Amazon Changes Free eBook Policy for Associates

Amazon to Change Free eBook Policy for Associates - GalleyCat :

"Next month, Amazon will change its policy for associates who help readers find free Kindle eBooks online, making certain sites ineligible for advertising fees. Here’s more from the company:

Starting March 1, 2013, Associates who we determine are promoting and meet both conditions below for a given month will not be eligible for any advertising fees for that month within the Amazon Associates Program …
1. At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks
2. 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links. 

The company predicted that the new policy will only affect .1 percent of its associates and will not count for advertising fees accrued before March 1, 2013. 

The online retailer explained in the FAQ: “the Amazon Associates program is designed to compensate advertising partners for referring paid business to Amazon.” If your site exceeds the free eBook limit on any given month, you can still be a member of the Amazon associate program."

Amazon's recent change in policy undoubtedly will affect those of us who have continued to use KDP Select free book promotion as a marketing tool. Kindle On the Cheap sent out a plea to its members today on Facebook: "Amazon has placed a limit on free Kindle book downloads that our community could go over in just a few days, putting our site in peril. Anytime you click to Amazon from our site, a cookie is opened for 24 hours and any free Kindle book you download counts against us. Please, to help us stay open, do not click and purchase a free Kindle book in the same browser where you browse books from TheCheapEbook.com (our new blog coming March 1) or our Facebook pages. Or, please use your device to search in the Amazon store for the freebie and download it that way."
For KDP Select promotions to be truly effective, book sites that promote free books have been essential for getting the word out and leading people to download our free books. Other similar sites will also, if they haven't already, be forced to change how they include free books, if at all. I have been leaning away from continuing with KDP Select and the time to make a change may be now. The free book promotions on Amazon may have run their course and this is probably not such a bad thing. The glut of freebies out there has weakened the overall strength of indie books. Time to regroup, adjust , and move forward.
What does everyone think?

My Results With KDP Select's Free Days Part 1

I've spent the last week perusing blogs to see what other self published authors have reported on their results from the KDP Select program. As I wrote back in December, right after I'd published my debut novel, Judgment Tramp, on Amazon, I decided to give it a try and enroll Judgment Tramp in the program. I'd heard about KDP Select as my hand was literally poised to upload to Smashwords. Although I understood the reluctance of some to give over exclusivity to Amazon, I decided to hold off putting the book on any other sites to give this a try. My reasoning was that a) I am essentially a total novice to the ePub world. Although I self published Judgment Tramp and sold print copies of the book, I am essentially a brand new indie author with little or no following, b) I could take advantage of the 5 days for "selling" my book for free. With the program, you can schedule the days you want the promotion to run and they can be used any way you like.  I felt I could use those days to gain exposure and jumpstart getting my book out there, and c) I basically had nothing to lose. 

So today I will share with you my results and in Part 2 of this post I'll summarize what I've learned from my experience and what I've gleaned from taking a look at other people's results.  However, before I give you my results, I think it's important to point out a few things.  First, I had published my book a mere week prior to enrolling. Second, I had done very little marketing of the book prior to publishing. I realize this is not the way to do it, but I am a confessed social media neophyte. At that point I had only been on Twitter for a short time and rarely visited my Facebook page.( ok, ok. No need to make that face). My blog had been up and running only 2 months. Obviously on the far,far newbie end of the self marketing curve... I did Tweet quite a bit about the promotion the day before and throughout the 2 days I held the promotion as well as posted on my FB page, but in retrospect I should have done much, much more of this.

I decided to run a 2 day promotion on Dec. 26, and Dec. 27 ( a Monday and Tuesday) hoping that right after Christmas all those new Kindle owners would be trolling for free books. I had absolutely no idea what would happen. I kept my expectations low. I needed exposure and was hoping I would at least get some reviews out of it. The minute it became free I started to get downloads. I averaged about 10 per hour and that was pretty steady throughout the promotion. In the end I had 400 US DLs, 64 UK, and 4 Germany. As soon as the promotion ended, DLs promptly stopped. I had no borrows, but would have been surprised if I had. Now I realize these numbers are nothing compared to many of the writers whose blogs I have been reading, but considering I had marketed very little right before( something I will absolutely increase next time), and had been on Amazon a few short weeks, I was pleased.  468 people who now have Judgment Tramp somewhere in their Kindle queue. Surely a percentage of those will actually read the book, and at least a few of them will post reviews. This remains to be seen, but that's my hope. I have had one new glowing review since the promotion but I have no way of knowing if this came from a "freebie" reader. 

