Amazon's New KDP Direct Program - New Opportunities for Self-Publishing Authors!

Amazon keeps moving forward in new ways to compete in the publishing market. While undoubtedly some of these new ideas will need re-working or will vanish, they do present interesting opportunities for authors who choose to self-publish their work.

Today I enrolled several of my books that are available in Kindle Editions in the newly announced KDP Select program. This opportunity means I have a chance to share in the $500,000 Amazon has set aside for this program (not that I expect to rake in huge royalty payments) and starting in January my books will be eligible to continue in the program and earn additional royalties.

What exactly does the program entail for authors who self-publish and the readers who choose to participate? Here is some of the information direct from the Amazon site promoting the new program to authors:

• Reach a new audience - Distribute books through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library and reach the growing number of US Amazon Prime members.
• Earn a whole new source of royalties - Earn your share of $500,000 in December and at least $6 million throughout 2012 when readers borrow your books from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.
• Promote your book for free to readers worldwide - The newly launched Promotions Manager tool will allow you to directly control the promotion of free books.
• Instant feedback - Check real-time performance of your books in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.

I am particularly interested in the promotional aspect of this program for authors. Being able to launch a new Kindle book and make it available for FREE for five days is a great way promote a book and generate some sales rank positioning early in its life on Amazon.

Enrolling your titles in the program is easy and done from your Bookshelf in your KDP Member Dashboard page. It took me less than one minute to enroll the books I decided to make available in this program. You can just as easily cancel the enrollment of the book from the Bookshelf as you entered the title.

Just what is the Lending Program? Again, directly from the Amazon website describing the program, here is some basic information: 

What is the Kindle Owners' Lending Library?

The Kindle Owners' Lending Library is a collection of books that Amazon Prime members who own a kindle can borrow once a month, with no due dates. For more information, click here.

How is my share of the Kindle Owners' Lending Library fund calculated?

Your share of the Kindle Owners' Lending Library Fund is calculated based on a share of the total number of qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles. For example, if the monthly fund amount is $500,000 and the total qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles is 100,000 in December and if your book was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn 1.5% (1,500/100,000 = 1.5%), or $7,500 in December.

If my books are distributed in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, can customer still buy it?

Yes, your books will still be available for anyone to buy in the Kindle Store, like they've always been, and you will continue to earn royalties from those sales like you do today.

What does it mean to publish exclusively on Kindle?

When you choose KDP Select for a book, you're committing to make the digital format of that book available exclusively through KDP. During the period of exclusivity, you cannot distribute your book digitally anywhere else, including on your website, blogs, etc. However, you can continue to distribute your book in physical format, or in any format other than digital. See the KDP Select Terms and Conditions for more information.

To learn more about this new opportunity, click here!

Aaron Shepard's Sales Rank Express for Amazon is now functioning again!

I can't say it any better than Aaron himself. So, here is what he had to say about the return of his Sales Rank Express:

"Sales Rank Express, my own Amazon sales rank checker, is officially back in operation, after months offline due to changes at Amazon. And it now offers more than ever, including

• Quick sales rank checking of multiple print books on Amazon in nine countries, including Spain, Italy, and China.
• Sales rank checking for Kindle Books in four countries. (Just select “Kindle” in the Format menu for the country you want—U.S., U.K., Germany, or France.)
• More detailed stats on Customer Reviews, with a breakdown by number of stars.
• Charts of the last week’s sales ranks, with visible peaks that let you make quick sales estimates and spot trends. (To see charts, turn on “Tracking” for each title.)

Enjoy! And please spread the word to all your author and publisher friends!"

www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#SRErelaunch

Can You Afford NOT to Self-Publish?

This past weekend I was examining a wide range of figures concerning my tiny publishing empire. I was mainly interested in comparing total sales, both print and ebook, of the current year with previous years. In the process I also looked at total revenue from sales.

One figure that jumped out at me was the monthly check I get from my first book. The amount has become very small. I was smart enough (my wife was smart enough) to retain the ebook rights. The book is still my number one seller, but the sales are almost all now Kindle sales with a couple of Nook sales per month thrown in.

What did I get from the first book's publisher? A nice cover, good formatting and editing and ever decreasing royalty check once the book peaked after its first 18 months of sales.

This all leads to the question I should have asked myself, "can I afford not to self-publish?" For the fun of it, I calculated all the costs of getting the first book to market if I had self-published it. Next, I calculated the difference between what I have been paid in royalties and what I would have been paid had I used CreateSpace.

Working on the premise sales would have been identical, I did not serve myself well by NOT self-publishing, to the tune of a loss of roughly 22% net profit. Granted, we are not talking millions of dollars. Still, when you are doing this as a second source of income, 22% is still a chunk of change.

So, if you have a book to publish, consider the financial pros and cons of having your book accepted for traditional publishing as opposed to self-publishing. You will have to do all the promotional work regardless of the approach you take.

Compare the advance and royalties you will be paid versus the income you believe you can generate if you self-publish. Be sure to include in your calculations the cost of editing, cover design, interior design and marketing and promotion. Know exactly how many copies you must sell to break even. After all, self-publishing is a business.

