- How does $34 million sound to you?
Would you like a piece of that pie?
If you're self publishing on Amazon KDP,
then you might be asking,
is KDP Select worth it in 2021?
Before we do get to that,
I wanna let you know that today's video is sponsored
by the fine folks over ProWritingAid.
We'll talk a little bit more about them later
into this video.
First of all, what is KDP Select?
It is a 90-day exclusivity agreement for eBooks only.
It does not cover print books or audio books.
So in the event that you opt into the KDP Select program
for a given ebook, it doesn't affect the print book
or the audio book version of that.
What it does is it places your ebook
into a subscription-based system.
And you probably know it more commonly as Kindle Unlimited,
it used to be available
through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library,
but that just ended this year.
If you've never heard of Kindle Unlimited,
it essentially is a subscription based system
where readers on Amazon
can subscribe to a library based system
to where they can check out upwards of 10 eBooks at a time
that are enrolled in the KDP Select program.
So what are the benefits of KDP Select anyway?
Well, there's quite a few.
So I'm just gonna go through
this laundry list one at a time.
The very first thing is going to be the unfair advantage.
Now this unfair advantage has a two-pronged attack.
It first of all starts out with the pages read model.
Now you remember how I mentioned $34 million
at the very beginning?
That was the global select fund for December of 2020.
Meaning that $34 million was divvied out
to all the KDP Select enrolled authors and books.
And it's divvied out based on the pages read.
So anytime a reader reads one of your pages
or flips through it,
you're paid kind of like a fraction of a cent.
It's not very much, but it does add up in a another way,
which is the other unfair advantage
of ABSR influencing.
Meaning the Amazon best seller rank, ABSR.
Well with the ABSR,
the closer you are to the number one spot, the better.
That means you're getting more sales.
The further away that you are from the number one spot,
the less sales that you're getting.
Well, here's the crazy part,
people are checking out short book through Kindle Unlimited
because you're in the KDP Select program.
At any time they check that out
it influences your bestseller rank.
Now I didn't say that wrong.
It's influencing your best seller rank.
I know it seems kind of crazy.
There's no real money being exchanged.
They're not actually buying your book,
but yet it's being reflected as a sale.
The next perk includes higher royalties in all regions.
Now, normally when you price your book between $2.99
and $9.99 you get a 70% royalty,
but there's an asterisk next to that.
Because if you aren't in the KDP Select program,
there's four regions that will give you 35%
outside of KDP Select.
That is Brazil, Mexico, India, and Japan.
And when you're in the KDP Select program, guess what?
You get 70% royalties in those regions.
I know it seems kind of confusing.
I don't understand their logic
behind dropping your royalties,
and then increasing them being in KDP Select,
but it is what it is.
The next perk includes two promotional opportunities
every 90-day period that your book is enrolled
in the KDP Select program.
The very first one is the five-day free book promotion.
Now this one has people scratching their head
because you're giving your book away for free.
Now there's two reasons
why you want to give away your book for free.
One, build your readership.
So if you've got a deep backlog of books
and you want to give a sample of your works,
then you can probably put out one book
on a five-day free promotion to bring in more readers
and hopefully that they're going to buy through
or read through your books in your backlog.
The other reasons going to be to acquire more reviews.
So in the event that you have an advanced reader copy team,
and you want to give them a free copy upon launch,
and then they have a verified purchase review
then that's the way to go.
Me personally, I don't like this option so much.
It's not quite what it used to be.
And here's a fun fact,
actually when you do put your book on free,
it has separate categorization.
So there's an Amazon best seller rank
for books that sell.
For those that are free,
there's actually a separate category for free books.
The next option for promotional opportunities
is actually the seven day Kindle countdown deal.
Now this is for U.S. and UK only.
It's essentially a time sensitive deal
that you can knock your ebook price down
to say like 99 cents.
And then on your product page,
they put a little timer that will show
when the book's going to increase back up in price.
You can actually put it at various tiers.
So for instance, if your books normally 9.99,
you could drop it down to 99 cents,
and then increases up to 2.99,
and then it increases up to 3.99 and so forth.
