KDP Program Restored my Faith

My KDP select experiment began in February 2012. It is important to note that I had been selling on the Kindle platform since October 2011, so I am still a newbie. I have the stats to prove it, yes, it is sad.

I was ready to give up and began searching the net on how to spur sales. I found the KDP blogs, articles etc. it seems as if everyone as singing its praises. I prayed this would be my answer.

I wanted my piece of the pie. So I enrolled a brand new (never published) eBook entitled ‘3x Heart Attack Survivor’. This one is based on my heart attacks and the changes I made since I had them in 2009. I had 103 downloads for the two days that it was free and there were also 3 sales of this title in February.

I had seen that in the days immediately following the ‘freebie’ day that my sales were hitting. I knew I was on to something so I went ahead and edited the book one day. I put the titles of all of my books at the end of the ‘3x Heart Attack Survivor’ and found that it did spur additional sales.

I went ahead and added two more of my books into the KDP select program after I had edited them to include each of my other titles. I went ahead and scheduled the freebie days on all three eBooks to include Fridays for the near future.

I choose Fridays for various reasons, but the most important reason is that as a freelance writer I know my page views on blogs and web content seem to spike on Fridays and Saturdays. This means simply more people are surfing the web on Fridays.

Before I show results here I need to show my stats from previous months to show why I feel strongly that each indie writer needs to have at least one book in this program.

In October 2011, I sold two eBooks.

In November 2011, I sold two more eBooks.

In December 2011, I sold three eBooks.

In January 2012, the amount of copies sold three

Now you see why I felt the need to do something here. Sales were sagging and the first four months I sold 10 copies of various books.

February, which was my first month in the KDP program I got 23 sales and had 293 downloads! All of those free books, which were down loaded, had the other titles so I was essentially advertising all of my other books multiple times without effort.

February I had more sales than in the first four months combined. My profits were more than I doubled for this month when compared to the first 4 months. Some could argue that my eBooks had finally been noticed, but I do not think that is the answer. I do believe that if that were the case the sales and profits would have risen a little and not made a huge jump there.

I do honestly believe that that jump in sales is because I have the three books in the KDP program. March is already almost half of what I did in February and it is only the ninth. I cannot wait to see if sales keep on the current trend.