KU vs. Wide: What the Data Actually Says

Ferol Vernon (00:00)

Hello authors and welcome to the Written Word Media podcast. I am Ferol here with Ricci as always. And today, Ricci, we are talking about one of the most discussed topics in all of indie publishing, the great debate wide versus exclusive. I’m excited to dig into this today.

Ricci (00:17)

Yep. No niceties this morning. We’re getting straight into the topic. That’s how you know Ferol’s excited. He doesn’t want to talk about the weather or the Olympics or anything else that’s going on. So yeah, let’s, let’s do it. Let’s talk about the great debate among authors and where do you want to start Ferol?

Ferol Vernon (00:19)

No.

Well, let’s  first set it up. So essentially in independent publishing, there’s two paths that we’re going to talk about today. And path one is described as exclusive and that means you’re exclusive to Amazon. And we’ll get into the mechanics of that in a minute. And path two,  which is often called wide, which just means your book is available in lots of different stores, not just Amazon. Right? So that’s the rough outline of the two choices. And I think where we want to start is

by understanding why it has to be a choice like that and what happens to an author when they get started on their publishing journey and they’ve got to make this decision. And the first thing they do is gonna be, they’re gonna try to publish on Amazon. So let’s start with that. Let’s start with how Amazon’s publishing platform, KDP works.

Ricci (01:27)

Yeah. So if you decide to publish on Amazon at all, whether you decide to be exclusive or not, you will use what’s called the KDP platform. It stands for Kindle Direct Publishing. And that’s where you go to upload your book, your book cover, your manuscript. So anyone who wants their book on Amazon has to use the KDP platform. Now there are a small subset of authors who don’t want to be on Amazon at all. And we’ll address that right at the end, but for now, let’s assume that the majority of

Authors want their book on Amazon, whether they decide to be exclusive or wide. So the KDP, yeah, go ahead.

Ferol Vernon (02:02)

Right, so.

Right, the, you know, pretty much if you want to be on Amazon, which we recommend being on Amazon because that is the number one marketplace for books. Once you get on Amazon, then there’s the decision around what to do next.

Ricci (02:18)

Exactly so you’d start off by getting your book on Amazon or your books on Amazon you can publish them without. You making the decision right away but then fairly quickly you will be prompted for that decision or you will have to make that decision and if you decide that you want to go exclusive with Amazon they make it real easy for you to enroll in that program.

And the program is called KDP select. So KDP is the platform and then you’re enrolling into select. So that’s an opt in within the KDP platform and you actually opt in by each individual book. So you can decide to have some books in select and other books, not in select. You can have all of your books in select or none of your books in select. So you do have quite a lot of choice when it comes to whether to enroll in the program or not.

Ferol Vernon (03:09)

Right, and I think that’s an important point is like often when you hear authors discussing this, they talk about  being exclusive and like it’s this permanent decision. It’s like an all or nothing thing. And while it is that for a certain period of time, which we’ll talk about in a minute, and it is that for a book,  like you said, you can have a book, some books in, some books out. And the KDP Select program  works in 90 day increments, right? So this is an important thing for authors to understand.

is that when you go in, you have your books on KDP and you’re prompted to opt into KDP Select.  You’re committing to being exclusive to Amazon for that book for 90 days, right? And that’s really all you’re committing to. Now, the program does automatically renew. So if you ever forgotten to cancel a subscription, there’s definitely that dynamic. But for the most part, this is a 90 day commitment.  It’s not perfect.

Ricci (04:03)

Right. So let’s say you enroll on January 1st, 90 days from them, from there. Let’s say you decide to enroll in January 1st, more or less your term would run until March 31st ish. And then at the end of March, you could either decide to go wide again and get out of the program, or you could stay in the program. I think the point about automatic enrollment is important. So it is going to automatically enroll you. So if on April 2nd, you’re like,

actually I don’t want to be in for another 90 days and you are, that automatic re-enrollment has happened, you cannot get out. So it is important to set a reminder or as soon as you enroll,  can, after you’ve enrolled a couple hours later, you can just go and hit manage book and uncheck the button that will automatically re-enroll you. And that way you don’t have to worry about being re-enrolled at the end of the term.

