FOR CUSTOMERS To
order books on Amazon, you must, of course, open an account and provide
a credit card number. Beyond that, you can simply order one book at a time
for your permanent electronic library, just as you have always done. But
if you are looking for "deals" you may want to try one of these
options: 1.
Amazon Prime costs $99.00 a year, but it carries valuable benefits. You
get free two-day shipping on anything you order from Amazon, and that
includes everything from appliances to groceries. You also get unlimited
access to music, unlimited cloud storage for your photos, and access to
over 800,000 Kindle books. Through KOLL (Kindle Owners Lending
Library), you can borrow one book a month with no due dates. If you are a
Prime member, seven of my books will now be available in KOLL. 2.
Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service that costs $9.99 a month.
You can subscribe one month at a time, or for various longer periods
depending on how much you want to lay out in advance. This gives you
free access to over a million books and thousands of audiobooks. And as
explained above, seven of my books will now be available in Kindle
Unlimited. You can download up to ten at a time, and once again there
are no due dates. You keep them as long as you like. In
both these options, the Kindle editions remain the property of Amazon,
and you are expected to return them when you no longer want them. I get
paid based on the number of pages you actually read, so long as you read
at least 10% of the book. (Of course, you won't be able to put mine
down, so that limitation does not bother me.) And you don't have to
read the book all at once. You can start it, put it down for a month or
more, and then go back and read some more. I get paid for the total
you read, no matter how long it takes you to do it. FREE PROMOTIONS Here's
the other part of the deal that I get for entering my books in KDP
Select and giving Amazon exclusive rights to distribute the electronic
editions. For each book, I can run a five-day free promotion offer in
every ninety-day period. (That's something that is not allowed if the
book is available on other distribution channels.) That's obviously a
great deal for readers. But what do I get out of it? Well, it puts my
books in the hands of more readers, it encourages Amazon to do separate
promotions of books that do well when offered for free, and, with luck,
the increased readership will produce more loyal followers and more
reviews on Amazon -- which in turn brings in more readers. Here's the Free Promotion schedule for this cycle. In March, my history books will be available:
In April we'll do the creative biographies:
And in May the historical novels will be on offer:
Happy reading! |