Amazon's KDP Select: The Verdict from a Newbie Skeptic

by A.M. Khalifa, thriller writer, Google+

I've been dragging my feet and avoiding test driving Amazon's optional KDP Select program that gives writers a set of preferential marketing tools in return for a 90-day period exclusivity to the Kindle Store. Even while hearing writers I respect and admire like L.J. Sellers and Jodie Renner singing its praises. 

I chose to go the indie route to be the master of my writing career. So understandably, the mere mention of someone else exercising exclusivity over my work triggers an allergic reaction. I want my ebooks to be available to readers through all outlets like Kobo, Nook, Sony and Apple, and not just Amazon.

Having said that, I've always been attracted to KDP Select's free book promotion tool. Until quite recently, the high ranking attained on Amazon's bestseller lists during the free promotional period could be converted to paid sales after the promotion ends. But in their excellent resource for indie publishing, Write. Publish. Repeat, Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant, and David Wright explain how in 2013 Amazon shuffled the rules of the free book promotion, which effectively broke this ability to convert high ranking to sales.

Despite that, I finally bit the bullet. I was curious enough to give KDP Select a shot with a recent novella I published, The Jewish Neighbor. I figured the only way to find out how Select really works is to try it. And since this piece had been lingering on my blog collecting digital dust for many months with little feedback, I had nothing to lose.

To cut a long story short, the results were outstanding. The book was downloaded thousands of times across all of Amazon's territories, but no where more than Amazon UK. It's about a Syrian woman who accepts an arranged marriage to an exile in London to escape the horrors of the civil war ravaging her country, only to find herself in an equally grim situation, with the only tenderness coming from the least expected person - her Jewish neighbor. So it made sense there would be keen interest from Britain. But I also broke ground in places like Amazon Germany, Canada, India and France, which was a first for me. 

Things got even more interesting after the free promotion ended. The Jewish Neighbor started climbing up the ranks in Amazon's paid bestseller categories in both the US and the UK. It hit number 500 of all of Amazon UK's paid kindle content, and then lodged itself as the number 1 bestseller in the inspirational romance category for at least a week. And also locked in second slot on Jewish-themed literature for a few days.

All in all, I sold more copies of that piece than my entire one year writing-career, across all of my titles. At one point I was selling thirty copies of The Jewish Neighbor every hour.

But it didn't stop there. This unexpected performance started funneling customers to my other titles. My overall sales spiked, including my flagship content, my debut novel, Terminal Rage. The daily sales average of that quadrupled compared to how it usually performs on any given day, no doubt as a result of the increased exposure.

So what's the verdict, from a new writer and a former skeptic like me? 

KDP Select is an incredibly powerful marketing tool for indie writers. But it's not for everyone and not for all your content. I don't think it makes strategic sense for a first time writer just wetting their feet to put their debut offering on KDP Select, denying themselves the opportunity to explore the overall landscape. The program seems better suited for writers with a larger body of work who can afford to make certain works exclusive to Amazon, without alienating users of other platforms.

In my case, hot on the heels of The Jewish Neighbor's success, I enrolled many of my other similar titles in the program, leaving out for now my full-length novel, Terminal Rage. I still like the unlimited free promotions you can do on Kobo, as opposed to Select's limitation to a maximum of five days free promotion every 90-day enrollment period. And I have to admit, I have a soft spot for Kobo and the openness of their platform. Unlike my perception of Nook, I don't want to discount them for dead just yet. Being the smallest of the three main players, they also try harder. At the Frankfurt Bookfair last October they were serving free crab cakes, chardonnay and awesome teal-colored tote bags that make me a huge hit with supermarket cashiers in Rome.  

Then again, I may wake up one day and realize that five days of KDP Select every 90 days are far more valuable than 365 on Kobo. I will keep you posted.

The way I see it, Kobo, Nook, Apple, Sony and Smashwords all have their niche segments of the market. But you can't be an indie writer today and fail to notice that Amazon is increasingly where it's at.

Writers, what have your experiences been with KDP Select, and if you've been on the fence like me, have I managed to sway you to at least try it once? And readers, have you discovered literary gems through free downloads?

Sign up to my newsletter below to get:

★ exclusive free fiction
★ writing tips
★ publishing insight
★ Hollywood for writers: exciting insight on the film adaptation of Terminal Rage as it happens
★ counter-terrorism scoops and analysis
★ book giveaways and competitions

* indicates required field

Email Address * 

First Name 

Last Name 

Special Offer! My sizzling-hot short story, The Egyptian Affair is available for free, for a limited period on Kobo.

A.M. Khalifa's critically acclaimed debut novel, Terminal Rage, was recently described by Publishers Weekly as "dizzying, intricate, and entertaining."  He lives in Rome, Los Angeles, and Sydney, sometimes at the same time.

