Yesterday was the positive. Today, the negative.

I’m happy, as an author, to be enrolled in KDP Select, and I don’t have any plans to disenroll at this time.

That said, there are things I don’t like about it.

The main thing I don’t like is the Countdown Deal–the option to lower the price of your Kindle book for up to 7 days. I’ve tried it once. I didn’t have success with it.

You do get paid higher royalties at that lower price point than you normally would, is how I understand it–by that I mean, you get paid more than if you simply priced your ebook at 99 cents or $1.99. But you also have to make some sales during your Countdown Deal for it to matter.

I tried a Countdown Deal once. I didn’t have much success with it. I tried marketing it with Bargain Booksy, and even that didn’t do much for me. I think I had 8 total sales. Which, hey, is better than nothing! But in terms of number of orders, I have always done much better with the free promo option I discussed yesterday.

I think I’ll use the Countdown Deal more with books two and three of my trilogy and use free promos on book one. While I could move more copies making books two and three free, I mean . . . I do need to actually sell some copies at some point, lol! It’s hard as an indie. (I love it though.)

The other thing I dislike is the drawback of giving Amazon exclusive rights to the digital/e-book version of your novel. I personally think the tradeoff is worth it, though. Nothing in life is free. It’s only for three months, and you can always leave KDP Select and “go wide” at any point if you’d like to. You just have to wait until your current enrollment period ends.

I’ve seen fellow authors leave KDP Select and regret it. In these cases, the majority of their royalties were from Kindle Unlimited, and they left without a plan of how to market their e-book and gain readers on other platforms. So if you’re an author and you want to leave KDP Select, go for it! But have a plan ready for when you do.

I’m quite happy with KDP Select for now, especially with a growing series on the way!