Should I enroll in KDP Select to increase royalties? That’s a big question many self-published erotica writers have.
And it’s something I’m always asking myself too. The truth is it depends. Let’s talk about the pros and cons of KDP select.
What is Kindle Select
So, what in the world is Kindle Select? When you publish your book, you have the option to enroll in regular KDP vs. KDP Select.
Enrolling in Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select means your books will be available on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited feature.
Kindle Unlimited is Amazon’s answer to “Netflix for books.”
Basically, subscribers pay $9.99 a month and they can borrow up to 10 books at a time from Amazon. That’s how it works from the customer end.
How does it work from our end? Well we enroll into KDP select for a period of 90 days at a time.
Under that period, the digital copy of the book MUST remain exclusive to Amazon—meaning you can’t sell it anywhere else like on Nook. The physical copy can still be sold elsewhere.
DO NOT violate this policy (even by accident).
I’ve heard about authors being permanently banned from Amazon for just the slightest KDP Select exclusivity infraction.
To enroll in KDP go into the “Kindle eBook Pricing” tab of the book making interface:
After that, click on the “Enroll my book in KDP select” checkbox:
In exchange for our exclusivity, Amazon pays out royalties to authors based on their “page reads”. Remember, readers under Kindle Unlimited will be able to “borrow” these books for free.
So how does Amazon key track of these page reads for books under the program?
They call it the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC).
KENPC is calculated using standard formatting settings (font, line height, line spacing, etc.). Amazon uses KENPC to measure the number of pages customers read in your book.
To check the KENPC of your book, go into the your bookshelf and select “Promote and Advertise”.
After that, you’ll be taken to the page where you can manage your KDP Select settings. From there, Amazon will display your KENPC count.
For example, one of my latest books has a page count of 64.
In exchange for our exclusivity to KDP Select, Amazon pays out royalties to authors based on their page reads relative to other authors.
At the end of every month, Amazon will announce the size of the KDP Select Global Fund. This is basically the money they pool together from the $9.99 Kindle Unlimited subscription (from readers) to pay us authors.
Your KDP Select earnings are then calculated by your share of total pages read.
Examples of how it would work if the fund was $10M and 100,000,000 total pages were read in the month:
*Author with a 100 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
*Writer of a 200 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million multiplied by 20,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
*Author of a 200 page book that was borrowed 100 times but only read halfway through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
So how much is the KDP Select royalty per page read?
The royalty typically ranges from $0.004 to $0.005 (in the US) depending on the size of the KDP Royalty pool.
So, if someone read my latest book, which had 64 KENPC, I would make 64 * .005 = $0.32 from that “sale.”
Benefits of KDP Select
Alright, now that we discussed the rules of KDP Select, let’s talk about the pros and cons.
Here are the pros of KDP select:
1. Freebies
Under KDP, you can offer freebies for your book. You are allowed 5 days of freebies over a 90 day period. This feature is usually a hit or miss.
I found that it works with some books, but not with others. Basically, you set a date and Amazon will let that book sell for free during that period. Why in the world would we want to do that?
Well, it attracts a lot of downloads (expect 100+ per day depending on how popular you are).
Make sure to link back matter into your book (basically promote some of your other titles).
If people enjoy the book freebie, they might end up buying your other books.
What’s a good conversion rate for free books? Well typically I get anywhere between 2% to 6% conversion rates for the next week after a book goes free.
Some books don’t really convert so I don’t run the free promotion again. However, for the books that do convert, it is a great tactic to drive higher sales without actually doing any real work (the real work was actually writing the book!).
2. Discounted promotions
Another cool feature of KDP is you can run discounted price promotions once every 90 days. You will get 7 days worth of price promotions for each KDP Select enrollment cycle.
What’s cool is Amazon actually has a portion of their site dedicated to books on these deals.
That’s great because it means there are potential customers out there searching for great discounted deals on your books!
Another cool thing is you can time these discounted promotion offerings with your newsletter subscribers. All it takes is just one quick sentence letting them know a book is about to be discounted and they should take advantage of the offering!
It’s a great way to drive additional sales.
3. Page read royalties
Some customers will only borrow books through Kindle Unlimited in order to make the most out of their monthly subscription.
It doesn’t matter how well your covers are designed, how good your blurb/description is, or even how great your story is. These customers will never outright buy a book.
As a result, KDP Select is the only way to reach these customers.
Disadvantages of KDP Select
Here are the cons of enrolling in KDP select:
1. eBook is exclusive to Kindle
If you enroll your book into KDP select, you’ll be stuck under the exclusive digital agreement for 90 days. This means you will not be able to sell your eBook on other channels (paperbook or physical copy is still okay).
As a result, this limitation will limit your royalties on other sites.
2. Very LOW royalties
The KDP Select royalties are VERY LOW compared to outright sales.
If your book is priced at $2.99 and you chose the 70% royalty option, you should earn about $2 per book sold.
However, royalties under the KDP select program are MUCH lower.
It averages about 0.004 to 0.005 per page read/KENPC.
So, to earn the same $2 royalty on an outright book sale, you book would have to be 400 pages long! My books are typically between 50 and 80 page reads.
As a result, I need to get 5 to 8 full book page reads in other to match one outright sale!
The royalties on KDP select are awfully low for us authors. In fact, some people have complained about it.
Is KDP Select Worth It?
So you probably want me to tell you if KDP Select is worth it after reading all of this, right?
Sorry to sound so vague, but it really depends. You have to compare your KDP Select Royalties with what you would earn from going wide (i.e. publishing on other platforms such as Nook or Smashwords).
Over the past month, I made ~$258 on KDP Select Royalties with my most popular pen name. That accounted for about 21% of my total royalties for that month.
The question for me is: can I make more than $258 sales on other platforms? Well, that’s a hard question to answer. Unless you take all of your books off KDP Select and list them on other platforms it’s impossible to tell.
I’ve read about authors who do both and the results are really mixed.
Some book categories (like BDSM or Romance) generally make a lot of their royalties from KDP Select. This is because the books are typically longer and thus authors make more per book read on KDP Select.
Other categories (like short erotica) make more money on outright sales because the books are typically short.
In general, if you are making less than 10% of your royalties from KDP Select, I would recommend taking them out of the program and going wide.
Related: Check out this post and learn how to make more money writing erotica shorts!
Watch out with Bundles!
Pro tip: If you offer a bundled book offering, you cannot offer that bundle of books on any other site if any of the individual stories are in the KDP Select program.
This is just a warning for beginning authors.
I’ve seen other people innocently make that mistake before and Amazon made them pay dearly.
Final Thoughts
Overall, KDP Select is a great program to be apart of for self published authors. For most of my pen names, the benefits of joining far outweigh the cons.
Give it a try and see how it goes! Good luck to all out there!