The ebook version of Terminal Rage is now on sale for $0.99 on Amazon.

Do You Want to Give A Shout Out for a Favorite Author?

By Peg Brantley

Evocative Characters. Intriguing Crime. Compelling Stories.

Most of our readers simply enjoy our books, and really in the end that's quite good enough. But sometimes readers would love to know how they can support us and get the word out.

Here are a few ideas:


★ Write a review for Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, DorothyL, For Mystery Addicts, your local library’s website, or any other online review site. It doesn't have to be detailed. Just what you liked.


★ Talk about the book on social media sites. Twitter, Facebook… you know what I mean.


★ Blog about it.


★ Ask your local library to order a copy of the book.


★ Donate a book to your local dentist, doctor, or hairdresser to put in the waiting room.


★ If you’re part of a group, even a group that's not about reading, tell them about the book.


★ Suggest the book to your book club, if applicable. Most of us would be happy to attend a book club in person if possible, or Skype.


★ “Like” the book on Amazon.


★ Direct people to our website.


★ Write a review for your local newspaper.


★ Purchase copies to give away as Christmas and birthday gifts.


★ Pin the cover or other pictures to Pinterest.


★ Share your favorite quotes from the book online. If you purchase an e-book, highlight your favorite quotes. (Personally, I get a kick out of these even though I'm not sure they contribute to any sales.)


★ Suggest the book on reading forums, like those you can find on Goodreads.


★ Make a video about the book and upload it to YouTube or Vimeo.

Can you think of any other way a reader can help spread the word? (Thinking hard about this as my next book is about a month away from release. October 22nd, October 22nd, October 22nd…)

I'm currently in NYC enjoying a brief getaway. If I don't respond quickly to your comments, you'll know why—I'm either at MOMA or Ground Zero.

Why You Should be Using Pinterest to Promote Your Book

by guest blogger Melissa Woodson

As the publishing industry has constricted in recent years, authors have taken on more and more responsibility for promoting and advertising their own books. The traditional image of the introverted writer has become less and less viable, as successful authors have had to make their presence known on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. After all, the public isn’t likely to read your book if they don’t know it exists. And while traditional marketing and advertising often require a significant budget and specialized skills, social media is free and fairly easy to use. So why not get started with Pinterest?

What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a social network built around virtual bulletin boards. Instead of a timeline like Twitter or Facebook, you have a bulletin board that you “pin” photos to. Each photo has a caption that you can use to explain and/or link to more information. Other users can follow your board, comment on your photos and so on. The site’s popularity stems from its visual appeal and intuitive design. It’s easy to use, and visually oriented people find it easy to communicate with. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But I don’t write picture books!” And that’s exactly why you should use Pinterest.

Visual Storytelling on Pinterest
Today’s marketplace is over-saturated with high-definition, carefully composed, hyper-manipulative imagery. Selling something as unassuming and understated as a book can be challenging in this context, but Pinterest can help you to close the gap. Successful social media users don’t try very hard to sell their products. Instead, they use social media as an outlet for storytelling and community engagement. Telling the story of your book’s creation, your genesis as an author or the subject of your work are all great ways to use the site. You can also invite other users to take part in or respond to the story and begin the process of community building.

Pinterest for Marketing
By using a series of images—whether you create them yourself or cull them from other sites—to tell stories and build relationships may not sound like an author’s job. But it is a great way to entice 21st century readers away from their laptops and into the pages of your book. As you begin to build a community of engaged followers on Pinterest, they will begin to do the work of marketing your book for you. Just wait until fans begin creating boards dedicated to your work!


In today’s media environment, literary creators need to be particularly savvy when it comes to using 21st century marketing tactics. The fact that you managed to tell a 300-page story without any pictures doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to sell it without using any pictures. Pinterest is an intuitive and social way of using visual images that authors can capitalize on without learning specialized skills or raising funds to hire photographers or graphic designers. The opportunity is simply too good for any writer interested in commercial success to pass up.

Melissa Woodson is a social media and outreach coordinator for 2U Inc., a higher education company that helps top-tier universities bring their masters degree programs online. The online LL.M. degree offered through Washington University in St. Louis and the Masters of Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are among their partnered offerings. In her free time, she enjoys running, cooking, and making half-baked attempts at training her dog. Follow her on twitter @hungryhealthymj.

Humpty Dumpty Sat on Wall

by Peg Brantley, author of RED TIDE



I'm trying to work through this new author balancing act. It has given me more than one nightmare.

