indieKindle: Over Two-Thirds of Our Kindle Nation Sponsors Climb into the Top 3,000 Overall, and Sponsorships Are Available

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Over Two-Thirds of Our Kindle Nation Sponsors Climb into the Top 3,000 Overall, and Sponsorships Are Available

By Steve Windwalker, editor of indieKindle and Kindle Nation

The peak annual period for shopping in the Kindle Store begins at around 5 pm Eastern on December 24 and continues for the next two weeks, and as it approaches we've been payng close attention to the results that Kindle Nation Daily sponsors have been getting in their efforts to connect with more Kindle readers. Our December 2010 Kindle Nation Sponsorship Results spreadsheet is available for all to see and has now been updated through December 20. Here are some of the benchmarks:

14 out of 55 sponsoring titles overall have climbed into the top 1,000 in Kindle Store sales rankings
29 out of 55 sponsoring titles overall have climbed into the top 2,000 in Kindle Store sales rankings
37 out of 55 sponsoring titles overall have climbed into the top 3,000 in Kindle Store sales rankings, including

8 out of 8 Free Kindle Nation Shorts sponsors/excerpts

18 out of 21 daily Free Book Alert sponsoring titles

Among titles priced at $3.79 and up, 4 out of 9 have climbed into the top 5,000
Among titles priced at $0.99, 15 out of 17 have climbed into the top 2,100
Among titles priced at $1.99, 2 out of 2 have climbed into the top 1,500
Among titles priced at $2.99, 18 out of 29 have climbed into the top 3,000

Finally, 10 out of 18 of our newer and less expensive Ebook of the Day sponsoring titles have climbed into the top 10,000, but we're working to strengthen the presentation on this and we see progress: 3 of the last 4 have climbed into the top 5,000, 2 of them into the top 2,000.

I personally don't believe much in advertising, but I do believe in connecting, and I see these sponsorships as a way of connecting with readers who are engaged and responsive.

What might an author or publisher get from sponsoring Kindle Nation, other than a warm fuzzy feeling for helping a hard-working guy like me?

There's never a guarantee of success, and definitions of success can vary widely among authors and publishers. But if you have written or published a book of real distinction and you want to increase exposure and connect with more readers, we work hard to help you in that effort. We have over 10,000 regular readers between our several platforms, and we often refer to Kindle Nation readers as the greatest readers in the world. If I had to describe their reading habits, I couldn't do it, but I can tell you that as readers they are prolific, savvy, price-conscious, ecumenical with respect to genre, and they don't care for trashy books, trashy covers (even though I do), and trashy reviews (I know, because I've written a few!).

I hope that helps.

Currently there is availability in early March for daily Free Book Alert sponsorships and Free Kindle Nation Shorts excerpt sponsorships, and in January for eBook of the Day sponsorships. We continue to offer a Silver package that knocks $10 off the price of a combo of the daily Free Book Alert sponsorship and the Free Kindle Nation Shorts excerpt sponsorship. See our sponsorship info page for more information and sign-up.

4 comments:

M. Louisa Locke said...: Dear Steve,

I can testify to the impact that having a Kindle short on Kindle Nation Daily can have. When you posted my short story, Dandy Detects, on your site in July, the 2 day bump of sales of my full length mystery (187 sold in 2 days) put me at #1 in my category-historical mysteries, where the book as staid ever since.

Now I realize that if the book hadn't had good reviews, a good cover, and a satisfied readership it would have eventually sunk. But what you sponsorship did was get it the visibility it needed.

Since then, my sales have climbed steadily, with an amazing increase in sales since Thanksgiving holiday. I have been in the 600's in over all Kindle sales the past week, and in December I have been averaging 36 books sold a day (most Kindle). I can't wait to see what Christmas morning will bring!

So thanks again for giving my book it's start.

M. Louisa Locke

None of this w; December 21, 2010 at 12:59 PM
Steve said...: Thanks to you, Louisa, for bringing to the table the kind of quality that is "the proof in the pudding" both for Kindle Nation's sponsorship program and for the indie author movement itself. If your excerpt hadn't been great, people wouldn't have bought your books, and if your book hadn't been great, the next author up would have suffered. Are we all in this together? Hell, yes!; December 21, 2010 at 1:09 PM
Lindsay Buroker said...: Thank you for posting the spreadsheet. I've been wondering how fantasy and children's stories do. I'm looking forward to buying a sponsorship and giving things a try!; December 22, 2010 at 7:03 PM
Anonymous said...: Thanks Steve,

I signed up two weeks ago and I'm looking forward to seeing how it'll all turn out.

I also wanted to thank you for emailing me back personally when I expressed interest but needed a little more direction.

Thanks again Steve and Merry Christmas.

Daryl; December 23, 2010 at 10:09 AM

Free Books and Other Content for Your Kindle

The Kindle store is the best place to buy many books, articles and periodicals, but it is also worth checking out the free content you can acquire through the links below. Then scroll down for Kindle information, guides, accessories, links, and a look at the latest in fresh fiction from some of the Kindle Store's hot indie authors!

