- Averaging about $25 million in payouts in 2019
and totalling over $300 million in payouts,
KDP Select Global Fund looks to be growing bigger
by the day but then again there are millions of authors
dropping millions of books into this program
so it bears worth in visiting and thinking
KDP Select really worth it going into 2020?
We're gonna talk about that in today's video so stay tuned.
(upbeat motivating music)
Hey I'm Dale L. Roberts, a best-selling author
as well as a self-publishing advocate
who wants to show you how to publish books that sell.
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Okay let's lay the groundwork here very first thing,
is Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
is the platform that produces e-books
as well as print on-demand books.
For the sake of this video we're gonna be focusing
on the KDP Select Global Fund which is only encompassed
with the e-books, not the print books.
So anytime you hear KDP Select
it does not involve print books on the KDP platform.
So what is the KDP Select program?
Well it's a 90-day exclusivity agreement
for your e-book only.
Now this is gonna go on a case per case basis
so if you've got say six e-books
and you enroll one of them, that doesn't mean
that the other ones are automatically enrolled,
it's just that single book.
Now exclusivity means that as soon
as you opt in to the KDP Select program
for a given e-book, that means it has
to stay entirely on the Amazon platform through KDP
and you can't go anywhere else and that includes
places like Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo,
Google Play and so much more.
Now that's just for that single e-book
and it's only for a 90-day period.
Now keep in mind that if you tick
the little box that says you're going
to be part of the KDP Select program with a given e-book,
then that e-book is stuck for 90 days
and it will automatically renew unless you deselect it.
Now I know I've already kinda touched
on the fact that this program only involves e-books,
but I think there's a lot of ambiguity
and some confusion over how
the KDP Select program actually works.
They think okay, it's exclusive
so I can't put my print books
and my audio books elsewhere.
No, this exclusivity agreement is only
for the e-books, so let's just say for instance
you have one publication that is put into e-book,
print book and audio book.
Well you decide to go ahead enroll
in the KDP Select program, the print book
and the audio book are completely different distribution
agreements and so that means that you can do
with those whatever you wish.
So when you enroll in the KDP Select program,
what exactly does this do?
Well it enrolls you into a program
that allows your book to be checked out library style,
except it's through the Kindle Unlimited program
as well as the Kindle Owner Lending Library program.
Kindle Unlimited is a subscription-based service
that Amazon offers its customers
and it runs about 10 bucks per month
and they're allowed to check out
upwards of 10 titles at a time.
Now in the event that they max out
that 10, they're gonna have to return one
of the books so that way they can get
another one of the books and check it out.
So it's a library system but it does have its limits.
You can't be checking out tons upon tons
upon tons of books and hoard all those things.
They want you to hang on to about 10 of 'em
before they have the limit.
Then the Kindle Owners' Lending library
is a little bit different.
And just to kind of summarize this,
if for some reason you have an Amazon Prime membership,
you're allowed to have a KOLL check out of one per month.
So that means that having Amazon Prime
you're able to check out of those titles per month.
Now it limits you to that single checkout
and you're stuck on that so it's not as oh robust
as say Kindle Unlimited is, but it does offer
something for those that really want to check something out
through that program.
Now to be clear, the Kindle Unlimited Program
and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library program,
they work the same.
So regardless if someone checks out through KOLL
or KU, you're still going to get paid exactly
the same whether it's in one program or the other.
And how you're paid is through pages read.
So let's say for instance someone checks out your book
through Kindle Unlimited and they're going
through and they're reading through,
oh there we go, they're flipping one page after the other
after the other.
And they stop.
They're ah, they stop part way through.
Well the nice thing is once when they have
actually synced their Kindle device
or whatever they're reading it from
with Amazon, what it's going to do
is Amazon registers the amount of pages read
and then pays you out for that.
And how it works is a little bit,
it's a little hard to explain.
So just stay with me for a moment.
What are the perks of the KDP Select program?
The very first one is you earn higher royalties.
Now this is something I'm putting
in quotations because it's Amazon's exact words
on their landing page, I'll show
it right here on the screen.
And so here is how it works.
They have the KDP Select Global Fund
which back in December was about $26 million.
