Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Value of Kindle Unlimited

Well, Saronna's Gift has been out for about six weeks now, and it's been a different experience from the other seven books. This is the first book I have marketed as a romance. Some of the others are very romance-friendly, but in this book, the point of the story is the relationship. It's also the first book I put out since Kindle Unlimited was an option.

In self-publishing ebooks, unknown authors have some tools (besides writing an engaging book) to get their work to readers. Two of the main ones are they can make books free (on some platforms), and they can price them very cheaply. Giving away a book works best as a marketing strategy if it's the first book in a series. But even that has limitations because there are so darn many free ebooks, that many of them are never read. People see “free” and click the button, but once they have the ebook, they don't feel any urge to read it right away. It might not even be a book they would want to read, but what the heck, it was free, right?


The Kindle Unlimited program is different. It's a subscription program, aimed at “heavy” readers, people who read a lot!  They pay a fixed price (I think it's $10 a month) and then they can download as many KU books as they want, but they can only have 10 KU books on their device at a time. Because they have already paid the fee, they feel a need to get their money's worth and read lots of books. They don't download as recklessly as they would totally freee books, but they are willing to take a chance on new (to them) authors.

Amazon pays KU authors for every time a book is borrowed and read to at least 10% of the book. Some authors are not happy because Amazon pays a flat rate, without regard to the book's price or length. Right now, the rate is approximately $1.40. That means if a book sells for 99¢, the author gets paid more for a borrow than a sale. But if the book sells for $3.99, the borrow pays only about half what the sale would pay.  Sounds like a terrible deal, right? I don't happen to think so.

Some people look at a borrow and see it as a lost sale. I don't. I see it as a reader gained. The thing is, if you're Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, anything you write will get a lot of attention. If you're Carmen Webster Buxton, your books have a ton of competition for readers' time and money. A program like Kindle Unlimited gets an unknown author over the barrier of the reader plunking down money to find out if they like a book or not. The free sample feature helps a lot, but I know a lot of people feel like it's not enough to really tell them if they'll like the book. With KU, there really isn't much of a barrier except the reader's time commitment, and they can stop reading any time, return the book, and go on to something else.

And I have to say, when it comes to “heavy” readers, romance readers have it all sewn up! They read more books than almost anyone. Which is fine with me!

Now if they would only write more reviews . . .

Addendum:  Adding a link here to an excellent discussion of this topic on Jane Friedman's blog.









Tuesday, February 24, 2015

The books are in the mail!

The Goodreads giveaway (see post below) is over, and the books are in the mail! If you were notified you won a paperback copy of Saronna's Gift, you should get it before the end of the week.

If you're not familiar with Goodreads, you should check it out. Lots of authors host giveaways. The cover all genres, and it doesn't cost anything to enter.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Saronna's Gift giveaway on GoodReads

I'm hosting a giveaway of three paperback copies of Saronna's Gift via Goodreads! You can enter to win using the link below.  Note that you do need a US mailing address.


Goodreads Book Giveaway

Saronna's Gift by Carmen Webster Buxton

Saronna's Gift

by Carmen Webster Buxton

Giveaway ends February 20, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

First US review of Saronna's Gift

At last, the US Kindle store has a review of Saronna's Gift. Reviewer M. Sutton gave it four stars. She wanted more sex (the reader has to wait a long time and nothing overt happens on the page) but she called it a good read and praised the lack of typos and grammatical errors, so I call that a good review.

She mentioned she borrowed the book through Kindle Unlimited. I checked and the review shows up on the paperback version, too, so they are fully linked.

Flat out bragging

I dedicated Saronna's Gift to readers who write and post reviews because reviews are what tells an author he or she has made a connection.  They also help sell more books, by the way.  The book actually got its first review on the Amazon UK site, rather than Amazon US, where it has sold a lot more copies, but in any event, here is the text of the review: "This review is in my husband s name ,but your book made me sad and made me smile, I wish every woman in the world. Was free . Keep writing."


It's short, but it gets the job done! That is what I call a connection! Thank you, wife of ericdavey!  You made my day.