Amazon is trying to entice self-publishers to go exclusive with them for 90 days by dangling a “fund” of $500,000 that will be distributed based “on a share of the total number of qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles. For example, if the monthly fund amount is $500,000 and the total qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles is 100,000 in December and if your book was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn 1.5% (1,500/100,000 = 1.5%), or $7,500 in December.”
It’s a pretty slick way to quickly ramp up the number of books available via Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, while minimizing the expense on their end with a clearly defined ceiling, but there are all kinds of strings attached because of the exclusivity requirement.
Enrolling in KDP Select means an author agrees to remove those ebooks from competing retailers, including their own personal websites where they might be selling an ePUB or PDF version directly. Because the wording doesn’t explicitly refer to sales, but instead to availability, it would appear to include library distribution, though I’m not aware of too many self-published authors working with Overdrive. (I do believe Smashwords distributes to Open Library, though.)
For self-publishers who offer print and digital, Amazon isn’t demanding an exclusive on the print book, but it effectively becomes one since Barnes & Noble has made it clear they won’t stock print books when they don’t have the corresponding ebook to sell, too, and I’d imagine most indie booksellers will feel the same way.
If you’re an author who has already been shook and sold your soul and firstborn to Jeff Bezos, I can see this seeming like a good short-term deal, but the potential repercussions are huge. And if you’re a relatively unknown author trying to build an audience, while the lure of snagging some of the crumbs that fall off of the self-publishing elites’ plates might seem appealing, limiting your reach to not only one retailer, but one format that can only be read on that retailers’ platforms—no matter how pervasive they may be—strikes me as extremely short-sighted.
This is a smart—but not wise—low-cost play for market share by Amazon, and while I usually admire their moves, this one stinks of the worst kind of opportunism. And I say that as someone who has an ebook that hasn’t sold worth a damn via B&N since its first month (or Goodreads at all), but continues to see a trickle of sales every month from Amazon despite the fact that I’m a shit marketer when it comes to my own stuff.
This is one program I’m sitting out purely on principle.
UPDATE: Not convinced? Be sure to read Victoria Strauss’ post, “The Fine Print of Amazon’s New KDP Select Program.”
