Decisions, Decisions - Kindle

Hi again.

In my last post I promised I would talk a little bit about a few of the decisions I had to make when I listed my book on Kindle.  These are decisions that you will have to make yourself if you ever decide to self-publish:

1) DRM vs Non-DRM

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and it is basically a way to stop your book from getting downloaded and shared on the internet without you getting paid any royalties (aka pirating). Unfortunately, the selection on Kindle is a one shot deal, you cannot change your mind later - so you have to think carefully.

The drawback to using DRM is that it may prevent people from transferring their purchase across their own Kindles (e.g. a PC version and Ipad version, or the real Kindle) - that might put off potential purchases.  The plus side of course is that you limit the risk of thousands of people ripping you off (although I bet there is software that can remove the DRM anyway).

In the end I decided not to use the DRM facility.  Doing some research on the internet showed that this appears to be the way the industry is going and, quite frankly, the risk of my book "going viral" are pretty small - and in a way it would be quite gratifying if it did!

2) Setting the price

I had to decide what price I would ask for my book.  I really gave myself two options - 99 cents (US) or 99 pence (UK) which would accrue royalty at 35%, or the minimum price to obtain a 70% royalty which was $2.99 of 147p (can't find the pounds sterling sign on this keyboard!).  The good thing is that you can change the price whenever you like.

I went for the minimum price to get the 70% option figuring this would be much more lucrative and not really wanting to "give away" my many, many hours of work for such a paltry sum.  However, after just a few days of selling, I changed my mind.  I realised that you need to price based on customer perception of value and not my own perception.  Why should a potential reader take a chance on my book out of millions out there?  I realised I need to take away the potential barrier of price, realising that selling more books at a cheaper price would in itself be a handy marketing tool
as Amazon will link the book to other books that my buyers have also bought.

So, we will see how that pricing strategy goes.  Infact, I will give an update in a few days time, on my first couple of weeks live.

c) Choosing a category

I also had to decide which categories to place my book in so that people can find it.  Amazon now only allows two categories to be selected, whereas it used to be five.  Limiting it to two was extremely difficult, but the good news is that it can be changed later (although it may affect your rankings in the Top lists).

It wasn't too hard to place the book in the Juvenile Fiction - Action and Adventre section.  The hard part was deciding whether I wanted to use the other category to classify as a "Christian book".   It's no secret that there is Christian content right through the book - Mason and his family are Christians, we read about them at church and talking to the pastor.  Mason's principles and beliefs help him make some tough decisions.  But, at the same time, I never intended that this would be a Christian book per se.  The plot would work pretty well without any of the aforementioned elements and my intention was to be a bit different and include that dimension which is often lacking in childrens fiction and tends more towards an atheistic worldview.

In choosing the second category, I was wary of choosing something which would potentially limit the number of people who would read the book or even seriously look at the synopsis.  On the other hand, I thought it might not be a bad idea to mark the book for something of a niche market who would see the Christian elements as positive or not merely neutral or even negative.  So...in the end..I decided to mark as Christian...and hoping for the best!

On a related point, I did read advice which encouraged the selection of relatively obscure categories where there might not be much competition to get into the Top bestseller list - which would further aid marketing.  This seems to be good in theory, but I have found that Amazon seems to place you in certain lists based, perhaps, on the content of your synopsis and the general categories selected.  It's something I need to do some research on...

4) Lending Library

Finally, I needed to choose whether to enrol the book in the Kindle Lending Library.  This needs to be for a three month period and requires exclusive listing with Amazon on Kindle.  Any listings on Smashwords etc needs to be removed.  There are two benefits to being in the program (US only) - if people borrow your book you share in a fixed pot for all shared authors in a given month.  Dec 2011 and Jan 2012 were both $500,000 each.  It sounds a lot but I imagine it will spread very thin.

What appealed more to me was the ability to offer my book for free for any 5 days out of the 90, as a marketing device.  Normally, Amazon does not permit free listings unless you can prove the item is being given away on other devices (plus I am not sure how easy it is to change that.)

I decided to take the plunge and enrol and see how it goes for the 90 days.  I figured I can always change and enrol on Smashwords to give me access to Sony, Ipods/Ipads and Nooks.  Speaking to other self-publishing authors indicates that the majority of their sales come through Kindle anyway - but it is always handy to be accessible in as many places as possible.

That's all for now!