Selling Books on Amazon – Is KDP Select for you?

What is KDP Select?

In a nutshell, KDP Select is a self-publishing program available to authors to promote, lend and sell their ebooks at no cost on Amazon.com. For a period of 90 days, authors give Amazon exclusive rights to their books; during this period, you cannot sell your book enrolled in the program elsewhere on the net in the digital format and you will have to put up your book for a free download for 5 days during the 90 day period. You can choose single days or use this promotional opportunity in blocks, or the entire 5 day period as one long promotion.

You might be thinking that the point of this promotion is for authors to gain visibility on the site and to drive up sales of their books, making money for themselves and Amazon. Not so. Amazon is a retailer, not a publisher. The point of this free download promotion is to supply Amazon customers who have bought Amazon’s Kindle e-reader with unlimited free ebooks, thus making the Kindle device a very attractive choice for the consumer. You can buy the Kindle e-reader and never have to buy a single ebook as you have unlimited access to a vast number of ebooks, on tap. Would you pay for a book if you could have it for free? — Exactly.

What are you gaining by enrolling your ebooks in KDP Select?

That’s the million dollar question. You might gain some exposure and gain readers, but what does this mean in practical terms? Your initial free downloads will be high; plenty of people will be downloading your free books but unfortunately the most likely post-promotion outcome is that this reader interest will not translate to paid sales in any significant volume, if at all. People will download anything for free, and your book will be valued accordingly, as a big fat NOTHING.

You might get some word-of-mouth and gain some residual sales, but the odds are stacked against you.
First of all, you are not harnessing an audience who is prepared to pay to be entertained; you are catering to people who are prepared to be entertained for free. These people are there for the free downloads only.
Second of all, Amazon is not actively promoting you as an author; the moment your free ebook promotion is over, so is your visibility on the site.
Thirdly, as a self-published author you probably don’t have a following or else you wouldn’t have to do free promotions; therefore, after your free promotion is over, you’re basically back to square one – no visibility and no incentive for Amazon customers to buy your product. Your book is buried under a mountain of other books on offer; unless someone specifically searches for your title by name and your author name, your book has no chance of being sold.

Will free downloads give you reader reviews?

If you are lucky, you might get a few. But the current market is saturated with free books so readers are getting lazy. Why give a review when you don’t have to? Like anything else, people are mostly moved to action when something goes wrong; for example, readers will post bad reviews on your book’s page if their free download had issues or they weren’t happy with some technical aspect of the transaction, which, of course, has nothing to do with your work, but it will get you a bad review, which BTW, you will find Amazon will be slow to remove. If they remove it at all.

This looks bleak, I get it and I’m sure by now you get it too. Given this state of affairs, is there anything you can do to help sell your ebooks through KDP Select?

Yes, there is. Promoting your kindle ebooks on Amazon need not be the soul-destroying, frustrating experience that it is for many authors who, given enough passage of time, begin to resent giving their creativity, knowledge, skill and hard work away for free, for no good returns.

You have to start valuing your work yourself. If you don’t, your readers certainly won’t. Put a price on your book, and charge it, at all times. To gain visibility and hopefully interested readers, publish short stories or only a few chapters from your books or the first book in a series in the KDP Select program and allow these to circulate for free, with a link to your book where readers can purchase it. You simply use the KDP Select to advertise your work, not to give the whole book away. Alternately, split your book into parts and give only the first one for free. End on a cliff-hanger so readers are motivated to purchase the rest of the story. After all, at some point, Amazon will want to convert this free download only audience to a paying one. So why not help them along? And if your 'giving it away' strategy isn't working, why not try not giving it away? This strategy isn’t a guarantee, of course, of a surge in sales, but if you’re not having many or any at all, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Remember, building an audience takes time, and very little sustainable success will happen overnight.

It goes without saying that you should have a Facebook page and Twitter account (for what it's worth, which may not be much but at least you'll feel like you're doing something) where you can promote your work, as well as a Goodreads account where you can blog about your books, and join reader-based groups. There’s not much point in joining groups of fellow writers; they’re all trying to do the same as you – promote their books. On the other hand, you might find that joining a writer forum to discuss promotional tips and strategies is just what you need to keep going.

