Going to hell with KDP Select?

I've been on the fence with the whole Kindle KDP Select thing.  You know, make your book exclusive to Amazon (and thus to Kindle owners only) for three months and get all sorts of fabulous benefits.  The most fab is being able to offer your book for free for a certain number of days during the three month period of exclusivity.

An author I follow on Twitter posted today that there have been 5000 downloads of his book in less than 24 hours of being offered for free! Unbefuckinglievable!  That's a whole lot of people that may, someday, read the book.  My book is available on Smashwords (as well as Amazon) and they had a freebie promo during "Read an eBook Week".  Special Offers was available for free during that period (reduced from the regular price of a whopping $0.99) and I had 114 downloads.  Which is probably comparable to the 5000 on Amazon given that tons more people buy books there.

Of course, people are probably downloading hundreds of books for free, many of which will likely be lost in the deep recesses of their Kindles, never to opened and read. But if even 10% actually read it, that's still good exposure.

What irks me, is that distancing oneself from all other sales venues when joining KDP Select is the ONLY way to offer a book for free on Amazon.  It's like extortion wrapped up in a seemingly pretty package.  Come to the dark side and your book will be seen by thousands!  Cleave onto Amazon, and you will be rewarded with exposure beyond your wildest dreams!!!

That being said, I still am considering selling my soul to KDP Select for a chance at better exposure.  As a new author, what could be better than a crap load of people downloading my book?  It's not like Smashwords gets me a lot of sales; aside from the freebies, I've only actually sold 3 copies versus 30 times that on Amazon in the first 3 months of being available.  But Smashwords allows me to download MY book for free, and generate coupon codes for free copies.  This is particularly helpful when requesting reviews.

Maybe I should download Special Offers in all available formats from Smashwords, and then make the deal with KDP Satan, ah, I mean Select.  It's only for three months.  It's not like I'm signing away my first born male child. Although he just turned 16, so that might be a more palatable option compared to Amazon exclusivity.  (Just kidding. Really.)