Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast
Join Penny Sansevieri and Amy Cornell for fun and frank discussions packed with clever ideas, easy-to-implement book marketing strategies, and critical publishing industry knowledge and insight! Designed to help self-published authors and traditionally published authors at any level, the Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast will definitely inspire you with new ideas for how to sell books, grow your platform, and make strategic business decisions as an author. Subscribe today and take that next step toward a more successful, long-term book marketing plan!
Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast
The Strategic Author's Guide to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited Program
Demystifying Kindle Unlimited might be one of the most requested topics from our podcast audience—and for good reason. The confusion between Amazon's KDP platform and the Kindle Unlimited subscription service continues to trip up both new and experienced authors alike.
After five years hosting this podcast, we've noticed certain questions appear in our inbox repeatedly: "Should my book be in Kindle Unlimited?" "What's the difference between KDP and KU?" "Will I make more money in KU or by going wide?" Today's episode tackles these questions head-on, cutting through the noise to help you make strategic decisions about your book's distribution.
What many authors don't realize is that Kindle Unlimited enrollment can dramatically improve Amazon advertising performance. We've consistently observed that ads convert significantly better for KU books, particularly in genres where subscription readers are abundant. This alone might justify exclusivity for some authors.
As with all marketing decisions, there's no one-size-fits-all answer. Kindle Unlimited is simply another tool in your publishing arsenal—not a magic solution for books that aren't selling elsewhere. Think strategically about your genre, audience, and overall publishing goals before making your decision.
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Hello and welcome back to the Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast. This is Penny Sansevierie and Amy Cornell, and we are. I think Amy was this. This was reader. I'm sorry, not a reader suggestion. This was a listener suggestion, right? Yes?
Speaker 2:Okay it was, and which I love because those are some of my. I mean, I love that we, you know we get ideas from everywhere. But I really love when listeners cause it's like, especially cause you think, oh gosh, they listen probably to lots of our shows, I would hope you know and for them to say, okay, this would be really helpful to add to everything else that you're covering, just makes me feel like, okay, great, we're. You know what I mean Building a really solid foundation. When I know somebody that knows all the topics we cover says this could be covered again or this could be covered better or this could be covered in a new way, like we love that feedback.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and. And this is also because you know we sometimes Amy and I, sit around we talk about, okay, what show should we, you know, creating a list of shows and kind of mapping those out, and we're going to miss some stuff that you all really want to hear about. So, for sure, send us your show ideas. We love those. And I also just want to say, for those of you listening, it's actually kind of shocking that Penny even had time to record a podcast today because many of you and it's been on the national news and all this other stuff. So the Big Bear Eagles just hatched, like yesterday, and Amy and I are on this string together and all I've been doing is like sending pictures of like eagle babies and eagle videos and all this other stuff. So it's like this nationwide like craze that they finally have babies, because I think for the last three years they were, the eggs were done. But so, yeah, very just be super grateful that I made the time. Yes, this video. I walked in my house this morning after walking the dog and I'm like I just my house sound like it's full of birds because I have on my second screen on my desk I have the big. Yeah, I thought, oh my gosh, I have birds in my house, but I have it on the second screen, the webcam. So, anyway, yeah, so be grateful. Penny's here because she's very distracted with the new little eagle babies, but always time to create a podcast.
Speaker 1:Amy and I were talking about this. Like we really love doing this podcast. In fact, we've had our blog for years and we love the blog. But we really and I hate to say this because it sounds like we're talking about our like, the like, our little AME children or whatever but we love the podcast really more than we love the blog. And I think it's because we a lot of times, you know we used to be very scripted and if you started, if you've been with us since season one, you know that we are so much less scripted. We're just kind of like we put some notes together, we sit in the green room, we brainstorm and, boom, we start recording. I think we've become we were always authentic, like I don't want to say like year one, we just lied to you, but want to say, like year one, we just lied to you, we were, but I think we've become more. What's the word I'm looking for, amy?
Speaker 2:we've become more, I mean. I mean I think we're definitely more natural than we were natural. Yeah, that's probably the and I think with yeah, without being so scripted, I think y'all get a lot more honest reactions and feedback as well, you know, because if it wasn't scripted for us to like get super pissed about something, it probably didn't happen as much yeah right, exactly.
