One of the thorniest decisions in self-publishing today is — enroll in Amazon’s KDP Select program (which requires that your book remains exclusive to Amazon) or go wide and try out all of the different publishers. So far, I’ve used the first approach, which has lots of benefits:

• 5 free days or 1 countdown deal every three months, which (if done right) can really increase your exposure to new readers while also keeping the rank of your book high
• Eligibility for being borrowed via Kindle Unlimited, which helps with exposure and can also increase your income (although the amount you get per borrow has been dwindling rapidly in recent months, from $2 to $1.50 to $1.33 and some authors report lower overall income as a result)
• Keeping all of your eggs in one basket means that all readers have to go to Amazon to buy your book, which means your book is likely to have a higher rank than if some of your readers bought elsewhere
• Simplicity, with only one file to upload, one system to learn, etc.

On the other hand, you’re obviously eliminating the possibility of making sales on other retailers if you go all-in with Amazon. And, while the majority of indie authors find that Amazon is the much easier nut to crack and thus that they make most of their money on Amazon even if they go wide, you might just be the exception to that rule. I hear rumblings now and then of authors who sell more books on non-Amazon sites, particularly All Romance Ebooks (if you write romance), Google Play (for children’s books and perhaps some other genres), and Barnes and Noble (for erotica and romance).

And then there are international sales. While Amazon does have branches nearly worldwide, if you appeal to a Canadian market, you’re shooting yourself in the foot by staying out of Kobo, the dominant Canadian ebook retailer. Similarly, iBooks and Tolino are reported to be big in Germany, where Amazon only has 40% of the ebook market according to Joanna Penn. Of course, once you start branching out beyond English-dominant countries, you also have to start considering whether it’s worthwhile to get your books translated, which is fodder for another post. But 7% of my Amazon income last month came from outside the U.S., making me wonder if I could turn a couple of hundred dollars a month into much more if I learned to leverage other platforms.

The final point in favor of going wide with your book distribution is perma-free. The accepted method of getting a book listed for free on Amazon is to list it through Smashwords or Draft2Digital (both of which distribute to many of the non-Amazon retailers), setting the book at a price of $0 through the distributor and waiting for Amazon to price match. But if you’re going to have the first book in your series up for free on other platforms while keeping the other books in the series only on Amazon, you’re spitting in reader’s faces. I know that if I was a nook user, if I downloaded and loved a free book, and then I found out that I’d have to change devices in order to read the rest of the series, I wouldn’t be very pleased.

Which is probably why most of the self-publishing heavy-hitters recommend going wide once you have more than one or two books in your arsenal. I thought long and hard about that decision as I prepared to launch Pack Princess, the second book in my Wolf Rampant series, and I’ve decided to stay in KDP for now…at least until I publish book three. At that point, I might decide that making the first book perma-free is the best way to get exposure for the growing series, making it worthwhile to pull out of KDP Select and explore other retailers.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Are you in KDP Select? Why or why not? And, if you’re still reading, I hope you’ll take a minute to snag my middle-readers fantasy novel, Burgling the Dragon, which is free today. (Gotta take advantage of those KDP Select benefits!)