SmashedWordsWhen I first began this digital publishing journey in 2011, I used Smashwords founder Mark Coker’s Smashwords Style Guide (which is free, BTW) as my bible to format an eBook, even though I was mostly planning on selling books on Amazon. At the time, Amazon had a true lion’s share of the market (something like 80-90% of e-Book sales were through Amazon—historically at that time). The market for eBooks, eReaders, and eAuthors was arguably at its most unstable, fluctuating state. Many (including me) rang the death knell for Kobo, Sony, and even (perhaps most definitely, Nook).

Kindle-Death-KnellI really believed when Amazon rolled out KDP Select, they were going to woo every Unknown/Indie author away and make them all Amazonian forever. Honestly, I think they blew it. When they started, they gave credit to the thousands of free downloads and did not penalize authors in their SALES ranking for the days they offered their books for free. Oh but then they stopped that business. You might enter a two-day free promotion at a decent ranking only to find yourself in the hundreds of thousands when you exited because you hadn’t made one actual sale for that 48 hour period.

And lending? I don’t know about you, but I see 1/100th at best borrowing versus buying. A pittance each month, all to swear my allegiance to the great digital Amazon?

Excuse my British but fuck-all on that.

So I said a tearless adios to KDP Select and I spent the week REALLY using Coker’s guide to get my manuscripts ready for the infamous Smashwords Meatgrinder (if you don’t know, the Meatgrinder is what takes your .Doc and turns it into every format known to the eReader populace, including PDF, TXT, LRF, Palm, Plain Text, and HTML for online reading). See, I cut a few corners formatting my eBook for Amazon (like using Word’s really quick and useful TOC-creator, which won’t pass the strict standards of Smashword’s Vetter, yet another formidable beast standing in the way of the premium catalog and then, after human review, the promised land of ultra-distribution).

9571869_mBut you know what? It wasn’t so bad. It was a lot of work (tedium is a better description). But almost all my titles are now in the Smashwords premium catalog, which means they will now distribute to Apple, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo, and more.

Just for the record, I know a lot of authors that fiddle with their pricing outside Amazon (i.e. in other sales channels) to affect their price within Amazon. Here is the updated law from Amazon as of December 2012:

You must set your Digital Book’s List Price (and change it from time-to-time if necessary) so that it is no higher than the list price in any sales channel for any digital or physical edition of the Digital Book.

But if you choose the 70% Royalty Option, you must further set and adjust your List Price so that it is at least 20% below the list price in any sales channel for any physical edition of the Digital Book.

By “list price in any sales channel,” we mean the suggested or recommended retail price or, if you sell your book directly to end users, your own sales price, for an edition of the book available outside of our Program. 

AmazonPoliceCarI’m not a member of the Pricing Police, and frankly I say whatever risks an author is willing to take are his or her own business (and I’m no rat either), but it’s clear that you can get into hot water setting prices to get Amazon to lower theirs but still give you the 70% commission on, say 99 cents, and by making your book free elsewhere, you are not fulfilling your contractual obligation to Amazon to “set your Digital Book’s List Price [on Amazon] so that it is no higher than the list price in any sales channel for any digital or physical edition of the Digital Book.”

And if you think they’re not looking, think again. I’ve twice received emails from Amazon, once when I was in KDP Select and there was still a copy of my book on another site (I thought I’d removed them all), and another when my price was 99 cents on another site and $2.99 on Amazon.

You all can do what works best for you, but I’d hate to be banned from Amazon, so I plan to stick to the rules.

And now’s not a good time to piss off the giant. I think Amazon is moody because they haven’t dominated the entire eUniverse quite yet—and I’m not sure how to feel about them buying Goodreads, but let’s face facts, in most decisions, Amazon has proven to be one smart, double-stuffed cookie. That being the case, I know more than a few authors that have reported upwards of 20-25% increases in overall income by leaving KDP Select and getting their books out in all the other lonely places.

SmashwordsMeatGrinderI know that sounds intuitive, but trust me, back in the day, I didn’t sell squat on B&N—true, I was driving traffic toward Amazon, but even incidentally I was sell 10:1 on Amazon versus B&N. I just don’t believe that’s true any longer and I am the first to admit when my prediction comes, goes, and is unfulfilled.

So we’ll see. I’ll tell you this: I have a bunch of super-clean manuscripts. Of course my eyes are as read as the sun when it sinks behind the gulf coast, but (whew) I’m finally done. Except for the manuscript I am currently working on, which is almost done.

But I’m an expert now.

I wonder if I can get Smashwords to give me my own my own prose Meatgrinder?

