Kindle Promotions on Amazon

Over the past year or so, Amazon has added some options for promoting your book on their site.  They seem to be the only ones who understand that the more money you make as an author, the more they make as a platform, a lesson Barnes & Noble seems unable to figure out; but whatever.  Let's look at the three major options on Amazon.

First, there are the two options that are free to you: the Kindle Countdown Deal and the Free Book Promotion.  Of these two, you would think Kindle Countdown Deal is the better one.  First, it puts your book on sale without making it free, so you make some money from it.  It also places it prominently on the website so there's more exposure.  There's also a timer with this ad so people feel under pressure to buy it soon.  This sort of advertising works a lot with larger companies.

But somehow it hasn't seemed to work so well with independents.  When this option first came out, a lot of people tried it, and quickly said they were going back to Free Book Promotions because they saw better results with it.  I experienced the same thing.  I think that ultimately it comes down to people not wanting to take a chance, not even with a dollar, on something they don't know.

As for the Free Book Promotion, this allows you to give away your book for free for five days.  There's still a part of me that rolls my eyes when I hear that.  Gee, can I really give away my own product for free?  Thanks!  And what's worse, the book does not get placed in a better position; people still need to find it and happen to notice that it's free without a catch.  Generally, you have to pay other sites to show off that this sale is going on.  So why does it work so well?

It basically puts your name out there to people who weren't going to take a chance on you otherwise.  I think people who are giving a chance to unknown authors are wanting to see as much as they can for free before purchasing anything.  That's why series work best for indie authors.  If you have a solo book, once you've given it away for free, that's it.  They might buy it as a physical book, but what you're really hoping for is that enough people download it that the book raises high in the rankings, and when it goes up for sale at a price again, it's more visible on the site.  This does happen, but it fades back into obscurity pretty quickly, and whatever sales you got is what you got.

But when it's a series, that one book is given away, and people become curious as to what the next book will be, and the next, and so on.  The general strategy today is to release the first book for free as much as possible, always advertising the fact that it's free, and have the second and third one available for a price, sometimes 99 center for the second, then 2.99 for the third to get the readers slowly into it.

The paid ad campaign is the newest feature.  Ads never work as well as reviews in books, but they certainly don't hurt.  Sometimes all the social media work in the world doesn't help as much as just having your book image appear on thousands of computer screens.  And best of all, Amazon only charges you for the clicks that went through, meaning you're only paying for the ad when it's successful enough to grab a customer.

In this way, I believe it's helpful.  It's not the end-all be-all.  You need to remember that the ad campaign needs to be run in conjunction with other efforts, and it's more of a long-term goal rather than a short one.  You'll get more people looking at your work and who you are when they see this ad, which will hopefully turn into sales.  This is another reason series are a bit better, because they can stick with you, checking you out from time to time as your work keeps getting released.  And that journey sometimes begins with an ad.

So what I'll be using is Free Book Promotions on the first book in my series in conjunction with an ad campaign that comes out more and more the closer we come to the release of book 2.

Relic Worlds Novel Free Today on Kindle through KDP Select

My latest novel, Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and theSearch for the Promised World, is now available for the Kindle on Amazon.  I had been releasing the series on Drivethru Fiction, and had even done this book as a serial there, releasing each chapter as I finished it.  As such, I was going to have the novel come out on Drivethru and all the other e-readers upon release.

However, I looked over the results of my last two books, Pro Bono and The Great Heist.  I released the former through the free on Kindle program, and even though I gave thousands of copies away for free, I sold thousands more after the promotion.  That book still sells better than any of my others.  Meanwhile, I put The Great Heist through Amazon’s other promotion program, Kindle Countdown Deal, where it is sold for a lower price for a limited time.  I had almost no luck with that, selling only a few copies during the promotion period, and it’s never taken off, despite the fact that the subject matter is even more appealing to the general public than Pro Bono.

Of course, none of the other major e-reader platforms have a good promotion program other than Drivethru, which, unfortunately, is not a site highly trafficked enough to get a huge amount of sales.  So as a result, I’m going exclusively with Amazon to give away those copies for free so hopefully those people will spread the word.

