Is KDP Select Worth It?

Is KDP Select worth it?

Heck no.

For those of you that don’t know, KDP Select is the program Amazon runs to get authors in on the Kindle Unlimited Program on the Kindle reading device and applications.

Please don’t confuse this with KDP as it is. Anyone can publish to Amazon using Kindle Direct Publishing without giving Amazon exclusive rights to their work.

If I couldn’t make it any more apparent, I’m against using KDP Select, but there are some pros to it if you call them that.

The Pros of KDP Select

  • Access to Kindle Unlimited. Many more people can download your book, which is free for them, and you’re open to a wider audience.
  • 5-day free promotion. Exactly what it sounds like, you can promote your book for 5 days when it is completely free for everyone.
  • Kindle Countdown Deal. Basically, if you have a book that’s $4.99, you can temporarily set the price to $0.99, then $1.99 on up at certain intervals of time.

Wow, look at all those great benefits. Seems like a proper dream come true.

The Cons of KDP Select

  • The payout for Kindle Unlimited authors is a sliver more than half a penny per page read. So if you have a 200-page book, and a person reads it all the way through cover to cover, you get a whopping $1.00. Seems like a super great deal. That and having to wait until the 15th of the next month to see exactly how much money you made from those pages read.
  • You’re limited to only 5 days of giveaways every 90 days. If you have a book on any other sales channel you’ll be able to set the price to $0.00 and e-mail Amazon to get a price match. It’s that easy. No, you can’t set the price to free on Amazon.
  • The Countdown deal is shit.
  • You lose all control to Amazon for at least 90 days. How great is that! You’re limiting your potential income to one sales channel as opposed to diversifying and covering your own six. Of the hundreds of things I learned from The Millionaire Fastlane, one of the biggest is never give up control.

Wow, look at all those great cons. What a coincidence, because KDP Select is a great con. Except for one group of people: the beginners.

Yes, I admit, some people can benefit from KDP Select.

Those people with a less than 5 books out (rather, less than 100k words published, it really depends on the individual when they are no longer a “beginner”).

  • Can focus on writing more and technical stuff less. Beginners only have to worry about 1 site to manage, see what’s going on in the publishing world, and only have to format for one website’s reading device.
  • It’s a lot easier to test the market when you are focusing on the biggest eBook market out there. If you write obscure shit that might not have a genre for it yet, you can see if people actually want to read obscure shit that might not have a genre for it yet. That’s good for the beginner before they invest time into a market that doesn’t exist (or doesn’t know it exists yet).
  • It’s easier to build up a following this way. You can gauge one single audience to see what they want, and collect e-mails from them or send them to your own author website.

In conclusion, KDP Select is great for a new author who has no presence or fans. Anyone with a mailing list that gets more than 50 clicks should reconsider their exclusivity.

Is KDP select worth it?

No.