How to Game the Amazon Rating System

The person who posted this ad was sued by Amazon. Fake reviews are no joke.

Amazon recently filed five arbitration demands against authors, publishers, and marketers, who it says have abused the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system to inflate their profits and sales rankings. It's not the first time Amazon has sued authors and services for manipulating Amazon's ratings system. In 2015, Amazon sued several websites that offered bogus reviews for a fee. By 2016, the number of fake reviewers sued by Amazon had risen to over a thousand.

The truth is that gaming Amazon's system is the norm. I've even experienced the work of Amazon gamers. One "reviewer" left a negative review on one of my books, only to recommend another book they said was better. (I became suspicious because the recommended book was on an entirely different subject.) After some research I discovered that these reviews had appeared verbatim on other books in the same category as mine. It was obvious that the "reviewer" was paid. (I reported the incident to Amazon. Nothing happened.) There are also fake reviews generated for political purposes, such as the thousands of "reviews" of Hillary Clinton's new book which Amazon was recently forced to delete.

At the moment, Amazon is suing over the ways their current payment system for KDP is being gamed. The new system is based on number of pages read, rather than downloads, because paid services were downloading books in order to boost a book's ranking. But the new system hasn't made a dent in the abuse. Thu-Huong Ha, writing for Quartz, has described in vivid detail some of the tricks being employed.

1) Inflating pages read. How can Amazon determine the number of pages a person has read of an ebook? Simple. Reading devices do not record the pages you read sequentially. Therefore, if someone is on the first page, and then jumps to the last page, the device will record the whole book as read. Who would want to read only two pages? Well, nobody. But if on the first page there is a "free offer" of something on the last page - voila! These books can even be composed of complete nonsense, and there will still be a payout.

2) Authors can create fake accounts, or hire a service that owns numerous accounts, to download massive numbers of books on free days. The author earns nothing, but the book will appear on Amazon's bestseller list for free books, which will enhance its attractiveness to future buyers.

3) Fake reviews. This has been a problem from the start. An author or company can buy fake reviews on Fiverr for a few bucks. Authors and companies can also purchase negative reviews of similar products (that's what happened to me) in order to drive down the ratings of the competition. Amazon has become so paranoid about fake reviews that it will remove a review from anyone even vaguely connected to the author - a Facebook friend, for example, whom the author may never have met.

The bottom line on Amazon rankings is that the system will always be gamed. It doesn't matter how many people Amazon sues, or how many new contortions it introduces into KDP, there will always be some way to work around it.

It makes you long for the old days, when all you had to do to get bestseller status was either sleep with a reviewer for the New York Times, or give birth to one. Ah, things were so much simpler then.

UPDATE: Amazon has decided to crack down on scammers by rank-stripping books it suspects have manipulated its system. Unfortunately, this has resulted in penalizing books which have followed the rules. Either Amazon's method of identifying people who are defrauding the system is flawed and/or scammers are continuing to game the system by pointing Amazon's fraud detection toward innocent authors. Read more about this disturbing development HERE.

Authors Guild Raises Doubts About Amazon's New Pay-Per-Page Policy

With the recent announcement that it will begin paying Kindle Unlimited authors by pages read, rather than borrows, Amazon has set off a spate of commentary, from Fortune to a satirical jab by the Telegraph.

According to the Guardian, self-published authors may see a drop in KU revenue to as little as $.006 per page read, prompting some speculation as to whether Amazon intended to cut back on short works by this maneuver.

Nobody has ever paid authors by the number of pages read. Authors have been paid by pages written, especially when their works are serialized, and they have been paid by the word. But the idea of paying an author for the number of pages a reader actually reads is unprecedented.

There is no comparison to be made in the history of authorship. (Not even pricing books by how much they weigh, or by how large they are.)

The confusion Amazon has generated is apparent in the Authors Guild statement below. In it, the Guild raises a number of questions, largely having to do with logistics (What counts as a page read?), and implications for authors (Will they have to generate cliff hangers? and the eternal, Will quality suffer?)

None of these critiques of a system in which reader attention span determines the economic success of an author addresses the underlying problem with this scheme.

It monitors readers in ways that are highly intrusive.

