About Kindle Direct Publishing's "Select" Program

Earth and Sky is now available for Nook here.

If you are thinking about self-publishing and e-book, you have probably checked out Amazon.com and their various services.  There is always the question of whether or not to enroll your book in KDP select.  In case you aren't familiar, here's the short and sweet of it:

If you enroll in the select program, members of amazon prime can potentially use their free borrow to get your book for free.  If this happens, Amazon still pays you for the book (you get a portion of the fund that they have set aside for the whole month, and this amount varies based on how many books and borrows there are to share in it.  For me it's been a little over $2.00 per borrow each month).  In addition, you get get a limited number of days (5 per 90 day period) in which you can give away your book for free (otherwise there are minimum prices you have to adhere to).

So, some good perks.  However, you cannot sell or give away your book through any other source during the enrollment period.

I've done this with all of my books thus far, since I was just starting out and wanted the option of giving away lots of free copies to spread the word.  I split my giveaways into 2 days, 2 days, 1 day, and spread them out over the course of the three months.  I gave away about 1300 copies of my first book the first time it was free, about half that the next month, then about half that again the next month.  The other books didn't do quite so well, but followed the same pattern.  So, I did get my books out to thousands of readers, and I landed some reviews which will help sell more books.  Was it worth the exclusivity?

I found that the first time a book was free, it had tons of downloads, less the next time, and less the final time.     So, my final conclusion is that this is a good program to begin with, but that it's not worth re-enrolling the same book into the program once the 90 days is up. As my books come out of their 90 day cycle, I plan to release them over at B&N and see how it goes.  Now, it's entirely possible that I won't sell anything over there.  If that is the case, I may find that it's worth enrolling in the KDP select program just to get the prime borrows.  We'll see.

Happy writing! :)