KDP – How I became a bestselling author

Sales for the Stripper of the Yard had gone well for the first three weeks but having run out of family and friends, I needed to find other ways to get the news of my book out to the world at large.

First I advertised on a number of free author platforms. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing if anyone is viewing these. Still no new sales.

Then up pops a request for me to support another author’s thunderclap promotion. I had never heard of thunderclap and for those who haven’t, it is a crowd sourcing platform. Rather than asking people to give you their money, it asks people to give you access to their social media platform. You need to get a minimum of 100 people to offer you their support and if your target is achieved at an appointed time a tweet or Facebook advert is sent out to all the connections of your supporters. I was amazed that my book was being tweeted to over 217,000 people.

My book was tweeted and while I am still hopeful, I have yet to see any new sales.

Looking for new ideas I was quite pleased to see my monthly newsletter from KDP pop up into my in box.

There at the top of the email was a link to a YouTube video of a KDP bestselling author. These appear each month and unfortunately this one was exactly the same as all the others. In the video an author sits and tells of her journey to bestselling authorship through using KDP and createspace. Yet again when it gets to the point as to how the author attracted readers she says she did nothing and that the readers came to her.

How can this be?

How does this help those of us who need to attract readers?

Why does KDP feel the need to only share the stories of people who magically sold thousands of books over night?

I do not begrudge the success of other authors but can’t we see the story of an author who struggled in the start, but has achieved greatness now. It would be great to know that one day all this hard work would pay off. If the ability to attract readers is all written in the stars is there any point pushing my book? There must be some way to let readers know I exist without being ‘traditionally’ published.

Come on KDP give those of us who are struggling some hope. Show us authors who never gave up hope and struggled to start with. Show us how the hard work is worth it.