Amazon Exclusivity (KDP Select) or Publishing 'Wide' ~ which works best? #SelfPublishing

Recently I've been talking to a couple of authors unsure whether to take books off Amazon KDP Select and go 'wide' (ie, publish across many retailers), or whether to move from 'wide' back to KDP Select.  

In the interests of research, I ran a poll on Twitter to see how other authors felt about the two options.  I also invited comments; see lower down for the results.

For new writers not in the know: one massive advantage of publishing exclusively to Amazon is that your books can be made available on Kindle Unlimited.  This works, for the reader, like a library; they pay £8/$10 a month to read any books on KU, free of charge.  The author gets paid per pages read; the royalties for a whole book are roughly equivalent to one sale.

• Advantage for author: it's a great way for new readers to discover you, at almost no cost to them.
• Disadvantage: if they don't like it, and abandon it early, you will earn little, or nothing (you get paid for any pages read after 10%).

The other advantage of KDP Select is that you can do 5 day free promotions once every 90 days, or Kindle Countdown promotions - you can price your book as cheaply as 99p for a whole 7 days, but still get the 70% royalty.

I couldn't vote as it's my poll, but I've always been Amazon KDP Select only.  I make more in royalties via Kindle Unlimited that I do with actual sales, and have had some very successful free promotions and Kindle Countdown offers.


The advantages of going 'wide' probably speak for themselves - i.e., reaching readers who don't use Amazon Kindle.  I don't know anything about this but I hear Draft2Digital is the best and easiest way to go.  Read FAQs about this HERE.  

Writer Georgia Rose (see below), who has chosen and been most happy with this option, told me:  

'D2D is a distributor.  You load up your files to them and they can distribute to sites such as Barnes & Noble, Apple, Playster and Scribd, including libraries.  The will distribute to Amazon, though this is not recommended.  The advice from those in the know suggest you go DIY to Amazon, Kobo and Google (if you can get in there - it can be tricky), and let D2D cover the rest.  On their dashboard it is easy to deselect the platforms to which you don't want them to distribute.'

Well, not quite...

Poll results 

86 writers voted

Amazon KDP Select: 55%

'Wide': 33%

Tried both, not much difference: 12%

**

Here are comments from some who responded:

In favour of KDP Select

'Tried both (only with 1 book, so pretty limited) but have come down on the side of KDP - the KU promo side of it seems unbeatable at the moment.'

'Have got one on KDP and one wide, most of sales for both are on Amazon...have only recently moved onto KU, sales have dropped off, but pages read seem to be doing well. My first book was on lots of platforms, but the vast majority of sales were on Amazon. Made it a no-brainer to put next book on amazon only.'

'KDP. Kindle Unlimited makes me more than sales.  I think if you write bigger historicals like I do, it's a no-brainer. And so much easier to just push your marketing to one avenue than eight or ten.'

'Kindle Unlimited seems, at the moment, the best way for me to reach readers.

'I think Kindle Unlimited seems to work on my Indie books.'

'As to your question, I used to be wide but the tried KDP Select on one book and saw how much better that did with the page reads, so I’m off wide now completely. About half my income comes from page reads.'

'I have done much better by staying exclusively with Amazon in the past, with all of my books.'

..and a last comment!  'I didn't see this in time, but I'd have voted for KU too'

**

In favour of 'wide'

'I’m wide. Have been for a while. I don’t like exclusivity and can still do all sorts of promos, including free ones if I want to...I think a good idea is to keep a first book in Select then once you put the next one out make the first one wide, and so on.

'...what I do is distribute direct to Amazon, Kobo and Google then to all the others via the magnificent Draft2Digital, and PublishDrive (early days there!) D2D provide a universal link to all sites (incl. The Zon) so just the one link needed...I do very little promo as I don’t have time. But via distributors like Draft2Digital you load up your files once, they distribute for you.

'.... but you are totally beholden to Amazon. All your eggs in one basket as it were, when they could change anything at any time.'

'I tried KDP Select back in 2013 but it just failed - I gave up after 6 months. I broke out in 2015 on Kobo Canada' 

'I prefer wide. I sell more on ibooks, followed by Barnes & Noble and Overdrive.'

