps as an aside, you said a day or two ago that you had a new posting coming about pricing — was this “it”? Because this is more about exclusivity and impact on price is only tangentally related. Looking forward to the next one pricing though…I’m doing a posting next week or so myself, and I’d love to see yours go up first so I can learn from it
PolyWogg
Paul, no this post was just an aside. I have a post about the costs of publishing and a post about pricing almost done. So this coming week will be full. (grin)
Agree 100%, Dean.
I’m trying an experiment with one short story published under another name in KDP Select. The name is one I haven’t used for anything else to see what would happen as if I were “new”. So far in two months the sales have ticked along the same as everything else at Amazon. I see no difference at all from granting exclusivity to Amazon.
Now I can’t wait to get the piece back and pub it on all sites. Good thing I don’t have book as event thinking of I’d be moaning to everyone how Amazon screwed me or some such nonsense *grin*.
I made the decision, I’m solely responsible for that decision. Period.
I will never use KDP Select as a promo tool again and the pros I’ve talked to feel the same way. (Never is a word I rarely use because I’ve been burned too many times.)
Would I try an experiment again? Absolutely. Why not? The one proviso I have is the term of the experiment is under my control and the end date is reasonable by my high standards, and they are high.
Good post, Dean, as always.
I tried Kindle Select; I figured one cycle of 90 days to see how it went wouldn’t be that bad. I have only one novel out (and a couple of short stories). Frankly, I was underwhelmed with my personal experience so far. I’ve only had a couple of loans.
On the flip side, the bestseller list of EVERY genre is right now dominated by indie books in the Select program. So obviously it is working, and working well, for some books.
Near as I can tell, over 3/4 of all fiction ebook selling over 1000 copies a month on Amazon are self published. And yes, most of those books are in Select.
It’s a method. Personally, I suspect it’s a GOOD method if you have ten+ titles out and can rotate one through there periodically as an ad for the rest of your work.
Incidentally, I also ran a short promo of my ebook at 99 cents. Got a bunch of downloads, way more than before. I popped the price back to $3.99, and – no shock – the sales dropped back down. I’m making about 1/4 the sales I was at 99 cents.
Of course, I’m also making twice as much income. Oh, and I noticed that in the wake of that 99 cent sale, my short story sales have jumped, about doubled. Am I wishing I had a lot more things out there? Yes. Yes, I am.
I’m OK with playing around with some of these things. It’s experimentation, to learn the values. But I’m not going to stress about them too much, or waste too much time with them. Nor forget basic business principles in the process…
Great attitude, Kevin. Thanks for the report back.
And Russ, great experiment. Thanks for the report on how it worked.
Dean,
Not to derail this whole bit… but I will!
In regards to paper, I remember the TLAP entry you did on pricing and bookstores etc. It got me thinking and so i reread it and then played with the calculator at Createspace for a paper edition of a novel,
I used 400 pages priced at 16.99 (I crunched other lengths too, but I’ll use this one for now.)
The amazon.com sale was a good rate as was the online store through createspace. The extended distribution, though, was less than $1 royalty per book.
Your method of direct sales to book stores was far better IIRC.
I guess my question is, is the extended distribution really worth it for 83 cents per book? Is it more of an exposure consideration or am I missing something else?
Thanks
JoeMontana, I just did the calculation on their calculator at CreateSpace for a 6 x 9 inch trim, 400 page, $16.99 book and the extended distribution profit is $1.14. Or a 16.3% profit margin.
By the way, while I as there, I noticed Kris’s new Retrieval Artist novel had sold 93 copies so far this month. And I checked into the details and 75 of those was one order through expanded distribution, more than likely for a warehouse of a bookstore or Ingrams or B&N warehouse.
I agree, if you can sell your books direct to bookstores as I suggested in Think Like a Publisher blogs (tab at the top of the page) then you can make upwards of $4.00 to $5.00 per copy by offering the bookstore 40-45% discounts. (They only get from 22-30% from Ingrams and B&T.) But my attitude is to do BOTH. No limit on the number of books CreateSpace can do.
So to answer your question, is extended distribution worth the $25.00? Uh, YEAH!!! Not only do you make money, but it gets your books into bookstores that might not know to go direct to you. And having books on shelves in stores is never a bad thing. It’s promotion, it makes money for you, and if your books sell, it gets the bookstores ordering more of the same book and your next books.
It’s all win. Do both.
Joemontana, the other thing you need to know about the extended distribution system is that even at 83 cents per copy, you’re probably making more on your book than you would on each copy of a mass market paperback sold by a traditional publisher. Writers average about 55 cents per copy on those books…before agent fees.
Plus all the other benefits that Dean listed.
