Being a Kindle owner definitely has its perks. Amazon has an extensive collection of Kindle-exclusive books that you can’t read anywhere else. As it turns out, that exclusivity is a real money maker.
Amazon announced today that the 180,000 books that are exclusive to the Kindle store have been purchased, downloaded, or borrowed more than 100 million times. The ability of Amazon Prime members to borrow books via Kindle seems to have had the biggest impact on sales. Authors love the Kindle exclusive library as well since it gives them the kind of exposure that would have been impossible anywhere else.
Amazon notes that several popular Kindle exclusive titles like “War Brides” by Helen Bryan and “A Scattered Life” have been downloaded or borrowed hundreds of thousands of times. Even more impressive is the novel “A Modern Witch” by Debora Geary as it briefly unseated the super popular “Fifty Shades of Grey” as the best-selling book on the Kindle store. It has since gone on to sell more than 200,000 copies.
“We have a huge library of books that are only available on Kindle, and they’re super popular – in less than a year they’ve been downloaded more than 100 million times,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. “Exclusive books are another great benefit for Kindle readers, and we’re going to continue to work hard to make sure the Kindle ecosystem is the best in the world for our customers.”
Amazon also points out that Authors who make their titles exclusive to Kindle through the KDP Select program receive 77 percent more royalties from paid sales. One author in particular, Stephanie Bond, said that royalties from paid sales for her novel “Our Husband” increased by over 2,000 percent since joining KDP Select.
Other authors, including Andrew E. Kaufman and Thomas Benigno, all praise the KDP Select program for letting them get their foot in the door. Both authors now have titles on the top 100 best seller list and have seen sales rise to the 100,000 mark.
If anything, the KDP Select program makes self-publishing easier than it’s ever been. Authors no longer have to foot the bill on publishing a few thousand copies in hopes that they sell. Amazon and Apple both offer self-publishing programs on their respective stores that up-and-coming authors can make a name for themselves on.
Internet self-publishing is still growing and expanding all the time. The success that authors have found on KDP only point us more towards a future where more and more authors, musicians and other creators will be peddling their wares on the Internet instead of indie bookstores.