KDP Select - My (modest) Self Publishing success

As soneone who is trying to navigate the self-publishing landscape, I read a lot of articles by other authors on what works and what doesn't. I can't say I've found instant success, I may have hoped I would but deep down I didn't expect to, especially because if I had, it would have been the first time in my life. One thing I hear a lot is people's distaste for Amazon's KDP Select program. If you aren't familiar, it's a program that allow independent authors to list their books in Amazon's lending library where members of the Amazon Prime program can download it for free. Amazon then pays you for each download. The big benefit though is that you are also allowed to list your book for free, up to 5 days a quarter. The big deterrent though is that you aren't allowed to sell your book anywhere else but on Amazon.

I would agree that if you have built a following and have a presence then it might not make sense but my question was, if nobody knows you exist and aren't finding your work, who cares if you are on 8 different platforms? The answer is of course, it's 8 different ways for people to find you....which is great but are enough people going to find you so you build that success, can move up various rankings and starting getting the exposure? I don't know.

I used KDP Select twice with modest results. First in February and then in June. At the end of June I published my second novel so in early July I decided to do it again and this time I got lucky. I put my first novel free on a Sunday and by 9pm it was 64 overall on the free site so I quickly went in and put it free for the next day and it climbed all the way to 16th overall. My mistake was I didn't do it for a third day and take advantage of being on the first page of the free site but that's ok. Immediately I started selling books. Just like everyone says, it's a 3 or 4 day jump and then it falls off but because of the success I had, the 4 days were huge and the fall off wasn't total. Even after my first two tries at Select I would go three or four days without selling a book, sell one then another few days, repeat. It's been almost a month since I put The Trinity Murders free and I've sold books every day since, not just one, usually a few. It's modest but I think it's a great start. KDP Select gave me exposure that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. My second novel, in a little over a month has already sold more copies than my first one did in the first 7 months. My first novel took 11 months to be profitable, paying for the cover and editing and there is an outside shot that my second novel could be profitable after two months.

One of the reasons I am posting this is because I'm trying something else, hopefully this week. I posted yesterday about a short story I am going to release later this week. It's part of a collection I came up with a while ago and I was going to wait until they were all done to publish them. Instead, I will put the first one out this week and each other one as I write them, I also hope to write other short stories too. My plan, I'm going to immediately put it free for three days. What I've learned is that there are lots of sites that report when books go free and I'm hoping I will get a lot of downloads. From there, people will hopefully like the story and go on to buy my books or when they download it they will be alerted to my books and may decide to give them a try. After that, the price will settle in at $.99 and at that point, it's another path for people to find me. I can't really find any holes in the plan. The only hole would be if the writing is bad, which I'm positive it isn't. So I'll check back in afterwards to report on how it went but I stand by my original comment that for an author that doesn't have a following outside of his family and friends, KDP Select is an invaluable tool.

Strange Things are a Foot at the Circle-K

Ok, that's not my line, it's a line from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure but it's one I've always loved...I just don't want to be accused of being a plagiarizer. That would be bad. I'll be honest. When I published my novel in August I thought it would be successful. It still will, I believe that, I just thought it would have some success early. It has a good title, a great cover and it's a good story. The problem of course, was driving traffic. I didn't know how difficult that would be.

I knew that all my sales had been to friends and family and I'm forever grateful but I wanted more. I didn't just want a few sales to people I know so I could say look at me. I signed up for KDP Select through Amazon and with that program they allow you to put your book free for up to five days. I hadn't sold a book in four weeks so I thought what could it hurt and I set it to be free on Monday and Tuesday. I woke up Monday morning and forgot about it the first hour I was up. Then I looked up my sales page, hoping to have 5 or 10 downloads. I had 510. I couldn't believe it. I had things I wanted to do that day but I was rooted to the spot and I just watched the numbers all day, it was my first bit of success. All told in the 48 hours, it was downloaded 2246 times on the US site, 305 on the UK and 46 on the DE site. A shade under 2600 downloads when a day before, nobody cared.

I know most people probably download tons of free books every day, that's what happens when a kindle will hold 3000 books. People fill them up because they can. My hope is that 10% will read it. Further still, my hope is 10% of those will leave a review. The first of that 10% I was looking for left a review on Monday, a 1 star review. I couldn't believe it. It's the first negative I've heard about my writing from anybody and it was really rude. He admitted that he stopped after a couple chapters and asked if a 14 year old wrote it. To be honest, I wish I were still 14. There's a lot I would love a second chance at. I would love to find the girl I grew up with and haven't seen in 22 years. Not reaching for that brass ring is my biggest regret. I would like to do better in school. I didn't try in school because I didn't need to. I wish I had tried and I wish I would have cherished the time I had with my Father instead of being almost 40 and struggling to remember every moment as they slip further away over the past 15 years since his death. It was irresponsible to leave a review like that, especially when he didn't even read it but after I stared at it for a while, I went and looked at the 1 star reviews from my two favorite books from last year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Help and I felt instantly better. I will admit though, every time I go to my Amazon page I'm waiting for another review to come in and treating it like a land mine that could go off at any moment. I would love to hear from somebody else but I'm praying it's not negative. I know the successful people don't pay attention to reviews, good or bad but I'm not to that point yet. I devour each one....and it devours me.

I was wondering what would happen after my book went back to $2.99. Would it go back into obscurity, only selling copies when one of my friends decided to buy it or would I start to see some success. So far, I'm thrilled it's the latter. In 6 months I sold 47 books, positive they were all to friends and family. Yesterday I sold 23 books and today already another 10. It's a modest start but a start nonetheless. My second book is done and once I get the cover and editing, I will publish it. I finally feel like maybe I have a chance and I couldn't be happier.