MWN Blog Archive: [New post] My Kindle Select Test via @waltshiel

Thursday, March 15, 2012

[New post] My Kindle Select Test via @waltshiel

New post on Walt Shiel - Writer

My Kindle Select Test

by Walt Shiel

No, sorry, no results to report. In fact, I just enrolled three of my books in the Kindle Select program...after resisting since the inception of that program. Now we wait for three months and see what happens, followed by a careful evaluation of the results.

I am still leery of turning my back on sales through the non-Kindle outlets until I can demonstrate that additional Kindle sales due to Select, will far outstrip those lost sales. So, the jury is out.

Before enrolling those books in Select, I had to remove them from the other online eBook retail sites. In my case, that meant B&N, Kobo Books, and Apple iBooks. I also had to withdraw them from the LSI eBook distribution program. That went really fast...everywhere but at Apple. Figures. For a high-tech company who prides itself on being cutting edge, Apple has the least user-friendly system (whether for publishing or reading), but, hey, it IS slow. (As an aside, I would note that the last title we sent to Apple still is not live after a week -- seems they've decided to implement a detailed review of all incoming titles.)

Since I was still waiting for Apple to do something, I contacted Amazon and asked if it was going to cause a problem if I enrolled those titles in Select before Apple had actually removed it from sale. Within 18 hours (are you listening, Apple?), I had a very nice, concise, and useful reply:

We understand that it may take time to propagate your changes to other sites. In the meantime, please proceed with enrolling your book in KDP Select.

Now Amazon may not be as big as Apple (who is?), but they're big enough. Somehow, they manage to take care of such things quickly. I've asked for assistance many times with KDP issues and other publisher account details. They've always responded quickly with excellent results.

How did I choose which of my titles to enroll in Kindle Select? I picked the ones that had not been selling well in those other outlets but have done reasonably well, in inconsistently, on Amazon Kindle. So, here are the three titles I enrolled (click on a cover to find out more):