Unfortunately, since the promotion ended I have sold only a handful of books. But again, although I would be doing cartwheels ( a sight to behold , let me tell you) if I had suddenly starting selling hundreds of copies of my book after the promotion, I hadn't really expected that, and my primary goal as a new author in the Kindle Store was to gain some exposure and,hopefully, reviews. I still have 3 promotion days left. Later this week I'll summarize what I think I've learned since I did the first promotion and what I've gleaned from the experiences of others.
In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you. Have you tried KDP select? What are your thoughts? Results? Anybody else out there who is as new to this adventure as me and has experimented with KDP Select? I haven't read very many reports from novice indie writers like myself and this would be interesting to me.

Be Different! Or The Value of Finding the Unique Angle

I'm a published writer.

I'm writing this post for the beginning writers out there--this one is for you. Maybe you have been trying to secure an agent, or perhaps you've been submitting articles, essays or short stories to magazines. I wish you luck, and I have tremendous respect for you and your tenacity. Believe me...I know what you're going through. It isn't easy to break through and get that first publishing credit.

But it is possible. I know it is, because I'm a published writer--and you can do it if I can. I'm not upset if you are thinking the same thing after reading my blog--in fact I'm hoping you realize that I'm not blessed with any special talent as a writer. I didn't get my first publishing credit because I was a great writer--it came because I came up with a good idea that caught the editor's eye.

My essay (the second essay I'd ever written) was published in the May, 2006 issue of Traverse  magazine, a regional travel magazine covering Northern Michigan. I submitted it to the editor on a Friday, and they bought it the following Monday. Later, I found out that they had rejected over five-hundred essays before choosing mine for publication. Most of the rejected essays were written well, a few of the rejected essays ended up going back into the slush pile for future consideration, but most of them were rejected outright.

Most of those rejected essays did a great job of describing the region--they described the sugar-sand beaches of the Lake Michigan shore, the sun dappled, azure blue water, the fiery glow of a Northern Michigan sunset, or the beauty of the fall foliage, as seen from a log cabin on a hillside overlooking the bay. All of those subjects were covered--multiple times, with every descriptive adjective known to man dressing up the writing. The only problem was that the editorial staff had read it all before--many, many times, and none of those essays stood out because the editors get five hundred of them every month.

My essay was about an abandoned railroad bridge. There was no sugar sand beach, no sun dappled shoreline, no azure blue water in sight anywhere. In fact, the bridge itself was gone, and only the stone abutments marked the spot in the forest where it had stood. I told the story of that bridge. My essay about a lost bridge on an abandoned railroad stood out because it was different--but it also stood out because it told something about the region and the people who once lived there, and the editors were starving for something besides the usual, "My trip to Michigan" essays they received every month.

That's what it took--I didn't know anything about the publishing business at the time, but I'd stumbled onto a basic truth of the writing market. Editors and Agents see the same thing constantly--and your travel essay might be well written, but it doesn't matter if it's the same old thing. The fiction book market is no different. I can only imagine how many vampire novels are pitched to agents every month, and it makes sense that most of them are D.O.A. unless the vampires are different in some way from the rest of the bloodsuckers in the agent's slush pile.

Maybe I should think about writing another novel--one where the handsome vampire (I think I'll call him Edward) lives under an old railroad bridge...near a sugar-sand beach and sun dappled, azure blue water. There's this girl he likes (I'm thinking Bella is a good name for her), and she lives in a log cabin on a hillside near the water, and she goes to the bridge late one afternoon to watch the fiery red sunset....

E-book...again

Judgment Tramp is almost ready. I can't believe we are this close, and I'm also humbled by the amount of effort it took. Kristin has done such a wonderful job! 

We also benefited from great advice along the way. Vickie Taylor gave us great advice when she advised us to use the Smashwords style guide:

http://www.smashwords.com/

I would absolutely recommend that anyone read over these guidelines and follow them carefully--it will save a lot of work! The Smashwords style guide is much easier to fathom than Amazon's convoluted instructions. 

Formatting an e-book for release is a lot of work, even with good advice. Be prepared to make changes, and to stay organized (keep track of the source file and rename the file as it is re-saved--it's really easy to start modifying files and end up wondering which one to publish...don't ask me how I know that...).

The work is worth it, though. We are striving to market a professional looking product, a book that will inspire people to have confidence in our work (and hopefully, confidence in the writer's ability to deliver an exciting read).

It won't be long now!