We just made Broken Toys: China's Song available through Amazon's KIndle Direct Publishing Select program.
The good news for Amazon Prime Members is that they can "borrow" our book for free when they download it to their Kindle. Prime members can only borrow one book a month and a Prime Membership is around $80 ($40 for college students). Prime members also get free video streaming on their computer or Roku player -- which is extremely cool.
Remember, that you don't have to have a Kindle device to read Kindle books. There are dozens of devices like the iPhone that can download Kindle books as well.
For authors, KDP Select is also a good deal because Amazon sets aside about $500,000 every month to divide among the authors whose books get borrowed under this program. For January 2012, I think that worked out to about $1.70 per borrow. (We just joined so we don't know what kind of response we'll get from this.)
Another opportunity is that this allows the author to offer their Kindle book for free to anyone for five days out of every ninety days. (Normally, the lowest price you can use is ninety-nine cents.) Of course, authors who offer their books for free don't get any royalties, but it does give them an opportunity to increase their readership. Getting a few positive customer reviews is certainly worth losing a few days' sales.
The down side is that the author promises to make the eBook exclusive to Kindle for the first 90 days. Since the other 500 pound gorilla in e-publishing is Smashwords (their website has content issues...) and I've never been able to get excited about going that route, that's not a huge problem for us.
I should also mention that the Lubbock Public Library has a website where people with library cards can download free books to their Kindle or other e-readers. Like the real library, often the book you want is checked out, but you can put in a request to have the system send you an e-mail when it becomes available. If you don't live in Lubbock, check with your local library. They may have something similar.
If you don't like e-books, Broken Toys: China's Song is also available in print through CreateSpace.
The good news for Amazon Prime Members is that they can "borrow" our book for free when they download it to their Kindle. Prime members can only borrow one book a month and a Prime Membership is around $80 ($40 for college students). Prime members also get free video streaming on their computer or Roku player -- which is extremely cool.
Remember, that you don't have to have a Kindle device to read Kindle books. There are dozens of devices like the iPhone that can download Kindle books as well.
For authors, KDP Select is also a good deal because Amazon sets aside about $500,000 every month to divide among the authors whose books get borrowed under this program. For January 2012, I think that worked out to about $1.70 per borrow. (We just joined so we don't know what kind of response we'll get from this.)
Another opportunity is that this allows the author to offer their Kindle book for free to anyone for five days out of every ninety days. (Normally, the lowest price you can use is ninety-nine cents.) Of course, authors who offer their books for free don't get any royalties, but it does give them an opportunity to increase their readership. Getting a few positive customer reviews is certainly worth losing a few days' sales.
The down side is that the author promises to make the eBook exclusive to Kindle for the first 90 days. Since the other 500 pound gorilla in e-publishing is Smashwords (their website has content issues...) and I've never been able to get excited about going that route, that's not a huge problem for us.
I should also mention that the Lubbock Public Library has a website where people with library cards can download free books to their Kindle or other e-readers. Like the real library, often the book you want is checked out, but you can put in a request to have the system send you an e-mail when it becomes available. If you don't live in Lubbock, check with your local library. They may have something similar.
If you don't like e-books, Broken Toys: China's Song is also available in print through CreateSpace.
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