Speaker 1:So you know, we and you know Amy and I both listened to a lot of podcasts and one of the things that she and I both, and a lot of them I realized were true crimes. So they're not really related to this genre. But, right, it's a very different, very different market. But one of the things that we really don't like in some of these shows is a long preamble, like, oh, the kids are doing fine and it's like get down to it. So, with that said, with this long, now that we've had somewhat of a long preamble, we are talking about Kindle Unlimited. And Is it Right For you? There's a lot of confusion about Kindle Unlimited and I know that a lot of people have kind of a love-hate relationship like.
Speaker 1:Amazon's trying to own all the publishing. I got news for you Amazon already owns all the publishing. If we wanted to fix that, we should have started this conversation like 15 years ago. So, kindle Unlimited, so let's talk. And there's a lot of confusion actually around KDP versus Kindle Unlimited. And, amy, I know we didn't talk about this in the green room and I didn't add it in the notes, but it just kind of occurred to me. That's why we love these unscripted shows, because stuff just pops into our head while we're recording. So KDP Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon's publishing portal. You can be in KDP without being in Kindle Unlimited.
Speaker 1:Kindle Unlimited is a special and different service that Amazon offers. Being a KDP Kindle Direct Publishing author does not mean you're automatically in Kindle Unlimited. And I have this conversation with authors all the time. They're like well, I don't want to publish on KDP because I don't want to be exclusive to Amazon. You are not exclusive to Amazon if you are in KDP Full stop. You are exclusive to Amazon only for your ebook.
Speaker 1:If you are in Kindle Unlimited, because the guidelines of Kindle Unlimited are that if you want to be in Kindle Unlimited for your ebook, so it's only ebook right now, amazon's not going to be mailing out print books to people for free anytime soon. Could you imagine? Your ebook cannot be anywhere else in you know, it can't be in Nook, it can't be in Kobo, it can't be anywhere else, but your print book can be everywhere. So a lot of times authors, when they're deciding whether or not to be in Kindle Unlimited, they're like well, my print book is everywhere, so I can't be in Kindle Unlimited, and that's not really the point. So your ebook, if you're in Kindle Unlimited, has to be exclusive.
Speaker 1:And now you can have two different types of Kindle Unlimited. You can have Kindle Unlimited, where you automatically re-enroll, just like you ever, continually in Kindle Unlimited, or you can do Kindle Unlimited for 90 days at a time. My preference is do it for 90 days at a time, because what we're going to break down for you in this show is that you may or may not want to stay in it, based on how well that your book is doing. And, amy, because I have my books in Kindle Unlimited and I'll explain why. But I also subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, as do you, right, amy?
Speaker 2:Yes, I do. Actually, and you know it's funny, I did that probably because you recommended a book and I. That would really make the most sense, you know, and I'm like, oh my gosh, and I probably came when you recommended a slew of books. Honestly, because then at some point Penny listens to a lot of really fabulous books by really fabulous authors, but those also tend to be they can be more expensive too because they've earned it, which I fully support. But when I have like multiple book recommendations to catch up on, I'm like doing the quick math, it's like, oh my gosh, it would be cheaper for me to be in Kindle Unlimited. So I'm almost positive that's how it started, because otherwise, getting all of those eBooks individually, it's like oh my gosh, like you know that really that's a lot to commit to. But then like, okay, but if these are all in Kindle Unlimited, then I've got a lower monthly fee and I can get to them when I can get to them, and it was great.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, but part of where. So I appreciate that I did. I did send her like I sent her an email with a whole bunch of recs. I'm like here are eight books that you have and you have two kids and all the things going on and I'm sure you have tons of time to spend with these eight books. But I think that, other than I mean, most people generally I mean people can recommend books but you still have to make the decision on whether or not you're going to get them. How much do you think did Kinlow Limited I mean obviously that really kind of informed your choice right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, it was one of those things too. I mean, granted, your recommendation means a lot, but I can't say that I'd ever read books by those authors, you know. So it wasn't like we're saying, like you know this person that we've read, like she's got a new book out, you know it's coming out soon, grab it, whatever. These were all authors I'd never read before, you know, and so that was another. That was a great aspect to this, and why Kindle Unlimited is so appealing is because it's like, okay, I can test out these authors and see if I like them, and I get to test out all of them for just the cost of the monthly fee for Kindle Unlimited. It's not a book you know, and again.