So that's not too bad.
What they will do is take the royalties
and they split it out and divvy it out based
on the pages read in total across the entire platform.
So this typically works out to be less than half a cent.
In fact I think it's .0043, it varies
from one month to the next because
some books are gonna be inside the KDP Select program
one month and the next month they probably won't,
and then there's gonna be some that are added,
some that are subtracted on a regular basis.
So that price kinda fluctuates.
And of course now we also have to take into consideration
the people that are actually enrolled in Kindle Unlimited
so that could raise the total Global Select Fund
'cause that means that more authors
are gonna be paid at higher amounts for pages read.
So you get paid per pages read.
That's the one perk and the next perk
actually is the fact that this is where I put quotations
is you were actually, well when you enroll
in say KDP Select, it opens up the 70% royalty model
for other areas that you wouldn't normally get it in.
So in places like Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico,
normally you're only given 35% and this doesn't matter
if you're priced between 2.99 to 9.99,
you can put it in there but that sweet spot
will not affect what you're going to get paid
unless you're inside the KDP Select program.
When you're inside that Select program,
you get 70% across the board regardless of the region.
Maximize your book's sales potential.
There are two promotional tools
we're gonna go ahead and discuss here
and that's the Kindle Countdown Deal
as well as the Free Book Promotion.
Let's start it out with the Kindle Countdown Deal
which is a time-bound promotional tool.
And when I say time bound what it is is you put
your book on sale.
Let's say for instance you market down
to say 99 cents.
You're allowed to do that upwards of seven days in total
in two regions only.
That's US and UK.
It won't do it elsewhere.
And the US and UK promotion
are completely exclusive of each other.
So that means you've got a total of 14 days
that you're able to play with but seven days
in each of those regions.
Now keep in mind that each time
these promotional tools are used within that period,
and you exhaust all seven days, that's okay.
If your book re-enrolls in KDP Select
you get even more days into the very next 90-day agreement.
So when you set your book up on the Kindle Countdown Deal,
you have to put it down obviously lower
than your normal price and it will put
a little clock on your product detail page
to let people know that it's going
to expire, that that sale is going
to drop off at some point.
Now they actually will do it in different increments.
So let's say for instance your book
is normally 4.99 and you mark it down to 99 cents
for the first day.
And then the second day you can always
kick it up to $1.99.
And then the third day you can kick it up
to say 2.99, so that way it creates this sense of scarcity.
I've found some mixed results when it comes
to the Kindle Countdown Deal.
It should be noted that you should not rely
on Amazon to promote your Kindle Countdown Deal.
It's going to be up to you to drive the traffic over there
and build awareness of it.
So if you're building awareness,
you're driving the traffic over there,
then chances are likely that this
could really really take off.
And if you get enough sales going
it's going to build exposure and in turn
what's gonna happen is Amazon's going to serve
it to more people that they believe
will enjoy that Kindle Countdown Deal.
Now for the free book promotion,
this actually is a little different
from the Kindle Countdown Deal.
Now you have to do one promotional tool or the other.
You can't do both of them.
You can utilize the free book
promotion or the Kindle Countdown Deal.
Now the Kindle Countdown Deal has exclusivity
in US/UK, whereas with
the free book promotion, it is global.
And you only get five days per 90-day agreement.
And you probably say why free, why would I want
to do free Dale, and that's a valid question.
If you find yourself balking at that,
then chances are very likely you may not want
to do the free book promotion.
Most people will say doing free book promotion
gets it to where people can take you
for a test drive, try out what it is
that your author brand has to offer
and then possibly buy other books
or for that matter as a worst case scenario,
people will leave reviews.
I've got my opinion when
it comes to the free book promotions
and how effective they are these days.
If you have a means of say for instance BookBub
to drive and build awareness towards
a free book promotion, then sometimes it can be worth it.
But just putting on a free book promotion
by itself and expecting to get great results
it's just, it's not what it used to be.
I would say try out the Kindle Countdown Deal
before you ever try the free book promotion
'cause at least you will make money.
Oh one more thing that I forgot
to mention with the Kindle Countdown Deal.
