KDP Select is a program available to all authors willing to grant Amazon exclusive rights to sell their ebook through the Kindle store only. By enrolling in this program you lose the right to sell copies of your book anywhere else except on Amazon's store. Of course, after agreeing to this you get rewarded with higher royalty and exclusive promotional tools that might let you gain more profit from your book's sales. But is it really worth it to participate in this program? In this article, we will show you the pros and cons of KDP Select and let you decide if you want to try it for yourself?
What are the negative sides of participating in KDP Select?
We are going to start with probably the biggest reason to turn down this opportunity, and that is exactly losing the ability to sell your book on other platforms. That is a major problem because by doing so you will be losing many book lovers over the world that don't use the Kindle store. Some readers' preferences are not going to be suitable for you if you decide to roll with Amazon's store only. Every platform has its own positive and negative sides and by enrolling in the KDP Select program you lose the chance to explore what other platforms can offer you. And there might be another platform that gives you options that are better suited to your wishes.
Another negative side that you should consider is the fact that Amazon is popular mostly in the United States and the UK, and if you want to go global, the Kindle store might not be your greatest option.
By enrolling your book in the KDP program you unlock the ability to put your ebook up in Kindle Unlimited, which is another program, that lets readers borrow an unlimited number of books for a monthly fee. Authors participating in this program get paid based on the number of pages read from their books. This might sound great at first but the money that you receive will be less than if you have sold a copy of your book somewhere else.
What are the positive sides of participating in KDP Select?
After looking at the negatives, we should take a look at the good side of this program. As we have mentioned earlier in this article, putting your book up in the KDP program guarantees you access to Kindle's promotional tools. We have already looked at Kindle Unlimited and while the money you will receive from people that have rented your book might not be that much, but in the end, it is better to receive money for fifty pages of your book rather than receiving nothing. Who knows, a person that has rented your book last month might want to decide and pay full price this month. It is pretty much the same story with Kindle's Owner's Lending Library where you get more attention at the cost of less profit. Another positive marketing tool KDP gives you is the Kindle Countdown Deal. This is a promotional tool that puts your book on a limited-time sale. When you read it at first it might not sound that great but when you see things in detail you will know that this is actually a pretty good marketing strategy. The advantages that are included with this tool are:
The ability for people to see the amount of money they are going to save if they buy your book during the sale.
There is a clock showing the time remaining until the sale ends. This is pretty useful as it puts pressure on potential buyers and makes them act faster.
You get to keep your 70% (the amount you receive when your book is not on sale) royalty even when the book is below $2.99
Everything is automatic, once you set it up, there is no need to change anything.
By putting your book up for sale with this program your book gets advertised on a special page for books on sale, which brings even more attention towards you.
After we have looked at these promotional tools we will have to tell one last major positive thing about the KDP Select program. You don't have to participate with all of your books, you can enroll in only one of your books and see how does it pan out. And last, but not least, this program is for digital books, if you have physical copies you can sell them elsewhere without any problem. This is wonderful if you want to experiment and see which marketing strategy brings you more money and popularity.
After everything we have covered in this article, the decision lays within you and your way of seeing things. The most important thing to remember is that you are the creator of your own success and failure. It is up to you. We wish you lots of sales and success!
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