Ferol Vernon (04:34)

Right.

That’s right. And so that’s the program.  And what we want to sort of break down for y’all today is how it works in detail and what are some of the benefits and what are some of the drawbacks. And so let’s just say if you’re an author and you’re going to put all your books, you have like a few books, let’s say you have two or three books and you put them in KDP and you enroll all of them in KDP select. So once you’ve done that for your 90 day periods and you’ve said, okay, I’m just going to automatically re-enroll them. So you’re kind of like committed to that one.

exclusive life.  Essentially what you’re doing is you’re allowing yourself to be available in the Kindle Unlimited library. And Kindle Unlimited is Amazon’s sort of Netflix for books program where there’s a huge pool of titles and readers can sign up to pay 12 bucks a month to access any of those titles. So for readers, it’s free, low friction. They can just grab any book.

from this large library of books for 12 bucks a month, which for a lot of readers is a pretty good deal. And that is like one of the core benefits of being in KDP Select is that there’s no other way to be part of that Kindle Unlimited library  that readers seem to

Ricci (06:15)

Yep. And so when readers go to Amazon and they’re browsing books, they will see that this is your book. If you’re in the exclusive program is available in KU so they can grab it. They don’t pay anything extra. And then as they read your book for every page that they read that gets recorded by Amazon and you’re able to track it in your KDP dashboard. So you’ll start seeing reads how many people, not how many people. So what you’ll start seeing.

is the number of pages read for each individual title that you have in the select program. And then at the end of the month, that’s about two weeks after the end of the month, Amazon publishes what the per page payout is. So it’ll take the number of pages that a reader has read, let’s say they’ve read a thousand pages, it’ll tell you how much you’re gonna get paid per page.

And then those two multiply out to give you what your payout is on the pages read. Now you are getting paid out on pages read, which you wouldn’t do if you weren’t in select, but your book is also still available for purchase. So just because you’re in the library, doesn’t mean that your book can’t be purchased. So if a reader comes to Amazon who is not in the Kindle Unlimited program, they can still go and purchase your book for whatever your list price is.

So when you’re in select, you’re managing both your list price for people outside of the program, and you’re also accessing the readers who are inside the program and getting paid out on pages read or the lovely acronym, K-E-N-P.

Ferol Vernon (07:56)

There’s so many K’s, KU, KDP, KNEP, it’s just a lot. And I think this is an interesting dynamic for authors where before KU existed, Kedmel limited, it was pretty easy. You either sold a book or you didn’t. So a reader looked and they said, hey, I want to buy this book for $5 or I don’t. And it was a binary choice for the reader. Now a reader can borrow your book.

they could read maybe 30 pages and say, eh, this isn’t for me, put it away. And then you’re only getting paid on those 30 pages. Now that’s sort of like the downside because if you sold that book, even if the reader didn’t like it, you still get to keep the money, right? So if you sold it for $5, you keep that $5 or whatever your royalty is on that price. But in this new model, once they start reading, they can sort of bail on the book a little bit into it.

And that I think is a double-edged sword because while it’s maybe better in some cases to have sold the book,  if you’re a writer who understands how to keep readers going through your story,  you can actually get paid very, well by keeping them turning those pages.

Ricci (09:07)

That’s similar to Netflix. Readers who are in KU are similar to Netflix. It’s very easy to binge content that you love. So when a reader picks up, say, your first book in the series and they love it, they’re going to read all three or 400 pages and then they’re just going to move on and read book two and book three and book four and those pages read are going to start racking up. The other, the biggest downside to.

being in select, which I want to make sure we say out loud, is that we keep referencing your exclusive to Amazon. What that actually means is that your book can only be available on Amazon. So it really is exclusivity in the classic form. So that means you cannot sell your book on any other platforms. You cannot sell your book on your own website. You’re very much restricted to only selling your books on Amazon itself. And that’s why it’s such a hard decision for a lot of authors because that’s a pretty big trade off.