How much I read of a book, or which pages I read of a book, is none of Amazon's business. Not only should Amazon keep its nose out of my reading habits, it should not draw any conclusions from them. I often read nonfiction books piecemeal. Sometimes, I read works of fiction in snippets. (Short stories, poetry collections.) Should a writer get paid less if he or she wrote only one short story or poem that touched my heart? What if that poem were "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"? If I didn't read any other poem in that collection, would it mean Robert Frost was less beloved in my eyes? Would it make him less well known to the reading public than someone who had written a book of dirty limericks (of which I guarantee every single page would be turned)?

You betcha. And, as a consequence of paying authors via this bizarre system (especially if it catches on) careers will be hampered, talent will go unrewarded, and readers will be served continual crowd-sourced pap - all under the banner of "books readers want to read."

Once again, publishers (in this case Amazon) not only determine what authors get paid, but what readers should like. But unlike industry manipulation of bestseller lists, fixed reviews, and well-placed hype, this is an invasion of privacy with no benefit to either readers or authors.
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From the Authors Guild:

Starting July 1, Amazon will pay royalties to its indie authors based on the number of pages users actually read, rather than the number of times the book is “borrowed.” In its announcement, Amazon touted its unilateral amendment to its terms for self-published e-books enrolled in its Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) e-lending services. The change, Amazon said, is a response to authors’ complaints about the unfairness of its current single rate for all books, regardless of length. Writers of longer works will stand to benefit, provided those books are read in full, but it could slash the earnings of entire classes of authors, such as poets and children’s book writers, whose works tend to have fewer pages. The new regime leaves intact Amazon’s unfortunate practice of paying indie authors out of an opaque royalty pool, which pits self-published authors against one another in a zero-sum scramble for readers. With a finite amount of money to go around each month, one author’s gain is another’s loss.

The royalty adjustment comes almost a year after Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited, an e-book subscription service where readers pay $9.99 a month for access to hundreds of thousands of titles, most of which are self-published by members of Amazon’s KDP Select program. KDP Select authors, who are automatically enrolled in both KU and KOLL, agree to make their e-books available exclusively through Kindle platforms, preventing these indie authors from exploring other revenue streams as long as they are enrolled in Select. Authors may, however, drop out of KDP Select by contacting Amazon with the ASIN of the book they would like to remove, according to the announcement.

Under its outgoing royalty structure, Amazon pays a fee for each book “borrowed,” provided at least 10% of the book is read. The fee is the same for short story–length books as it is for a 500-page novel. Some writers quickly learned how to game the system and flooded Kindle Unlimited with excerpts and shorter works, even publishing books in chapters, since once a reader crosses the 10% “borrow” threshold the author earns the same no matter how long or complex the book is. While there are any number of other possible solutions to the problem, Amazon’s solution is to pay per page read. This represents an entirely new way of thinking about compensation for authors.

Exactly how this will impact books in the long run is hard to know, but it undoubtedly will affect KDP Select authors’ writing and the ability of some of these authors to make a living. For now, many questions remain to be answered. Will authors enrolled in the program feel compelled to write longer books? Will they feel the need to make sure every page has a compelling detail or cliffhanger? Will there be more padding (to make a book longer) or less (so every page is read)? If books do get padded, will readers start reading differently and skipping more? What happens to the long works of nonfiction that might take years to write and add greatly to our society’s knowledge base, but are rarely read in full by the lay reader? Will skimmed pages count? How long does a reader have to spend on a page for it to count as “read”? What data will Amazon share with authors and publishers? Will the data it gathers (most likely kept close) give it even greater dominance in indie publishing? Will it share any of its reading statistics with writers to help them have more pages read? Will they eventually foist this payment method on publishers, starting with the smaller ones who have little to no negotiating power?

At first glance, it appear that tying royalties to pages read will only incentivize authors to produce books that compel readers to keep reading. It’s not so clear whether that will result in better books. What is clear is that Amazon’s contracts with its indie authors are non-negotiable terms of use that Amazon can change at any time and which become binding on its authors within 30 days of their posting. Since its Kindle Select terms require exclusivity, this unilateral change in the royalty structure has the potential to disrupt the livelihoods of KDP Select authors with little to no warning. Even with Amazon’s monthly tinkering with the royalty pool, under its per-borrow scheme authors in recent months could at least count on a rate of somewhere between $1.33 and $1.40 per borrow. Writers of children’s books, particularly books for young children, will necessarily see that rate go down significantly.

