Comments on: Dear Amazon… here’s what I think of your Kindle Select program http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/ Welcome to the world of writer and game designer Guido Henkel Fri, 21 Nov 2014 11:03:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.1 By: No http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-55731 Mon, 10 Dec 2012 23:21:45 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-55731 Making a book free is very good if the book is actually good. But Amazon know it’s not. We are talking self-publishing here. 99% is pretty bad. So you are only helping them sell more kindle devices, helping their monopoly be stronger.

You, the authors do not care you are killing publishers and retailers and you also do not care you do all the work of publishing related jobs like editing, proof, cover and book design, etc (you do it yourself for free or pay for it). When Amazon will get full control of the market (they already have because stores can’t compete), they sell the kindle without profit (other reader manufacturers can’t compete) and all writing will be a useless commodity, people will not buy media or books. They will just read all they want for $5 a month or so and authors will get very little money. Actually, everyone except best-selling writers will get virtually nothing. Then, it will be hard to survive if your not on the top and we will have a nice little system you “self-published” authors created.

Didn’t you learn anything from self-publishing in the traditional publishing? What it really is? How much money one can actually make? What they actually do and who has the short end? Why did not believe that this company, Amazon, who is also “cutting the middleman” would be any better? You are getting a share of the profit from cutting the middleman, but they do not do the job of the middleman, you have to do it yourself, you have to invest in it for free. Don’t you get it? Amazon found new victims to carry their business, because traditional publishers were not total idiots.

The big publishing companies could simply kill Amazon when they saw it coming by not selling through it. But they are greedy also, they believed it was just another retailer. It’s a media monster that needs to be stopped. The funny thing is that law will eventually stop amazon, first in europe, then in usa and other countries. It’s bad for everyone. It’s killing taxes, jobs, local and national economies. Major discount stores are like that, monopolies. We should know better. They are not creating jobs, they are drinking the blood of entire industries. One point of sale, and armies of puppets creating the content or product and offering it for very little compensation or even for free. Congratulations guys!

This article shows how the powerful use greed to control us. You would make millions on Kindle because Amazon arranged so that a handful of Kindle authors would get heavy marketing, publicity and sales to boost the Kindle opening. Now this. Earn $7,500 a month, sounds like a scam doesn’t it? That’s because it is.

Simple truths:

The market will not grow because a new way to read appeared. We are still sharing the same pie in small pieces.

Getting into the same bucket with 10000000 worthless writers is not the best way to show you are good. The very fact that you are putting yourself in this position shows you do not believe you are good or perhaps you are lazy. If you were good and you persisted, someone would pick the book up eventually. If not the first, the second or third. One always get discovered sooner or later.

But forget about traditional publishing. It will be dead in five years. It can no longer react to the monster Amazon is. I congratulate the successful writers who were not lured by Amazon. They know it will kill writing as we know it. Think Hollywood in the book business.

If you believe amazon will keep doing this for only 30% (or 65%) of the pie when they are a monopoly, think again. They are taking 70% for doing retail sales. In paper books they are selling for 15% or so and doing a lot more. Don’t you writers feel exploited? Greedy people do not really care about the families of those who run bookstores, 300,000 publishing companies operating at 5% profit or loss, those who drive tracks and work in warehousing, those who work in bookstores, those who design, edit and proof read for a living. They will do everything themselves and offer it to Amazon, their “publisher”. They big guy will form an empire and they will have a position in it. Right. You have no advantage over any other Kindle writer. You are all in the same position. Nobody will gain except amazon. It’s an an alliance, it’s just exploitation of your lack of common sense. By publishing on Amazon, you are killing everyone that cared about this industry, everyone that invested in the production of your books. And you hope the Walmart of book retail sales will care for its suppliers and treat small ones right. Unbelievable.

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By: Guido http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-33894 Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:40:28 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-33894 It is actually $79 a year, not per month. As a Prime customer myself, it work perfectly. I do not use it for media, though – or rarely so. For me the huge benefit comes in the free two-day shipping. I am ordering a lot from Amazon and getting everything shipped for free so quickly is definitely worth the $79 per year expense.

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By: Rose http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-33893 Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:34:32 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-33893 Be honest , it doesn’t work for the buyer either. One can only purchase one book a month. Why pay $79 a month toward a free book I might like or might not like. I don not watch the videos or movies so it definitely does not work for me. Now I do purchase free books alot. But I also buy a lot of books from that author if I like what I am reading.

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By: Friend or Foe? The Kindle Select Program « knightengalebooks http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-16437 Sat, 23 Jun 2012 01:50:38 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-16437 […] end of a very shady rainbow. Unsuspecting Indies who fall into the trap could lose out big time. (Read this blog post for more on how that limited amount of money is divided […]

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By: Matt http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-9460 Thu, 03 May 2012 14:49:38 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-9460 Susan, I don’t think you read the terms very well. When you make a book free, you are agreeing to receive NO royalties. That is clearly explained. You receive a cut on BORROWED books. You can enter the KDP Select program and NEVER give your book away for free. You can keep charging whatever you want and you are allowing people to borrow it (for which you receive payment which has been over $2.00 per borrow for each of the past 3 months) in exchange for being exclusively on Amazon for 90 days.