'I'm wide because the opportunities for promotions with Kobo means I make about 25% of my money from there each month, sometimes more. It's my 2nd most successful site after Amazon. Also, I don't like the idea of being tied to Amazon in case anything goes wrong with KDP.'

'Personally, I’m wide. From my point of view it’s not possible to be an independent author while being entirely dependent on the whims of Amazon. My first year off self-publishing, 99% of my sales came from Amazon. Today, almost a third of my sales come from other platforms.'

'I think it's better to go wide, so you can reach more readers. Ku didn't work for me.'

 'You can also go wide by using Ingramspark publication and distribution service'

A bit of both

'I have an e-book publisher who does the work of getting my books out wide, they do print and audiobook as well so I like them. Still, most of my sales are Amazon. & I have a few indies that are KDP. Don’t want to do the going wide work myself'

'..personally I would recommend: KDP exclusive for 3 months for exposure and then go wide'

 'I’ve tried wide and it’s hard to make a dent. Even with KU pages read fluctuate a lot.'

(About doing audio books) 'My audiobooks are a 3-way contract with me, publisher & Amazon. Voice actors get same royalties as author. It’s a way for Amazon to fill their Audible catalog for the freebies. Maybe pitch to Amazon/Audible?'

And finally.... 

'There's so much to learn in this business, it really helps if others share their own experiences so you can try and avoid them and keep moving forward instead of encountering setbacks.'

Which is why I write these posts!

If you are new to the game and are looking for a bit of mentoring/support from the wise, you might like to take a look at Shelley Wilson's Writer Mentoring Programme.  Shelley is one of the most approachable people I've ever met, and is so easy to get on with, positive and practical.  

 

I can also recommend Georgia Rose's Three Shires Publishing - self-publishing support services that may be of use to anyone wary of going it alone.  Georgia is very helpful and really knows her stuff!

Shelley and Georgia are two of the most generous people I've met during my writer and Twitter years.  😀

I hope this has been of help to anyone not sure which way to go - as you can see, there is no 'right' way, and it seems to depend on so many issues like genre, how much work you are prepared to do where marketing is concerned, if you are willing to spend out on advertising, how many books you have, etc.  Comments welcome, of course :)

The Park on the 28th: May - Late Spring #Trees #Nature

The park where I go for my walks, photos taken in roughly the same places on the 28th of each month, to observe the changes in seasons: the trees, the flowers, the light in the sky - and the weather!  Each month seems to have its own 'feel', no matter if it's rainy, sunny, overcast, warm or cold on that day.

A few days ago I walked this same trail and some of my favourite parts were beautifully overgrown; I really hoped that the council gardeners wouldn't come along and cut it all down in the meantime, but thankfully they didn't!  It's all so verdant now; lovely.  I admit to taking these on the 26th this month; the weather's been so awful lately that I looked at the weather forecast and saw it had big black clouds all over the 27th and 28th, so I went out on Sunday instead.  For once, the forecast was correct; I got soaked when out this morning!

Click month to see previous posts:

April
March
February
January
December
November
October
September

Lost my glasses around here; alas, I needed them to find them...

These trees were bare for so long; 

how lush they look now 😊

New this month ~ the laburnum :)

The tree that turns bright red in the autumn

 I stood under these trees in a mass of pink blossom last month!

~ love the wild flowers ~

Amazing smell walking past here; 

reminded me of childhood country walks. 😌

This is the stump of the tree that fell down in October.

Taken in roughly the same place as the pics 

of me taken in Sept and Oct - big difference.

Thoughts on the final season of #GameOfThrones #GOT

I'm a bit late to the party, I know, because I saved it to watch all at once, which I have done over a couple of nights.

I've read that many fans were extremely disappointed; yes, it did feel a bit rushed through in places and I've seen the pictures of the Starbucks cup, but I found myself pleasantly surprised, after all I had heard.  Some bits I loved, and I thought it had a satisfactory ending.  Shall we do bullet points?

