Kindle Select and the Importance of good Branding for Books

**Warning - this post, while fascinating, is old and withered.  I have recently posted an equally fascinating update with better info.  Go HERE…BRANDING YOUR BOOK (Redux) to read the current version**

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I've got some data that should be worth talking about, so I guess it's about time to offer up some results  on Kindle Select and some opinions on what it might take to succeed in publishing going forward.

For what it's worth, before I start rambling on about "branding," I should mention that my day job is in brand consulting.  That still doesn't mean I'm not an idiot and completely wrong about everything I'm about to say, but I do at least know what the words mean.  

On Kindle Select:

The Good:

If you have very few books out, say just one or two, you may be able make more money with Kindle Select than you would without it.  A lot more.  And if you use Select and aren't making more money, it may give you some nice insight into why that is.

Recently, entrepreneurial writing guru Dean Wesley Smith posed a question referring to Select on his blog, "Why would anybody NOT publish on every available platform?"  It was meant to be rhetorical, but honestly...

The answer, for me at least, is because at least at this particular time, it is not worth it.  

I should also point something out before I question someone like DWS.  Even though I have been a professional writer in various fields for a long time,  I claim no wisdom about publishing beyond what I have observed in the last couple years or so as I entered into this new world with eyes wide open.  I'm also offering an opinion on something (Kindle Select) that is about 7 weeks old.  I intend to follow Dean Wesley Smith's enormously sound career advice long into the future.  And if you are really looking for knowledge to help in your writing career... Go HERE asap.

It should also be pointed out that Dean Wesley Smith is working from a very different model than is possible for me at this time.  DWS's business model involves incremental audience building through a steady stream of books released over several years.  DWS has dozens of books which have been available for a long time.  I have one book which went on sale 3 months ago.  Apples, meet one lonely Orange.

So, why is it not worthwhile to me to publish King's X across all available online platforms?  The answer is simple; because my book is selling very well on Amazon right now, in large part due to something only Amazon can do.  And in exchange for that one special thing Amazon can do, I had to offer the title to them exclusively for 3 months.

What is the thing they do?  They make my book VISIBLE to a lot of people.  That's all.  And at least so far, that's enough.  Plenty, even.

If you have a good book,  a good cover, and a product page that does its job well, Kindle Select helps you attract an audience right away.  Potentially a big audience.  Bigger than the one you can generate on Twitter, or your blog, or through paid advertising.  People will SEE your book.  Whether they buy it or not has to do with your work.  All they are offering is VISIBILITY, nothing more.  But visibility is huge - "If a tree recites poetry in the forest and no one is there to hear it..."

An earlier post (This One) offers a recent screen shot of the sales ranking for King's X after Christmas.  King's X had a rather high production cost, which was essentially paid for in a couple of days.  After 3 months on sale, the book was in the black.

The early numbers looked like this...

Sales:

October:

Amazon - 16 (not bad for little to no publicity).

B&N - 0

November:

Amazon - 10 (still within the margin of "normal and expected" from what I've seen).

B&N - 0 (sensing a pattern here)

December thru the 9th:

Amazon - 3

B&N - 0

That week, Amazon offered Kindle Select to its authors.  Basically this: in exchange for 90 days of exclusivity, Amazon offers 5 days (at your discretion) of lowering your price to $0 and enrollment in a borrowing program where members of their paid "Prime" service can borrow one participating book a month for free.

So, close inspection of my B&N sales totals and some agonizing soul-searching eventually led me to the following conclusion... "okay, sure... whatever."

On December 10th I tried an experiment.  Made the book free for 2 days.  Saturday and Sunday.  In retrospect, I now realize that for whatever reason, people don't shop very much at the Kindle store on weekends.  I am aware of that because I now sell enough books to see the pattern.  At the time, I had no idea.