Announced just weeks before it takes effect, the change is a reminder of Amazon’s power not only vis-à-vis traditional publishers and authors, but also among those self-published authors who have often been the e-tailer’s most vocal apologists. It’s never been more clear that indie authors who publish with KDP Select are dependent on Amazon’s business decisions, including how much money to distribute via the monthly royalty pool.

This is also a sad reminder that traditional publishers—whose unsavory contract terms we’re focusing on as part of our Fair Contract Initiative—aren’t the only ones who offer writers take-it-or-leave-it publishing contracts.

In additional Amazon news, the retailer has come to terms with Penguin Random House, the last of the Big Five publishers to negotiate e-book terms with Amazon after the expiration of the consent decree resulting from the U.S. v. Apple e-book pricing litigation. Neither side disclosed the nature of those terms or what pricing model (wholesale or agency) will govern under the terms of the new agreement.

150 Amazon KDP Select Authors Each Sold Over 100,000 Copies in 2013

Amazon's recently released statistics are no doubt causing gray hairs to sprout all over the heads of print publishers. Why? 

For one thing, 200,000 additional authors decided to sell their books exclusively on Amazon through their KDP Select program. Not all of these authors will reach the sales of the top 150, but even if each author sold a few hundred books in 2013, Amazon made quite a profit. 

Success, for Amazon, is not measured by how many best-selling authors they produce, but by how many authors decide to throw their hats into Amazon's ring.

Of course, another reason for CEOs to go gray is the exodus of well-known authors who have decided that they would rather get a greater chunk of the profits their books generate than whatever percentage their publishers mete out to them. In some cases, this amounts to millions of dollars in royalties that would otherwise have gone to publishing houses.

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Press Release: Amazon Media Room

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 26, 2013-- (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon today announced a record-setting holiday season for Amazon Prime, the annual membership program offering unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items. More than one million customers around the world became new Prime members in the third week of December. On Amazon’s peak shipping day, more Prime items were shipped worldwide than ever before. The entire 2013 holiday season was the best ever for Amazon, with more than 36.8 million items ordered worldwide on Cyber Monday, which is a record-breaking 426 items per second, and millions of customers unwrapped Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets this holiday season.

Kindle and Amazon Digital Media Facts:

• Amazon’s digital media selection grew to more than 27 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, books, audiobooks, and popular apps and games in 2013.
• Selection in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library in 2013 grew from 250,000 books to more than 475,000 books.
• More than 200,000 exclusive books were added to the Kindle store in 2013.
• 150 Kindle Direct Publishing authors each sold more than 100,000 copies of their books in 2013. Top sellers this year include “Hopeless” by Colleen Hoover and “Wait for Me” by Elisabeth Naughton. (Read about Colleen Hoover HERE.)
• The best-selling Kindle Direct Publishing author during the holiday season was H.M. Ward.

Read the rest HERE.

In Britain, 61% of Downloaded Ebooks are Free, Kindle Dominates

The burgeoning ebook market in Great Britain has found a home on Amazon. Kindle dominates the market, which is not surprising. It also isn't surprising that 61 percent of these books are free - meaning, they are self-published through Amazon's KDP Select program.

This is bad news for publishers trying to break into the ebook market. If two-thirds of the ebook reading public expect to read a book for free, how likely is it that they are going to shell out the type of money that publishers charge for ebooks?

It is both good and bad news for self-published writers. The good news is that readers are enthusiastically downloading self-published ebooks. The bad news is that they aren't paying for them.
..................................................................................................................................
79% of UK Consumers Use Kindle
Source: MediaBistro, September 13, 2013 10:34 AM
By Dianna Dilworth

Seventy percent of UK consumers use Amazon to download eBooks, according to a new report Ofcom and Kantar Media. According to the report, which looked at media consumption in the UK March-May 2013, Kindle dominated as the service used to download or access eBooks in the past three months. Apple held a very distant second place with 9 percent of UK consumers using it to download eBooks. A Google Search and eBooks.com tied for 4th and 5th place at 6 percent of consumers using these channels.

