I'm in my second 90-day period with KDP Select. Not by choice, I just failed to notify them when the first 90-day period was up that I wanted to cancel and by default you enter into another contract.

Having said that, I’m not sure what alternative I would have chosen. I know nothing about Kobo or Smashwords and from what I’ve read I’m not convinced they would be any better for me.

Anyway, my experience with KDP Select has not been all bad. During my first free promo period, my wife's book Rings of Smoke was downloaded over 6,000 times. At its peak it was downloading at the rate of 100 per hour, sending it to no.4 in the Free Thriller charts. However, once the free promo was over the downloads dropped back down again. They were more than before, but nothing outstanding. I did get a few good reviews out of it though.

Just recently, I had another free promo. This time I really went full out with the publicity, paying to advertise it on several sites, tweeting, Facebooking, the lot. The crazy thing is though I only managed 700 downloads this time. I doubled the effort and got just over 10% of the result. I can’t understand this. The book had far more 4 or 5 star reviews than the first time, but only 1/10th the downloads. I’m thinking there must be a finite number of freeloaders and once they’ve downloaded your book that’s it. They’re not going to do it again.

So once the 90 days are up the question is where do I go next?

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