Several years ago, an Amazon
rep told me that selling my books via Amazon Select—going exclusive to Amazon—would
greatly benefit me as an author. When I voiced some reluctance to remove my
books from the reach of Nook, Kobo, iBook, and Google Book readers, he went on
to explain that, as long as my earnings from other venues was at or below 30%
of my total earnings, then the extra sales I would see at Amazon Select would
make up for the loss.
The terms and conditions of
Select have changed with the invention of Kindle Unlimited, so I don't even know if the 30% rule still applies. I currently have 4
of my 18 self-published books in the Amazon Select Program for a second
3-month stint which will end in two weeks. The way I figure it, it’s good to try
new things. However, the Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) Read have shown
pretty dismal results/earnings. Before removing the 4 books from Select, I
needed more sales information from the various venues where my books are
available. The charts below are the result of my info-gathering.
Note: The charts below show percentages of my Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and iBook sales. I also sell books
on Google Play and Smashwords. Google Play constitutes about 1-2% of sales in
any given month and Smashwords comes in consistently at under 1%, so I didn’t
bother to include these venues or sales on the charts.
The information clearly shows
that, during the past 4 months, I’ve only had 1 month where Amazon Kindle sales
were greater than 70%.
With the advent of Kobo’s
fabulous new Promotions Tab on my Kobo Author Dashboard, I believe my Kobo
sales and readership will grow. I’m still learning how the promotional
campaigns work and which ones fit best for my books, but it seems that I have
gotten it right 2 months out of 4. I imagine I will only become better at choosing
and marketing the correct campaigns. I can tell you that during the first week
of February, Kobo and Amazon are neck and neck with Kobo at 40.5% and Amazon at
43%. Also, I get a thrill when I see Kobo readers in Nigeria, Qatar, South Africa, Slovakia, Columbia, and dozens of other countries are reading my books.
I know that going exclusive
works well for some authors. I have colleagues who are doing very well selling
their books exclusively at Amazon, and I am truly happy for them. However, I
think authors need to take many things into consideration as we decide to either go
exclusive or go everywhere. It’s a personal preference. For me,
building my readership across all sales venues is what is most important. I
mean, I do call myself an independent author; it just doesn’t seem right to be dependent on any one sales venue for my
income.
What do you think? Let’s
talk. How do you feel about going exclusive? Has going exclusive worked for
you? Or do you utilize all the available venues to sell your books? Please
offer the whys of your chosen plan. Maybe we’ll all learn something new.