Ferol Vernon (10:04)

Yeah, and one thing that’s really important to note about the program is it is ebook only, right? So you cannot sell your ebook on Apple or Google or any of the other major stores. You cannot sell your ebook on your own website, but you can sell your print book on your own website. So if you’re an author who’s sort of part of this direct sales movement and you’re in KDP Select, you can still sell your print book on your website or through another sort of print retailer.

Ricci (10:09)

Right.

Ferol Vernon (10:30)

 You are allowed to do that. So I thought that that was an interesting thing when we went through the terms and conditions before the show, just to make sure people understand it is definitely an exclusive program for eBooks, no questions asked.  But you can sell your print books in addition to being in KDP select. Yeah, that’s right. It’s format.

Ricci (10:45)

And your audiobooks too. So it really is limited to the

ebook format. Yeah, any other formats are up for grabs, but this is your exclusive on the ebook specifically.

Ferol Vernon (10:54)

Yeah. And one thing I just, another point I want to make about, know, we’re talking about the reading versus buying sort of readers behavior within KU and Ricci mentioned binging books, right? This is something binging content. We’re a binge culture now, right? We want the next show or we want the next book. And  when you’re selling a series and each book costs money, as soon as they finish the book, even if they loved it, there’s friction, right? So I got to go and I got to shell out a few dollars for book two or book three or wherever I am in this series.

And that friction can keep people from moving on, right? But if your series is in KU, like you said, people can plow through it. can binge it. As soon as they finish book one, there’s a little pop-up. It’s like, book two, you just hit it and you keep reading, right? And I think that’s a really important reduction in friction for people to understand because from a reader standpoint, that’s wonderful, right? Like I don’t have to go and buy book one. I wait for it. It’s like, you just get it. 

So there is both benefits and drawbacks,  but that’s an important one for readers.

Ricci (11:58)

Yeah, for sure. The other big benefit to being in the Select program is that the KDP Select program offers some really powerful marketing tools. So as the marketer on the show, I think it’s worth touching on those  because I do feel like that is actually what makes the program so enticing. I know when I was way back helping my mom publish her book, they didn’t have KDP Select when she first published and then they did.

Ferol Vernon (12:08)

Yeah.

You

Ricci (12:26)

And as soon as they did, and I saw what the marketing tools that came with were, I enrolled her because I was like, wow, this is, this is really powerful.  so what you get, if you enroll in KDP select is within that 90 day period, you get five days where you can either run a free promo or a countdown deal. And let me break down what those are. So a countdown deal is let’s say your book is regularly priced at 499.

or 7.99, what you can do is you can say, hey, for these five days, I want my price to be 99 cents. And it will market as a countdown deal on the Amazon page. So create some urgency for the reader. And even at the 99 cent price point, you get a 70 % royalty. Whereas if you’re not in the select program, you only get a 30 % royalty. You can also do something where you.

Slowly increase the price you can set to countdown deal and i want to start in ninety nine cents and then the next day go up to one ninety nine and then two ninety nine so you have this.  So you have this access to this tool where you can be a psychological marketer and play with pricing to get readers. Really interested in your book and during that time like the authors we work with who are running promos on our sites are usually running countdown deals and ninety nine cent book.

And then doing promo stacks and a ton of marketing about it because it spurs a ton of interest on the book. The other, yeah, go ahead.

Ferol Vernon (13:55)

Yeah.

I think, you know, one important part of a countdown deals and part of, you know, what Amazon, why they’re so powerful is they, the countdown aspect. So essentially when the reader sees the price of your book, they also see this little urgency counter that says how many hours it’s going to be before the book goes up in price. So Ricci was talking about, can go from 99 cents to 2.99 to 3.99 to 4.99. The reader, when they encounter that book, they’re going to realize, Oh, I’ve only got a few hours left at 99 cents or at 1.99 or whatever your low price is.

And that urgency and incentive drives a lot of activity. And so it’s just important that you can actually take advantage of that sort of urgency merchandising that Amazon has built into the countdown deal.

