I did want to point out one fallacy that you started to touch on but missed. That is Amazon Sales Rank. It is very important on Amazon, critically important in my opinion. It is used by the Amazon algorithm in making recommendations to readers, positioning within searches, and almost every other aspect of organic sales.

You said that you would have to make up lost wide sales with page reads and believed you would not. However, in calculating Sales Rank, every KU borrow is considered a sale. Therefore, the additional reads would have driven Sales Rank higher, (lower Number) and made your book(s) more relevant to the algorithm. This would drive even more sales and reads. Therefore, your lost wide revenue would come from additional sales and reads.

I have put some of my books wide from the time of publishing, and still have some of them wide. Their total sales wide do not come anywhere near what I make being Amazon exclusive. But, it was not always that way, having a good back catalog is where it is at.

I released a book a couple of months ago that rocketed into the top 100 for the categories the first day. What followed was two other older books moving back into the category top 100, all driven by a large number of KU reads. KU readers do move into the back catalog if they like your book. They are loyal and voracious readers.

All that said, it is not something that I believe will ever be settled. There are too many variables between individual authors, books, and genres to really sleuth out.

Thanks again for the great article

Hey Nalini! Keep at it! As for those forms – I schedule it on my calendar and tackle it on the weekends. When I have something to distribute, that is. I find that if I plan to do it and jam through, it’s almost like an assembly line. You get faster as you go. I love D2D!!! Maybe I’ll see you in the 10K FB group…or Wide for the Win!

So good to see you over here. 😀 Great article and thanks for the Wide for the Win shoutout. ❤️ I’ve heard the same thing as you (KU is best for romance; KU is best for new authors) for YEARS, and it simply isn’t true. KU is best for…

Nobody! 😁

Thanks again for a great article.