Writers & Writing Links & Blogroll

Independent Publishing Resources and Links - in Progress

BowkerLink Publisher Access and ISBN System

American Booksellers Association

Book Industry Study Group (including BISAC Subject Headings List)

International Standard Book Number Agency

Joe Wikert's Publishing2020 Blog

Dan Poynter's ParaPublishing.com

indieKindle

John Kremer's Book Marketing Blog

Reviews of Independently Published Books - Foreword Magazine

Small Press Blog

Small Publishers Association of North America

The Independent Book Publishers Association (PMA)

Amazon's Digital Text Platform for Kindle Publishing (beta)

CreateSpace - high-quality, inexpensive publishing with seamless integration with distribution channels and no setup fees

Believer

McSweeney's Internet Tendency

The Sun Magazine

Grub Street

Poets & Writers

Narrative Magazine

PEN New England

National Writers Union

Sunday, March 23, 2008

A season of renewal

Just a quick drop-by to wish an hour, a day, a season of renewal and new energies to my visitors here. I have been hard at the work of finishing my book about independent publishing -- part how-to, part anthem, about publishing both on the Kindle platform and more generally -- and haven't been here as much as I wished to be, but I'm moved this morning to re-purpose a paragraph from the manuscript and share it with you here:

By heralding and thus extending the life of the good work of others, as readers, writers, and citizens, we are casting bread upon the water. We writers have had to face up to the fact that our initial hopes, that we might happily pursue our writing lives in a Garden of Eden, assured of a loving audience as large as we had any cause to imagine, forgiving of our flaws, where all our needs would be fulfilled, turned out to be delusional. We have been banished to the real world and cursed, like Eve and Adam, to work hard for a living. But it is work that we can do, and be happy to do.
Cheers to each and all,
Windwalker

Friday, March 7, 2008

Indie Author Review Program

att'n Indie Authors: You've published a Kindle edition of your novel, memoir, how-to article or history, so now what?

If you would like to have it reviewed by one of Amazon's Top Reviewers, we can help!

We have been rounding up top 100 reviewers and others who are interested in receiving reading copies of indie work for review purposes, and building a data base by reading interest areas.

If you would like to participate, just send an email to indieKindle@gmail.com with the link to your book's detail page, a brief bio, and a reading copy of your book attached as (preferably) a Word document. Please include "Indie Author Review Program" in the subject line, and include a link to any free excerpts and your website if applicable.

Your content will be only shared with participating reviewers, whose participation will be kept confidential (until and unless they publish an Amazon review). Be aware, of course, that positive reviews are not guaranteed - reviewers will post honest reviews.

Building an audience of readers

On November 19, 2007, Amazon introduced its new ebook reader, the Amazon Kindle. Although it is yet another in a series of ebook devices, it is also much, much more than that. The Kindle sold out in 5 1/2 hours, and Amazon's production process still has yet to catch up with the demand. Whether or not you can ever imagine yourself reading books or journals on a 6-inch e-ink screen, you owe it to yourself, as a writer or publisher, to give serious consideration to what this device can do to help you connect with readers.

More than any other technological development in the past decade, the Kindle will help to provide audience for quality writing of all kinds:

* First, if you follow the steps in the articles that are available to your left, they will enable you to publish books and other content on the Kindle Publishing Platform at zero expense;

* Second, these steps provide a guide to walk you through a seamless, user-friendly process of marketing and promoting your books and other content through a powerful keyword and category search environment that Amazon has created within its "Kindle store," and the cost of this marketing power is, like the cost of publishing on the Kindle Publishing Platform, is zero; and

* Third, and most importantly, by publishing your work for the Kindle now, you will be getting in on the ground floor of the fastest growing segment of avid readers for years to come.

I am, personally, extremely resistant to the notion of telling any writer or publisher that he will ever get rich doing anything related to writing. It is not why we do what we do, and the only paths to prosperity that I know of are paved with passion. So I am not going to talk money here. It makes much more sense for you to do your own thinking on this topic.

But here are some basic building blocks for whatever thinking you may do.

* I published three short-form articles on the Kindle Publishing Platform in December 2007. In the first 15 days they were up, they sold over 15 copies. I did nothing to market them other than fill in keywords and categories for the Amazon search engine. No big thing, in and of itself, until one begins to make logical extrapolations. By the end of the month they sold 50, and another 50 in the first two weeks of January 2008.

* Whatever the small number of Kindles in circulation in December 2007, it is a no-brainer to project that there will be 20 times as many Kindles in circulation one year later, and 50 times as many in circulation a year or so beyond that. Amazon does not roll out its biggest product in years without serious market-testing and a tight plan for ramping up production.

* Can you see where this is heading? Authors who publish directly to the Kindle Platform receive, in effect, a 35% royalty and may set any price they believe the market will bear for their work. They may publish as many books, articles and excerpts as they wish. Ultimately, readers will provide the best filter to determine the success and popularity of the work that is published for the Kindle.

Whether you see the Kindle publishing opportunity as a chance to connect your work directly with readers, as a way to market-test a book project by publishing an excerpt to test response, or as a creative way to build the kind of numbers that might persuade a conventional publisher to give you a book contract, it is time for you to get started. I hope that the articles available at the left will give you a big assist with that process.

You don't need to own a Kindle to publish books or other content for the Kindle. But if you get to work with the publishing process, you may find that your royalties pay for a Kindle sooner than you would expect.