Ricci (14:39)

Yeah. And merchandising is a great word for it. Basically you get access to these marketing and merchandising tools. So yes, you can run a countdown deal, which is where your book remains priced or the other option is you can run free promo days. So you can set your book to be a hundred percent free. Now, this is a really interesting dynamic because for readers who are in KU, if your book is priced free, it doesn’t really make a difference. You’re still getting the reads that you’re getting, but for readers who are not in KU,

When you price your book free for those limited days, they come in and it gives you an opportunity to lure in new readers, have them read your book for free, and then they go on to purchase and read the rest of your backlist. So the free days are another powerful marketing technique that get, that allow you to broaden your reader base outside of the KU library.

Ferol Vernon (15:29)

Right. And it can drive a ton of activity. And if you are trying to figure out free and countdown deals or specifically free, like we did a pod a few months ago, it’s all about free promos.  So if you want to sort of dig deeper into the free piece, go check that out.

Ricci (15:46)

Yeah. Um, I think the last thing to say about the select program before we start moving on is just the formidable amount of money that it does pay out. So when, when the select program started, I think it was back in like 20, 14, maybe right around then, um, the, monthly payout.

Ferol Vernon (16:06)

2014 maybe?

Ricci (16:16)

I actually don’t have these stats available.

Ferol Vernon (16:16)

It was July,

2014. Kindle Unlimited and KDP Select actually started in July of 2014 and that starting payout. the whole pie that they were paying out for all the people that got pages read was about two and a half million dollars.

Ricci (16:33)

Got it okay yeah so it started about two and a half million dollars which you know back in twenty fourteen was still pretty hefty part of money. January data just came out and that part that that is getting paid out is sixty two point two million dollars which is. Kind of astounding so if you say okay if it’s gonna be around sixty million a month even though keeps going up times twelve months you’re looking at you know seven to eight hundred million dollars that are getting paid out to authors through.

Ferol Vernon (16:49)

crazy.

Ricci (17:02)

select program and you know that’s close to a billion dollars. It’s a really big slugger cash that is going to authors for their ebooks only. It actually makes up a pretty huge chunk of the ebook marketplace. I think if you were to look at how much is being made on trad ebooks, it’s probably one or two billion dollars a year. So it is a very big part of money and you only have access to that part of money if you’re in KDP select. So I think it’s

Ferol Vernon (17:08)

Big number.

Ricci (17:32)

Important to make sure that authors know that it’s out there.  Of course, how that part gets divvied up is very much dependent on your page reads. And then there’s also a,  all star bonuses, which is kind of like a lottery program where some authors get additional money there. But if you’re an author and you’ve been to conferences or you’re in forums and you have other authors saying, Hey, I got paid out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars through,  the select program.

This is why, because the pot is really big and if you can figure out how to crack it, you do get access to a large amount of revenue.

Ferol Vernon (18:06)

Yeah. And I think it’s important to understand that, you know, that big pot of money that we’re talking about, the January 20, 26 pots around $62 million. So each month there’s a pot of money and Amazon then pays you out per page read from that pot. Right. And these numbers vary. So always make sure to like either check our website or check or check your KDP dashboard. So we don’t want to say like what the payouts are exactly because they change so often. But  one of the things that they also do is on top of getting your pages read,

right? Which is how everybody gets paid in that program. They also pay out these all-star bonuses. And these are these KDP select all-stars. And what these are is chunks of money that are paid to authors for high performance in the program. Now Amazon does not publish why, who gets it, how to get it. So unfortunately, there’s no real reverse engineering and there’s no like strict laws that we can give you to tell you how these things are paid out. But from talking to authors,

Roughly we can say, know, authors have gotten these all-star bonuses if they’ve sold hundreds or thousands of copies in a given month.  And those sort of bonuses are from a few thousand dollars all the way up to maybe $20,000. And again, don’t quote us on those numbers because we’re sort of talking in broad strokes here. But in addition to the  sort of benefit of being in the program, there’s also this kind of like lottery-ish all-star thing where if you do really well, you might get an extra bonus on top.

