I’ve written a 12-Day series on self-publishing tips and guides to help you start your Kindle publishing, building a passive income and ultimately quit your day job!
If you’re new to ThinkMaverick, you might want to check out how Kindle Publishing changed my life and make sure you go through this 12 Days Self-Publishing series:
Day 1: 5 Things Beginners Need to Know About Kindle Publishing
Day 2: 7 Reasons Why You Should Create an eBook for Your Business
Day 3: How to Write and Publish an eBook
Day 4: How To Find Profitable Niches To Publish Online
Day 5: The Biggest Mistake I Made In Self-Publishing and How You Can Avoid It
Day 6: 6 Steps To Sell More Books on Amazon
Day 7: Designing Book Covers That Sell
Day 8: 7 Most Common Self-Publishing Mistakes You Should Avoid
Day 9: 40 Ways to Promote and Market Your Book
Day 10: 49 Inspirational Marketing Tips From Top Authors
Day 11: Top 10 Best Tools for Self-Publishing Authors
Day 12: 12 Best Platforms to Self-Publish Your eBook and Make Money
If you’re new to self-publishing, you should understand the difference between Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and KDP Select.
Although it’s only one word different, your choice of enrolling in KDP Select can make a huge difference to your book marketing, distribution and sales.
So, what is the difference between Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and KDP Select?
When you publish your book on Amazon, you can choose to enroll in standard KDP or KDP Select.
Amazon KDP is non-exclusive. You’re free to sell your book on other eBook retailers, as well as Amazon Kindle.
Amazon KDP Select requires you grant Amazon exclusive distribution rights for your Kindle books. You can’t sell your eBook on Apple, Google Play, Nook or any other retailer platforms or your own website.
Whenever you enroll a book in KDP Select, your book will be available on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited.
Kindle Unlimited is an eBook subscription service, also known as “Netflix for books”. By paying $9.99 a month, it allows subscribers to read as much as they want, choosing from more than 1million eBooks.
How does KDP Select work for self-published authors?
During this 90-day period of exclusivity, you cannot publish the digital copy of your book anywhere else BUT Amazon. However, you still can sell the physical copy on other sites.
To enroll in KDP Select, go to the “Kindle eBook pricing” tab of your book publishing account and click “Enroll my book in KDP select” checkbox:
In exchange for your exclusive rights, Amazon will pay out the royalties based on “page reads”.
The more pages people read, the more royalties you will collect.
So how does Amazon keep track with all the pages read under the program?
They use Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC) to measure the number of pages customers read in your book.
KENPC is calculated using standard formatting settings (font, line height, line spacing etc.).
After you’ve successfully published your book, you can check the KENPC of the book. Sometimes, it may take up to 48 hours for Amazon to show up the accurate KENPC.
If you want to check the KENPC of your book, follow these steps:
1. Log in to your KDP account.
2. Go to “Bookshelf” and search for the selected book.
3. At the right side, you will see this option “Promote and Advertise”. Click on it.
Here’s an example of my latest book, which has 170 pages of KENPC.
Directly or indirectly, our books are going to compete with many other titles from different genres. But it also means that you can reach a new audience.
From the past record, Amazon has increased the KDP Select Global Fund allocated consistently on a monthly basis.
April: $21.2millio
March: 21million
February: $20 million
January: $20.9 million
December: $19.9million
November: $19.8million
On average, royalty for each page read ranges from $0.004 to $0.005.
For example, the royalty for every page read on February is $0.00465. If someone finishes reading my whole ebook, I’d make 170*.00465 = $0.79 from that download.
Next, you should consider the pros and cons of exclusivity before clicking the checkbox and enroll in KDP Select program.
Related: The 1% Rule: The No-Brainer Secret to Making Four Figure A Month in Kindle Publishing
Amazon KDP Select Pros and Cons for Self-Published Authors
The Pros of KDP Select
- Earn higher royalties
By participating in Amazon KDP Select, your books will be available to Kindle Unlimited.
This all-you-can-read membership program allows subscribers to read as many titles as they want for as little as $9.99 a month.
Since customers already paid for the monthly subscription, most of the time they won’t hesitate to download your book and give it a read or borrow your book from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
For every page read in your book, you’ll earn your share of the KDP Select Global Fund. Plus, you’re entitled to get 70% royalty for sales to customers in Mexico, Brazil, India and Japan.
- Improve eBook’s sales ranking and sell more books
Furthermore, enrolling your eBooks in KDP select will help to improve your sale ranking and sell more books!
I have tested this with my books. After opting out of KDP select, my eBooks ranking dropped tremendously to over 500,000 ranking and sales continue at a much slower rate. For some titles, I have barely made a hand full of sales without KDP select.
