Amazon Expands KDP Select with New Bonuses for Top-Performing Indie Authors
Amazon quietly expanded the funding for KDP Select yesterday, adding nearly three million dollars in bonuses.
Launched in late 2011, KDP Select is a program in Amazon’s self-pub platform which offers indie authors special privileges in exchange for exclusivity.
Any ebooks submitted to the program cannot be sold elsewhere, and in return Amazon gives authors extra promotional opportunities. eBooks in KDP Select are also entered into the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited, earning the author a share of a pool of money ($2 million for August 2014) for each time their ebook is loaned to a Kindle user.
And now KDP Select is getting better. Amazon revealed yesterday that they are boosting the funding for KDP Select by $2,700,000, and adding a second set of bonuses just for the best performing authors. The top 100 best performing authors will receive any where from $1,000 to $25,000, while the authors of the 100 most popular titles in KDP Select will get anywhere from $500 to $2,500.
Update: It seems I missed an important detail. The $2.7 million and the KDP Select All-Stars bonuses are separate. The latter only amounts to
The bonuses are going to be awarded based on participation in August 2014, so there is no way to affect the awards now, but I don’t think anyone who is in the program will care much.
Amazon also announced:
Finally, many authors outside the U.S. derive most of their qualified borrows from the KOLL and have not been able to benefit from the growth of KU. This has meaningfully altered their ability to compete within the wider pool of KDPS loans. To adjust for this, we are adding an additional bonus of $80,000 to be paid out on all KOLL loans outside of the U.S.
At last report, Amazon said that there were over 500,000 titles in KDP Select. That body of work makes up most of the catalog of Kindle Owner’s Lending Library and for Kindle Unlimited, the ebook subscription service which Amazon launched in July 2014.
KOLL is a freebie for Amazon prime members in the US, UK, and Germany, and KU cost $10 a month, but is US-only at the moment.
image by Emily Carlin
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