Ricci (19:35)

Yep. Okay. So we’ve covered a lot. let’s just zoom out for a second,  which is if you decide to go with KDP select, which is Amazon’s exclusive program, what you’re basically saying is you’re entering a monogamous relationship with Amazon for your ebook, right? So you’re not dating anyone else. You’re kind of married to Amazon for a 90 day period. And that comes with some benefits and some drawbacks. The biggest drawback, you can’t play the field.

Ferol Vernon (19:39)

Yeah.

Ricci (20:05)

And you are now in a relationship with one person. So you are getting paid out on your page reads every month, but Amazon gets to change what those payouts are. And you have no say in that. You just have to kind of take what they’re paying out every month. On the flip side, you do have access to this huge pool of money. That’s 60 million plus every month. You also have access to some merchandising and marketing tools. And that’s that program in a nutshell.

Ferol Vernon (20:34)

Yeah, and I think we’ll kind of transition and start talking about the wide authors, authors that are on multiple platforms. That’s a great summary of KDP Select and what it is. And I think the final thing I would say about it before we move on is as we start talking about people that are on a diverse set of platforms, more different places, which are these wide authors, the exclusive authors have one platform. it’s complicated, but it’s only one platform to manage. So that’s a benefit.

But the downside is if something changes on that platform, and we’ve seen this over the years where the algorithm shifts, so they weight certain things a little bit more, a little bit less,  your payouts can really fluctuate, right? And if they fluctuate down, that can be extraordinarily stressful. And so part of  that dynamic is what brings us to wide authors and why you might make a decision not to be in KDP Select.

Ricci (21:24)

Yeah. So let’s say you decide, okay, it’s too scary to be in a monogamous relationship with Amazon. I want to play the field, right? You want to date a lot of people at once because you’re now diversifying. You’re going to don’t have all your eggs in one basket. So these authors are known as wide because they have their eBooks available on multiple platforms. Generally the most popular platforms here are Apple, Google books and Kobo are kind of the top three nook to some degree as well.

And to be clear, these authors generally also do have their books on Amazon. They’re just not enrolled in the select program. They’re not enrolled in the exclusive program. So the wide authors now have multiple platforms where they’re selling their books. They may have multiple platforms that they’re managing because if you’re going to go wide, the first question is, is how do you manage all of that? Right? If you’re exclusive to Amazon.

Ferol Vernon (22:18)

Yeah.

Ricci (22:20)

You go to KDP, you set up your books and that’s it. That’s where you’re logging in every day. That’s the only platform that you’re managing. If you decide to go wide, you can go direct to each platform. So you can go set up an account with Apple. You can set up an account with Google. You can set up an account with Kobo. And for each one of those accounts, you have to set up your book and you have to do your pricing and you now have, you know, multiple tabs open every day when you’re looking at what’s going on. The other option is you can go with the distributor, which makes it easier.

Ferol Vernon (22:43)

Hahaha

Ricci (22:50)

Because you upload your book once and then you basically check, check, check. These are all the different platforms that I want to be available on. And then the distributor will help you get your books on all of those platforms. And then you can try and manage your pricing in one place on the distributor. And then they push that pricing out. Sometimes that can be a little glitchy, but for the most part, it works. Most authors who go wide still have a KDP account. So they’ll go direct and have a KDP account.

Ferol Vernon (23:18)

important.

Ricci (23:20)

but then they’ll distribute, they’ll maybe use a distributor to get on all the other platforms.

Ferol Vernon (23:24)

Yeah, and the distributor model, like Ricci said, you don’t have to do that, but the majority of authors that start going down this pack do choose to pick a distributor because the distributors get you on a lot of platforms, more than just the handful that we’ve mentioned now. Some ones that are very small that you would never really think about setting up manually yourself, but when you go through a distributor, you’re able to get to those relatively easily.

