WRITING TIPS - Kindle Unlimited vs Wide

Do I go KDP Select (Kindle Unlimited) or go wide?
This is a question you see debated lots.

So, you can tick the little box on KDP which says 'Select'.
This will make your book available to Kindle Unlimited subscribers for free. They pay a monthly subscription and get as many books as they like in KU for no extra cost. Yay!
And you get paid by Amazon, something like $0.002 per page read.

But, this means you're tied into Amazon exclusively.
Your ebook mustn't be available anywhere else.
And there's the rub.

You're losing out on all the Kobo, Nook, iBooks etc. sales.

And, BookBub (huge promotional site), seems to prefer a wide distribution (meaning your book should be available across all platforms).

So, is it worth it?
Well, you potentially get a lot more readers, as y'know, free book...
And we know my thoughts on those! (see my post on freebies)

And there are many authors out there who declare thousands of page reads per day, and swear by their KDP Select success.

If it's a first book in a series, and your next ones are full price, sure, maybe it's worth it.

But the mighty Amazon seem to be clamping down harder and harder on authors.
They routinely remove reviews, a lot of which were actually genuine, but not according to their algorithm 😩

Many authors have had books removed from sale and/or been threatened as Amazon have decreed reading bots have been used. These authors often have no knowledge of this btw.

Pirated books flag up on Amazon as you publishing your book elsewhere, so they then take yours down from their site. Grr!

Some books have been removed as there was a sudden spike in sales. Well yeah, the author ran a promotion and got sales; it worked. But Amazon don't seem to like this either.

And then you add in the erotic genre who recently had all their rankings stripped out.

Oh, and don't forget Cockygate! I'm not going into details. If you don't know what that was, Google it.

Every day I see authors having problems with the market leader who were originally book sellers.

So, is it time to 'go wide'?
Maybe.

Why put all your eggs in one basket?
Especially when that basket is a little bit shabby and there's a hole forming?

Sites such as Draft2Digital will push your books out to all other platforms at once which is super helpful. However, they don't run promotions on those platforms (at time of writing).
To get your book noticed on the other platforms you'll need to advertise it e.g. on Facebook advertising. I have a blog post on advertising.

It's a deep question.

But there is a relatively simple answer...

Check the top 100 of your category/categories on the Amazon website. If most of them are in KU, you probably should be too.

Up to you. This is just my humble opinion. You can make up your own mind.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Comment below.

Always in love and light,

TL