What I liked:

• Jon's reunion with Ghost.  Can't beat a tear-jerking dog scene!
• The Long Night: the final battle with the White Walkers.  Thrilling, and I loved that Arya killed the Night King, though I do have some reservations about this episode (see below).
• That Daenerys was shown to be every bit as tyrannical as Cersei and Joffrey, if not more so; I started to go off her quite early on, back as far as Slavers' Bay; power seemed to be all that mattered to her.  I love that her true colours began to show as soon as she arrived at Winterfell, and discovered that no one in the North gave much of a stuff who she was, or were any more willing to bend the knee than they had been to the Lannisters.  I thought it was a great bit of character development, how she became increasingly ruthless and delusional about her 'destiny'.  And how she killed Varys - he had been the one who kept her safe, since she was a child.  She deserved to die for that alone!
• The ending; it was perfect.  Sansa as Queen of the newly independent North (how proud Ned would have been!), Arya the adventurer setting off again.... and Jon back to the wall, as though he never left.  Perhaps there might be another Ygritte, one day....
• That right back at the start of Season 1, when Jon parted from Ned for the last time and asked him who his mother was, I said, 'I bet he's really a Targaryen.'  Smug, not. 
• How we heard an echo of Viserys's 'Don't wake the dragon' at the beginning of Daenerys's fiery rampage... 
• The genuine good feeling between Sansa and Tyrion. 
• What the White Walkers did to Lord Umber.  Horrendous, but.... crikey. 
• How Bran said to Jaime that if he had not pushed him off the tower, he would not have become the better man he did...and what Sansa said to the Hound about still being the 'little bird' if all the terrible things had not happened to her.  Love that domino effect/alternate possible lives stuff.

What surprised me:

• That Jon didn't turn against Daenerys the moment she murdered the population of Kings Landing.  I thought he was less of a wuss than that.
• That he wasn't more perturbed at having shagged his auntie. 😆
• Bran as King.  A lovely development :)
• Jaime and Cersei's deaths.  I thought there would have been more drama, rather than just seeing them alive one minute, together again as they had been since the womb, and dead the next.  I thought Arya would get to 'do' the last one on her 'list'! (see Georgia's comment, below - exactly!)
• That not everyone found out about Jon's true identity.
• Sandor Clegane's death.  I hoped he might find some peace.

 
What I was a bit 'hmm' about:

• The swift conclusion of the whole White Walkers storyline.  It's been with us since the prologue of the first episode, then one quick stab, and it's over.  And now that that the people of Westeros are pals with the Wildlings, what are the Night's Watch going to actually do all day?
• Only a few weeks after the devastation of Kings Landing, we saw Jon standing on the beach, with a backdrop of the Red Keep looking decidedly un-devastated....
• The way Grey Worm accepted Tyrion's words so quickly, and left without further ado.
• I would have liked to see more memories of those they had lost, like Robb, Caitlin, Rickon, Stannis, etc; the two dead Stark brothers were never even mentioned.

 
What made me sad:

• Varys's death.  One of my favourite characters; he knew, everything.
• Jorah's death.
• Theon's death (but lovely that he redeemed himself)
• Beric Dondarrion's death.
• Jaime leaving Brienne (though, really, it was never going to happen....)
• Oddly, Jaime and Cersei's death. 
• That the Starks will not be seeing very much of each other now....

 
What I didn't like

• That it got a bit schmaltzy in places.  The characters and situations are emotive enough without any help; they don't need to become gooey.
• That during The Long Night, not much use seemed to be made of the dragonstone or the dragons' fire, after all that preparation.  And it was too dark and cloudy, all the time; it was hard to see what was going on.
• Not much else, really... yes, if felt a bit raced through, but I really enjoyed it.  One day I will watch the whole thing again, from the beginning!

 

To sum up, I like this, by Vox's Andrew Prokop:

 "If Game of Thrones ended with a triumphant Daenerys Targaryen heroically taking the Iron Throne, it wouldn't be Game of Thrones. This is the show of Ned Stark's death. This is the show of the Red Wedding. This is the ending it was headed toward all along."

 

Lately I've Been Watching.... (TV/Film etc reviews, with trailers)

More TV/film/etc reviews recommendations.... if you would like to see more, please click on the 'Lately I've Been Watching' tag at the bottom, which will bring up the rest of the posts in this series.  Happy watching!