I must chime in as well. As I just recently published my first two books and waiting on the cover for the third, my sales have been negligible, but something interesting happened. (everyone try to read through this without laughing too hard when I mention my sales) In December 3 copies of my books sold on nook and none on kindle. In january, another copy on nook, none on kindle. This month so far, 1 copy on nook…but then two copies sold on kindle; one of each book.
Now these sales numbers are quite laughable, but the fact that someone suddenly found the book and bought the first and second in the series definitely proved your point, Dean, that it would be folly to limit myself in sales outlets.
Just my humble $.02
Dean and Kris,
Thanks for the feedback. I think my initial calc was with *15.99* even though I said 16.99 – that’s why the numbers were off (not that it is a huge difference).
I hadn’t looked at it through the traditional royalty prism – a $7 paperback @ 8% royalty (56 cents!!!
).
Appreciate you setting me straight!
Q. Why would anyone limit their sales to only one bookstore?
A. Because it is in their economic best interest to do so.
It is really that simple and, of course, that complex. How does an author decide it is in their best interest to go exclusive? Let’s focus on Amazon and KDP Select, since that’s what we are really talking about. The only reason to go with this program is if you think it will boost your income by increasing sales on Amazon. The risk is the lost sales on other platforms of the specific work(s) you enroll in the program for three months. Neither of those is knowable, but authors ought to have a pretty good idea of what they are giving up. Should you try KDP Select? You are the only person who can answer that, but here’s a list of factors that should incline you towards using the program:
1. Your sales on other platforms are inconsequential to your income. (+95)
2. You have multiple works in a single genre. (+25)
3. You have a series of 3 or more related works that are available for sale on Amazon . (+50)
4. You understand how Amazon’s recommendation system works and can use it to your advantage. (+25)
5. You are pursuing a thoughtful marketing plan for your writing that can accomodate KDP Select. (+50)
6. You have actual evidence that your work is “sticky” (i.e. people who buy one of your works frequently buy another one). (+50)
7. You have cover art that is attractive in the context of the genre of your work. (+25)
Add up the points from the factors that describe you and your work. If you are less than 100, then KDP Select is not for you. If you are between 100 and 200, you should be considering when to use KDP Select. Over 200, stop reading this right now and go sign up.
I can help with #4. Kindle sales for indie authors are driven mostly by Amazon’s personalized recommendation system. Climbing the best seller lists is an effect, not a cause. The recommendation system leads to increased sales when you can attract sales, whether free or paid, and views of your book(s) from power readers who frequently buy and/or search for books in your genre. When those folks buy (or even look at the page for) your book(s), your books start popping up on other buyers recommendation. Price doesn’t matter very much, as long as you are not out of line for your genre. If you are writing thrillers and Barry Eisler’s latest novel is $6.99, you will be hard pressed to go above that.
I think if you look at the writers who are pleased with KDP Select and the ones that aren’t, you will see that the factors that I outline define the difference.
I have a prediction to make. Around mid-March (i.e. close to 3 months after KDP Select began), KDP Select will become more attractive: they will add some wondrous benefit to make sure that anyone who planned to be there for only 3 months will stick around.
Like anything, joining KDP select is a personal decision. It worked for me. I gave away 16,000 books, but my Amazon rank has since shot up and I’m selling a lot more copies. I blogged about it with some numbers here: http://www.larsguignard.com
My 2 cents? Like some other posters have said, look carefully at your individual situation and do what works for you.
I had a thought after reading all these comments. The best reason to use KDP Select is as a loss leader/promo for your other stuff, right? (At least it seems that way to me.) So I think a good way to use it would be with a collection of short stories. If you have a lot of series/settings, then you could have one story in the collection for each of them. That way people who download it free or borrow it get just a taste of each series, and if they like any of them enough, they’ll go get more. This way you can use one book as a promo for lots of works. And if you’re selling each short story as its own ebook, you’re probably not losing many sales–plus, people who borrow the book through Prime and love one or two stories can then buy each story separately.
So for you, Dean, you might have a collection with Poker Boy, Bryant Street, and Jukebox stories, as well as a few others (you probably have more settings that I haven’t noticed). Then if somebody downloads it free and decides they love Poker Boy, neither you nor the reader has lost much, and they’ll go buy the rest of your Poker Boy stories.
Of course this only works if you (generic you this time) have a lot of different works up. But you’re doing that anyway, right?
You could also do the same thing with first chapters of different books, but that seems like bait for a lot of one-star reviews from people angry that they didn’t get any complete stories for their no-money.
Just a thought. I’d be interested to see if anyone tries it.
Clare, the key is do what you do and think through the reasons to use the program. So many writers didn’t do a careful and thoughtful look at why limit sales to one store. Your reasons are good in my opinion, if you have a bunch of other product as you said. But you also noted, anything free always attracts bad reviews. Nature of that beast. Thanks for the great comment.