As an indie author who supports indie bookstores and freedom of choice, I was a little hesitant to let anyone know I was trying out Amazon’s new KDP Select program.

Admittedly, the idea of getting a share--however small--of a $500,000 monthly pot for tossing Hippie Boy into Amazon’s new Lending Library pool sounded nice. But it was the ability to launch a free eBook promotion on Amazon that sealed the deal.

Despite more than thirty rave reviews (including three written by the very generous OSers Trilogy, Alysa Salzberg and Dianne Schuch-Lindsey) since my memoir, Hippie Boy: A Girl’s Story launched as an eBook in October, I’ve been struggling to figure out the magic formula that enables me to exceed two to three eBook sales a day.  Along with the sponsorship ads I had recently started exploring on sites such as Kindle Nation Daily,  launching a free Hippie Boy eBook giveaway sounded like a great way to build exposure.

I wasn’t crazy about the idea of pulling my eBook out of the BN Nook store to meet the 90-day exclusivity required to participate in KDP Select.  But since my Nook sales have only represented about 10 percent of my overall sales, I figured the three month restriction was worth the gamble.

I enrolled Hippie Boy in the KDP Select Program on Friday and scheduled my first one-day free eBook promotion for the following day.  To ensure that my promo got noticed, I paid $25.99 for a small spotlight ad on Kindle Nation Daily.

 That night, I gathered with other  indie authors in my neighborhood to do a book signing at our local indie bookstore, Secret Garden Books, an amazing bookstore that we are all trying to support by offering signed copies of our paperbacks exclusively through the store.  To help cross-promote the book store, we even pulled together our resources recently to launch the Ballard Writers Web site, which links all of our books to Secret Garden’s online store.

The event was nice and at least thirty people showed up – all of whom came to the store because they were friends of participating authors.  I had three friends come out to support me and I sold a total of four books – including one book to a woman I didn’t know.   The books I sold were all books I had already purchased and given to the bookstore on consignment, which enabled them to drive a 40 percent margin with no upfront purchase or risk.

I woke up Saturday morning (December 10^th), logged onto my Amazon dashboard and noticed that 91 people had downloaded a free eBook of Hippie Boy.  By mid-afternoon, that number totaled more than 2,000 downloads.  That’s when I discovered, thanks to a friend and fellow author, that Hippie Boy was also being featured on Pixel of Ink, a large web site/e-Newsletter devoted to quality bargain & free eBooks.  I wasn’t even aware of the Web site until Saturday, but Pixel of Ink has more than 94,000 Facebook followers and I know—along with Kindle Nation Daily —played a huge role in Hippie Boy’s eBook promotion success.  By the end of my one-day promotion, more than 4,000 free copies  of Hippie Boy were downloaded—landing  Hippie Boy at #1 on Amazon's top 100 Memoir bestseller “free” list, and #28 overall on Amazon’s Top 100 Bestseller “free” list.

THE DAY AFTER

I was thrilled with the promotion’s success.  But I wasn’t sure if any of the momentum would hold once the promotion ended.  I told myself that it would be a dream if I could sell a hundred eBooks in a day.  And at the end of my first twenty-four hour  “post” promotion period, I exceeded my goal by eleven eBooks. 

I don’t know if these sales figures will continue to hold in the short-term --- and I’ll continue to do everything I can to drive paperback sales to my local indie bookstore.  But for me, the KDP Select Program has been a huge gift.  It’s given me the opportunity to get my memoir into the hands of 4,000 new readers I otherwise wouldn’t have known how to reach.  Now it’s up to Hippie Boy to do its job and resonate with those readers.  If it does, I know that eventually the book sales will follow.

And…I’m now up to six eBook loans, so I figure at least $1 of that $500,000 December pot of money belongs to me.