Skip to main content

Kindle Digital Publishing Select

I have six books enrolled in the Kindle Digital Publishing Select Program. For those that don't know, the KDP Select Program requires that the books be offered exclusively on Amazon over a 90 day, renewable period, and that the books be available for free loan to Kindle users who belong to the Amazon Prime program.

For less than $80 a year a membership in the Amazon Prime program gets you three major benefits:

  1. Free two day shipping for Prime eligible items.
  2. Free instant streaming videos from the Prime library.
  3. Ability to borrow KDP select books.
What does the author get in return for allowing his book to be borrowed for free on the KDP Select program? Well, if the book is borrowed, then the author shares in a pool of money allocated for that month for the book loans. Sometimes these loan fees are as good as the royalty on a sale, sometimes not. A second advantage is a method to promote the book. The promotion method provides you with 5 days during the 90 day period where you can give away free copies of your book. You do this in hope of generating traffic and in getting reviews to stimulate sales for the free book once the give-way is over or for others in a series.

Once the 90 days expires, you can renew manually or automatically and get five more promotion days. Getting publicity for your give-away is up to you, something I have no talent for.

The KDP Select period for all my Kindle books expire in April. Between now and then, I plan to use up all my remaining promotion days and give away copies of each KDP book I have on Amazon. However, I will not be renewing any of my books in the KDP Select program. Instead, I will switch to the usual KDP program for these books on Amazon, and I'm going to publish all six books in new venues such as Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc.

My current Work In Progress (WIP) is the fictional tale of one of Charlemagne's paladins who ends up in Britain as a free lance knight in approximately 816AD, a few years after Charlemage's death. Although, I've researched the period, I've decided to take liberties by introducing scientific advances some of which were discovered in the early medieval period in some places but likely were not known in Britain. In some cases, I've extended that knowledge to a technology not available in the middle ages. Hence, I've created an alternate history with a science fiction tinge. I'm about 30,000 words in and expect the story to run more than 100,000 words.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2013 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest

I was just notified (March 14, 2013) that my 7700 word short story " Intent to Occupy "  placed second in The 2013 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest administered by William Ledbetter. Mr. Ledbetter just posted the results on his Facebook page , so I assume the results are now official: The winners of the 2013 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest are: GRAND PRIZE "The Lamplighter Legacy" by Patrick O'Sullivan 2nd Place "Intent to Occupy" by Ronald D. Ferguson 3rd Place "Improvising at Branson Six" by Sean Monaghan The annual contest is sponsored by Baen Books and the National Space Society in memory of the founder of Baen Books , Jim Baen. The judges consisted of Baen Books editors Hank Davis, Jim Minz, Tony Daniel and best selling Baen author David Drake. I'm very honored to have such illustrious judges select my story. My first reaction to the email from Bill Ledbetter telling me that I won second place was "Well, I
2 comments
Read more
My first alternate history novel was  Rogue Knight: Marked by Thor . Rogue Knight takes place early in the ninth century shortly after the death of Charlemagne.   The View from the M öbius Window is my new kindle novel available on Amazon.com . The novel is my second venture into alternate history:         In 1914, fifty years after a forgotten cabal of wizards stalemated the Civil War and overthrew the incompetent Confederacy to establish the Southern Alliance monarchy, twenty-two year-old Lieutenant Maximillian Bontemps saves the newly crowned, teenaged King John from a sniper in Asheville by knocking the boy onto his royal ass. Angry that Max dared touch Him, the King dismisses Max from His Royal Guard. Dejected, Max returns home to New Orleans to start a private Security Service.        New Orleans is the last bastion of wizardry in the south, and there Max discovers he has a rare talent: he is immune to magic. For Max's first security job, a young woman hires him to protect
Post a Comment
Read more

Repurposing a Joke.

  Jokes are often micro fiction—very short, short stories—but they share some characteristics with longer stories. Most folks label a story as good if it keeps its promises and meets expectations. They may label a story as great if it exceeds expectations, but when it subverts or twists or upends expectations it can be brilliant or terrible depending on who reads it and how. These subversions are the basis of a lot of humor. Humor often relies on surprise, particularly the upending of expectations. Two different people can tell the same joke, and for one teller, it falls flat while for the other it invokes laughter. That is a separate, story-telling issue. When the joke is written as micro fiction, as many jokes are, then whether it strikes someone as humorous depends on the reader as much as the writer. This is why explaining a joke often destroys the humor. Explanations eliminate surprise. Recently, I’ve posted a few repurposed old jokes on Facebook, rewritten as political humo
Post a Comment
Read more