Back in Decem­ber I thought I would try out the Ama­zon Kin­dle KDP Select thingy. You know, where you put your book exclu­sively (at least in e-format) for Kin­dle and in exchange, over the course of 90 days, you can offer your book for free for five days and your book is included in the lend­ing library (which you still get a cut of).

I fig­ured it wouldn’t hurt — after all, in MY par­tic­u­lar case the e-books being bought through Apple or Kobo or Nook were FEW. Kin­dle is where most of my sales were com­ing from.

Any­way, Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, my sales were THROUGH THE DAMN ROOF. I gave thou­sands of books away for free and the inter­est­ing part was that my books con­tin­ued to sell well afterward.

Then March came, and, well sales are pretty slow. They are a mil­lion times bet­ter than they were back in Decem­ber (oy, all of last year was pretty dry) but com­pared to the fan­tas­ti­cal months of Jan and Feb, it looks pretty dis­mal. C’est la vie.

I think this hap­pened for two rea­sons. One, I’m hear­ing over all that March is a slow month for books. Two, I’m sure the mar­ket is now flooded with a shit ton of free books, most of which are actu­ally quite shitty, which in turn turns off poten­tial read­ers.  Also, peo­ple are just over­whelmed — I know I have gone absolutely bonkers with my Kin­dle, pur­chas­ing books left and right over the last month. And have I read any of them? I’ve barely made a dent.

Now I am out of the 90 day con­tract with Select and I’m pon­der­ing when to go back to it (with Dark­house — the rest of the full books won’t be included, as I have no plans to ever give them away for free). Notice I say WHEN because the pro­gram has helped out my lit­tle series more than any­thing. Say what you want about Ama­zon and how they are a hor­ri­ble, unfeel­ing, cap­i­tal­ist con­glom­er­a­tion from hell, but this method TOTALLY. WORKED. FOR. ME.

Now I doubt I’ll be using all of my free days this time around — I actu­ally see a lot of return with the Lend­ing Pro­gram. But I’ll be re-signing up just the same.

But not yet. I’m going to wait until the Easter Week­end (approx­i­mately) until I do it. Until then, Dark­house will be back at Barnes & Noble for the Nook, back at Chap­ters for the Kobo, back at Apple for the iBooks. And of course, back at Smash­words for all of the above (and other for­mats too): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/58699 <———-click here. do it.

I’m doing this to give other e-reader users a chance to read the book (espe­cially with its new cover) but as I closely watch my sales, I pre­dict I’ll see that a large per­cent­age of peo­ple don’t actu­ally use Kobo/Nook/etc. I invite you to prove me wrong of course, and if sales and inter­est shoot up, I may be inclined to leave the books out of the pro­gram. But until that hap­pens, Kin­dle is where I’ll be mak­ing an income. You have to go where the action is.

*of course, no mat­ter WHAT e-format Dark­house ends up being in, you can always buy the book in paper­back from B&N, Book Depos­i­tory, Pow­ells, etc. PAPERBACKS NEED LOVE TOO!