In our industry, there’s sort of two main players that do this distribution. One of them is Draft2Digital and the other one is PublishDrive. They’re both reputable great services that distribute stuff for authors, but they have slightly different business models. So Draft2Digital takes a percentage of your sales, right? So they take 10%. There’s no upfront fee. So you can go in there, set up your thing, and then distribute to all these different places and you still haven’t outlaid any cash, right? But they are taking royalties as they come in.

Publish Drive does a slightly different model where they charge you an upfront fee  and then as much as you sell, you keep. those are just  essentially, they’re both really good. It’s like the business decision of just whether you’d rather pay your upfront fee or sacrifice some of your royalties. But in both scenarios, you’re outlaying a little bit of your earnings in order to use one of these distribution services, which are very valuable.  But that is part of the dynamic here where 

Sometimes you might think, I’m getting a little bit better margins on some of these other stores, but you’re also paying a little bit of extra cost to these distributors.

Ricci (24:58)

Yeah, think the bottom line is if you’re going wide, it is more time consuming because you’re managing multiple platforms. And so you can either pay to save yourself some time by going through a distributor or you can pay in time and, you know, have all these platforms that you’re trying to go direct. There are, as Ferol mentioned, some platforms that are, you know, small or obscure that you haven’t heard of, but that some authors actually make a decent amount of money on that you can only get to through the distributors. So.

When you’re trying to figure out what to do, or if you, if you’re like, I really want to be on this platform, you would maybe look at published drive. You’d look at draft to digital and you’d see where they distribute to and who can actually reach that platform. And one of the great benefits of going wide is that you are available in all of these different places and it does broaden the audience that you’re able to reach. So if you have a book that’s particularly interesting to people in Canada, being on Kobo is going to be.

pretty valuable because Kobo is such a big platform in Canada,  more so maybe than say Amazon. And so it basically allows you to reach a larger audience, to have diversifications. You don’t have all your eggs in one basket, but it does come with the trade-offs of having to manage all these different platforms and pricing on them and trying to figure out what’s working and what’s not.

Ferol Vernon (26:23)

Yeah, and I think all the eggs in your one basket sort of argument is a really good one. Apple, Google, Kobo, these are like big stores. They have their own algorithms just like Amazon does. So if one of those changes, can also affect your earnings. But because you have so many different ones, you’re not as sort of locked into one. And so a change in one platform doesn’t necessarily disrupt your business as much as it might if you’re exclusive to only one.

And we do talk to authors and the majority do fall into  these buckets of I’m on Amazon exclusive, I’m wide so I’m like everywhere or I’m some mix of the both. And there’s a very small percentage of authors that maybe just wanna be on Google, right? Or you just wanna be on Apple Books and you focus all your effort there. But overwhelmingly that’s not what we see. And we essentially see authors making this choice of being in one of those three buckets.

Ricci (27:22)

Yeah. I think with the rise of direct sales, the wide path starts to make more sense for authors who have a mailing list, who have an established audience. Because if you say have a Shopify store and you’re selling your books and you want to sell your eBooks there, you might say, Hey, I’m going wide because I’m not willing to pull my eBook off of my direct store. I’m, you know, making good money there. And so for some authors, the choice is actually not.

what other platforms they want to be on. But the choice is basically, I want to keep all my books on my direct author store. Therefore, I’m not going to go exclusive to Amazon. And so if I’m not going exclusive to Amazon, why not also distribute to a bunch of other platforms to get some incremental revenue.

Ferol Vernon (27:56)

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that’s a great point. so, you know, as we kind of like explore these two paths, why, which we’ve gone through, it’s actually like a little bit less complicated than the KDP platform, but it is more to manage ongoing. KDP platform and KDP select, more complicated to understand. We obviously spent more time explaining it on the show because it’s more complicated to understand, but it’s less to manage ongoing, right? You have one platform. And so I think, you know, what authors always ask us, 

And when we talk to them, it’s always interesting to hear people’s inputs, but how do you make this decision as an author? We’ve gone through and explained these things for you, lifted out some of the pros and the cons. And I think a helpful point for everyone to understand is what is everyone else doing? That’s what everybody wants to know. And so just to give you some data from our 2025 survey, so roughly 38 % of authors that we have are all in on Amazon. They’re in KDP Select exclusive.