This is one of the main reasons I put over 90% of my books in KDP select.
- Reach a new audience
If you are new to self-publishing, joining KDP Select is a great way to attract new readers and grow your audience.
- Access to Kindle Promotional tools
You’ll have the access to two great Kindle Promotional tools:
(a) Kindle Free eBooks
For every KDP select enrolment cycle of 90-day, you have the option to give your book for free for a total of 5 days. This limited time free promotion will attract lots of downloads. Remember to link your free book to other books, your website, social media, course or anything relevant that you want to promote.
Giving away the first book in a series for free is a great way to get your first review, populate a backlist and sell more books.
Here’s an example of one of my fiction books, you can see I got 17 downloads and 2 physical books sold during the first day of 3-day free promotion.
(b) Kindle Countdown
You can also run limited-time discount promotions for your books every 90days. This 7-day countdown feature is only applicable for books that are available on Amazon US and UK market.
During the promotional period, there’s a countdown timer on your listing that helps you build scarcity, a sense of urgency and thus increase conversions.
It’ll urge potential customers to grab this discounted deal before it ends. Plus, you still get the same royalty percentage as before the promotion.
Here are the cons of enrolling in KDP select:
KDP Select offers many great benefits…but it comes at a “cost”. And that’s the cost of exclusivity.
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eBook is exclusive to Kindle Select.
KDP select requires you to grant them 100% exclusive rights for your kindle ebooks.
Under the 90-day exclusive digital agreement, you’re not allowed to sell your eBook on all other online retailers
This means: no Nook store, iBook store, no Smashwords, no Draft2Digital, no Kobo Store etc. Just Amazon.
As a result, you may lose the opportunities on other channels.
Ask yourself: Will you gain more benefits by joining KDP Select than you lose by not publishing your eBook on other online channels?
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Dependence on a single platform makes your business fragile.
If all your books are published under KDP Select, you’re putting all eggs in one basket.
It’s too risky to have your business awfully dependent on the whims of a powerful big company like Amazon. Any changes made to the rules or program will have a significant effect on your revenue.
It’s the worst nightmare for every self-published author!
I still remember the day Amazon KDP select changed its payment scheme from royalty per book read to per page read in 2015. Overnight, my eBooks royalties dropped more than 70%. All my books were enrolled in KDP Select, there’s nothing I could do in the short-term.
By committing yourself to ONE single platform, it gives Amazon to have 100% control over your business.
You might want to diversify your book-publishing portfolio by publishing on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Apple etc. Even if one of your accounts gets disabled for whatever reason, it won’t kill your business.
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Very low royalties
The KDP Select royalty payouts are based on a monthly pot determined by Amazon. Basically, you have zero control over your eBook pricing on KU.
If you choose to sell your eBook at $2.99 with 70% royalty option, you’ll earn about $2 for each book sold.
However, the royalties for KDP Select are awfully low.
Instead of getting $2 for each book sold, you’ll get an average of $0.004- $0.005 for every page read.
In order to earn the same $2 royalty on KDP Select, you’ll need to publish a 400-500 pages book!
Most of my books have 70-100 KENPC. To match the same earning, I need to publish 5 more books!
Is Amazon’s KDP Select Worth It?
When it comes to Kindle exclusivity, there is no right or wrong choice, it all depends on your goals and objectives.
The best way to find out the most effective publishing strategy is running experiments. Compare your earning from KDP Select with what you make from open publishing on other retailers like Smashwords or B&N.
Are you willing to put all your books on Amazon only?
Are you willing to let go of the opportunity in other retailer markets?
If you have only one book and no other platform, if you want to use the kindle promotion tools, if you’re satisfied to have your book on Amazon only, then KDP select would be your choice.
Keep in minds, you can always hop in and out of KDP Select. You can run some tests and see which option works best for you. By leveraging the options, you can get the best of both worlds.
Here’s a great example of my dad-in-law, he has only one book and has no intention of doing any book marketing. He published this book in KDP Select and this ONE eBook is still selling and making him a completely passive income online.
Conclusion
I have over 500 books published under different pen names. As a long-time self-publisher, I found that the advantages of joining KDP Select far outweigh the disadvantages.
Like I say what works for me may not work for you.
So, give it a try, run a test and see how things go.
Over To You
What do you think?
Do you sell all your books on Amazon platform only?
Do you publish your books on multiple retailer sites?
What’s your experience with KDP Select?
Feel free to leave a comment below.
Are you interested in publishing books on Amazon? Sign up this free publishing mini e-course below.
One more thing, be sure to check out this 12 Days Self-Publishing series. Have a read and jump in the comments if you have any question.