Initial thoughts: I liked the way that this was described on Amazon. Outside retailers could purchase my books and resell them. My mind immediately went to Books A Million or local indie bookstores stocking their shelves with my books. But the reality was online retailers who are trying buy my book at cost and then resell for a gain online. Which is an expanded distribution, but without the excitement of my book being on bookshelves. And when the first royalties came in it was so exciting to see a new color on the Amazon KDP Sales Dashboard.

Likes : Why not add another means for people to purchase the book? The more options, the better chance of more readers finding it.

Dislikes: The jury is still out, I’m making a really small amount on each re-sale which makes sense since I received the royalty after the initial purchase. So this hasn’t grown my revenue exponentially or anything.

Re-sellers are charging a crazy amount: my initial instinct was to be shut off expanded distribution and post on my social channels to not buy from these re-sellers who were jacking up the rates. One was listing my book for $40 used when it could be purchased new for $9.99. I didn’t like that they were going to add a lot of extra cost for the end user and rip them off when there was the lower price that I had listed. But then I realized that people shop around. I haven’t seen any negative comments come from this, but I have my eye on it and I may pull my book off of expanded distribution if I see any reader complaints. Hopefully they know that there are cheaper alternatives.

What are your thoughts on KDP Expanded Distribution?