I am doing this promotion in two stages:

First promotion:  I’m making it free for two days over a weekend to give it away to all the fans of Relic Worlds and people who have been following me on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  It’s a bonus to them, and hopefully those people will begin spreading the word in time for the second promotion.

Second promotion:  About a month later, I’m making it free for three days.  I will be promoting this one far more widely.  Those areas include:  Book Bub, Pixel of Ink, Facebook sci fi sites, Google + sci fi sites, Kindle Daily, etc.  This is the one I’ll really be pushing, and trying to get people to purchase.

The intent is to generate interest while there’s still time left in the exclusive Kindle deal.  The reason this is helpful is because it maximizes the book’s exposure in one area, making it more likely to get on their top books list.  If people have multiple readers, they purchase it on Amazon, and that pushes me up the Amazon list higher.  If it was on multiple readers, the book would go more evenly up multiple lists, thus making it so the book never reaches bestseller status on any one site.

Since the other e-reader sites do not have promotions that support independent artists like Amazon does, I chose Amazon Kindle.  Simple as that.  They all bemoan Amazon for having unfair business practices, but they do that while not improving their own services for independent authors like myself; so I don’t feel too sorry for them.

My KDP Direct Kindle Countdown Deal Experience

My book The Great Heist - The Story of the Larges Bank Robbery in History just finished its Kindle Countdown Deal and I have to say, I'm very disappointed by the results.  I was warned about this, and I might have made a few mistakes, but I'm disappointed nonetheless.

I'll start by explaining my previous experience with Amazon's only alternative promotion option, the free giveaway, which I did with my last book Pro Bono - The 18-Year Defense of Caril Ann Fugate, which I did last year.  I had two promotional periods, one for two days, and another for three days.  The first one gave away a few hundred books, and the second gave away thousands, nearly ten thousand.  It jumped the book to the top of the bestseller list for its category, and caused a few hundred real sales after the promotion period was done.  It was a good start, and I did it a second time, generating thousands more giveaways and hundreds more sales.  The second go-around was lower, but it was a good way to finish off my KDP Select program before going to a wider release to all the readers.  This was without radio or blog promotions, just an entry in Pixel of Ink.

This method worked well, though I felt that there should be an alternative to giving away thousands of copies of one's books.  The subject matter of Pro Bono was such that many people would spend the money to buy it, but they didn't learn about it until it was free, and at that point they got it without paying anything.  I appreciate the hundreds of sales I got, but it's a bit frustrating when us struggling independent authors have to give away so many thousands of copies for free while the wealthy larger ones get their covers plastered all over the front pages of Amazon and other sites.  In short, though I appreciate greatly all the help Amazon and Createspace has given me and other independent writers and publishers, I would like to see an alternative.

They are trying that alternative with Countdown Deals where your book is offered at a discount, and they list your book as on sale, as well as put a countdown on it, letting people know it's going to go on sale, and then how much longer that sale will be.  The price then slowly creeps up until it's back at the normal price.  The sale can go on for up to seven days.

I looked for other people's experiences before trying it myself.  Oddly, I found very few people had written about it.  I guess that's because it was new, but I'm still a little surprised.  The few that I did read said it hadn't gone very well for them, and had little advice on how to make it work.  I decided to try anyway with The Great Heist.

I wanted to set up my sale to begin the weekend before Thanksgiving.  The logic was that the day before Thanksgiving is supposed to be the biggest travel day of the year, and that weekend has everyone returning, so they'll want something to read.  When I went to set this up, Amazon said I couldn't start the sale until the day before Thanksgiving because of when I entered it into KDP Select.  This seems odd to me, and frankly, I was very frustrated.  I knew my sales would do much better if I could have the lead-up to Thanksgiving rather than through the holiday itself, and it seems completely arbitrary to make the person have to wait a while before they can enter something into the Countdown Deal.

But I figured that the deal included a lead-up promotion to the sale itself, so I went ahead and started it on the 27th and had it run through the whole holiday weekend.  You are allowed seven days for this sale, and there are two sales you can do.  Thinking this seven days was for both sales, and thinking both sales were the same, I set the first one for three days and the second for four.  I didn't realize until it was too late that I could have done seven days on both sales, and one of them is for the UK while the other is for the US.  Luckily, I got the one for Thanksgiving in the US.