The main thing is not to have high expectations or take the lack of sales or reader engagement personally. Just do your thing, do it well, and enjoy the journey.

Download The Chat and have a laugh

An eye-opening humorous tale of two merry widows going online to find love. Politically incorrect and not for the faint-hearted but definitely helpful to those thinking about joining an internet dating site. Based on a true story.

Now available to download from Amazon for a measly buck.

Reviews posted online will be much appreciated. Please, don't gripe about having to buy the novel The Dead Husbands Club to find out what happens next, or that you paid a dollar to download 17 pages. That's your choice. Keep in mind that this  is a promotion, after all. Other than that, say what you will.

Cheers, xxoo Ivana

Where do you buy fake book reviews?

I wouldn't have a clue. My sales reflect this; feel free to check my sales rank numbers on Amazon. It's pretty dismal but funnily enough, I don't mind... well, not much. I'm just not that ambitious, or desperate, whichever you prefer. I'd rather not sell than have people tell lies about my work. So why do people do it? (If indeed they are doing it as at the time of writing of this blog post, I have no definitive proof that this practice is going on. But, in light of recent events, (click here to read this article: Fake online reviews get reality check) one can only assume the book business, like many others, has fallen victim to the practice of paid fake reviews.

So why do people allegedly do it? To sell books on Amazon, I understand. Books with lots of  reader reviews will show up on the site more often, leading to exposure and hopefully sales. I understand the motivation, I really do, but there's just no justification for doing this. It is dishonest and fraudulent to the consumer, no matter how you look at it. A paid review will in no way reflect the true opinion of the 'reviewer' even if they did take the time to read the book, which they won't as they're too busy 'reviewing' too many books. Besides, reading the book is not what these 'reviewers' are being paid for. They're paid to come up with a couple of gushing comments which they will attach to the book in question. In the end, it is the consumer who is being fooled as paid reviews simply do not reflect the true quality of the book.

This begs the question: Should you trust any book reviews?
Probably not. The first few reviews of a book are almost always planted as authors will ask family members (at the very least) to help sell the book. There's nothing wrong with that; you should have family/friends supporting your efforts. Sure, these reviews will not reflect the shortcomings of the book either but at least the reader can rest easy knowing that these folks would have read the story from cover to cover, even if they do not give an unbiased opinion. 


I personally do not pay much attention to book reviews. This is not to say I do not enjoy reading or writing them. I do. But reviews are certainly not the tipping point for me when I'm deciding to read a story. And it shouldn't be for you either as a good percentage of book reviews (for all published and self-published books) are solicited in some way, be it from an author friend, or a family member or anyone you feel comfortable enough to ask for a review. Chances are, if you've asked someone you know for a review of your book, they will be kind, and so they should be. After all, nobody in their right mind will tell you your baby's ugly, will they? 

Asking people for reviews is nothing to be ashamed of. It's part of book marketing as we know it, though clearly not very effective otherwise there would be a lot more success stories starring independently published authors. It's not easy to gain a following when you're publishing yourself; it takes time to build an audience and get honest, unsolicited reviews and that's probably why less patient authors might resort to paying for fake reviews. It's the volume of book reviews that will gain the author visibility and generate sales, especially in today's saturated e-book market. The more reviews you have attached to a book, the more traffic you will drive to that book. It's a simple and effective idea but it doesn't mean that paying for fake reviews is okay. In the long run, I suspect, it will come back to bite you. 
 
However, in fairness to authors who are really only just trying to sell books any which way possible, readers should take more care when selecting books to avoid disappointment. Too many glowing/five star reviews should trigger alarm bells; no book is that perfect to have mainly five star ratings. If you think a book may have paid fake reviews, why not open the book (on kindle) and read the free sample? This should be enough to see whether the story is something you'd like to read. If more people paid less attention to the volume or star ratings of book reviews, we'd all be better off. Read the free sample and make up your mind on the quality of the writing and how engaged you become. If you like what you're reading, buy the book. That simple.

Authors paying for fake reviews on Amazon

Click on the title of this blog post and you will find out who allegedly pays for fake positive reviews of their books on Amazon.  
In all fairness, the information you will find in that article may or may not be true. Either way, it's food for thought.