Friday, October 16, 2015

Friday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

NOTE FROM KATHY:

I have been hard at work finishing THE EMERALD BROOCH, which will release on November 1, the day I run the New York City Marathon. It's been a crazy few weeks writing, training for the race, and traveling back and forth between Lexington and New York City, but it's been a very exciting time, especially with the release of the article in Runner's World Magazine. Click the link and find out why "I'm A Runner." 

~*~


SHOULD YOU GO WIDE OR JOIN KDP 
SELECT/KINDLE UNLIMITED?

By: Lindsay Buroker

When I uploaded my first book, The Emperor’s Edge, in December of 2010, it was a foregone conclusion that I would put it out there everywhere I could, in the hope that new readers would stumble across it and give it a try. Then, a couple of years later, Amazon introduced KDP Select, a program for self-publishers that requires exclusivity.

Right off the bat, Amazon introduced a couple of promotional tactics that are still available to those who are enrolled. Eventually, Kindle Unlimited and the ability to be paid for borrows also came along.

Here’s what the perks of KDP Select look like as I write this in October of 2015 (let me know if I’ve missed any!):
  • The ability to run a Countdown Deal once per quarter, a feature that, among other things, let’s you run sales on books (i.e. dropping them to 99 cents) while still receiving the 70% split that’s usually only available with ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99.
  • The ability to run a Free Book Promotion up to five days per quarter (The only other way to have a book listed as free in the Kindle store is to make it free elsewhere and hope Amazon price matches. This is unreliable and may involve being free longer than you wish.).
  • Enrollment in Kindle Unlimited, the Amazon lending library, where you’ll be paid for pages read and where ebook borrows can improve your visibility and sales ranking in the Kindle store (I did a big write up about this last year: KDP Select & Kindle Unlimited: Why Ebooks Not Enrolled Are at a Disadvantage).
  • Earning 70% on appropriately priced books sold in some of Amazon’s newer territories such as Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico (for some reason, perhaps to make KDP Select more appealing, Amazon decided not to offer everyone that 70%, as is the norm in other countries).

So, what do you lose? Obviously, if you’re exclusive with Amazon, you can’t receive ebook income from the other stores. Let me emphasize that we’re only talking about ebook income, as you can still have audiobooks in iTunes and paperbacks in Barnes & Noble and elsewhere. But, as you probably already know, ebook income is huge for self-published authors. Even though I’m working on getting more audiobooks out there, and I’ve done paperbacks for most of my novels, ebooks easily account for 95% of my income.

Are you wide or in Select?

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To read the rest of the post, click here:

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If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again:
Happy writing and running, Kathy 

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