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.
