How To Sell Books Without Using Amazon KDP Select

This is a continuation of yesterdays post, Edward Robinson And How To Sell Books Using Amazon KDP Select, but today we're going to talk about how to sell books either without using Select or by using a hybrid approach.

2. Selling Books Without Select

a. The power of permafree

There are many ways to use the permafree strategy (see: Writers: How To Use Permanently Free Books To Increase Sales).

- Make the first book of a series permanently free

- Write a book intending to make it permanently free

For instance, if you have a few blog posts you're especially proud of, compile them into a book and make it permanently free. I think you'd be guaranteed to get more traffic to your blog.

- Make one of your short stories or novellas permanently free

This should be one that you feel showcases your ability. Yes you'll lose some potential revenue but you could also think of it as passive marketing. After you publish the book you can and then completely ignore it and it does it's work without you having to tweet or blog or do absolutely anything! That's attractive to all writers who feel their most valuable asset is their time.

b. How to make a book permafree

This part is easy. Publish it through any and all online bookstores you can but make sure that at least one of them will allow you to sell the book for free. (I know Smashwords will let you do this.) The other bookstores will price-match and, eventually, make your book free as well.

I want to mention that I don't know how Amazon, or any other online retailer, feels about this.

3. Going Hybrid

a. Grow an audience for your series using select then pull it out of the program and publish it as widely as you can

Ed suggests starting your first couple of books in Select then transition out once you have 3 or more books in the series.

After you've written 3 books take them out of Select and, as a group, place them in all the online bookstores. Readers often want to know an author isn't going to promise the next book in the series then get busy with another writing project and never deliver.

Also, bookstores such as Barnes and Noble often promote new books. Ed writes:

... if you've got a squad of books, they help each other out. They pull each other up when one of them stumbles. BN, for instance, has a new releases list that goes back 90 days. You have a much better chance of climbing high up this list if you fire three titles at it all at once--giving browsers three chances to find your series--rather than hitting it with a single book at a time. There are cases in which books enter a state of positive reinforcement where they haul each other faster and faster down the track.

Great advice.

4. Experiment: Find What's Right For You

In the beginning I said we'd look at Ed's ways to sell your books without you doing a lot of promotion. This way involves trying a bit of everything, including promotion. He writes:

... when you move your books out of Amazon [Select], advertise or promote your books in some way. If you know a site that advertises to Nook users, book an ad for soon after your books go live on BN .... Do something. Anything at all to get some initial sales and, with any luck, provoke your books into continuing to sell.

Ed writes that in October he was dissatisfied with the sales of Breakers and its sequel Meltdown (both terrific books by the way). Here's what he did:

- A guest post on his friend's popular blog.
- Took out an ad.
-  Reduced the price of both books to 99 cents.

Ed kept the books at 99 cents for 5 days and, in that time, sold hundreds of copies. After the 5 days he raised the price of Breakers to $2.99 and Meltdown to $3.99. That was 6 weeks ago. They continue to sell at a rate of about 3 per day which works out to around $200 a month. Not bad at all!

All Things In Moderation

Perhaps the best strategy is to move your older books, books that have begun to build an audience, out of Select and distribute them  to as many online bookstores as possible. Put a new book, or one that is under-preforming, in Select to see if that will help.

As Ed says, Select is a tool that a writer can use. It's up to you.

Summing Up

Experiment and find out what's best for you. As Ed says, other folks can say whatever they like, but their experiences aren't your experiences. This is still the wild west of writing and publishing so all anyone can do is pass along what has worked for them.

No one knows what will work for you. You don't even know what will work for you, not unless you experiment.

As Dean Wesley Smith says, there's only one way to kill a career: Stop writing.

I know it's scary. I've been setting my writing and publishing goals for 2013 and I've felt an iron weight in my stomach, my heart starts to beat quicker when I think about putting my work out there. What if no one likes it?

These days I don't need a horror story to keep me up at night!

But that's all part of being a writer, and as I've mentioned to others, you don't have to publish under your own name. If you're nervous, create a pen name, put your work in a program like Select and see if it sells. If so, great! If not ... well, that's good to know. That's great feedback.

No matter how your work is received, if you follow Heinlein's rules then you're a professional writer and that's a pretty terrific thing to be.

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What is your strategy for selling your books? Where do you tend to sell the most books (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, etc)?

Other articles you might like:

- How To Earn A Living As A Self-Published Writer
- Writers: How To Use Permanently Free Books To Increase Sales
- Amazon's KDP Select: The Best Long-Term Strategy?

Photo credit: "Winterlight" by Pink Sherbet Photography under Creative Commons Attribute 2.0.

Edward Robinson And How To Sell Books Using Amazon KDP Select

I love Edward Robertson's blog, Failure Ahoy!, and I recommend it to anyone thinking about publishing their work. Ed is also a wonderful writer, I love his prose.

I first read Ed's blog because of his posts about Amazon KDP Select. The truly great thing about his articles is that Ed shares his experiences in book publishing, including his sales numbers, both good and not so good.

Today I'd like to talk about Ed's latest post, I'm New to Indie Publishing, Part 5: The Long Term, and discuss the various publishing strategies he mentions.

1. Selling Books With Select: When Does Using Amazon Select Make Sense?

a. You have an established series that isn't selling as well as you'd hoped

Let's say you've written and published 3 books in an urban fantasy series. None of these books are enrolled in select.