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)

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Typing Image credit: pressmaster / 123RF Stock Photo

Falling Letters Image credit: z_i_b_i / 123RF Stock Photo

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11 Responses to Call T.O.D. On KDP Select And Smash The Words.

  1. Ryan Schneider says:

    Keep us posted on your sales over the next month or two, Rob. I’m very interested in your results.

    For me, my sales on non-Amazon channels have been small by comparison. But I do meet people on Twitter who tell me that they went and bought one of my books for their Nook, or their iPhone, etc. My new novel EYE CANDY is in KDP select and this weekend I’m doing a 48-hour promo where it and most of my other titles are free. But I had one Twitter friend ask if EYE CANDY is available on Nook. Sadly, it’s not. All I could do was steer her toward Amazon’s free Kindle reading apps so she could read it on her phone or in her browser. It sucked but what else could I do. I know writers who work Amazon exclusively and have had massive success. I’ve had mixed feelings about what Amazon expects, and I like what Mark Coker and the Smashwords folks are doing. And you’re right that the Meatgrinder does improve one’s manuscript, especially the ToC.

    Thanks again and keep us posted!

    • rsguthrie says:

      Will do. In the past, I’ve experienced the same thing, but like you I’ve had requests from readers who want EPUB for their Nooks, so now I can offer it. I figure it shouldn’t hurt the Amazon sales and I just haven’t seen the advantage of KDP Select (5 free giveaways and commissions in Japan aren’t that high on my list). But we’ll see. Changing of the strategy (either direction) is a writer’s prerogative. Or something like that. 😉

  2. Stephen Woodfin says:

    Rob, I’m off KDP select for now, but still uncertain about which way to go. I am seeing more BN sales than I used to. I guess all we can do is to keep tinkering with things until we discover the best combination.

    • rsguthrie says:

      Thanks for commenting, Stephen. I’m with you on the uncertainty factor (starting to think that’s just part of running a business, which is exactly what being an author is). Tinker, changing it up, trying new strategies—that’s what we have to do. I promise, if I ever bottle the magic success formula, you get a complimentary jug. 🙂

  3. Mary Pax says:

    I never used Select. I don’t want one big giant. I don’t think that’s smart on our part [the writers]. Choice gives us a better standing. It can take time to build a following on the other sites, but it’s nice to have multiple income sources.

    Meatgrinder isn’t that hard. Just tedious, as you say. http://mpaxauthor.com/blog/

  4. chickletslit says:

    I thought this was a really insightful and informative post. I always learn so much from you. Don’t go doubting that intuition of yours. I believe as you that Nook would have failed had Amazon stayed the same but they didn’t. Amazon took Kindles to the next level and they embarked on a huge marketing plan, which together have made eBooks as popular as they are today. B & N and all the rest have enjoyed one helluva ride on Amazon’s advertisement dollars letting them establish that eBooks are not going to go away – and while Amazon has been spending their mega-money, everyone else has watched to see what works and what doesn’t with authors and readers. While I don’t think they will ever rival Amazon, I do hope they step up to the plate enough to at least keep them on their toes and from reading the blurb Amazon sent out in December it looks like they may be succeeding. Fabulous post, Rob.

    • rsguthrie says:

      Well, I wouldn’t say I doubt it, but once a week it taps me on the shoulder and gives me that “what were you thinking?” raising of the eyebrows. I just give him the bird and remind him it was HIS idea in the first place. 😉

      As we are always able to say, I think the market will keep changing and there are more curve balls still coming and we’ll have to keep swinging for the fences. 🙂

  5. Eri Nelson says:

    Very insightful as usual. I have posted this to a group I am part of as well as my own feeds.Please keep us posted. 🙂

  6. S.I. Hayes says:

    This is a great bit of words, I actually started with and have kept Smashwords, even after moving into Amazon for my print works, when the offer for kindle content came up after going through the crazy edits for CS I decided that it was worth a shot to be in all available venues. I declined using KDP select of course because I didn’t want o be locked in to anything for any period of time that I couldn’t just walk away from. As for the Meatgrinder, it seems to be OK with the Creatspace formatting standards. I discovered this when I found that my doc had errors I had previously missed before sending it to SW the first time. So in a lazy effort to not have to reformat I submitted the CS version, and all was a go. Now I write everything in the CS Templates I’ve modified fro myself, and found it saves soo much time!

    • rsguthrie says:

      What I love about your comment is the “template” remark. I do the same thing; once I have Doc A working, I just write the next one using the same template. So my “previous” template was pretty good, being that it was mostly based on the CS template—now I am also clean enough to pass the auto-vetter and the eyballs that look at the manuscript, so I’m good to go. 🙂 Thanks for the comment, Shannon.

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