Don’t Panic: KDP Select still works, you just might have to work it a little differently
I haven’t posted for awhile on any topic, including on indie publishing, but that is because I have been working steadily on writing Bloody Lessons, the third book of my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series (if you want an update on my progress go check out my facbook page.) I also felt I had pretty much exhausted what I had to say on the ins and outs and pros and cons of using KDP Select. However, with the change in Amazon’s rules for Associates, a whole discussion has erupted about what this means for indie authors. See this balanced review of some aspects of the discussion. See, in addition, this good overview of the issues around free as a selling strategy and Amazon. One result of this change and subsequent posts about it is I have had a number of requests to comment Read more…
Two-Day Sale of Victorian Mystery Books on Kindle
I don’t usually just post when I am doing a promotion, but I am experimenting this time with a pre-Holiday promotion of my two Victorian San Francisco Mystery novels so I thought I would let you all in on the experiment. Uneasy Spirits, the sequel in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery Series is FREE on KINDLE for two days, Tuesday-Wednesday, December 11-12, 2012. Here is the link for the U.S. Kindle Store, and the U.K. Store. A second part of the experiment is to offer the first book in the series, Maids of Misfortune, for 99 cents for the same two days that the sequel is on sale. While I know there are lots of people out there who already have Maids of Misfortune and are going to be glad to pick up the sequel for free, I wondered if those Read more…
My brief experiment going off KDP Select: At least I got this nifty blog piece out of it!
So… I lasted only a month off of KDP Select. It was an eye-opening experience. I knew that I would lose sales on Amazon without the borrows and KDP free days to keep my books visible on the historical mystery bestseller lists, but my hope was that I would be building enough sales on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and the Smashwords affiliates, to make up for these lost sales. I even told myself I was willing to accept lower overall sales for 2-3 months in order to test the idea that having my book on multiple sites (even if the sales on those sites were lower, on average, than on Kindle) was a workable alternative to exclusivity on Amazon, which is what KDP Select requires. But this was predicated on being able to figure out how to get my books, Read more…
KDP Select Free Promotion: Discoverability Experiment, Part Two
As stated in Part One, my goal in joining the KDP Select program had been simple, to get my two Victorian San Francisco historical mysteries, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, back up to the top 5 rank in the Kindle historical mystery bestseller category. Their ranks had dropped to between 18 and 24 after Amazon added hundreds of titles to that category just before Christmas. The experiment in light of this goal was an unqualified success. I used KDP Select to offer the Kindle edition of Maids for free for two days, December 30th and 31st. When the free promotion ended, Maids of Misfortune was at #1 in the historical mystery bestseller category, and it has stayed there. In addition, Uneasy Spirits, a sequel to Maids, rose to #8 during the promotion of Maids, and by the end of Read more…
Numbers, Numbers, Numbers: To an Indie Author, what do they mean?
9,093; 2.99; 2,049; 99; 15,570; 440; 7135; 4,882, 10,281; 1517; 94; 54; 18; 89; 229; 28; 18; 5; 10.264; 539; 20,505; 1577 For a writer, supposedly dominated by my right-brain, I seem to have become obsessed with a left-brained fixation on numbers. On reflection, I think this obsession with numbers may be related to the important role marketing (or selling-depending on how you define it) plays for me as an indie author. L. J. Sellers had an interesting blog post on Publetariat the other day, where she argued that one of the reasons that self-published authors seemed more motivated to get out there and sell their books than traditionally published authors is because the “…steady income and the sales data provide a great incentive to spend time everyday blogging, tweeting, posting comments, and writing press releases.” I tend to agree. Read more…
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