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By: Guido http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-8591 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:04:38 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-8591 Well, by now I’ve heard of countless authors who decided to pull their books out of Kindle Select because they realized that giving away books for free is, perhaps, not exactly what they wanted and that they literally ran the values of books into the ground – FREE is the new 99 cents, and 99 cents was bad already. So, within a few short months we pretty much managed to destroy the book industry and any hope to really make profits from it—unless you are one of the best-selling authors, which is not all that much different from the traditional publishing model where a handful of authors made riches and the rest made very little. Only now, those who do not make it into the big time will have to give away their books for free in order to be read. Not a very attractive prospect, and part of the reasons why I am no longer writing.

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By: Mark http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-8563 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:23:19 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-8563 As in many things, I think Kindle Select is a tool. Use it correctly and it could help someone in the long run (or short term). Use it incorrectly and you’ll bomb.

You’re math is most likely correct. I’m not going to check, but the math isn’t the only consideration. There’s other factors that might help you decide to try the program. It will work for some and it won’t for others. If it works for you, good. If it doesn’t, you tried it; now move on. And for others it isn’t worth trying at all.

If you are selling well elsewhere, don’t do it. If you are happy with free coupons via Smashwords, don’t do it.

However, there might be reasons to try it. If your book sells well on Amazon (and you have the choice about the free days), try it and see. If you’re not selling anywhere, try it (it won’t hurt). If you are interested in using the free promotion to boost your rankings within Amazon’s algothrithm (some say it works for them), try it.

You aren’t signing a contract, not in the long term. If it doesn’t work, take it off. It’s only 90 days. For someone not making any money to start with, it doesn’t matter. It might work.

I understand your concern about all the free books, but I can also see where this might make the self-published crap a little easier to identify. Or maybe not. Time will tell.

As you can tell I am on neither side of the fence. Still watching to see what happens. My guess is that a few will make a lot of money, a few more will make decent amounts, and the rest MAY benefit from the free promotion. In any case, I haven’t heard horror stories yet, but it is too soon to tell.

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By: Susan David http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-8157 Wed, 18 Apr 2012 19:58:45 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-8157 Here’s something no one has addressed yet. I joined kdp select program and uploaded one ebook. I chose 2 of my free days thinking that the program would give me at least the $1.70 authors were getting from Prime members borrowing the book, as they did last month. What I didn’t realize was this; my book, when free was downloaded by 1377 people; only 2 people who were a Prime Amazon member downloaded the book. I spent days marketing as well as paying for marketing to get the book out. I did not receive a dime for all those ‘free’ 1377 books. That many people go to read my ebook & when pay day comes, in 2 months wait, I get all of $3.40. Only 7 people after that purchased the book and I got no reviews, even though it’s a great book no one responded. So what was the point? Well, amazon sold a lot of kindles. I learned a great lesson. I feel stupid, why didin’t I realize before that the ‘freebies’ they were speaking of HAD to be from Prime members ONLY, not from people who just downloaded for free who were NOT Prime members?

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By: Matt http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-6915 Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:25:53 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-6915 Just wanted to chime in with a couple thoughts regarding the Prime lending library part of the discussion. I agree that the advertised $7,500 is not realistic, but though your math with regards to the average that each available title will make is correct, the average is not the number that is relevant to an author in this case. Instead, the amount of royalty paid per lend is the relevant number.

The money an indivudal book recieves is determined by calculating the percentage of total lends that book recieves for the month which is independent of the total books available for borrow. Also, the only people who can borrow books are PAID Amazon Prime users. None of the free promotional accounts get this perk. Each prime member can borrow only one book per month so the ACTUAL (not average) amount of money authors get for each borrow is dependent on the number of paid Prime members who choose to borrow a book that month and is not related to the number of available books.

My wife has two self published books that she chose to enroll in KSP two months ago and she makes MORE for each borrowed book than she does in royalties for a purchased book. She has one introductory novel in a series for 0.99 and the other for 2.99.

In February, each lend, regardless of book price, earned her over $2 in royalties and the amount she earned per lend actually went up from the first month to the second so the deflation you predicted with an increase in available books is not happening, or at least not yet. (On a side note, yes, she makes double the cost of the 0.99 book when someone borrows it. I have no idea why someone would borrow a cheap book when they could borrow an expensive book as others mentioned before, but I’m not complaining!)

She is currently “lending” 10-20% as many books as she is selling each month so this is a nice additional chunk of profit that likely would not translate into sales if she were not in the KSP and outpaces what she was making from the other outlets she had to abandon by 100 fold. Additionally, her sales numbers, excluding the lends, have actually grown faster (although still fairly slow in the big picture) than they were growing before she entered KSP although I obviously can’t say that is due exclusively to being part of KSP.

Anyway, just wanted to share our experience with KSP and the lending. It has definitely been a good for her.

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By: Guido http://guidohenkel.com/2011/12/dear-amazon%e2%80%a6-heres-what-i-think-of-your-kindle-select-program/#comment-6377 Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:59:00 +0000 http://guidohenkel.com/?p=987#comment-6377 That is very much my observation, too. Going free is still no guarantee for paid success. Of course ,everyone wishes it would, and some success stories prove that it is possible, but there’s also a lot of stories of authors who essentially lost out completely by going Select.

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