The report also examined the digital versus print downloads and revealed that during the three-month period, 58 percent of all books sold in the UK were print and 42 percent downloaded were eBooks. The study found that 61 percent of eBooks were free and only 39 percent cost money.

Eighty-three percent of these free eBooks were consumed legally and 17 percent were consumed illegally. Here is more from the report: “We estimate that 7 million e-books were consumed illegally online in the past three months – equating to 4% of all books (downloaded, accessed online, or bought in physical format).”

Free Publicity for Your KDP Select Free Days

Updated 5/11/24

Note: Self-published authors have mixed feelings about KDP Select. For a good critique, read: Should Should You Enrol Your Ebooks In Amazon Kindle KDP Select? Also read: Is Kindle Unlimited Bad for Authors?

If you have published your book on Amazon and have signed up for the KDP Select program, you are probably wondering how you are going to let the world know that you have giveaway days coming up.

There are two steps to this process. First, you need to make sure your book has reviews. Many of the sites that advertise Kindle giveaways require a minimum number of reviews (three, five, ten or, in some cases, more than twenty).

How do you get reviews? Send out a press release, well in advance of your book's publication, to any groups, online media, and reviewers who might be interested - including everyone you have ever known or met. Offer to send them a free PDF file, and make sure you have a dynamite summary that will get them interested. (Pester the people who have promised to write a review until they do. This is not the time to be shy.)

Now choose your free days on KDP Select.

Once you have booked your free days. Send out notices to these sites. (Read their guidelines now. Many require advance notice):

Note: This list was updated on 5/11/24

It’s Write Now 

Free & Discounted Books

The Kindle Book Review 

Ereader News Today
Kindle Book Promos
Ereader Café
Awesome Gang 
Frugal Freebies
Bargain Ebook Hunter
Free Booksy
Ebooks Habit

Indie Author News
ContentMo
Free Ebooks Blog

Book Angel

Pretty Hot

Book Bub (Books only – no short stories)
Reading Deals  (Books only – no short stories)
Read Free.ly
Discount Book Man
Indies Unlimited
Free Books Blog

Robin Reads

Book Basset

Digital Book Today (Free and paid promotion)

Best Book Monkey (Free and paid promotion)

Book Cave

Boards

Book Bazaar at Kindle Boards - Join, and chat away.

Mobile Read Forums

Free Books - Goodreads group

On the day your book is free, post on these Facebook Sites:

https://www.facebook.com/ourawesomegang

http://www.facebook.com/BookGoodies

https://www.facebook.com/KindleNation

https://www.facebook.com/kindle

https://www.facebook.com/EreaderNewsToday

https://www.facebook.com/TheeReaderCafe 

http://facebook.com/IndieBookLounge

https://www.facebook.com/groups/341840249197060/
https://www.facebook.com/earthsbooknook


Twitter Hashtags (Note: Twitter is in flux right now)

#FreeKindleBooks
#freekindle
#free
#freebook
#FreeKindleBook
#kindlepromo
#freedownload

#BookADayUK (UK only)

#bookboost

#BookGiveaway
#KDPSelect
#Kindle
#KindleBargain
#KindleBooks
#KindleBargain
#FREEBOOK
#indiekindle
#freekindleebooks
#Readthis

Send Tweets to:

@FreeEbooks

@Freekindle8ooks

@IARTG (add #IARTG to any tweet you want them to retweet)

@MichRockx (fantasy)

@freebooksdaily

@amazon

@freereadfeed

@freedailybooks

@IndiesBookPromo

@IAN_AuthorPromo

@AuthorNetwork

@asmsg (writers circle)

@IndieAuthorNews

@kindlebookpulse

@kindleebooks

@writersRT

@IndieKindle

@Kindlestuff

@kindlebookblast

@indieauthornews

@kindlenews

@KindleEbooksUK

@KindleBookKing

@FreeEbooksDaily

@TweettheBook

@KindleFreeBook

@4FreeKindleBook

@WorldLitCafe

@DigitalBkToday

@kindle_promo

@WorldLitCafe

Rising in the Ranks: Amazon Ranking Revealed

If you have published a book via the traditional route, you will want to keep tabs on how it is selling. Publishing houses will, of course, send their yearly or, for the larger houses, biannual royalty statement. That's a long wait for an impatient author.