Speaker 2:We talk about it all the time. Books technically are not high ticket items for the most part, compared to a lot of things we spend our money on. But when you tie in the cost of a book with, like you said, the time commitment you have to put in, that's when people don't click buy. I think most people you know. They're just not ready to put in the time to read that book in addition to spending the money. It's really a combination of the two, right?
Speaker 1:right, exactly, exactly. And I think that you, I think that you know the readers, the readers in Kindle think you know and we get this question a lot like should my book be in Kindle Unlimited? And I would say that are there other books that you know what?
Speaker 2:does your?
Speaker 1:genre look like Right, so are books in your genre in Kinland Limited. Generally, you're still going to find. You know, you're going to find. For some genres you'll say, well, it's kind of 50-50. And then I would say, well, then you probably really want to be super strategic about this.
Speaker 1:There aren't necessarily downsides to Kindle Unlimited. I mean, you get paid by the page read. So if somebody only gets through half of your book, you only get paid for half, right. And I don't know exactly what that per page read is because, I'll be honest with you, it changes a lot. And those of us who have books in Kindle Unlimited get sent emails like, oh, amazon has like billions of dollars and you're getting, you know, whatever, five cents a page or something Fine.
Speaker 1:So I think you have to look at your genre. The first thing there's a couple of genres that we know just off the top of our heads that do well in Kindle Unlimited and those are particular genre fiction. So romance, mystery, mystery, thriller, right, those tend to do really well, books that are like business books, you know. I mean, you're going to see maybe 50-50, maybe the spread is more 30-70 in terms of 30% being in Kindle Unlimited. You really have to look at your readership. I think people who are buying business books are willing to spend the money on business books and in other markets. Not that they're not willing to spend the money, but again because the genre fiction readers tend to be more voracious readers. They read a lot, you know. That start like my list of eight books that I sent to Amy. That starts to get, that starts to really tally up, right. I mean, amy, do you have I mean, have you gotten feedback from our authors just in terms of whether they're in KU, or do you get this question a lot too?
Speaker 2:authors just in terms of whether they're in KU, or do you get this question a lot too, I actually. I mean, they ask about it only because it sounds like and I have not experienced this for myself it sounds like they kind of push it. I get this a lot from our first time authors for sure, you know, as they're setting up their book and everything, they're like wait, you know, it kind of like stops them in their tracks before they finish their. You know their upload and things like that. Should I be in this? And it's like okay, well, that's a. You know, we're doing a whole podcast episode, so clearly it's a little more complex than a simple yes or no, and I let them know that.
Speaker 2:But I think a lot of times what and this happens with a lot of things in publishing, so it tends to be very complex. It's okay. It's kind of basic on whether or not they can afford to be in it or if they should give it a shot, and I always encourage them to assess if it's working. You know like, make sure you know whether or not this is also going to work for you. And I had before we get into that, penny, I had a question and we didn't discuss this in the green room either. So sorry if it's more complex than we want to get into, but if somebody wants to transition their book to Kindle Unlimited on a scale of one to 10, is that a complicated process? If your book is already distributed wide, you know if your ebook is in a lot of different places it can be.
Speaker 1:The short answer to that is it can be. So if you publish your ebook through a portal like, for example, draft2digital or IngramSpark, there should just be a box that you can check, or uncheck, as it were, to get it removed off of those other sites. So basically, those feeds yeah, those no. That's a great question because we also get this a lot Like. I think my book would do better if it's in Kindle Limited and it's usually related to the Amazon ads, which we'll get to in a second, but it could take up to 90 days sometimes less depends on how fast the systems work for it to get pulled out of all of those systems.
Speaker 2:Right. Is that something Amazon knows? Or is that something you're telling Amazon you're accountable for?
