I'm sure many of you have heard of this new deal from Amazon Kindle called KDP Select. If not, here is the link: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/KDPSelect Basically, what Kindle is doing is setting out to make sure that digital books are given to them exclusively for 90 days, promising that an author's portion of their lending library money will be distributed to them during this time.
What's the catch? Well, the fact that Amazon will effectively be the only place that your book will be listed for those 90 days. So an author's book, if it is a new release, will no longer be able to be marketed as a new release at the other online retail sites once it's free to be sold elsewhere. And you're depending on there being sales during those 3 months... and it's very possible there won't be. And for those who already have their book listed in a myriad of other online retail sites, you're facing the task of having to go through and take down all of those listings... and then put them all back up 90 days later. (And for those retail sites that only pay on a quarterly basis, this could mean that you won't receive any royalties for a half a year or more.)
Now, if you are an author who has only a few titles to deal with, and one or more of your books haven't been selling for a while, this may seem like a unique and advantageous opportunity. But if you are an author with a ton of published titles - or worse yet, a small press publisher who has a few hundred or more - this represents an incredible amount of time and effort. Consider how much time (and money) it takes a publisher to convert and upload all of the titles on their Book Title List (backlist or otherwise) to up to a dozen different retail sites.... and all the time it will take for that publisher (or author) to take each title off of all of those sites.... and then go back and put it back on to all those sites again once the 90-day period is over.
Amazon is trying to completely corner the market on digital sales at the detriment of small press publishers and authors alike. The large amount of money they are listing that they'll be using makes it all sound very exciting, but it's really just a form of lottery system, with no guarantee that your title(s) will be part of the distribution of that money.
So... as a publisher of nearly 400 titles myself, I will only agree to listing a title at Amazon Kindle with this option if it is a NEW TITLE that has yet to be converted and uploaded to the other online retail sites. Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that your title will make sales during this time, and you will not have the added advantage of a myriad of other retail sites that your book will be listed on - such as at Barnes & Noble for those of you who have a Nook - so you may be missing out on a lot of sales from those other sites as well.
Your comments are, of course, welcome. I look forward to hearing from any of you who are doing this on your own or has a publisher who is doing it once the first 90 days are over.
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