As a freshman author in the self-publishing world, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what would be the most effective distributing system for my work. I started with my Smashwords and enjoyed seeing the initial spike of 80 views within day one. Sadly, there were no takers on following through to purchase. My views dropped to 20 in day two and then only 1 view on day three. By day four there was nothing left. Amazon fared no better on the purchases. Their tracking system isn’t very effective so I could only see the number of downloads, not page views. I honestly didn’t expect anything though. I didn’t do any specific advertising on purpose and had simply let my work sit on the sites.
I’d heard some really good and really bad things about KDP Select, so I was cautious to use it right away. I haven’t had much experience with self-publishing and it seemed foolish to completely exclude a distribution system for 90 days. After my views through those alternate distribution systems stopped showing any signs of life, I decided to take a closer look at the Terms and Conditions for Amazon’s exclusive program.
