Thread: KDP Select
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Old 12-14-2011, 10:06 AM   #22
J. Strnad
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Posts: 915
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Device: Kobo, Kindle 3, Paperwhite
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
What it is doing is losing the trust of the author to non-Kindle users. I don't trust an author who goes exclusive with Amazon to do the right thing for the readers.
With my book, none of the other retailers did squat to market my book, and none offered Amazon's ease of searching and purchasing. As a result, Amazon last month accounted for 99.4% of my sales which is pretty much how it's gone for the past two years. Like it or not, I was "exclusive" with Amazon even before KDP Select came along!

I see that you have a Sony reader, so, no Amazon books for you, no Barnes & Noble books for you. Wherever you're buying your books, my book isn't going to be there. I'm sorry about that, but realistically it doesn't really matter to anyone who buys from those outlets...they aren't interested in my book anyway or don't even know it exists.

Now, you might say, "What about that one guy who bought Risen at B&N last month? That's a sale you'd have lost, even if it's only one sale!" And that's true. But I have 7 borrows from Amazon Prime members after a week in the program. Do I "owe" more to that one B&N guy than I do to the 7 Prime members, that I should turn my back on the 7 to serve the 1?

Of the major retailers (excepting Smashwords, where I haven't sold a book in about a year), only Amazon lets me distribute Risen DRM-free! I'm really sorry that the "open" epub standard has been crippled by competing forms of DRM, because that was these retailers' one chance to compete with Amazon. "Any ebook on any ereader" might've stood a chance against the Kindle, but they blew it.

I want to make Risen available DRM-free to as many readers as possible. Apparently going exclusive with Amazon and listing it with KDP Select is the way to achieve that goal. If the landscape changes, I can get out of KDP Select after 90 days, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm really sorry to see ebooks trend this way. I'd have loved an open standard. I'd have loved to not see the Beta vs. VHS war re-enacted. Unfortunately, the war seems to be over in the U.S. As the owner of two Kobos, I feel as if I have two Betamaxes sitting on my shelf.
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