[M T McGuire]

Right well, for what it's worth. I think this has more benefit if you're in the UK and want to reach the US market. Also a lot of the competition for you lot is not open to UK residents or if it is, subject to withholding tax which complicates things horribly. That said, Amazon prime, here in the UK, is just a postage option, nothing more.

So on one hand, sites like B&N or Apple are only accessible for me though Smashwords. I'm certainly not going to pull out of Smashwords and I have a number of titles exclusively on there.

However, I have made all bar 3 of my actual sales through Amazon so exclusivity isn't exactly an issue for me. I'm in for 3 months with a 4000 word prequel to my novel.

The advantages, for me are:

1. People can download my short story for free and, hopefully, will want to read my novel (soon to be novelS woohah) as a result.
2. I will get some Americans reading my work - it's very British so they'll love or hate it but it's nice to actually get it offered to them in a slightly more high profile way.
3. My story will go into the Amazon algorithm and will be offered in "people who bought x also bought"

It has occurred to me that the algorigthm may not help as much as it could because my story will be downloaded with other free stuff rather than other genre specific items.

To this end, if anyone who writes humour, fantasy, sci-fi or YA fiction on KDP Select wants to join me in planning say, 2 days in every 3 month period when we'll all make our books free at the same time and all shout about it wherever we can, you are welcome.

It may take a lot of us but I think this might help to tip the algorithm towards other similar books as opposed to just random titles which are free. I say this because currently the algorithm for my stuff is really knackered, people who bought this also boought the works of L Ron Hubbard. Hmm...

Anyway it's just a thought...

I'm in for 3 months. We'll see how it goes.

Cheers

MTM