I’ve got some more amazing news. I’ve just added Agile Discovery & Delivery: A Survival Guide for New Software Engineers & Tech Entrepreneurs to Kindle Unlimited. That means if you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can now read my book FOR FREE!
I also just bought a new Kindle and with it came a three-month free subscription to Kindle Unlimited. I love it so far! My husband does too. He’s now able to read a series of books he’d been looking for that our library didn’t carry.
For authors, the way we get our books included in Kindle Unlimited is by enrolling in KDP Select.
What is Kindle Unlimited / KDP Select?
Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service Amazon offers for eBook readers. If you subscribe, which currently costs $11.99/month in the US, you can read as many books in the Kindle Unlimited library as you want.
Authors can choose to include their eBooks in a program called KDP Select when they publish their eBook on Amazon, or any time thereafter. If they include the book, then any Kindle Unlimited subscriber can read it for free! Authors get paid by the page when readers read their books.
KDP Select Requirements for Authors
When I published my book last July, I didn’t enroll it in KDP Select because its main requirement is that your eBook must be exclusively on Amazon to join KDP Select. I wasn’t sure at the time whether I’d want to publish it elsewhere. Authors join KDP Select for 90 days at a time and their books auto-enroll unless they opt-out. It’s only during those 90 days that you can’t sell your eBook elsewhere.
I recently published the print versions of my book via Ingram Spark and I chose not to include the eBook. I mainly wanted to use Ingram Spark as a conduit to get into bookstores and libraries. Most eBooks are sold for the Kindle, so that’s where my eBook is published. Once I settled on not publishing my eBook through any other platforms, I decided to enroll it in KDP Select.
KDP Select Benefits for Authors
There are a few enticing benefits for joining KDP Select:
- Wider Audience: Potentially, more people could find and read your book.
- Get Paid: You get paid by the page. The payment varies based on how many subscribers they have that month and how many total pages were read. So, it’s going to work out to be a fairly small amount.
- Promotions: For each 90-day segment that you enroll in KDP Select, you can do one of these promotions:
- Kindle Countdown Deal – Put your book on sale for a set period of time and include a countdown clock on your Amazon page.
- Free Book Promotion – You can offer your eBook for free for 5 days, possibly attracting new readers. This type of promotion makes a lot of sense if you have a series of books. You can offer the first one for free and hopefully attract new readers for the rest of your series.
- Amazon Literary Contest – Amazon runs contests every once in a while that you are now eligible for.
Is it Worth It?
I don’t know yet. The only person who I know has checked out my book in Kindle Unlimited is my husband. Not being a software guy, I don’t think he’s read a finished copy of my book yet. He read an early (i.e. crappy) copy and I’m sure he never planned to read the book again. However, he did open it up on his Kindle and read the intro. So I guess that’s something – Kindle Unlimited got my husband to read my book again! I do not see his page count showing up in my reports, possibly because we have a householded account and they don’t count our pages.
So, I’ll report back later! The moral of the story is that my book could get a lot more eyes. Are you a Kindle Unlimited subscriber? If so, you should check out my book!
