For some time we’ve been advising writers to publish their e-books via Amazon Kindle Select. Our argument has been that Kindle dominate the e-book market both in the UK and the USA, possibly accounting for up to 80% of it. By signing on to Kindle Select, writers give exclusive e-book distribution rights to Kindle for periods of ninety days, renewable. In return writers receive a royalty of 70% of the retail price of their e-books provided the price is set to a minimum of $2.99 or equivalent. This compares very favourably with a more standard level of royalty of 30%.

There are serious dangers in the semi-monopolistic position that Amazon has acquired and we recognise this, but writers, especially self-published writers, have to look after themselves and we feel that is our duty to point out the advantages of a 70% royalty and the advantage of receiving one sales report – which much easier to manage than collating sales reports from multiple e-book platforms. The Independent Author blog has a good balanced piece about the does and don’ts of Kindle Select.