Kobo Promo

There's no doubt about it; Amazon dominates the eBook market. But Kobo is continuing to gain traction, particularly with readers who've realized recently that they don't actually own the content on their Kindles. They've just purchased a license to view it on their devices. There are ways around that (or so I hear), but not everybody wants to go through the rigmarole of downloading and transferring their Kindle eBooks via Calibre and various plugins. Most of us just want to buy an eBook and keep it on our device till kingdom come. Simple as that.

Kobo keeps things simple, and for that reason its market share is steadily growing. I believe they're at around 15% now (up from only 3% five years ago), and with their global reach, that will only increase. This summer, I decided to try out Kobo Writing Life for the first time, selling my eBooks directly via Kobo as I do with Amazon, instead of going through Draft2Digital (and giving up 10% of my royalties). One of the perks is the opportunity to apply to group promotions. After being rejected thrice, I made it into this one, where I had to pay $10 to play. I'm giving away the first book in my Charlie Madison P.I. trilogy, and the hope is that folks will like it enough to buy the sequels. So if I sell-through five copies, I'll break even. 

After locking most of my books in Kindle Unlimited this summer, I'll be breaking out a few at a time and offering them wide again in the fall. Usually, I take the all-or-nothing approach, but this time around, I'll be keeping my short story collections in KU and releasing my novels wide. If a certain trilogy seems to be doing exceptionally well in KU, then I might leave it for another 90 days before setting it free. When KU works for me, it usually adds 20% to my income. But something in me balks at the idea of allying myself exclusively with Amazon, so I have to rebel every now and then.