Anyway - 1600 free downloads in those 2 days.  Okay, great.  So what?  Well, remember "that special thing that Amazon does?"  If you make a blip in their system, if you somehow manage to show up a little bit in their data, their Machinery starts to show your book to other people to see if they might also be interested.  And in the case of my book, anyway, they were.  That little blip caused a spike in real sales the following week.  No big deal by Konrathian standards, but a very big deal compared to "10" in November.

I watched the spike rise and fall over about 12 days.  I noticed that whatever generated the spike (these mythical algorithms you hear spoken of in hushed whispers across the Internet) had the most effect 2 days after the book went back on sale.  So I did it again, making King's X free for one day only on December 23rd.  Two days before Christmas.   5000 downloads this time.  That screen shot in the other post is the top of the spike that lasted for weeks.  I've very nearly earned the average Traditional publishing advance for a debut fiction author, and expect to eclipse that mark soon.

I’m not exactly sure what the numbers were because Amazon mixes in the freebies with the “paids,” but it was something like 700 sold in the last 3 weeks of December, with 296 “borrows.”  

Projecting the numbers for Barnes & Noble through December had King’s X not gone exclusive, it would have looked something like this...

B&N - 0

So, speaking just for myself, the good of Kindle Select has been pretty damn good.

The Bad:  A couple things here...

1)  It doesn't work for everybody.  DWS mentioned recently on his blog that from the copious amount of anecdotal evidence he gets from other writers, "it makes no difference at all in my sales" beats results like mine 4 to 1.  

That's very interesting.  Maybe interesting enough to learn something else.  

The IMPORTANCE of GOOD BRANDING for your book. 

 I would easily believe that what happened with my book the first time was just a coincidence, except that it’s worked each of 3 different times.  The result of selling a lot of books after going free has been very consistent for me. 

From what I’ve seen (admittedly only a short window of data gathering), other than raising the visibility of your book (promotion, marketing), the difference between having success with only one book and not having success, has a lot to do with the book, the uniqueness and appeal of the subject matter, and how good your product page is at conveying what’s special about it once people do see it.  So… branding.

In short, branding is NOT marketing.  Branding is about letting people know what your product is, not where they can get it or how much sex they will soon be enjoying once they own this amazing thing.  Effective branding is not designed to make people want something they didn’t want before.  Rather, effective branding lets people know that this product (in this case a book) is the thing they’ve’ve been looking for all along.  Really good branding will also tell you that this is NOT the thing you’ve been looking for and probably NOT for you, so you should just move on. This is particularly important for books.  It short, you don't want to sell your book to people who probably won't like it.  You may think you do, but you really don't.  ESPECIALLY if its a great book.  If it's great, you want all the word of mouth help you can get.  And that can only come from the people the book was written for.

This is all particularly true for genre books.  If you write Cozy Mysteries, or Romantic Sci-fi... make friends with branding.

For further anecdotal evidence about what good branding for a book is and how it can really, really make a difference.  I want to talk about another author who has sold a lot of books through Kindle Select.  

David Wisehart has an excellent product page on Amazon.  His novel “Devil’s Lair” is probably the most effectively branded Indie book I’ve seen.  Click that link and take a look...

Perfectly positioned within a clear cut genre, there is no mistaking what it’s about and what to expect from it.  It’s got a great cover in that regard too, and if you are attracted to that cover, then his book will very likely please you.  The product page also shouts “quality,” with a series of glowing and specific blurbs from other authors, and a high price (though still a bargain).  One look and it will be obvious if it’s NOT for you so you can move on (which is good). But if it IS for you, you’ll know it right away, and you will very likely buy it (which is tremendous).  With branding that effective, all he needed was for people to SEE his product page.  He’s using the one day free thing to create visibility and selling in huge numbers.  All of which he’s posted about on his BLOG and elsewhere.

What’s most interesting to me is the consistency of his results, and the way they mirror mine to an uncanny degree.  Through total coincidence, the most recent free promotion I did of King’s X, just happened to be on the same day Wisehart did the same for Devil’s Lair.  So I got to watch what both books did and see all the numbers (the constantly updated rankings) in real time.