My personal energy comes from creating a new story. From stringing words together that might make it worthwhile for someone else to read. I write for myself, yeah… but to be honest, I really want someone else to find an escape—some pleasure—when they read my words. I'm a sucker for affirmation. But right now, if I'm not focusing on the book that's already out there, I'm focusing on initial edits for the next one that are dragging me down. If only I could write well enough the first time around that I could read through it once, call it good, and ship it off to an editor who would find very little that  needs improvement. Yeah right… whose dream did I just slip into?

With the publication of my first book, I suddenly find myself in a cyclone. There's a convergence of past, present and future that all relates to and hinges on my choices. How much time do I devote to all of the pieces that need some of my time? 

My sales are about to offer me a break-even for the editing, cover design and interior formatting. But suddenly I find this amazing actor who I think would be perfect for an audio version for which I've had requests. And then there's that website presence we've been told over and over again we need and that I don't have the expertise to handle on my own. It's all money beyond what I want to pay right now. On the other hand, maybe there's part of it that would be a good investment. These items take more time. More consideration. More research. Less writing.

And then for a day my sales falter. I frantically try to figure out what I can do to "fix" things. Should I tweet more? Do I need to get involved with Kindle Nation? Would a trailer help? Is this a fluke or am I settling in to more realistic sales? (And while I'm here, small rant: some readers were disappointed there wasn't more romance. I never described my book a romance. There is no tag that purports it to be a romance. Not even a romantic suspense. The cover, the title? No romantic themes.)

In my heart of hearts (speaking of romance), I believe the best thing I can do to help RED TIDE get into the hands of more readers is to get my second book out there.  But what do I know?

How do I manage this? What should my priorities be? Have you found a rhythm for your day?

Under The Covers

by C.J. West

When I first started publishing books I thought it was really cool that I had complete control over what I wrote and what cover I put on my books. Little did I realize that readers have become accustomed to some very specific things and they expect them when they are looking for a good book. 

I talked a little about Amazon pages and how the formatting really matters. Well, in the last few weeks I’ve been retooling the covers for my Randy Black series and I’m ready to unveil the results. 

Book One: Sin And Vengeance

The old cover has a cartoonish feel to me that suggests there will be fire and maybe some action and suspense, but it gives me the feeling that it’s done in an amateurish way. When I looked at other suspense novels one of the first things that struck me was that the large majority have clear, realistic photographs on their covers.

The New cover is a little sexier in my view and fits reader expectations for a suspense novel.

For years I felt like a great book was hiding underneath a cover that wasn’t getting attention. The book itself was optioned for film and came very close to the big screen about a year and a half ago, but the deal fell apart due to lack of funding. 

Book Two: A Demon Awaits

The old cover was a marvel of graphics work by my cover artist. She took a real flame and morphed it into a demon. The guy on the cover is me, photographed by my oldest daughter. It was fun to tell people that was me on the cover. I liked this cover, but even though it was created using two photographs it still had a surreal feeling to me that didn't fit a suspense novel.

The new cover is sexier, consistent with the series and still shows the main idea of the book, a man seeking redemption, even as a thumbnail. This picture to me speaks of a man facing his maker in a more concrete way than the fire demon did.

Book Three: Gretchen Greene

The old cover is a scene I really like. The oil refinery sets up the reader for the climax and this is the only cover I was sad to see go. The coloring here is softer than I would like and it doesn't set up as suspenseful for me. It doesn't convey a sense of mystery or danger.

The new cover matches the series well and also shows a scene right out of the book where Randy walks out of a swamp toward a vehicle in dark. This cover says spooky much better than the old one and it is clear that this is a suspense novel.

Only time will tell if these covers help the books sell better and given how little we ever know about marketing, I may never truly know what impact they have. But I feel good about the change and I’m excited for the future of these books.

What do you think about the change and the importance of covers?

When we last left Gayle, she was forgetting something...

I had an entire essay to post for my turn last Thursday, then forgot to actually post the darn thing, so LJ told me to just post it on Saturday. I thought I would rework it slightly to cover why I got so befuddled Wednesday evening. As they say, when life hands you lemons, squeeze the crap out of them. Then stick the peels down the garbage disposal to remove odors, and trade the juice for chocolate.

My brain flew out the window on Wednesday because my new book finally hit Amazon and I needed to let everyone know. It's not a mystery book, it's another humor book. I now have two humor books and two mysteries.

By quantity, I write more humor than mystery, simply because, since 2005, I've provided the Placentia News-Times with 600 words every week, telling some story about my family in the most exaggerated, and hopefully funniest, way possible. And yet, when people ask me what I write, I tell them I write murder mysteries.

I try to say that with a demure smile.

I'm guessing there are probably 100 mystery writers to every 1 humor writer. Just go into any bookstore and look around. "Mystery" gets its own section "Humor" gets one shelf. So why do I want to align myself with an ocean of writers, instead of trying to be the big fish in the smaller pond?

