The Kindle Exclusive

[I. J. Parker]

Last year Amazon had a special incentive for writers if they gave Amazon an exclusive of their titles for one year.  In exchange they would offer a small amount of initial promotion, like featuring the cover on their news pages.  This did work fairly well in the summer, but by November, I got no traction at all out of it.  In December they introduced exclusivity plus Select.  I assumed it was a replacement of the other.

 

I'm stymied at the moment because I cannot get my titles back into my own hands as long as the exclusivity agreement lasts.

 

Any views on this?

[Jonathan Francesco]

I dunno. The offer sounds like it could backfire to me.

[I. J. Parker]

Yes, it may have done so.

[Jack Getze]

I don't see how you can avoid waiting the full year of your contract. If it expires this summer, you can try something else then. Is there someone at Amazon you can talk to? I got an answer last year to a very complicated question about my newly acquired rights and why the book was still showing. I just asked the question from my author page. I was surprised. 

[I. J. Parker]

Thanks, Jack.  I've sent them an e-mail.  I suppose I'll end up living with it.  More fall-out from the massive mistake I made by going digital through my agency.  Three of the novels become due later this summer, but one is under contract (to Amazon!) until December.

 

The one-year exclusive isn't advertised any longer.  Since last December, it's been the 90-day exclusive for Select.  That is far more reasonable.  I suppose I assumed it replaced the 1-year deal.

[Grant McKenzie]

You also have to be careful with Select as it automatically renews your participation every 90 days unless you uncheck the Automatic Renewal button.

[I. J. Parker]

Ooops!  I didn't know that.  I'd better have a look.  Thank you so much.  Select is beginning to lose its appeal, just like the one-year exclusive did.  Amazon doesn't provide enough promotion to make it worthwhile.

[Grant McKenzie]

I agree, Ingrid. I just discovered the automatic renewal myself - and I noticed that I didn't have a single borrow, which means no share of the pot for me. If you're already a "name" author, then I'm sure your borrows and share of the pot is very nice, but if you're still trying to be discovered (I have a larger following in the UK than the US), I haven't noticed any extra publicity or promotion at all. And you would think that if an author has been previously published by one of the bigs (as we both have), Amazon might take a little more notice when we release an independent book through them.

[I. J. Parker]

Darn right.  Your warning was doubly welcome:  I found that my agency (which is holding 4 of my titles that I want back) wasn't aware either, and now the Select option has prolonged my servitude by another 90 days for 2 of the titles.  It's really unconscionable of Amazon to do this.

[Benjamin Sobieck]

That borrowing thing is a strange beast. The fewer e-books people borrow, the more the author makes per borrow.

[I. J. Parker]

If that's true, then this has to do with a fixed fund Amazon sets up every month.  They have some system by which they split that among the authors whose books have been borrowed.  The amount has seemed fairly minimal to me.  If the same person bought the book, I'd make more.  But then, that reader might not want it unless it was free.

[Kalen Cap]

I'm part of KDP Select now for the 90 day period. I've only used one of my free days so far, but that day went well. Paid sales have been slow, but didn't really have much promotion set for prior to July. My time for KDP Select is up in early August. So I'll have a better sense of how the 90-day exclusive for ebooks has worked for me by then.

So far, getting free books out there has been good exposure. But, too early to tell whether that will help much otherwise.