Another 30 % are fully wide. They’re like bought into the wide thing. They have no exclusivity with Amazon. Another 32 % are kind of playing both sides or playing the field as Ricci said, right?  And so it’s like not quite a third, third, but a third, but roughly that.  And so when you’re saying like, Hey, what is everybody else doing? There’s not a clear, like everybody’s doing this or everybody’s doing that. It is very mixed. And I think that’s an interesting dynamic for authors that are trying to make this decision.

Ricci (29:34)

Yeah i actually think it’s really positive because what it means is that there is no right answer here right you get to choose your path some authors just might have a visceral reaction to monogamy and be like i do not want to be exclusive and then the answer is there okay so then you should go wide and some authors might say you know i don’t really know.

And because the exclusive programs only 90 days, you get to experiment. And what this data shows more than anything else is that authors are experimenting. And my bet would be for those authors who went exclusive or those authors who went wide, they probably tried a little bit of both. And then they figured out actually wide is better for me, right? Or maybe they started off exclusive. They built up their base of readers and then they said, Hey, I have an asset now. I don’t need to be.

Ferol Vernon (30:09)

Yeah.

Ricci (30:21)

Exclusive with Amazon anymore and then they switch to wide or maybe you start wide and then you switch so The good news is you’re not that tied down. So although we are using this analogy of like dating versus marriage It’s really for a 90-day period, right? So I think the biggest thing So I think the best advice for authors is Experiment to make a decision in life. We can always get caught up with analysis paralysis. I This happens to me far too often

And what I’ve learned is the best thing to do is just try something, right? So you can say, okay, I’m just going to try going wide and you do that for a while and you see what the results are. And then if it’s working great and if it’s not be like, okay, I’m going to put one book in KDP select and I’m going to see how that goes for me. And I’m going to learn how that program works. And you can kind of experiment until you find a recipe that works for you and your books in the audience that you have.

Ferol Vernon (31:12)

Yeah, I think that’s  great advice and like really kind of brings us to the end of the show because you you can do what works for you, right? And I think there’s no right answer. There’s no wrong answer. This is a decision that every author can make for themselves.  And experimentation is a great way to figure out which one of these options is right for you. All right, authors, thank you so much for listening to our conversation around wide versus exclusive. Keep writing and we’ll see you next week.

Ricci (31:41)

See you next week.

Ferol Vernon (31:49)

Ricci, that’s such a great point. think, you know, that’s a great way for us to sort of come to an end of the show. And I think to kind of summarize for the audience what we’ve talked about here, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about the KDP and KDP select programs, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for you or for any author. And it doesn’t mean that WIDE is right. It means you get to make your own choice, right? You can experiment. You can be exclusive to Amazon, focus on one platform, get some cool marketing tools.

 Or you can be wide where you’re managing multiple platforms, working with a distributor. You’re all over the place and you kind of have a way to meet your readers where they are instead of locking yourself on one platform and not having the algorithm platform risk. And that’s really the decision that authors have to make. And I think there’s no right answer, there’s no wrong answer. And experimentation is really key. That’s what we see in terms of the authors that are the most successful in making this decision is

those that are willing to try some stuff out and figure out what works for them.

Ricci (32:51)

Yeah, absolutely. So hopefully this episode has helped with the ins and outs and some of the complexities of the two options that you have. We also have a ton of resources on our blog around how the different programs work, who the distributors are, how to access them. And then every month we also do update the KDP fund, the global fund, how much is a paying out per month, what the pay, the payout per reads are. So there’s a ton more information here. And as always, you can reach out to our.

wonderful customer support team who would be happy to answer any questions you have on this. So thank you Ferol for breaking this all down with me today.

Ferol Vernon (33:29)

Yeah, that’s great. And thank you authors for listening and we will see you next week.

Ricci (33:35)

See you.