I didn't see it listed anywhere special on the Amazon site during the lead-up or during the actual sale, but I'll be honest, I didn't look that hard.  I was busy throughout the holiday.  It might have gotten buried in all the black Friday deals, and this year everyone jumped on advertising early, so it could have gotten buried in all of that.  This was why I had wanted it to run the weekend before, but Amazon's arbitrary requirement of waiting a certain length of time after signup didn't allow that to happen.

I did tell everyone I could about the sale, and I listed it on Pixel of Ink, but in the end, I only got 26 sales.  That's it.  I do admit that I made a few mistakes.  I should have given up on Thanksgiving when I found out I couldn't sell the weekend before.  I should have had the sale go on for seven days.  And I should have looked closer at the marketing to see if Amazon was promoting it they way they say they will.  However, judging from the experiences of others who have gone through this program, it seems I've had a standard experience.

What's worse, I can't take what I've learned from the experience and do another US sale.  I'm stuck until the next 90 days, and even then I can only do it if I go exclusively with Amazon.  When i did the free promotion, the reason I did two days and then three days was so I could learn from the smaller one, make improvements, and do better with the second one.  This one's all or nothing, and it seems most people are winding up with the latter.

Don't get me wrong.  I love Amazon and what they're doing for independent authors and publishers.  Createspace is, in my opinion, the greatest thing to happen to literature since the printing press.  I really mean that.  But I want to see them follow up with better ways to promote.  It seems that so far they have few ideas.  When I first read that they had special promotional deals under KDP, I thought they meant advertising, banners on their web pages, special mailings... something like what the big publishers get to do.  When I first saw that giving away free copies of the book WAS the special KDP promotions, I thought I must be reading it wrong.  They have followed this up with "allowing" us to sell our books for lower price.  This shows a lack of creativity on their part, and gives us few options.

There's another book buying company that does promotions so well, they should be used as the model.  They are drivethrufiction.com.  The way they handle it is that every month, an author gains a certain amount of points.  These points are based on how many titles they have up, how long they've been registered, and how much they've helped the community.  So when you give a review to another book, you get points.  Sometimes they give you points for helping out on the forums, and just being a part of the community in general.  I've gotten points for pointing out some glitches in the website.  You can redeem these points by purchasing advertising time.  This can be a banner on the top, on the side, written advertising with links, a listing in your specific category, etc.  You can even send notes to people who have purchased your work to let them know you're releasing something new.  This system is exemplary to independent artists, and should be used by all independent writing sites.

I'll be honest, unless KDP comes up with some better promotion plans, I won't be using it anymore; or at least I'll be getting away from it as soon as possible.  I might try the free promo again for a book that I just want to get out to the public; especially if it's part of a series where they can purchase more books.  I'm still very loyal to Createspace, and will sing the praises of Kindle and Amazon in general, but thus far, I don't see much use in their "promotional" deals.

Amazon's Kindle Countdown Deal for The Great Heist

I am trying out the new KDP Select Countdown Deal for my book The Great Heist - The Story of the Biggest Bank Robbery in History.  It starts out for 99 cents today, goes up to 1.99 tomorrow, and rises every day by one dollar until it's back to full price at the end of the weekend.

I've started this sale the day before Thanksgiving and will be running it through the weekend.  I know this is risky because I'm competing with all the madness of Black Friday and other holiday events.  However, my idea is to catch people as they are traveling.  The day before Thanksgiving is the biggest travel day of the year, and the weekend is equally busy, so my hope is that people will buy it to read on planes, road trips, etc.  I wanted to start it the weekend before Thanksgiving, but Amazon has this crazy concept where the writer must place this promotion a certain number of days after they start on KDP.  I don't understand why this is, and it seems only to hurt, as it has in my case so far.

Hopefully, though, this will not cause an ongoing problem, and it will sell to people wanting to read on their long travels.  I'll give an update after it's done to explain how it went.

The book is available at:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G8ULNX4/ref=s9_simh_gw_p351_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1F2ZN3P7MVWW2YE3GW1V&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1630083502&pf_rd_i=507846