Kindle Unlimited or Not
That’s the big question, isn’t it? But, before I answer that, let’s find out what KU is. Kindle Unlimited, or KU, is Amazon’s subscription service specifically for books, audiobooks, and magazines. There are more than 150 million subscribers who have access to over 1 million titles (or probably more by the rate books are getting published). KU works like a virtual library but, before you say, “awesome!”, let me remind you there are several other virtual libraries like Bibliotheca and others.
Most self-publishing authors have the dilemma: should you put your books solely in Kindle Unlimited or go wide? And it IS a dilemma. You hear of authors who makes a lot of money through Amazon and KU but then others will tell you that for them it is not worth it.
I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of KU or start slagging Amazon for it. This is not the purpose of this blog. All I wanted was to let readers know why I’m doing what I’m doing. And this is something each author should work out for him- or herself. Do your research. Try it, whatever. Just make your decision rationally and not because “everyone is doing it”. Read some of these blogs listed below and figure out what it means if you are unsure.
https://justpublishingadvice.com/goodbye-kindle-unlimited-thanks-but-you-robbed-me/
https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/amazon-kdp-kindle-unlimited/
https://blog.publishdrive.com/kindle-unlimited-kdp-select-vs-going-wide-which-is-better-for-self-published-authors/
I’m one of the latter authors who have tried and tested KU now three times, and it doesn’t work for me. Maybe it will if I spent thousands of advertising – which I don’t have. I also found that I’ve sold more books going wide than I did on KU. Oh, it may look like I had a lot of sales for some months, but those were the times I did paid marketing campaigns and gave away a lot of free books or have Kindle Countdown-Deals. I may be wrong, I don’t know, but I decided to go wide again. Another reason is that many of my books are aimed at the South African market, who prefer Kobo rather than Amazon.
So as soon as I can, five of my books (which will be the Taste for Love series and the Blouberg-reeks (the Afrikaans version of the Blue Mountain Series), will be wide. The rest (Playing for Glory and Blue Mountain series, as well as book one in the Kick-Off series) will be in KU until my three-month period runs out in middle June. I may try again to do advertising on those, and if it doesn’t work, I’m pulling them all out. So, for those of you looking for those books, they should be live by next week.
If you want to find any of my books on the other platforms such as Kobo and Apple or Barnes and Noble, you can follow me on Books2Read, the readers platform of Draft2Digital, where you can find out an author’s books.
https://books2read.com/ap/xXodD8/Francine-Beaton
Until next time
Francine
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