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• Hi Joanna -

  I ran an experiment earlier this year where I took my books off amazon exclusive and tried Kobo and Nook, where I'd had the first book free for a year, with DLs over 30,000 (vs 240,000 on Amazon).

  I blogged about it here - http://edjamesauthor.com/2014/04/30/kobo-nook-amazon/ - but the upshot for me was on amazon I sold three times in one day than in six weeks on Kobo and Nook combined.

  I've kept the combined edition of my first four books on both sites and have sold six in two months, which I'd usually sell in a day or two.

  Personally, I don't think the competition does a good job of promoting indies until they're huge on Amazon, eg Hugh Howey. Amazon don't care who they're selling as long as they're selling. Given this is my day job now, I'm all in with them - it makes financial sense, much as I'd like to avoid the many eggs in one basket conundrum.

  One additional thing to note is the daily deal - I got selected for one in May and shifted LOTS of books, but that's only open to KDP Select people.

  It's an interesting time.

  -- Ed

  • Hi Ed, I hear you - but I hold to my own feelings about exclusivity and the time it takes to grow an audience on other platforms and in other countries. It's a personal decision for everyone!

• I'll put my first book on the market in November, with the intention of adding another every two to three months. While I'm filling the pipeline, I think I will start out with KDP for the first. That will allow me to get a quick boost and immediate feedback. I'm also writing YA and Middle Grade, which hasn't quite taken off in the e-readers yet. But it will, and I want to be in a good place for the Christmas wave. My personal Christmas fantasy is millions of ten year olds unwrapping e-readers and pads this year!

  • It's definitely worth being KDP Select, at least for the initial period on the first book - all the best with it!

• Great post! I'll be referring people back here when they ask why I didn't go all-in with KDP Select for my first book, or why I didn't pull from other platforms when KU started. It's a great program, but pre-release I already had people asking for the book on Kobo and iTunes, and I remember how frustrating it was when I only had a Kobo (I can't read on a phone/tablet/laptop and enjoy the book, so apps were out for me). If I couldn't get a book on Kobo, I didn't add it to a list and wait for it to come out of Select; I just forgot about it. Maybe only 1-5 people find my book outside of Amazon on a given day, but I'm glad they could get it when and how they wanted it. I hope that, as you said, I eventually gain traction on those other retailers.

  I'm pleased with how things have gone so far, but I can understand the arguments for getting a debut book into Select, for sure. If/when I release a lead-in short story, I'll probably try it in Select, just to get into KU for a while and find a different audience. I have no moral objection to exclusivity. It was just a personal decision. :)

  • Thanks Kate, and everything is a personal decision in this business! It's fantastic that we are empowered to make the decisions :)

• I've been exclusive to Amazon so far - 2 books and 4 short stories. I really appreciated this post because I've been thinking about branching out with future works. I like everything KDP select offers, but I'd like to try expanding my reach.

  • All the best Cassandra :)

• A very helpful post on a topic that I've wondered about recently as I've just released my debut novel, 'One Summer in Montmartre' (sorry had to take advantage of the opportunity to give it a plug!) on Amazon with KDP. However, I did buy, and have used my own ISBN (though Amazon puts its ASIN number on the website) so I have the option to place the novel on other platforms.
  I'm aiming to release another novel in October and will be keeping your excellent advice in mind.

  • Thanks Teagen, and just so you know, you don't need ISBNs for any of the main stores. I don't buy my own, and I don't need them to publish direct on Kobo, Apple or Nook.

• This makes a lot of sense.

  An important consideration for me was where my initial audience would come from. Part of the reason I chose to go indie in the first place was because I felt I'd written a book that would appeal to a pretty specific community (Anglo-Catholics) to which I belong. I'm in Canada, and although the US is a much bigger market, the people whom I can reach with my own grassroots marketing efforts are mostly in my own country, where Kobo has a bigger market share. Not only that, but a lot of the people I know would prefer a paper book to an ebook. So for me it made sense to get into all the major vendors and to produce a paper edition. But those factors are quite specific to my situation; I think you need to think carefully about where your potential readers are and what they want.

  I'm super-excited about selling direct, too! It's on my list of things to get sorted in the near future.

  • Hi Alice, Thanks for sharing your viewpoint, and you're right of course, if you're in Canada, your initial audience may well be Kobo dominated :) In Germany, the Tolino is important ... thanks for bringing an international perspective!