As good as King’s X has been doing, Devil’s Lair has been doing MUCH better, but very consistently so.  From what I’ve seen,  Devil’s Lair sells about 50% better than King’s X, every single day, like clock work.  If King’s X is #10 in “Historical Fantasy” then Devil’s Lair is number 4.  If King’s X is number 2,200 in the paid store, then Devil’s Lair is around 1,050.  Seriously.  I've watched the numbers for both books rise and fall for the last 2 weeks.  It's been uncanny.  At this very moment, I’m looking  on Amazon.  14 days since the free promo - King’s X is #8,574 and Devil’s Lair is 3,818.  So I’m still at a little less than 50% of his pace.  Amazing.  

And based on the numbers Wisehart has posted elsewhere, it was exactly like this over Christmas too.  Double amazing.  Enough to prove to me, at least, that it is not a fluke.  

To sum up:  

1. - DSW says that going free through Kindle Select produces negligible results for 4 out of 5 authors he hears from (undoubtedly a large sample).  
2. - It worked for me 3 out of 3 times and produces very consistent numbers.
3. - It works for David Wisehart every time too, and his numbers are very consistently double what mine are.

So... why?  How could this possibly be?

I’m sticking with branding as the answer.  My book is similar in all the qualities I mentioned about his.  It’s got a very interesting cover that stands out, it has a unique premise and has a very strong product page to let you know what to expect should you start reading it.  

The big difference is issues of clarity.  Wisehart’s “Devil’s Lair” is very clearly an epic fantasy (with a twist), where as “King’s X” is more of a genre-hopper.  The title “Devil’s Lair” offers a lot of specifics, paints a very clear picture even before you read the plot summary.  The title “King’s X” is far more vague.  What the title means is explained in the book, of course, and a hint comes later on in the product page.  But certainly, the title of my book does not call out, “You are my people!  At last we have found each other!  Take me to bed with you and we’ll stay up all night reading!”

I'm suggesting that the crystal clarity of “Devil’s Lair” is worth double the sales of a book that makes you wonder a bit more about what reading it will be like.

So my takeaway from this information is this... if making your book visible to a lot of people at once isn’t helping you sell your book, there may be something you can do about it.  It may be that you need a better cover or a better title, it may also be that you need a better book.  But no matter what the issue is, it definitely means you need to give more thought into WHO YOUR BOOK IS FOR.  Every book was written for someone, or some group of someones.  Like penguins, who can return from hunting in the ocean to find their children among millions of identical chicks in Antarctica, you’ve got to figure out a way for your book’s people to connect right away when they see it.  

Which leads me to one other “The BAD:”

Making your book free does go a little contrary to the idea of solid branding bringing your book together with its people.  For starters, the “customers also bought” on your product page will be dominated by one similarity... all books that were also free on the same day.  That doesn’t help you to find your people.

But even more importantly, when a book is free, people don’t necessarily look real close before downloading it.  Very few (percentage wise) will likely ever read it.  Some who do will become fans, but others who do may totally hate the thing you’ve poured your soul into.  “It’s not for me” is a very real thing.  So, you can get bad reviews from angry people who have no patience at all for “it’s not for me.”   

King’s X received an excellent review from author and bookblogger Tamara Rose Blodgett.  When I saw this line down at the bottom... “If you're looking for dessert, skip this...” My eyes got wide.  I immediately made that line one of the first things you see on the product page.  It says a great deal about what reading this book is like, attracts the people it was written for, and politely warns off people who might very well not like it.  Perfect branding. 

But... going free flies in the face of all that.  Shortly after I did, I got a scorching review from a reader who... well, let's just say he was clearly not in agreement with the other reviews.   

And again, just a little more praise for Wisehart and the excellent branding he has done... 25 reviews and none of them negative.  What that means to me is, no one is reading his book who isn’t going to like it.  And as previously stated, A LOT of people are reading that book.  

When you consider that Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” has 51 one-star reviews on Amazon... that’s pretty impressive.