The problem with being a humor writer is that comedy is so subjective. Everyone recognizes that Hamlet is a tragedy, even if they are not moved to tears. However, if I walked across the room, tripped spectacularly and fell in a heap, some people would gasp and rush to my side, and some people would help me eventually, after they stopped laughing.

Because some people laugh at slapstick. Others laugh at erudite, New Yorker stories. There are people who love bawdy humor, who love puns, who love knock-knock jokes, etc. If you write something which appeals to one of these groups, they will pronounce you funny. The rest of the folks, however, will not say, "Yes, I recognize it as humor, but it's really not my style."

They will say, "I didn't laugh, therefore, it wasn't funny."

Therefore, you are not funny. You big loser.

Even if you feel confident in being humorous within your group, and you are a good writer, humor is very difficult to write. When I'm writing my mysteries, my character can trip over a table or the table without too much trouble. Action is more forgiving. In humor, though, one word can make or break the joke. One example:

Erma Bombeck released a book of her columns called, I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression. Funny title, yes? What if the word "the" was replaced by "my"? Suddenly, I Lost Everything in My Post-Natal Depression isn't so funny. It's now a sad, yet ultimately redeeming memoir (that we've all seen before).

So now I'm consumed with my new book, checking to see if it's on Amazon yet, and now is it on Barnes & Noble? I'm doing a Goodreads giveaway, and I put a Media Release on my website. I'll be talking about it briefly on my own little two-cents-worth blog. If you're a writer, you know the drill, and how everything else falls away while you're taking care of the bird in your hand.

So how do you market humor? Ideally, you're looking for that subset of people who laugh at the things you find funny, and trying to avoid the people who don't get you. The straight approach of "Read this book, it'll make you laugh," doesn't always work. Maybe some people will think it's funny, but others will take it as a dare. I love to laugh, but when I see ads for books or movies that tell me they're "uproarious", "hilarious", "gut-bustingly funny", etc, I want to run the other way. Mention "zany" or "wacky" and I'm in the next county.

Here are some of my rules for marketing.

1. If you're writing humor within a genre, market the genre. My mysteries have a lot of humor, but I'm afraid if I brag about how hilarious they are, I am just begging for a snarky beatdown. Instead, I describe my mysteries as fun romps. I allude to the humor, as in, "it's got a little humor in it." That way, either readers like the story and don't get the humor, or think it's funny and I'm being too modest, or don't like the story anyway, making it a moot point.

2. If you're writing straight humor, compare it to someone else's style. This doesn't mean you're copying them. It means you write in the tradition of Robert Benchley, or David Sedaris, or Tina Fey, etc. Or perhaps, like me, you write Erma Bombeck-style, slice-of-life humor. It's like saying the password, opening the door, and finding your people.

3. Market your sense of humor. This means writing your ad copy, your press releases, and all other marketing materials in your "funny" voice. If you write a blog, you should include your humor there. If you have a website, same thing applies. This goes back to the first rule of writing: show, don't tell. Don't tell your reader they'll laugh if they read your book. Show them the funny!

4. Last, your marketing kit should include plenty of steel wool. Scrub yourself with it on a daily basis. You're gonna need thick skin for this business.

Hope you enjoyed my little rant, and if you don't get my kind of humor, it's okay. If you can't say something kind, say something snarky, right?

The Trouble with Trailers

By Peg Brantley, Writer at Work, Stumbling Toward Publication

Do book trailers really do what they're intended to do, or are they more of an ego trip for the author?

This post originally appeared on my personal blog, Suspense Novelist, but I still feel pretty much the same way.

Book Trailers
What makes a successful book trailer?

I'm beginning to believe that just as one person loves a book while someone else puts it in their DNF (Did Not Finish) pile, it's pretty much the same with book trailers.

With all of the creativity, time—and often expense—that goes into the creation of trailers, the bottom line has to be sales. Does the book trailer make you want to go out and buy the book? Or, at the very least, check into it a little more?
Here are some things I like:

• Short. Maybe as long as 2 minutes, but 1 minute or less is best. Sort of like a visual Twitter program.
• Endorsements. If you've got some name-candy to throw around, throw it around early in the trailer. I'm shallow enough to pay more attention to something endorsed by Dean Koontz than well . . . Peg Brantley, or no one at all.
• Live action. Unless your still photos are super spooky and filled with tension, I'd much rather see living beings in action. I don't need to see their faces, but I want a sense of real people, not photos or statues or drawings. Even with historicals.
• Set the mood. If the trailer is for a cozy, it shouldn't be dark and evil. Music is huge, but so is color choice and pacing.

These are my personal preferences, and I'm curious . . . do you have any? Are there book trailers you love? Some you hate?

Have you ever bought a book because of its trailer?