Once upon a time, Kindle Countdown Deals combined with some inexpensive and targeted advertising was a surefire winner for authors. Set a Countdown Deal on KDP, pay under $100 for a few targeted ads, and voila! You were almost assured to get a few hundred downloads, increase your Amazon rank, and get a couple of new reviews. We had authors who regularly made it to the top ten, and even number one, in their category rankings on Amazon using this plan.
And then things changed. As with most great marketing ideas, people grew tired of it. The websites advertising daily book deals such as Fussy Librarian and Choosy Bookworm, weren’t drawing the crowds they used to, so the countdown deals were not as effective. People weren’t even breaking even despite the low cost of advertising.
But in book marketing, things constantly change, and in the past year, the Kindle Countdown Deal strategy is working again. No, people aren’t making as much money as they were ten years ago, but it is again one of the easiest and cheapest ways to push your book out past your friends and relatives and start to develop a national market.
As with all marketing, you must have a clear strategy to be successful. But when you pay for advertising, you want to be even more certain of your goals and audience.
Getting Ready for Your Deal
- For the first 45 days of your e-book campaign, concentrate on asking the people you already know to buy and review your book. Your goal is to get as many reviews as possible in this period.
- After your first 45 days on Amazon, you can run a one-week price promotion, dropping your price either to .99 cents or free. There are a number of e-book promotion sites you can use, but for the first marketing campaign try just FussyLibrarian.com. Then, each time you do a Countdown Deal add another book promotion site. This will help you see which sites work best for your book.
- Fussy Librarian and the other sites put out daily newsletters to subscribers telling them about various book deals. The newsletter is free for subscribers, but as an author, you must pay to advertise. Prices run from about $25 to several hundred dollars, depending on the popularity of the site and your book genre.
- Once you have signed up for a date for your price promotion, and received a confirmation, go back to KDP and change your price for the dates you have selected. It’s very easy to do.
Setting Up Your Deal on KDP
- On your KDP bookshelf, look to the right of your book cover image and click the “Promote and Advertise” icon. This will take you to a new page. Click on the yellow “Create a New Kindle Countdown Deal” button.
- Ensure that “Marketplace” is set to Amazon.com, not Amazon.UK. Choose the dates your deal will start and end. Then choose the price.
Now your first e-book promotion is set. You cannot, however, sit back and let it happen. Using an e-book selling site will boost your sales, but you need to help it along. Post your deal on Facebook, Instagram, and any other social media sites you use. If you have a newsletter, send one out the week of your sale and include a link to your book. Think about all the ways you can let people know your book is on sale for a week at 99 cents or free.
Of course, there are no guarantees in life, and the first promotion will rarely take you to number one in your category, unless you happen to have a very small niche market.
As with all marketing, e-book promotions work best when done several times. You can run a promotion once a quarter. The objective is to slowly, over time, watch your sales rank increase. It will be at its highest on the first day or two of a promotion. But with luck, after each promotion your rank will stay higher for longer.
**I help people set up their Countdown Deals. Email me to learn more.