promos – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 92: How to Use KDP Select to Sell More Books with Susan Kaye Quinn

August 2, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

We got a lot of great information from today’s return guest, science-fiction and paranormal romance author, Susan Kaye Quinn. In addition to writing genre fiction, she’s penned For Love or Money, a book that talks about the ongoing debate on whether to write to the market, to write your passion, or to try and find the spot where the two areas mesh.

Since Susan has been doing a number of experiments with Amazon’s KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited promotions lately, we focused on that during the show, trying to find the information that would help authors work KU to their advantage and do better with the promotions available to those in the program.

Here are a few specifics we covered:

Being wide (in all the stores) and having a permafree title versus being in KDP Select with a 99-cent title
How to have a successful free run while in KDP Select and why “getting the attention of borrowers” matters more than anything else
How borrowers are almost like an entirely different store with their own eco-system
What to do if you’ve been wide and are bringing older titles into KDP Select
What some of the problems might be if your books just aren’t selling as well as you wish
Figuring out if a book or genre is a good match for KDP Select
Whether pre-orders are a good idea when you’re in KDP Select and you’re relying on borrows (which can’t roll in until the book is live)
Dealing with readers who might be upset if you switch from being in all the stores to being exclusive with Amazon
Figuring out whether you should give KDP Select a try based on how well you’re doing in other stores
Whether you should save up books and launch them in a cluster or try to stagger them to release over time
Places to advertise KDP Select titles

Stop by Susan’s site, check out her books on Amazon, and sign up for her popular For Love or Money group on Facebook. Lindsay is there as are many other indie authors.

Also check out Susan’s previous appearance on the show if you haven’t already: Episode 36.