KDP select and Amazon price promotion strategies

Two weeks since I published Borderliners via KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), Amazon’s self-publishing platform, and I’ve got to the point on my marketing plan which says:

Enroll book on KDP select and a three day free promotion.

Well, I’ve decided not to do it. For now.

When to reduce the price of your book on Amazon

I’ve picked up a few nuggets of advice:

  • Only run a free book promo when you have other books up on Amazon you wish to generate paid sales for – i.e. use book one to create buzz for all the books, but particularly the next ones. You take a hit on your first book in order to generate many more paid sales for the second. Will I take this advice? Yes, probably. My research seems to back up this statement.
  • Only run a free book promo in tandem with advertising on a free book aggregator site like BookBub, Pixel of InkEreader News Today, and Digital Book Today. (Even then, some authorities on the matter feel BookBub is the only one worth bothering with).
  • Consider price drops rather than free promos.

My pricing strategy?

I’m still playing with the pricing strategy for my book, just as I’m working hard on meta-data, categorisation and product description. However, I’ve decided the time to do a free promo isn’t now. As the first book, and the only one published in a forthcoming trilogy, it seems that returns on a free promo for Borderliners will do better once my second book is out later this year.

More research pending…

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