When you mark your price down,
the nice thing is you still stay
in that sweet spot, that 70% range.
So if you're normally between 2.99 and 9.99
and you drop it down the Kindle Countdown Deal
to 99 cents, it doesn't move your royalty
to 35%, you keep 70%.
The KDP Select All Stars program.
Amazon wants to reward you for very good results
and they will pay out some ludicrous amount
of money to you for doing good in your field.
So this way you stand something to gain from it.
Now it's going to vary per region.
So for instance you can make upwards of $25,000 in the US.
You can make upwards of 2,000 Pounds in the UK,
and you can make upwards of about 7500 Euros in Germany.
So the All Star program is pretty nice
but this is kind of for the best of the best,
the elite, the people that are in the upper echelon
of the Amazon Kindle Store.
The unfair advantage.
I have talked about this one time and again,
the Best Sellers list is not so much
about sales inside the Kindle Store.
And the reason is when you enroll your book
in the KDP Select program, anytime someone checks out
your book, it influences your book's rank.
So it kinda works like a sale.
Any time someone checks it out, guess what?
It's gonna move your rank up.
So in theory, you don't have to sell
a single stinkin' book to become a best seller
through Amazon's Kindle Store.
So it works like this, more checkouts equals higher rank
equals more exposure equals potentially more sales.
So now that we've got all that out of the way,
is KDP Select really worth it in 2020?
This depends really.
Are you new to self publishing because
if you are, I would say give it at least 90 days.
Try to put your e-book in there so you can see
how well it performs.
Now remember just simply putting it into the KDP Select
program without any kind of marketing and promotion
behind it without any way of really building awareness
of that.
You know it's a disaster, it's a recipe for disaster.
You shouldn't have your expectation too high
if you're gonna enroll in the KDP Select program
and do nothing with it.
Fair warning.
Opt out of KDP Select before your 90 days are up.
That way you don't get it accidentally renewed
and you're havin' to reach out to them
in saying hey I didn't want that removed.
If for some reason you accidentally get
into the KDP Select program, you're I didn't
want to be opted in, I want out.
What you wanna do is go into your KDP dashboard,
scroll down to the bottom, click Contact Us
and it's pretty intuitive from there
and you're gonna let 'em know hey look,
this e-book accidentally was enrolled
in the KDP Select Program, could you please
remove it from it?
Now bear in mind when you asked them to remove it from KDP
Select entirely, you will forfeit any pages read
that was accumulated over that specific time period.
So I almost always recommend that if you're enrolling
in the 90-day period, fulfill that obligation
so that way you get paid for the pages read
and you're not havin' to deal with any kinda heartache.
And the other thing to kind of think
about is is the KDP Select program worth it?
Well, I want you to think are you being
financially compensated according to your value?
My experience has been this.
I've actually had some books where I pulled
them out of the KDP Select program and I went ahead
and distributed them wide.
I was real nervous about it.
I did see my best-seller rank of course drop,
but here is the beauty of it.
For the most part, I've found that sales
didn't change whatsoever.
I didn't see 'em increase, I didn't see them decrease.
So this can be a real plus and especially
if you're utilizing the Amazon advertising platform
to drive more traffic to those books,
you don't need to have them inside the KDP Select program
in order to actually use Amazon ads and build awareness
and get more sales.
And if you don't feel like you're being compensated
according to your value or your book's value,
then might I recommend that you just publish wide.
Go ahead and get on the KDP Select program,
fulfill your 90-day obligation,
you will see it inside your dashboard when you click
on Promote and Advertise, it'll open up your dash there
and it'll say when your period is up.
I always go the day after when I publish, why?
You can go over to Apple, Barnes & Noble,
Kobo, Google Play, and you can even use
any number of aggregate publishers including IngramSpark,
Draft2Digital, Smashwords, PublishDrive and more.
What do you think about the KDP Select program?
Is this something that you would enroll in or have
enrolled in?
If so what has been your experience?
I would love to hear from you inside the comments.
And speaking of KDP believe it or not
I actually done a full review of Kindle Direct Publishing.
You're gonna take a look it in this very next video.
I go real in depth, it's probably one
of my most popular videos here on this channel.
I will see you there.