Case One:

Let's say you're preparing to publish the 4th book in your series. By enrolling your new book in Select you would be guaranteed that a lot of folks would see your book, including some folks who wouldn't have otherwise tried it. Also, you'd probably increase the number of people who visited your website or blog as well as the number of people subscribed to your mailing list. (That's a rough paraphrase of one of Ed's points.)

When I read this my first thought was that if a writer already had a huge fan base that Select wouldn't be of interest. Ed has something especially interesting to say about this objection (see point b, below).

I'd like to sound a cautionary note about putting your book in front of readers who wouldn't normally read it. Of course this can be great. What writer doesn't want more readers? That said, some writers believe that's where most of their one star reviews come from, folks who don't like the book just because, say, they don't like that genre but they read the book because it was free.

Another thing. Some folks think that if something is free then it's worthless. Just the other day a commenter wrote that they'd never read a good book that was free. I suppose one could have had several bad experiences in a row and given up but I've seen plenty of great books that were free, or nearly so. For instance, the publisher of one of my favorite authors, Kim Harrison, offered several of her books for 99 cents.

Okay, enough about Case One. I do agree with Ed that this is an instance where someone with an established series should at least consider releasing their new book with Select. They may decide it's not for them, it just depends on their circumstances.

Case Two:

You've got one book in your series that is under-preforming. One way to boost sales is to enter just this book in select to get a few more eyes on it.

Case Three:

You move all 3 of the books in your series into Select. Now you'll be able to offer one of them free every month. Of course you'd have to be careful to make each book entertaining as a stand-alone, but if you want a lot more eyes on your work this would do it.

b. You have an established series that is selling like gangbusters

In the previous case we looked at a series of books that wasn't selling well, or at least not as well as the writer/publisher wanted. Now let's look at a series that's selling quite well. Ed uses Hugh Howey as an example.

I need to think more about this suggestion before I have an opinion so I'll let Ed explain it in his own words:

I'll put it another way. Let's say Librios, the god of books, strolls down from book-heaven and presents you with a choice. He can make you a bestseller at Kobo, but you have to remove your book from the iBookstore. Mwa ha ha ha! Would you do it?

Unless you're already a bestseller at both places, of course you would. The argument for publishing to every possible outlet is that you never know where a book might take off, so you should buy as many lotto tickets as possible to up your chances of breaking out.

But if you're doing that great with Select and its borrows, you have already won the lotto.

Let me say again that Ed's post is great, terrific, and I agree with most of what he says. I would like to mention, though, that there is another argument for publishing in every possible outlet, one other than that one never knows where a book is going to take off. (Though I am not saying anything against that point of view.)

Let's say I've published one book. I've published it everywhere I can. Let's say that means it's available in 10 different electronic bookstores. I only need to sell 10 copies of my book at each bookstore to sell 100 books a month. 10 copies of a book a month isn't a lot. Now think of it selling 10 copies a month at 20 different bookstores. You get the idea. All the little sales add up. If you sell your book in enough bookstores even if you only sell 10 a month, you'll be selling hundreds of copies a month when you add up all the sales.

At least, that's one argument. There's a lack of data on how often that happens.

Ed has a lot to say about the advantages that the Kindle Owners' Lending Library (KOLL) can provide a writer and it's well worth the read. I know I'm going to be thinking about what he has to say for a long time to come.

Tomorrow I'll look at the second half of Edward Robinson's article and look at strategies for selling books without Amazon KDP Select.

Update: Click here for the second half: How To Sell Books Without Using Amazon KDP Select.

Have you ever used Amazon Select? What was your experience like? Would you recommend it?

Other articles you might like:

- The Magic Of Stephen King: How To Write Compelling Characters & Great Openings
- Should A Writer Let Her Reader's Expectations Influence Her Artistic Judgement?
- Writing in 2013: Bend don't break

Photo credit: "187 Days" by Ian Sane under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Update On Amazon's KDP Select Program

Edward Robinson over at Failure Ahoy! has written extensively about his experiences with Amazon's KDP Select program. After trying out various things, here is his tentative conclusion:

[R]iding free runs every 30-40 days can be an effective strategy (although ENT now says they won't mention a book within 60 days of the last time it was free, meaning you're basically down to POI, FKBT, and paid ads for exposure). This can last for several months, anyway. But it appears to be less effective the more you do it, and there is a point where a diminished 30 days of sales + a diminished free run isn't going to be enough to prop you up to a significant place on the pop lists. (Edward Robinson)

Although ER's conclusion seems cautiously optimistic, he has decided to pull his most popular book, Breakers, from the program and and explore what Barnes & Noble as well as Kobo have to offer. This should be interesting. He writes:

Over the last few months, I've grown disillusioned enough with Amazon Select to pull my book Breakers from the program. Yesterday, its exclusivity expired. Today, Breakers is available on Barnes & Noble for the Nook reader.

.  .  .  .

I know that Breakers can sell when it's in front of people, so unlike my other titles, if I can find a way to get it some visibility in the other stores, it should sell. Hypothetically. So how do you find that visibility?

Stay tuned.

Read the rest over at Failure Ahoy!: Exploring Bold New Non-Amazon Frontiers, Day 1: Barnes & Noble.

Other reading:
- More on Amazon Select: Is exclusivity worth it?
- Marketing Strategies For Writers
- The Harlequin Class Action Lawsuit Explained