My Kindle Countdown Deal Epic Fail

by Juliet Rich

Over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend, I offered The Flaming Geeks Book of Geeky Trivia for .99 on an Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal. I didn’t have tiers, so it was 99 cents the whole time until it went back up to the list price of $2.99.

As I did when I offered it as a Free Book Promotion, I only marketed it by sharing it on my personal Facebook page. I did this a couple of times during the promotion.

The results:

Free Book Promotion – ~150 free downloads (no money for me), followed up with ~5 sales immediately after the promotion ended (yay money). Plus it netted me my first review (yay review!).

Kindle Countdown Deal – no downloads, no sales, no new reviews

Why didn’t it work?

Reason #0 – I need to do more marketing in general. But that was true of both cases.

Reason #1 – Everyone who follows me on Facebook who wanted it already had it.

Reason #2 – Kindle Countdown Deals is new — I thought that might help, because there wouldn’t be many books in there trying it out. However, it could be that being new also meant that people didn’t know […]

Tags: , , | Category: My Books, Sell Your Ebook | Comments closed

Geeky Trivia – Kindle Countdown Deals

by Juliet Rich

Just throwing y’all a heads-up that The Flaming Geeks Book of Geeky Trivia will be a Kindle Countdown Deal starting this Wednesday (day before Thanksgiving). It shall nicely encompass Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

And if this URL continues to work, it should also show up on this Kindle Countdown Deal category list.

Tags: , , | Category: My Books, Sell Your Ebook | Comments closed

Kindle Countdown Deals – What the Heck Are They?

by Juliet Rich

Amazon recently introduced Kindle Countdown Deals. For awhile now, authors have been wondering how they could put their Kindle ebooks on sale for a short period of time. Before this, the only thing you could do was offer them for free, or jigger around with pricing on other sites so Amazon would price match. If you just lowered the price, it wouldn’t show as a strikethrough ($4.99 $2.99), like you would see when you offered it free.

Now with Kindle Countdown Deals, you can do just that.

Kindle Countdown Deals Pre-Requisites

* Your book has to be enrolled in KDP Select for at least 30 days. This means your ebook is exclusive to Amazon. It’s free to enroll, but just know the trade-offs you’re making.

* Your book has to be priced at no less than $2.99 and no more than $24.99.

* Your book has to have had the same price for the past 30 days.

* You can’t also offer a Free Book Promotion in the same enrollment period. You have to pick one or the other.

The KDP Select period is 3 months. At the end of the 3 months, you can decide to switch to […]

Tags: , , | Category: Sell Your Ebook | Comments closed

Is Amazon’s KDP Select Worth It?

by Juliet Rich

What is KDP Select?

After you’ve published your ebook via Amazon, you’ll have the option to enroll it in KDP Select. Basically, in exchange for granting Amazon exclusive ebook rights for 3 months (or more), you get additional benefits.

What does exclusive mean?

It means you won’t make the ebook available for sale anywhere else. The only place to get it is through Amazon. That means if you’ve already published it through Smashwords or you’ve made it available on your own website or blog, you have to remove it before you enroll. They’ll check.

Again, this is only for 3 months. So if it’s not working out like you’d hoped, you can remove it from KDP Select and sell it through whatever other methods you’d like.

What’s the benefit of enrolling in KDP Select?

* You get 70% royalty on more non-US sales, rather than 35%.

* You can offer EITHER a free promotion for a short period of time (“Free Book Promotion”) OR a discount promotion for a short period of time (“Kindle Countdown Deals”).

* Your book is available in the “Kindle Lending Library”. Amazon Prime members who own a Kindle can borrow your book for free. […]

Tags: , , | Category: Sell Your Ebook | Comments closed