If you have self-published, you can keep track of sales monthly through most venues, provided you maintain a minimum number of sales, which is better than an annual royalty statement.

But for instant gratification, your only real up-to-date source of information is Amazon. This is not just because Amazon is the only seller that will update your sales hourly – or daily, depending on the number of sales – it's because Amazon ranks its books. If you have aspirations of becoming a bestselling author, you will find yourself glued to your Amazon page within minutes of your book's publication.

Amazon's ranking system has been the source of much speculation over the years. The ranking is not simply based on the number of books sold by the day (or hour), but also takes into account how your book fares against other books in the same category, which Amazon calculates based on a secret algorithm which only clairvoyants, psychics, and 33rd degree Masons have access to. (It is not for “simple folk” to understand the ways of Amazon, which makes their ways all the more intriguing.)

If you do a Google search on “Amazon ranking” you will find pages of articles written by frantic, OCD rankaholics who have tracked their sales hourly, compared them to their ranking, and graphed them. Dream on! Only those who have enrolled in KDP Select – an Amazon promotional program designed to kill Barnes & Noble once and for all – can actually track sales against ranking. And even those chosen few are not privy to the Ultimate Truth. While ranking changes hourly, actual sales reporting may lag by a day.

We can never truly perceive reality...

State Your Name, Rank and Title (Novelrank is defunct)

But you can get close to it. NovelRank is a free website that allows authors to track their ranking on Amazon.com (US), Amazon.co.uk (England), Amazon.ca (Canada), and Amazon.de (Germany). You can also check a box to include Amazon.fr (France), Amazon.it (Italy), Amazon.co.jp (Japan), Amazon.cn (China) and Amazon.es (Spain). (NovelRank warns you that checking the box may clutter your details page, but, hey, if Pandora didn't care, neither do we!)

And that's not all! You can get RSS feeds to get updates when a book is sold and to view your hourly sales rank. Now you can be obsessed everywhere! You can get graphs!

Quantifing a Bestseller

In the end, all this watching and waiting pays off! If you never, ever take your eyes off your sales rank, you may become a bestselling author. StoryFinds (Defunct) knows exactly, uh, almost exactly, how many book sales it takes to enter the ranks of bestsellers. (I have personally checked this chart against my own sales and found it to be accurate.) Here it is:

Bestsellers Rank 40,000 to 100,000 - selling close to 1 book a day.

Bestsellers Rank 8,500 to 40,000 - selling 1 to 10 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 3,000 to 8,500 - selling 10 to 20 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 1,500 to 3,000 - selling 20 to 40 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 1,100 to 1,500 - selling 40 to 50 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 900 to 1,100 – selling 50 to 65 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 750 to 900 - selling 65 to 85 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 350 to 750 - selling 85 to 175 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 200 to 350 - selling 175 to 250 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 100 to 200 - selling 250 to 300 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 80 to 100 – selling 300 to 400 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 70 to 80 – selling 400 to 500 books a day.

Bestsellers Rank 50 to 70 - selling 500 to 650 books a day.

Bestseller Rank of 45 to 50 - selling 650 to 700 books a day.

Bestseller Rank of 30 to 45 - selling 700 to 900 books a day.

Bestseller Rank of 20 to 30 – selling 900 to 1,300 books a day.

Bestseller Rank of 10 to 20 – selling 1,300 to 1,800 books a day.

Bestseller Rank of 3 to 8 - selling about 4,000+ books a day!

Becoming a Bestselling Author on Amazon

If you've looked at your rank and are now depressed because you're not even close to a bestseller, don't despair. Becoming a bestselling author is surprisingly easy. If you join KDP Select and – this is crucial, so pay attention – promote the hell out your book's free days, you can turn your book into a bestseller within a day. Amazon counts free downloads as sales (you won't get royalties, however, because your book is free). When I got 6,000+ downloads in a 24-hour period, my book got the coveted yellow bar. That's an indication of how many you would need, more or less, to get to #1. (Click HERE to find out how to promote your KDP Select book for free.)

