Category: KDP

Kindle Direct Publishing Newsletter: Holiday Bonus; NaNoWriMo; Marketing Tip

I post these things from the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Newsletter for those of you who might be interested in indie publishing with KDP and don’t know that much about it. And while it might not give you all the details and answer all your questions, at least it shows you what KDP is doing, how it’s being presented, and the kind of information authors who have pubbed with KDP are getting.

This isn’t everything from the newsletter (I’m not blogging about this to promote other KDP authors I don’t know), but I thought these were the things most authors would be curious about.

From my inbox:

Holiday Bonus of $1.5 Million for KDP Select

KDP Select is adding a bonus of $1.5 million to the global fund for the holidays!

This is on top of the regular monthly fund during the three-month period from December 2012-February 2013. December’s regular monthly fund is $700,000, plus $700,000 of the $1.5 million holiday bonus will be paid out for December, doubling the total amount available in December to $1.4 million. The remainder of the $1.5 million bonus will be paid on top of the regular fund in January and February.

In the month of November KDP Select-enrolled authors earned $1.90 each time their books were borrowed.

You will earn a share of the global fund amount every time your book is borrowed from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.fr. Plus, you can reach more readers worldwide than ever before with millions of new Kindles being opened this holiday season.

Visit your Bookshelf to enroll your books in KDP Select.


NaNoWriMo 2012: The KDP & CreateSpace Chronicles, The Final Chapter

http://cts.vresp.com/c/?Amazon.com/36bfdb0213/7a9dfa5b8b/9d0ad3c7a0Fingers cramping? Eyes tired? Brain exhausted? Computer overheating? If you’re experiencing any of these plights, you may have just spent the month of November writing a 50,000-word novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The authors at CreateSpace and KDP are right there with you! We’ve watched their progress at the start and midpoint of NaNoWriMo; now let’s see how they concluded their month of furious writing. Click here to read more.

Marketing Tidbit of the Month:
Help Readers Discover Your Books on Amazon

If you want to sell more books worldwide, readers must first be able to find them. With millions of books published each year, how can you increase your title’s chances of success? Check out these simple steps to improve your book’s discoverability on Amazon.com and Amazon’s European websites, courtesy of CreateSpace. Click here to read more.

Next Amazon KDP Release: "A Sign From Heaven Above"

I haven’t posted anything about my work with the Amazon KDP program in a while because I’ve been busy working on contracted books for publishers. But I’m getting close to releasing another KDP book very soon and I wanted to mention it.

This time it’s a story titled, “A Sign From Heaven Above.” It’s an original story that has never been published anywhere before, it’s gay erotic romance, and it runs about 8,000 words. It will also be priced at .99 just like my other KDP releases on Amazon.

Raw Blurb:

Although Ricky is starting to get his new life together in Los Angeles, he still misses his long time partner, Max, of Twenty years who died suddenly. The fact that there was a twenty year age difference between Ricky and his late partner makes things even worse, and Ricky finds himself trying to figure out how to begin his life all over again at the age of forty years old when most people are just beginning to sink into their lives.

The reason he moved to LA in the first place was because there were too many memories of Max in New York to start again. But things don’t seem to be getting better, at least not until Ricky meets his next foor neighbor, Grayson, for the first time. And although he’s not sure about Grayson at first, he is attracted to him and Grayson’s aggressive personality makes him smile more than he’s smiled since Max’s death. But in order to move forward with Grayson, and to know he’s doing the right thing, he needs a sign from heaven. Without that sign, he knows deep down he’ll never feel right about falling in love with another man.  

As I said, this is a raw blurb subject to change before publication…which usually happens at the last minute. But it is the basic storyline and that won’t change. I’m shooting for a release date next month sometime, which I’ll post more about as I get closer to a release date.

I don’t want to get all spiritual in fiction, but I think a lot of people are more superstitious than they would admit to being. When it comes to important life decisions it makes people feel more confident/comfortable if they get a small sign that they are making the right choices. It doesn’t have to be religious and doesn’t have to have anything to do with heaven. But I’ve been around long enough to know that certain things in life seem to fall into place when we least expect them to…as if there’s a pattern to our lives over which we have no control.

And we often find things out about our lives/destinies in the form of little signs from the universe that only we can know and understand. In my case, I’ve always lived in a place with the numbers 1, 4, 6, and 2 in the address. Not in that order; not always at the same time. The home Tony and I owned before this was a combination of two of those numbers…16. The home before that was a different combination of two more of those numbers…42. The home we’ve lived in for the past ten years is an arrangement of all those numbers. And I didn’t always realize it at the time, so it wasn’t a conscious decision to move to places with those numbers. We bought this house before we even knew the address…or cared about it. But these four numbers have been following me around for years.

Kindle Direct Publishing at London Book Fair This Week


Had I planned earlier, I think I would have gone to the London Book Fair this year. I’ve always wanted to go, and I would have been able to meet a few people from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). But I didn’t even officially decide to publish with KDP until December. For those who read this blog you know I’ve been talking about indie authors for a long time and I’ve always been curious about it. It just took a while for me to make the decision…which had to do with many contributing factors in my career I’ll eventually discuss at a later date. It should also be interesting because this year Hong Kong is taking part for the first time.

In the most recent KDP newsletter, here’s what it says for those of you who are going to the London Book Fair:

As we’d previously announced, KDP will be at the London Book Fair April 16-18, 2012. If you find yourself in London in the next few days make sure to stop by our booth (EC2-W905) to meet us and best-selling KDP UK author Rachel Abbott. We will be hosting several sessions focusing on KDP and Rachel will also be signing copies of her UK Kindle best-seller, Only the Innocent, on Tues 4/17 1-2 pm at our booth. Check out our sessions:

Digital Zone session at Digital Theatre 2
A “how-to” discussion of reaching the growing Amazon Kindle audience and a demo on how to publish your book using KDP.

Tues, 4/17 11-11:20 am

Meet Rachel Abbott at the KDP booth:

Tues, 4/17 3-5 pm

In more KDP news, one of the most recently featured books on KDP was written by Catherine Ryan Hyde, the author of “Pay it Forward,” and “Jumpstart the World,” also an author I’ve written about here on the blog several times long before I even knew Hyde was self-publishing with KDP.

Featured KDP BooksWhen I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde

When Nathan McCann finds, and saves, a newborn baby abandoned in the woods, he asks the baby’s grandmother to someday bring the boy around to meet him. She agrees, but by the time she brings young Nat around, the boy is an angry 15-year-old with a police record and dreams of becoming a professional boxer. And she doesn’t just introduce Nat to his namesake, “the man who found him in the woods.” She washes her hands of Nat and leaves him with Nathan. Now Nathan must learn how to be both a father and a friend to a troubled kid who doesn’t want his help, doesn’t trust anyone, and doesn’t understand his own heart or the possibilities of his young life.

For those who are interested in looking into more about KDP, here’s an interesting piece from the newsletter about the Owner’s Lending Program. I opted to do this with “Chase of a Lifetime,” and so far I’m happy with the results I’m seeing.

In the month of March, KDP Select-enrolled authors earned an impressive $2.18 per book borrowed. From our recent press release: “Every time a customer borrowed an independently-published book in March, the author earned $2.18. That’s more than many authors earn when their books are sold,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content.

Early sales data indicates that inclusion in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library not only generates additional revenue from loans for authors, but actually increases customer purchases of authors’ work as well.

KDP will also be at BEA this year (Book Expo America), which I’ll post when I hear more about it.