Speaker 1:That is something that you're telling Amazon that you're accountable for. Now, this is not us encouraging you to trick the Amazon system, but whether Amazon actually knows that. Sure.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Okay, you're just risking potentially getting your hand slapped or worse, if it's, somehow they find it still listed on other retail sites and you're in KU.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think that you know here's, here's. The other thing, though, too, is that Amazon will probably email you first and say hey, your book is still listed on blah blah. The weird thing about this is that. So we all know that pirating books is kind of a difficult. I mean, there have been websites that help like oh, we'll take your book down if it's been pirated, whatever. If it's been pirated, whatever. Books sometimes wind up on weird websites, whole entire books. How they get them is a whole separate podcast.
Speaker 1:Amazon does know the difference between books that have been pirated that are being sold on the, because I have books that are like that, and what's interesting is that they only pick the really really, really old, outdated books, which is fine. Make, make your 99 cents, you evil pirate person, right? They do know the difference. I've never had an issue. I've never had an author tell me oh my gosh, I got an email from Amazon saying that my book was on Kobo or and I have to pull it down, or my book was on, you know, was pirated, and it's showing up Because Amazon does. A they know the difference and B I don't know if they have the time necessarily to go and check all of those sites Again, not encouraging you to lie, but if you're wanting to be in Kindle Unlimited and pulling your book off of all of those other sites, which could take a while, you may want to go ahead and start the Kindle Unlimited now, and just you know, if Amazon does write, you tell them you're doing best efforts, right, you know?
Speaker 1:So we talked about what kind of books that these tend to be best for. So the other thing that is also worth mentioning is that when you're running Amazon ads, in particular for genres that are predisposed to Kindle Unlimited readers, like genre fiction, your ads will perform your Amazon ads, in particular, will perform much better if your book is in Kindle Unlimited, because keep in mind that you are pulling in a lot of these readers. If you have one book, you're an untested author, etc. Your ads will do so much better, and I've seen this firsthand with authors who have, you know, they didn't have their book in Kindle Unlimited and I'm running ads and they decided to put their book in Kindle Unlimited and the ads do so much better, right? So, um, and do we get this a lot? Like, how do I know how well my book is doing in Kindle Unlimited, like do we see that a lot? I think we see that question a lot.
Speaker 2:I think we get like how do I know if it's working, which I realize is complex, because, as you said, how you get paid and things like that, and that's all subjective as well. Right, you know well right.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that your Kindle Unlimited, so your KDP dashboard will show you how the page reads have, how many page reads have happened, how they've gone right, and you'll be able to tell from those page reads and again, every book is different because the page reads are based on the site how many pages are in the book, etc. You'll be able to get a sense of whether people are actually, whether readers are actually completing the book right. In some cases, authors have will take their first book in a series and put that in Kindle Unlimited to get readers into the series, especially if the book is much older like, especially if they've been working on the series for a few years.
Speaker 1:So when you're running ads, running ads on the first book in the series to get them into the series is probably really smart right right no, I love that idea yeah, and, and you know I mean I, and so here's, here's a weird little thing that I just want to kind of throw at our listeners too. So my books are obviously they're book marketing. They're in Kindle Unlimited, right. And the reason that my books are Kindle Unlimited is, yes, it's because of the audience, right, and I discovered this with my first book. I was like, you know, when I put it in Kindle Unlimited it started doing so much better. It sounds like you know, a book on book marketing, like you would think, well, isn't that just like a business book? Like wouldn't this book not do as well? And like not necessarily need to be in Kindle Unlimited? But again, it comes back down to the audience, it comes down to the readership and my readership. They tend to be KU, you know. They tend to have a Kindle Unlimited membership, so the book does better when it's in KU.
Speaker 1:But what I did with my most recent book, the Amazon Author Formula, is I didn't put it in Kindle Unlimited right away. Part of the reason for that is because I wanted people, I mean, and again, I'm established. I mean and again I'm established, I'm not as established as like maybe you know one of the recs that I the book recs that I sent to Amy, certainly, but I'm established enough that I really wanted to eke out book sales initially before I put the book in Kindle Unlimited. So that's another strategy too. That you could do is, if you have a number of books out, delay your Kindle Unlimited, for I think I delayed mine for eight months.
