The troubles with KDP Select

The value of using KDP Select has become questionable in many cases. Jennifer Malone has an excellent article on it. Be sure to read the comments.

Daverana’s own  experience with it has been that it does not  work well. We have offered three different books by three different authors and not seen a bump in sales as a result of it.

A year ago, Carolyn McCray wrote an excellent article on the ways to decide whether KDP Select would work for you or not.  And from reading the article, I see that she’s saying you already have to have fabulous sales numbers to get any benefit from it. She could be right there.  If you don’t already have substantial visibility, KDP Select is not going to give it to you.

Jane Friedman has a guest post from CJ Lyons, whose final analysis is that the bloom is off the apple tree when it comes to KDP Select. It has become over saturated.

I’m going to close with one last article, this one includes interviews with four self-published authors. It’s from Karol  Gajda

As I said, we got a zero result at Daverana, when we used KDP Select.  I would be able to do a greater analysis if we had gotten even the barest of results. The three books were each from different genres within the speculative fiction umbrella: horror, science fiction, and fantasy. They were from one of our highest selling authors, one from our midlist, and one that was a brand new author.

Elaine and I have decided that we will not use KDP Select again in the near future.