    • Plus Kobo has impressed me by bribing me with wine and opportunities to meet my indie heroes! You can't beat that. :)

• I originally published my first novel, Oranges for Christmas, on Amazon and Smashwords. But whilst sales at Amazon were fair, sales at the other retailers were almost non-existent. I sold one copy at Kobo, and it turned out it was to someone I knew. He just happened to own a Kobo ereader, rather than a Kindle. I also sold one copy at the iBookstore. So I decided to take that title down from Smashwords and try out KDP Select. I've had a handful of lends through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library or Kindle Unlimited (unfortunately you can't tell which) and I have a Kindle Countdown Deal coming up in September. I also have a second novel which is in KDP Select and a Countdown Deal scheduled for that one too. The results of both Countdown Deals will play a big part in determining whether or not I remain exclusive to Amazon. My husband tried the KDP Free Promotion deal on his novel, and the results were extremely poor, so I'm not convinced the KDP Select benefits are as great as Amazon make out. I'm concerned that Kindle Unlimited could be a huge game changer though and might make exclusivity the only sensible option. I'm watching very closely to see what other people in the industry make of KU, but in my heart of hearts I'm itching to get my stuff out on all the other platforms.

  • "in my heart of hearts I’m itching to get my stuff out on all the other platforms"
    That's how I felt too :)

• Sorry, me again - can I ask a question please? Talking about foreign translations, you said " I’m using KDP Select for my Spanish and Italian books, and the free promo days have enabled us to get the algorithms moving and get some reviews." So, you've obviously published your Spanish and Italian books through KDP, but are they only available in Amazon.es and Amazon.it respectively? Can you do that, or do you have to choose Amazon.com as a territory? And are KDP Select benefits available in those foreign countries? KU is only available in the US, and KOLL is only available in a handful of countries, but not Spain and Italy. But from what you've said it would appear that free promotions are available in Spain and Italy. Have I understood that right? I'm interested in looking at the German market myself. Thanks in advance for your help.

  • The books are available in all stores, and you get the same free promo days - there's no difference there. Plus, Spanish is obviously a big language in the US so I would expect borrows in KU for the Spanish book at least. There's no KU to readers in Spain/ Italy - but they still can get books for free. Hope that helps :)

    • Thanks Joanna!

• I love your podcasts, Joanna! Thanks for all of the great info. As far as exclusivity, it worked well for me in 2011 in the Gold Rush, and more recently, when I had absolutely no traction in other venues, I took several out of BN & Kobo and started making more via Select borrows. Then, I got a BB ad for the permafree 1st in series and put the other three up in the other venues again to catch that tail. It worked.
  But now that KU looms large, I'm wondering how long or if I should keep them out of Select. BN is still making me a little change, but Kobo stopped dead in the water after the first BB surge. I hate exclusivity for all of the reasons you've mentioned, but frankly, I am trying to build capitol too. I guess it depends on long-term or short-term goals. If I had more confidence in building readership in BN and Kobo, I'd take the long-range outlook.

  • What about Apple, Donna? With IOS8 bringing iBooks to all Apple devices as standard, it might make the difference there. We live in interesting times, for sure!

    • I really have to figure Apple out. I write on a PC so it's a matter of finding someone's Mac to upload it which seems... weird. But it only make sense and I've certainly done stranger things for my writing. :)

      • Is that really true that you can't publish to Apple unless you own their hardware? We don't have a Mac in our house and have no intention of getting one, or an ipad for that matter. You've got me worried now.

        • Sadly, yes, that's the way they have it set up. You can open an account on itunes and fill out all the tax information, etc. But you need to have a Mac to upload the book. The trick is to have a friend with a Mac that you can use, although you can also rent virtual Mac in the Cloud space.

        • Thank you Yael for explaining that.

        • PC users can publish to Apple through Apple in the Cloud. That is where you, in effect, rent an Apple machine in the Cloud in order to do Apple-only things. See Mac in Cloud http://www.macincloud.com/ It is reasonably priced and an answer to anyone who wants to control their iBook uploads without investing in an Apple computer.

        • Thanks for the link Maggie - I'll check it out.

• I release my books on KDP Select initially, but don't renew after 90 days. Then it goes to the other channels for distribution. Because I am publishing at least quarterly, there is always 1-2 of my books on KDP Select available on KU/Lending Library. I can take advantage of free days or countdown. And then expand my distribution (with appropriate announcements to keep it at the front of people's minds...)

  • That sounds like a super strategy PD :)