Amazon KDP - the first 90 days

I have just completed 90 days of being signed up exclusively to the Amazon KDP program - so how was it for me?

There were two main benefits that I was looking for - for people to borrow my book out of the lending library (so I would be paid a fee) and also to take advantage of the 5 free days of free promotion in that period (i.e. I was allowed to give the book away free for 5 x 24 hour periods.

The lending was not at all a success!  Only one book was borrowed in the whole three months, earning me a whopping $1.60!  To be honest, I cannot say I am surprised for a number of reasons.  Firstly, I am a very small fish in a big pond and there are hundreds and thousands of other options.  Secondly, my book has been priced at either 99 cents or 2.99 and one would think that borrowers would prefer to borrow a bestseller and save themselves ten bucks (the borrower can only borrow one book free per month). Thirdly, because I am enrolled in this program, savvy borrowers will know that I am likely to offer my book for free at some point in the 90 days, so why waste a borrow?

Frankly, I think it highly unlikely anyone is sitting around daily just praying that I will give my book away - chance would be a fine thing!

Anyway, I was always more interested in the freebie side of the equation.  This was rather more successful although of course not in the least lucrative.  I reckon that I gave away well over 600 books during the 5 free days, with a peak of 200 books in one of those days.  Not bad, although I could probably have done better.

How did I use the free days?  I spread them out.  One right at the start and one very near the end and the other three pretty evenly spaced.  I didn't opt to roll 2 or 3 days together as I wasn't sure that was the best way to approach it.  I am not really any the wiser having done it all day by day.  I think it is more fun to spread it out, personally.

However you space it, the key is to be as well prepared as you can be and make sure your advertising on various sites and boards, or Twitter is all in place for your free day.  The days where I did not advertise as much showed much lower downloads.  One snag is that by the fifth day, if you are using the same marketing channels, you may not be reaching as many new people as you would like.

Did my free sales generate any further sales when I reverted back to a selling price - the answer is yes but not a huge amount and the trickle soon dried up completely.  You do get the benefit of appearing in Amazon's "people who bought your book, also bought this" section, which must have some real benefit.  But there was no real explosion of sales, even though I got pretty high up in the free charts.

Did I get a lot of reviews from the freebies?  Hardly any, which is disappointing but hardly surprising - for a start I don't know just how many people actually ended up reading the book in the end, and secondly, why should I expect people to leave a review just for me, out of the kindness of their hearts - how many reviews have I left for other Indie writers - perhaps two or three at most.

Having said all of that - have I re-enrolled in the program for another 90 days?  Yes I have - probably through a sense of inertia as much as anything (you are automatically re-enrolled if you do  not opt out).  We will see how it goes this time, but like anything else - you only get out what you put in...

I am also conscious of the fact that to upload my manuscript to other sites such as Smashwords or Barnes and Noble would require some re-formatting and jumping through hoops - and I am not sure I am going to see the sales from it. My understanding is that Amazon is currently where it is at from a e-book perspective.