It's a nice feature,
but again it's limited to U.S. and UK.
So I would say be very careful
when you're promoting that Kindle countdown deal
because some people outside the U.S. and UK
are going to get a little salty
that they don't have that same deal.
There's two things you need to know
about those promotional opportunities.
The very first things is you can split up your days
among the 90 days.
So in the event that you wanted to say
do one free book promotion day,
and then four later on in about another month,
then that's fine.
But you got to remember this though,
it is an either or model.
So you can either do the free book promotions
or you can do the Kindle countdown deal.
The next big perk is the KDP all-star bonuses program.
Now this is for the elite.
This is for the people
that are getting ridiculous amounts of page reads.
We're talking probably in the hundreds of thousands
if not millions of page reads in a day.
You first of all, get a bonus.
Now I'm talking about a monetary bonus.
We're going to put a pin in that for just a second.
You also get a badge on your page
saying that you're an all-star.
Here's what KDP says:
We award all-star bonuses to authors and titles
that provide our customers the best reading experience based
on how much they're read in KU.
That means that anytime they're reading
in Kindle Unlimited.
So the cash prizes that they award out on a monthly basis,
this includes in the US upwards of $25,000,
in the UK upwards of 2000 pounds,
and in Germany, upwards of 7,500 euros.
And additional awards are for illustrated kids' books
in the US should get $2,000 up to that amount.
And then in the UK, you get upwards of 200 pounds.
So that means you're going to get paid
in addition to being paid.
So it's a nice little perk,
but again it's like the one percenters.
The fraction of the amount of people
that are on the platform.
I've known of a couple of people
who've had all-star bonuses,
but it's way less than you would think.
But is KDP Select worth it in 2021?
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All right is KDP Select worth it in 2021?
Here is my answer.
It depends largely on your goals.
If you're a new author, absolutely.
If you're brand new to the business of self publishing,
I recommend at least trying out 90 days
in the KDP Select program,
because there's enough moving parts
as it is in self publishing
that you've got to get used to it.
You got to wade into the deep end of the pool
instead of just jumping head first into it.
And KDP Select just allows you
a little bit of breathing room
just to see maybe just maybe this program is good for you.
Nice thing is if you find out after the first 90 days
it's not quite what you wanted it to be,
you can just opt out of it and then publish elsewhere.
It does however fiction books over nonfiction books,
and it also favors series over stand alone books.
So this means if you're a fiction author,
this is perfectly suited to you.
Non-fiction authors,
I'm not saying you shouldn't go there,
but the chances are not very likely
that you're going to be pulling in
hundreds of thousands of dollars per month
through the KDP Select program.
Same thing goes for series books versus standalone.
If you got a stand alone book, guess what?
They're going to read through your book, then they're done.
There's nothing else they can do.
Whereas if you have multiple books in a series
and they're able to read more,
and they get hooked on book one,
they're going to continue to go through
to book two book three and book four and so on.
It is not worth it if you don't see the value in it.
If for some reason you're not seeing the return
on your investment,
that you're not getting the value that you've put into it,
then get out of KDP Select
or don't go into it in the first place.
If you want to reach more readers
beyond the Amazon platform,
then hey no one should fault you for that.
You don't have to stay to KDP Select.
You can be able to fulfill ebook orders
through your own website.
You can go to places like IngramSpark,
Lulu, Drafted Digital, Smashwords, Publish Drive,
and so much more.
Is KDP Select worth it to you?
I want to hear from you inside the comments down below.
And Hey, if you have not tried out Kindle Unlimited yet,
I really highly recommend that you do give it a shot.
I've got a 60-day free trial Kindle Unlimited
in a link and set the description down below.
Feel free to share it with your readers as well
because that'll get them a couple months
that they go flip through some of your books.
And guess what?
You're still going to get paid per page read.
And speaking of Kindle Unlimited,
in this very next video right here,
I talk a little bit more about my insights
of using Kindle Unlimited,
and why I really like Kindle Unlimited as a reader.
And in this other video,
YouTube says you need to go check it out.
I will see you in either one of them.