Once your book has risen to the rank of bestseller, it will appear on various lists (“top 100,” “top 20”), in relevant categories, which will increase its exposure. There is a caveat, however. Your book won't stay in #1 position for long. But you can use even a brief sojourn in the #1 spot to market yourself as a bestselling author on Amazon when you promote your work. (Make sure to take a screen shot!) Once you've hit the mark (it only takes once), you will almost certainly continue to rise in the ranks.

(If you want to know more about how I made the #1 spot, read Anatomy of An Amazon Bestseller.)

Anatomy of an Amazon Bestseller

The received wisdom of self-publishing is to place your book everywhere, and in all formats. I did that (mostly). And it didn’t work. This is why: Writers who finance their own work can’t possibly promote their books everywhere, and in all forms.

Book promotion is time-consuming enough as it is, but promoting a book to brick-and-mortar booksellers, libraries, organizations, and individuals all at the same time is impossible. If we obeyed received wisdom, not only would writers have no time to write, we wouldn’t have time to breathe. That’s why we are drawn to publishing houses, with their lure of marketing departments.

The promotion dilemma is one which I tackled after self-publishing my first Ebook. (It was not in print form, thank God.) Dutifully, I made it available to everyone. After three months of minimal sales, I jumped ship and enrolled in Amazon KDP Select.

For those who are not familiar with Amazon’s KDP Select program, it requires exclusive publication for 90 days (renewable). In short, you have to remove your ebook from all other sites that may be selling it. At first glance this seems to be contradictory. How can you sell more books with fewer suppliers? The answer to that question is exposure.

KDP Select allows authors to give their books away for up to five days in any 90-day period during which the book is enrolled. Giving away products is a proven technique for increasing visibility – and it works like a charm for books.

I enrolled my book in KDP Select in December, and I advertised my free days (the weekend right before Christmas) to organizations, individuals who had written reviews, bloggers, anybody who might be interested. That weekend 1500 people downloaded the book. Although I was quite pleased, I’d hoped for higher numbers. What I didn’t expect was the incredible surge in visitors to my new website. During those two days, two thousand people visited my website. This was a considerable improvement over my previous number of visitors, which was in the category of “less than 10.” The best part was that sales increased. People who missed the book’s free days simply bought it. (I’d priced the book at $2.99)

Determined to do better on my next free days, I advertised more heavily. This time I put the announcement on every Facebook page that might even be remotely connected to my subject. (I also started a Facebook page for my book, something I should have done much earlier.) Facebook chastised me, and then kicked me off for two weeks with dire warnings of permanent banishment, but not before I’d posted the free days on nearly 200 Facebook pages.

This round, there were over 1700 downloads. It was a modest gain. And to my disappointment, fewer people had visited my website. But the number of people visiting the website daily had increased by a factor of ten. And my book’s Facebook page had a reach of 3,000. Once again, there was an uptick in sales.

I only had one free day left, and I was pulling out all the stops to make this a big one. Starting two weeks prior to the event, I notified all the people I’d contacted on previous free days, and, in addition, I posted on every Facebook page that had not reported me as “spam.” (This was easy to do. I simply looked to see which of my previous posts were still there.) And because I now had over thirty 5-star reviews from previous free days, I was eligible to advertise my free days on several Kindle promotion sites. (More on those HERE.)

On my remaining free day, there were 6,292 downloads (which is not bad for an obscure medical reference book). Following the previous trend, there were fewer visitors that day to my website than during other free days, but there was a corresponding increase in daily visitors. Interestingly, my blog readers suddenly jumped to several hundred a day. That month, the book sold more than double the copies of the previous month. It was #1 on the bestseller list for my category, and placed in the top 20 for the next larger category. It was also on the Top 100 list for free books. (Smack between one book displaying a brawny pirate kissing a damsel in distress and another featuring a brawny farmer kissing a damsel in straw.)

What had happened was fame. With nearly 10,000 people who had my book in hand (metaphorically speaking) I was now known in the appropriate circles. I got a job offer to edit a newsletter, and requests to do webinars and give talks. In short, I now had a platform.

While this short trial of KDP Select has been successful, I will probably call it quits after another three-month run and follow received wisdom. There is a time and place for everything. And the time to hit all venues is after your name is already out there.

Here are the KDP Select Rules: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200798990

Related posts:

Free Publicity for Your KDP Select Free Days

Top 12 Sites for Finding Reviewers

10 places to find reviewers for your self-published book