Documentary film: Unseen Enemy

Terrifying, fascinating and absolutely must-watch - a film showing how easily viruses spread, particularly now that the world has become such a small place, and the dangers of them more virulent than anything we have seen yet, emerging via the animal and bird population.  Seriously, if this doesn't put you off eating meat and poultry, nothing will.  Prepare to fall in love with Dr Moses, btw.

5 stars plus ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Animated film: American Pop

This lasts about an hour, an animated film told in the music of the time, from a Jewish boy's escape from the Russion pogroms at the turn of the 20th century, through to the late 1980s, when the film was made.  Every era is captured so beautifully and perfectly.  The 'pop' of the title isn't only about the music, though; it's also about how each of the four male main characters relates to his father, as it zips through four generations.  I loved it, and you will, too!

5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TV Series: Line of Duty (Season 5)

One of my favourite TV crime shows, this season was as good as any that came before it, as the search for 'H' continues.  Stephen Graham is terrific as an undercover cop working with an OCG who soon realises that he is on his own - will Arnott be the person to help him, or will he chicken out?

5 stars⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Film: Lawrence of Arabia (colour etc restored)

I can't believe I had never seen this epic classic before, but the other night I spent 4 hours engrossed in it.  Peter O'Toole is wonderful, the cinematography is amazing, and it's a poignant illustration of European politics in the early part of the century.  The scenes in the desert were spectacular.

5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TV Series: Silicon Valley

Very funny show about start-ups in Silicon Valley and the world of technology.  Pokes sophisticated fun at trends and hip company cultures and the ridiculous amounts of money some can have on paper, in this strange digital age - and how transient it all is.  Half hour episodes.  I liked the first two seasons the best, after which the writing seemed to change a little, and it became more 'standard sitcom' than 'clever satire'.  Best character: Bertram Gilfoyle, a satan-worshipping tech wizard.  In S5, some have become caricatures of themselves, as happens when some show producers think 'hey, these lines and jokes are getting great approval ratings.  Let's include a version of them in every episode and do them do death till they're not funny any more.' .... but it got better towards the end and I ended up really hoping there's going to be an S6!

S1/2: 5* all the way.  S/4: 4.5*  S5: 4*

4.5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 
Film: Extremely wicked, shockingly evil and vile

Stars Zac Efron as Ted Bundy.  I admit to being slightly disappointed by this, as it is not about his crimes but more about his relationship with girlfriend Liz, while he was living his secret life.  Efron is terrific as Bundy, and it does a great job of showing how the evil can completely disguise themselves to the world, but I was waiting for a slow reveal of what he actually did, or a shocking, hard-hitting end, that never came.  It's good, though, and well done; held my interest throughout.

4 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

TV Series: The Ice Cream Girls 

Adaptation of a book by Dorothy Koomson, stars Martin Compston (Line of Duty) as a slimy teacher who screws his pupils and gets violent with them.  Fast forward 17 years, and we find that he's been murdered - but by Poppy, a lonely waitress with a crush on him who was imprisoned for the crime, or Serena, the 16 year old pupil he said he was crazy about?.  Great premise, and I loved the first episode, but it went downhill, and I was disappointed by the final third.  I spotted a few glaring plot holes and highly unlikely reactions, and the end was far too HEA and swiftly wrapped up.

3 stars ⭐⭐⭐

Musical Theatre: Rock of Ages

Went to see this at Derngate Theatre, Northampton.  Love story with a backdrop of the 80s LA rock scene.  I like the dancing, and some of the cast (mostly Zoe Birkett, who came 4th in the first Pop Idol) were great, but I was fairly disappointed in much of it.  It wasn't really representative of the music or the styles of the time; the 'rock' music was little of the 'hair bands' like Poison, LA Guns, Cinderella, Warrant, or heavy rock like Aerosmith or Zep, but mostly soft or pop rock type, like Journey.  Most of the men had short hair, and looked more like members of Noughties boy bands than 80s rockers.  I enjoyed some of it well enough, but I think it's more a show for people who like musicals, generally, rather than those who like rock.

3 stars ⭐⭐⭐