#380: Publish with a Purpose: Pros and Cons of the KDP Select Program

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Hey Kingdom Writers. This is Shelly Hitz, one of your hosts here at the Kingdom Writers Podcast. And today we're going to talk about the pros and cons of enrolling your ebook in KDP Select. So this can be a confusing topic to many authors. KDP Kindle Direct Publishing is where you can self publish your book directly to Amazon in print and in ebook format to Kindle. And what you can do when you upload your Kindle book is you can choose if you want to enroll your book in KDP Select. This is optional. You do not have to do this. But if you choose to do it, then your book will be exclusive to Amazon in the ebook format only for 90 days. So one of the possible cons of this program is that you do have to be exclusive. So you cannot sell the ebook on your website. You can't have more than 10% of the book available anywhere else. So if you've published it as blog posts, like if you were blogging a book, you would have to unpublish those blog posts. And you do have to be exclusive. Now I've asked them and they said, you know, you can do other translations, you can do audiobooks, print books, you can do other things with other places and you don't have to be exclusive in those formats. It's just the digital ebook format. But one of the pros of doing this is that you will get.

Availability to be part of their special programs. So you can run a free promotion for 5 days and every 9, 90 days. So you can break that up. You could do like three free days one time, two free days another time, but you just get five days for free and you can do that within the 90 days or you can also enroll it in the Kindle Countdown program. So if you want to lower the price of your Kindle book to 99 cents, then you're able to to enroll it in the Kindle Countdown deal if you have your book enrolled in KDP Select. Now later this month I am hosting a workshop for Christian Book Academy members called a 99 cent book launch. And it's going to really go into depth on how to do this the easiest ways. We're going to have a list of sites that you can use tools that can be helpful. And it's really going to be a great resource. Gonna have my team put together some graphic templates for you that you can use, some email templates and all of that. So if you're interested in doing that, definitely come over. Join us@christianbookacademy.com it's gonna be on June 22, and if you're not able to make it live at 8pm Eastern, there will be a recording and that will be available ongoing. So if you're listening to this later, that will be available ongoing. But that's one of the other pros is, you know, just being able to be part of that, that Kindle Countdown program. And it puts a little timer on your page letting people know how long your book is lowered to that price of $0.99. And this program, KDP select, it first launched in December of 2011, and we first enrolled one of our books in that program in early January 2012. So we jumped right in. And in the beginning, it was so effective to run a free promotion. And then afterwards your book would get a boost in the rankings. We would sell a lot of books. And that was literally like how God was providing financially for us. If you've heard our story, we were living in an RV at that time. We didn't know how God was going to provide because our speaking engagements dried up. But God used the KDP select program and just launched our publishing career. And in 2012, we wrote and published, I think it was 23 books. I mean, it was, it was an incredible season, but it's no longer quite as effective as that. So why would you want to offer your book free? Why would you even consider this? Well, for CJ and I, part of it is, it's part. It's a ministry for us. So some of our books, like, they go out and we run probably a free promotion once a month for, for a different book of ours. And so it goes out and people are being impacted and it's, it's part of our ministry, just to be honest. But if you have a book that then you can get people to sign up to your email list. It can be a way to grow your platform. So you can have a book that's on a similar topic to your main book. And it can be a way to market. Your main book is having a smaller, short Kindle ebook. I've taught on this on the podcast before. And you can have calls to action to join your email list. So those that get it for free could help you to Grow your platform. Another reason is if you have multiple books in a series, then someone who reads the first book, then they might get hooked and want your second, third, and fourth. This especially works well for fiction, but, but there's many reasons to offer books for free. Also, this is a great way to get reviews that show that they're verified buyers. So we have a whole program on how to get reviews. We have a toolkit on this, all sorts of templates and checklists and we walk you through it. And that's available in Christian Book Academy or in our book marketing shop. And so we show you how to do that. And, and for the most part, I don't worry about getting the Verified reviews badge on there. Like, if you look on Amazon and you look at reviews on certain books, there will be a little thing that says verified that just means they actually bought the book. Now if you're an advanced, you know, reviewer for even traditional publishing companies, you're not going to have that, that verified tag on there. But Amazon will still let you post a review as long as you've spent some money with them they that month or that year. But if you want to enroll in the KDP select program, you could run your book for free for one day. You know, already have all the people that have agreed to review your book have already given them an advanced review copy and then say on this day, say, go and download the book and post your review. So that way the review shows up as verified. Those are just a few of the pros of doing it. Now, like I said, the, the biggest con is that you have to be exclusive to Amazon. However, we have found that, you know, the majority of our royalties come from Amazon and it's kind of like the 8020 rule, you know, 20% of your efforts produce 80% of your results. Yeah, we could spend a lot more time going wide is what they call it in the publishing industry and publishing on other platforms like Kobo and Ibooks, Barnes and Noble and all of those things. As far as for ebooks go, our print books are typically on those sites. But for us, it just makes more sense to put all of our efforts into Amazon right now because we have limited time to really spend on the marketing and that way we can get the biggest bang for our buck. Now everyone has different opinions. Some of you just don't even want to publish your book on Amazon. And so that's totally fine. You get that choice. But there isn't just a one or the other. You don't have to choose, do I do KDP select or do I go wide? This is instead what I recommend. And you can stay exclusive with KDP select if you want. We have state exclusive exclusive with some of our books so that we can continue like I said as a ministry getting the books out. But the other option is to be part of the KDP select program the first 90 days your book is released. And those first 90 days are really crucial anyways. And I don't know for sure, but I just wonder sometimes if Amazon gives more, more, more visibility to books that are exclusive with them. So you know, the first 30 days are really crucial for getting on the bestseller list, the new new release lists, all of those things. And then you can also, you know, just be start to get shown on other book pages like someone who bought this also bought this. And there's just all sorts of things that Amazon does. And so my suggestion is to go exclusive to Amazon the first 90 days. Take advantage of all the things that they have. But maybe you don't want to have your book free. That's okay. You don't have to use that option. You can use the Kindle Countdown deal instead and do the 99 cent book launch promotion. Or even it could just be a 99 cent book promotion at any time. It's a great anytime promotion and you can use that part. And then at the end of 90 days you can unenroll your book in the KDP select program and go wide after that. So it's not a, it's not a, you know, or it could be an and situation. Does that make sense? It doesn't mean that you have to choose do I do KDP select or do I go wide? You can actually do both. So you would do KDP select for the first, first 90 days and then unenroll your book in KDP select and upload it to other places. We now recommend draft to Digital to distribute your book to other ebook retailers. And we have a training on that in our self publish module in Christian Book Academy. But that is really what I recommend. And you get to choose, you get to choose what you want to do. And the thing is, if you are going to do that option, you do have to log into your account@kdp.Amazon.com and click the link for the bookshelf and the info on the right hand side for the KDP select program. And then you will need to manually uncheck that check mark that says you're automatically re enrolling your book in KDP Select. And if you're not sure. How to do it, Just scroll to the bottom of your account, there's a contact link and just tell them, you know, I'm want to unenroll from the KDP select program. Can you help me with that? Their support is I've found to be very good. So hopefully this has just got you thinking about some other options that are available for you with your ebook. And like I said, if you're wanting to join us for that 99 cent book launch workshop, this can work for an anytime promotion. So if you already have a book published, this would be a great option for you. $0.99 is like it's just an easy buy, you know. And so it's a great way to just get your book out there, get some, some reviews, get some, you know, feedback, but also just generate some interest. Right. So join us@christianbookacademy.com for that. It's going to be June 22nd or if you're listening later, there will be the recording in the member area for you. So I hope that this was helpful and I will talk to you next time.

Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.