To KU or Not to KU? That is the Question

This weekend, I made the decision to put all of my fiction titles into Kindle Unlimited. This is the first time I have ever done this. I never thought I would and honestly, it’s an experiment to see what the market looks like in there.

I have a series that will be releasing through the autumn and winter this year. As I’ve watched trends and talked to authors and looked at the declining sales of everything for indies across the board, I thought what I would do is launch the series into KU, and when the final book runs through its 90-day term, publish the series wide with the first book at permafree. However, the KU audience isn’t my audience because the only books I have ever had in there are the Crossroads box sets.

In order to truly launch well, I wanted to introduce the KU readership to my books. So, I pulled all 21 fiction novels I had wide, removed the permafree from 3 books, and put them all into KU, then poured a bunch of advertising money into them. I’m super curious about how it will turn out, because I know there are authors who rock the KU platform, and there are authors who just fizzle and die in it.

I figure for myself, it’s 90 days. I can give it 90 days. If it works, if it’s a good thing, then I’ll leave my books in there until the whole series is launched and the final book finishes its 90 day run. At that time, I’ll relaunch my library wide. If it doesn’t work, the beauty of being a self-published author is that I can put them all back wide and go back to the way I’ve always done things.

This is a dynamic industry, and indies need to keep their eyes on the market and be ready to move and shift as needed.