Speaker 1:My book was almost a year old when I finally put it in Kindle Unlimited. That's so smart and now it does really well. You know it does really well. So when the formula workbook comes out, which hopefully we're still on target for Q1 of this year, that book will not go in Kindle Unlimited. But what happens is is that because the formula book, the first formula book, is in Kindle Unlimited, it's going to spur the sales Because I'm going to at some point add a page in that book Like hey, just so you know there's a workbook for this book. There's a workbook for this book that will help to spur the sales for the workbook Does that make sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it makes me. Now I'm thinking okay, so if an author has some backlist titles that are not really you know what I mean, that need a new life, you know, yeah, in addition to obviously doing some strategic marketing as well, but makes me think that could potentially be another option as well to just try to get it in front of more people.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, exactly Exactly. And so that's really where you can be really. I mean, I realize that this is kind of Amazon's game, like I get it, but you can still be really strategic with your Kindle Unlimited choices, as opposed to just saying, okay, well, I'm just going to put this in Kindle Unlimited and hope for the best. You can be strategic with it, and don't necessarily so. You have an option of auto-renewing it for 90, you know like where. It just stays in Kindle Unlimited forever and ever until you pull it out. For me, personally, I don't do that with my books because I want to see how well, so I'll leave it in there for 90 days, and then Amazon sends me an email saying, oh, do you want to continue the?
Speaker 2:Kindle Unlimited.
Speaker 1:And then I can opt for to do it or not. Sure, that's really smart, uh huh, yeah, because emailing Amazon to get, emailing Amazon to get them like oh, can you pull my book out of Kindle Unlimited, I mean, that takes like 45 emails because they either I'm in the wrong department or they're uncooperative or whatever. Right, um, so yeah, but but I think that I hope that Amy, did I miss anything in terms of the deep?
Speaker 2:dive. We hit all of our points and then and then some, which is awesome.
Speaker 1:And then some. Yeah, I think Kindle Unlimited is something. Use it smartly. Don't just use it because you think that's the only way that you can get sales. And this is another. I think this is a really this is a final point If you aren't getting sales on your book, it's probably not Kindle Unlimited's fault, like I mean whether, if you're not in Kindle Unlimited, I'm just going to put it in Kindle Unlimited and now I'm going to start selling books like crazy. That's probably not the answer. And we have another show that we did a few weeks ago. Go back and look for it if you haven't listened to it already. Kindle Unlimited is a strategy. That's it. It's right. It's a strategy to get you in front of, you know, in front of more readers. It's not necessarily, you know, it's not necessarily going to make or break the success of, because your book will still sell. It will just. It enables you to reach a writer, wider audience. I really, I think is really what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2:I think this was helpful and I love that you explained the difference because I think that's a huge one is that there's so many things on Amazon that sound similar and all the different services and options and things like that, and I can understand why it's overwhelming, especially for first-time authors that are, or authors for the first time that are loading their books. You know, if they've published differently in other ways, you know, yeah, yeah. So I really appreciate that you went into that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So again, we love show ideas. So if you were just like, oh, penny and Amy, they haven't done, you know we haven't done this or something, I mean absolutely email us. We love your show ideas, we love your show feedback. We also love reviews wherever you listen to podcasts, so be sure. And you have to subscribe to a show. This is something I have omitted in all of the prior shows where we begged for reviews. Well, I've begged for reviews because it validates me people just but, um, you actually have to be subscribed to the show to be able to review it. I did not know that. I didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't either, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So be sure to subscribe to the show, because then you get notified every time we release a show, which we do every week but then you, you, if you're not subscribed to the show, you, they, they won't let you review it. It's weird. I don't understand why that is, but that's just that. That's just. That's the game, so we have to play the game, listen. Thank you all so much for listening. This is our fifth year. I know I say this a lot, mostly because I'm just so like five years, like it's amazing we have so many shows. If you just found us, go back through our the archive, you can. You can certainly search it on our website at amarketingexpertcom slash podcast. You can find all of the other prior shows. Well, there's a lot of content out there. So if you're really struggling for answers, contact us. Absolutely, we are more than happy to help you, but that's why we create this show. Thank you so much for tuning in, for listening and for being part of our podcast family. We'll see you next time. Bye.
