As an independent author I am grateful when others share their experiences whether they are successes or failures; for that reason I wanted to share why I decided to give KDP Select (Kindle Select Publishing) a try last week. I find that most people’s thoughts on KDP Select really varies so I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect.
Creative Chaos has only been out for about 4 months, but I was noticing that the sales weren’t really going anywhere. My friends and family have been so encouraging and supportive but I really didn’t want to wear them out “pushing” my book whenever I could. Though you’d be surprised that despite how many times I tweeted or posted on Facebook about Creative Chaos that many of my friends and family still had no idea that I’d written a book.
Last week I decided to try and find out how other indie authors had had success selling their books on Amazon and came across this great post from author David Kazzie about KDP Select. After reading about his experience I thought I’d give it a try with Creative Chaos.
In order to be able to take part in the KDP Select program I had to remove Creative Chaos from all other online stores. This means if any of you Nook readers were thinking about downloading it but had not yet, you’ll have to wait until September. Following Kazzie’s suggestion, I notified several sites that my book would be free a few days before the promotion got started.
Going into this 2 day free promotion through KDP Select, I didn’t really have expectations or goals initially because I had absolutely no idea how Creative Chaos would do.
Thursday (6/21/12), was the first day of the two day promo. Things started out slowly I now realize, as only 200 copies had been downloaded by about 2:30 pm. At first I thought that was awesome. But then around 5:oo pm the downloads really started to pick up steam. Before I went to bed that night I checked one last time and I was just under 3,400 downloads.
Friday, the last day of my KDP Select promotion, I couldn’t help but keep an eye on the downloads and my rankings on Amazon. The highest I got in the Top Free Books was #38. I was floored but excited. In addition to being featured on quite a few sites I also posted the promo on Two Peas in a Bucket, a scrapbooker message board. In true Pea fashion those ladies were excited about a new read that was about a scrapbooker.
Over the two days, what really blew me away was how many RTs, Tweets, shares and status updates I got. I truly have some amazing family and friends and could never thank them enough for helping me get the word out there! You guys are AWESOME!
Saturday, I woke up and thought that the free period was over and I was about about 7,900 downloads. After watching Friday’s progress I was just hoping for 7,000 downloads and made that my goal. However, I notice Saturday that people were still some how downloading free copies. It looks like the final number for free downloads was 8,311 in the US. Wow! I also had a little over 100 international downloads with most of the downloads taking place in the UK. So Creative Chaos has officially gone international!
I am really excited that through this free promotion I was able to reach people I would have never been able to reach otherwise. Though I realize not everyone who downloaded it for free will actually read it, but if even a 10th of them do that would be awesome!
I did not realize that the initial categories Creative Chaos was listed in were both under the Children’s book sections, so the entire time of the 2 day promo it was ranked in the top 10 of to Children’s category. After the promo was over Creative Chaos was in the top 100 of the “Coming of Age” category and I saw quite a few paid downloads.
It has now dropped off the top 10 lists again and moving up in the ranks will be determined by word of mouth advertising and reviews. If you read it and enjoyed it hopefully you will spread the word to your friends and family and even give it a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. The reviews at this point are really mixed and to be quite honest I am terrified about future reviews because Creative Choas is now in so many hands thank to the KDP Select promotion. One author’s blog I read said that she felt like the KDP Select promotion did more harm then good because it brought out people who wouldn’t traditionally read her book and thus gave her in her opinion unfair harsh reviews. Unfortunately I read this after I had put Creative Chaos out there through the promotion which is where my fear comes from.
I am going to do my best to take any harsh reviews with a grain of salt and not let them get me down and keep trucking a long with the follow up book! I can’t judge yet whether the KDP Select promotion was a good or bad move but I will keep you posted.
If you missed out on the 2 day promotion, you can still get Creative Chaos for just $2.99 in the Kindle Store.
I am a scrapbooker and read your book on kindle fire. Loved it. I love all things dealing with scrapbooking.