Amazon Kindle to Receive Major Overhaul

The soon to be released Amazon Kindle Fire is generating lots of interest at the moment and rightly so. What should be generating lots of interest is Amazon's announcement that Kindle Format 8 will feature HTML5 Support.

According to Amazon, this new supported format will allow for the creation of better books and allow authors of comics, graphic novels and picture books to produce these works in the Kindle format. Amazon has announced over 150 new formatting tools will be available including the long desired fixed layouts, nested tables and Scalable Vector Graphics.

Alas, Amazon claims the KF 8 will only be supported for the new Kindle Fire but over time plans include making KF8 available on previously released Kindle readers. The good news is the new KF8 format is compatable with existing Kindle PC desktop and mobile applications including the Kindle app for iTunes, iPhone and iPad.

Amazon claims the new Kindle Fire and other upcoming apps and devices will still be able to read the old Mobi 7 format.

This is good news for authors who self-publish ebooks. I am sure there will be the inevitable kinks and quirks to work out, but it seems e-books will become more and more like "real books." 

The next evolution will probably be to include sound and video in e-books.

Is Self-Publishing Still Self-Publishing?

Morris Rosenthal, one of the "godfathers" of the self-publishing industry has a really thought provoking blog post this week. He makes an interesting argument that many self-publishers are really Amazon publishers or write for Amazon Publishing. 

It is well worth reading and thinking about what Morris has to say.  Click here to go to his blog post.

Analysis of Panda and Its Impact on Websites

Morris Rosenthal wrote an interesting and insightful post on the impact of Google's Panda on traffic to websites. Since many self-publishing authors utilize a blog or a website to promote their work, this is a worthwhile article to read.

To get to the article click here.

Recent Trends in Self-publishing Sales Based on my Own Sales Data

The third quarter ends today, and even though I might sell some more books today via the magic of Amazon and Barnes and Noble, I have been wanting to sit down and look at these totals for about six weeks.

A quick run down for the past 2.75 years:

2009 POD Sales: 100% of total sales

2010 POD Sales: 96% of total sales     Kindle/Nook: 4% of total sales

2011 POD Sales: 48% of total sales     Kindle/Nook: 52% of total sales (Through the 3rd quarter)

For the first two quarters of 2011 I sold more POD books than ebooks.

2011 3rd Quarter POD Sales: 36% of total sales    Kindle/Nook: 64% of total sales

Total ebook sales: Kindle sales: 98.4% of total sales      Nook Sales: 1.6% of total sales

Some more information concerning sales.

Total POD titles available: 23

Total Kindle titles available: 7

Total Nook titles available: 1

I will tackle the issue of the Nook right off the bat. The lone Nook title I have is also my single best selling POD title and Kindle title and it has sold a grand total of 24 copies. Needless to say I am not in a big hurry to convert all of my POD titles that sell well into ePubit for sale at Barnes and Noble.

If I had any doubts that ebooks were the wave of the future, those doubts are not only gone, but the future is now.  My next non-fiction book is small and very much a niche book but it has the advantage of being one of those timeless topics. It will be my first experiment as a Kindle only book.

In the last three months, despite the economy and summer vacation (my target audience does not read during the summer) I have had the best three months ever. Not in terms of total revenue but rather in total copies of books sold. Almost exactly two-thirds of my sales were Kindle books, and therein lies the problem of sorts.

As POD sales declined, Kindle sales rose sharply in the last three months and my lone Nook book even started to sell a few copies each month. POD sales declined by 10% total from the 3rd quarter of 2010 and the 3rd quarter of 2011.

Excluding the 4th quarter figures for POD sales for 2010 and future 4th quarter POD sales for 2011, I am happy to say POD sales are up by 33% when comparing the first three quarters of 2010 and 2011, despite the decline is POD sales the past quarter.

Total sales for 2011, without the last quarter of 2011 included, are up by 37% over  all of 2010. The last quarter of the year has historically by far been my best quarter for sales so I am encouraged.

In general, it has been a really good year for the fledgling self-publishing empire! But there are some issues that require thought and planning from a financial perspective given what look like irreversible trends, mainly the rise of the ebook.

Hands down I make more money per sale for each POD book I sell. Simply raising the price of the Kindle edition does not make up for the net loss in revenue. I have found Kindle readers to be much more price sensitive than readers who purchase paperback editions. Experimental price increases in Kindle editions resulted in a significant drop in sales for the month the experiment was conducted. Restoring the original price restored and improved sales numbers. 

The issue is I have to sell nearly 2.5 Kindle books for each POD version of the same book to make the same amount of net profit. I write non-fiction for a niche market with a finite number of possible readers.

It is my hope that over time the market will sort this out and allow authors of non-fiction books with valuable content to charge an appropriate price for the information and not simply look at price alone. There has to be a happy medium in the mix somewhere.

In the mean time, I will inch up the prices of some of my Kindle books and work harder at the marketing and promotion end of things to convince readers to pay the higher price.

I would be interested to have any authors who read this blog and who would be willing to share information with others to post what their experience is changes in sales by book type have been.